Escape to Australia Read online

“Nah, just a bit of a breeze,” the bus driver said. “Anyway, we don’t believe in hurricanes. In Australia, we have cyclones.”

  “Isn’t a cyclone just another name for a hurricane?” I asked.

  My Friday nights in front of the Discovery Channel had included plenty of shows on typhoons, tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes. I was an expert at this point.

  “Nah,” the driver said, looking at me as if I was nuts. “Totally different thing. She’ll be right, mate.”

  “What about those hailstones?” Mom said.

  “Those itty-bitty little specks of ice? Completely flamin’ harmless! Now get off me flamin’ bus, ya drongos!”

  The bus driver skidded to a halt in what looked like the parking lot of a fried-chicken joint. The hail was coming down hard and quick, so we made a run for a bus shelter. We had gone from superhot to ice-cold in less than two minutes. We were clearly in the middle of some enormous natural disaster. The best we could hope for was that our waterlogged bodies would be found wedged in the branches of a tree a week later during the massive cleanup operation.

  Over the noise of the hailstones hammering down, Mom told me that Mayor Coogan’s brother, Biff, was supposed to meet us. I leaned against a graffiti-covered wall and looked out at the curtain of hail.

  “This isn’t what I imagined,” I said, but Mom wasn’t listening.

  She was fast asleep.

  CHUNDER DOWN UNDER

  After what seemed like hours but was actually six minutes and eighteen seconds, a car screeched into the parking lot and slid to a halt in front of the bus shelter. A six-foot-tall chicken sprang out of the driver’s seat and stood looking at us as hailstones the size of tennis balls bounced off his head as though they were made of popcorn. Mom and I stared back.

  Maybe the hail was popcorn. Nothing would surprise me about Australia anymore. For all I knew, the hailstones contained exploding poison darts, or possessed claws, or six sets of fangs. Everything else in this country seemed to have unnecessary protective armor.

  Or the chicken possibly had a head made of solid granite.

  Either way, he didn’t seem to notice.

  The chicken’s car, on the other hand, took a beating. I watched the left side-view mirror get caught by a particularly large hailstone and crash to the ground. Ice rat-a-tat-tated the roof, and the windshield cracked in three places. The chicken didn’t seem to mind. Maybe these giant chickens had plenty of spare cars.

  “G’day, you blokes!” the chicken boomed. He lifted his wings and pulled off his head to reveal someone who looked very much like Blitz Coogan. “Biff Coogan’s the name, and I’m mayor of this joint!” Biff Coogan pointed at his chicken suit. “I don’t normally dress like this, but me and Mrs. Coogan have got a fancy-dress party coming up, and I’ve just been to pick up my costume. Thought I’d leave it on and give you a bit of a laugh!”

  “Fancy-dress”? “A bit of a laugh”? It was obvious he’d lived in Australia a long time. Any trace of American in his voice was gone. He even sounded more Australian than any of the Australians we had met so far. At least I could still understand him, though. It could be worse—he could be speaking Chicken.

  “Ha, ha,” I said, doing my best to appear amused.

  It seemed to satisfy Biff.

  “What about your car?” I asked. “It’s getting totally destroyed.”

  Biff glanced at the car. “Oh, that’s not mine. It’s Mrs. Coogan’s. My car had a bit of a run-in with the hailstones, but this car’s a beaut. She’ll—”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “She’ll be right, mate?”

  “You got it, buddy,” said Biff. “We’ll make an Aussie of you yet!”

  He stepped forward and shook Mom’s hand.

  “Ha!” she said. “I mean, hi. Ny mane’th Rafe and this son is my Jules. I mean, my name’s Rafejools and this son is my. Wait, what I mean…”

  She may have been trying to look like she wasn’t auditioning for a role in a zombie flick, but she definitely wasn’t succeeding. She sounded as if her tongue had been replaced by a drowsy ferret. I began to wonder about those travel pills she’d been popping on the plane. She had mentioned something about side effects…

  Biff didn’t seem to notice.

  “No worries, Rafejools! Welcome to Australia!” Biff opened the doors to what was left of Mrs. Coogan’s car. “Pity we couldn’t have fixed up some sun for you guys. Okay, let’s go!”

  We made a death-defying leap through the hail and into the relative safety of the backseat. The hail sounded even louder inside the car than when we were standing under the bus shelter. Biff looked around the front seat at us.

  “You blokes are traveling light!” he yelled.

  I didn’t bother explaining. I was too tired. Our luggage would turn up or it wouldn’t. After twenty-six hours on the move, plus a sleepless night before that, I didn’t care if the bags ended up in Saskatchewan.

  I sat back and watched as we drove through town. A sign read WELCOME TO SHARK’S BAY, AUSTRALIA’S MOST FEARLESS TOWN.

  “‘Most Fearless’?” I said. “What’s that all about?”

  “Shark’s Bay surfers,” Biff replied. “We got sharks here in Shark’s Bay—lots of sharks—but that never stops a Shark’s Bay surfer!”

  I gulped and exchanged a meaningful look with Leo.

  “Did he say ‘lots’?” Leo asked.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, boy.”

  “But don’t worry,” Biff said, “hardly anyone gets eaten. Heh, heh, heh.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “How far to the hotel?”

  All I wanted was a shower and a bed I could sleep in for, say, three weeks straight.

  “Oh, you’ll be staying at our little beach shack,” Biff said as he swerved around a fallen tree in the middle of the road. He turned in his seat and grinned. “More cozy than a hotel, hey?”

  I sat up and looked at Leo.

  A shack? That hadn’t been part of the deal. I’d thought it’d be some swanky five-star resort, not some complete stranger’s backyard shed.

  “I didn’t know about this!” I hissed.

  “Of course, Rafe,” Mom said. She had a strange, glassy expression on her face, and her skin looked a bit green.

  “I mean, we don’t know these people!”

  “Mmm, yeah, apples,” Mom said, nodding. Her eyes wobbled in different directions. “And oranges. Christmas stockings.”

  I looked at her. “Mom, are you okay?”

  “What a strange question, Rafe. Of course I’m Wednesday.”

  And then, before anyone could stop her, Mom leaned forward and did the unthinkable.

  She puked.

  All over the back of Biff Coogan’s head.

  It was a full-on, pedal-to-the-metal puke tornado, too, not a measly quarter or half hurl. It was the real deal, chunks blown, projectile Vom City to the maximillion. It was messy. It was loud. It was spewtastic!

  It was probably the single most awesome thing I’d ever seen.

  BIFFZILLA VERSUS MOM

  Everyone froze. In fact, as you can imagine, the atmosphere inside the car cooled down right away. The temperature dropped so much you could have used the inside of the car as a training pod for an Antarctic expedition.

  “Whoa,” I said. It seemed to sum up the situation.

  Getting puked on by a complete stranger can’t be much fun. Getting puked on by a complete stranger while dressed in a chicken suit must have been much, much worse.

  And funnier, too, although a big part of me felt really (like, really) bad for Mom. She couldn’t help it, I wanted to say. Maybe I should’ve explained to Biff that a combination of jet lag, heat, travel pills, and an Aussie Airways tuna bake had combined to turn my nice, polite mom into a walking puke machine, but Biff didn’t look like he wanted anyone to talk to him, least of all me.

  But, I thought, my hopes rising, we’re in Australia. They had a different sense of humor compared with the rest of the world. They were used
to sharks and snakes and poisonous flowers. Maybe being puked on was regarded as a bit of harmless fun here.

  No such luck. Biff wasn’t giving even the slightest hint that any part of being puked on came within the same solar system as being fun.

  And—this is just a hunch—Mom puking on the mayor was probably the wrong way to start a cultural exchange. Right now, the chances of Hills Village and Shark’s Bay becoming best buds looked about as likely as me playing the saxophone on the moon.

  “I. Am. So. So. So. So. Sorry,” Mom said. “Really sorry, Mayor Coogan. I couldn’t help it.”

  She started trying to wipe the worst of the gunge off Biff’s neck but only managed to accidentally slide a chunky gloop of it right down the back of his chicken costume.

  Biff squirmed out of her reach. He yanked a box of tissues toward him and began wiping the puke off by himself. Disregarding the hurricane outside, I rolled down the window to let in some fresh air. I was beginning to feel a little pukey myself, and I didn’t think Biff would appreciate a repeat performance. Being puked on once is bad enough.

  “She’s been taking some travel pills,” I shouted above the howling gale filling the car. “That must be it.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Mom said, “I do feel a lot better now.” Then she closed her eyes and fell fast asleep.

  A low rumbling noise, like someone dragging a heavy anchor over concrete, filled the car. At first I thought we’d hit something and lost a tire and the noise was the wheel scraping across the road, but then I realized it was Biff grinding his teeth. He was the angriest-looking giant chicken I’d ever seen.

  He didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the vicious twist he gave the steering wheel to avoid a speedboat resting upside down in the middle of an intersection that he was about a millisecond away from turning around and putting us on the next bus back to Sydney. One more incident and I had no doubt that he’d mutate into Biffzilla, and the whole Shark’s Bay/Hills Village twin experiment would turn into a massive disaster.

  I imagined slinking back home, a failure once again. It wasn’t a good thought.

  “Maybe we should take her to the hospital,” Biff said when he had finally unclenched his puke-spotted jaw.

  “Nah,” I replied. “She’ll be right, mate.”

  I couldn’t resist.

  IN THE BIG HOUSE

  The moment we arrived, the hail suddenly stopped. It was like someone had thrown a switch, and the clouds were split open by a beam of sunlight that lit up the place like a stage spotlight. I half expected a choir of angels to start singing. But we were in for an even bigger shock: the Coogans’ “shack” sprawled across a huge chunk of land that wrapped around half of Shark’s Bay. Being a mayor must pay pretty well, because I’d seen airports that were smaller than Biff Coogan’s beach shack.

  In the driveway, a tall blond kid about my age stopped doing ollies on his skateboard and stared at me.

  It wasn’t a friendly look. His eyes reminded me of the drop bear’s.

  “Bradley, this is Ralph Katchadoorhandle,” Biff said as he stepped out of the car. “Ralph, this is my son, Bradley. He’s on school break right now.”

  “Eww!” Bradley said, pointing at his dad’s puke-encrusted neck. “What in the name of Hugh Jackman’s sideburns is that gunk?”

  Biff shook his head and stomped toward the house.

  “That’s, uh, puke,” I said.

  “You puked on Dad? Why?”

  “No! My mom puked on your dad,” I said, like that made it okay.

  Bradley looked at me and then at Mom in the car. “But she’s asleep.”

  “No,” I said. “Well, yes, she is now. But she wasn’t then, so she could have. And did. Puke, I mean.”

  To be honest, it wasn’t the clearest answer I’d ever given. Even I could hardly understand it. But I was way too tired and hungry and smelly to think even a little bit clearly.

  Bradley opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. You could almost see his brain trying to work out the sequence of events.

  “Okay,” he managed in the end. A blond girl who looked a lot like Bradley appeared next to him.

  “What’s that?” she said, pointing at me like I was some sort of exotic slug.

  Bradley shrugged. “Some American dude,” he said. “Puked all over the old bloke. Fair dinkum.”

  “Ew, gross!”

  “I didn’t!” I protested.

  “This is my twin sister, Belinda,” Bradley said.

  Belinda looked at me briefly again and shook her head.

  I wanted to tell her how tired we were and that it wasn’t me who had puked on her dad, but I didn’t have the energy. Instead, I opened my mouth and, without warning, puked all over Belinda.

  BEETS?

  Let’s just say that Belinda took being puked on a lot worse than her dad.

  For a moment there I thought she was going to smack me with Bradley’s skateboard, but her desire to clean my puke off her T-shirt was too great. Belinda fled into the house, swearing undying hatred and vengeance against me in particular and Americans in general.

  I didn’t blame her. I would have felt exactly the same way if a random Australian had showed up in Hills Village and hurled chunks all over me.

  Bradley, on the other hand, thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

  “Awesome.” Bradley chuckled. He jumped onto his skateboard and disappeared down the driveway.

  A few minutes later, after I’d woken Mom up and gotten her out of the car, Mrs. Coogan stepped out the door. She must have heard all about the puky Americans, because I noticed she stayed a few paces out of hurl range.

  Barb wasted no time showing us to our rooms and demonstrating exactly how the showers worked.

  “Take your time,” she said.

  Thirty minutes later, showered and changed and feeling a little more like our old selves, we came downstairs to eat. I imagined that we’d be eating giant cockroaches cooked on the barbie or something, but we had regular steaks and burgers and fries and salad. The only weird thing was the beets Mrs. Coogan insisted on putting on the burgers. Beets.

  Belinda didn’t speak to me. I don’t even know if it would have been any different if I hadn’t puked on her. I tried to apologize, but she just ignored me.

  A bunch of Bradley and Belinda’s friends came over for dinner. They were just like the twins—all big white teeth and blond hair and tans. Too good-looking, too tall, and too well dressed. Frankly, Bradley and Belinda Coogan and all their friends were just too perfect to be human. (The pod people strike again!)

  I think Mrs. Coogan thought having Bradley and Belinda’s friends there would make it easier for me to befriend them. But that idea was definitely not going to work. I hated Bradley and Belinda’s friends on sight, and they hated me. It looked like I wasn’t going to be warmly welcomed into the Shark’s Bay surfer community anytime soon, but I was so tired I didn’t care. I just hoped that not everyone in Australia would be like Bradley and Belinda’s crew.

  By eight o’clock I could feel my eyes drooping, and Mom must have felt the same. We made our excuses and crawled to our rooms.

  “Sleep tight, Rafe,” Mom said as she closed her door.

  I muttered something back, but it may as well have been in Swahili. All I could think about was sleep, glorious sleep.

  Less than thirty seconds later, I slid between the sheets of my bed, closed my eyes, and dropped into the deepest sleep of my life.

  THE ROPE OF DOOM

  There’s no sleep like jet-lag sleep. It was like being under anesthesia. I sank into the soft, billowing pillows, which soon turned into soft, billowing clouds, and then I was gone. For a time, there was just velvety blackness, and then I began to dream I was tightrope-walking across a river. It wasn’t a bad dream—the tightrope was wide and fat and warm beneath my feet. I wrapped my toes around the rope and kept walking.

  The only trouble was that the wind started rising, and the rope be
gan moving up and down and from side to side. It became harder and harder for me to cling on, so I reached down and wrapped my arms tight around that rope and hung on as if my life depended on it. The rope was moving so much that it was wrapping itself around my legs and—

  “This is not a drill, soldier! Mayday! I repeat, Mayday!”

  Leo’s voice cut through my dream like a chain saw. My eyes popped open, but I couldn’t see a thing in the darkened room. After a moment, I realized that the tightrope was still moving.

  That’s weird, I thought. The tightrope was in my dream, wasn’t it? How could it still be moving?

  “The lights!” Leo screamed. “Hit the lights!”

  I reached across and fumbled for the bedside lamp. My finger found the switch, and I realized that the thing coiled around my feet and legs wasn’t a tightrope.

  It was a giant SNAKE!

  REVENGE OF THE POD PEOPLE

  You know the movie Snakes on a Plane? This was Snake in the Bed. Much, much, much scarier. Mainly because it was happening to me in REAL LIFE and not to Samuel L. Jackson on a Hollywood movie set.

  The snake and I stared at each other and time seemed to stop. Then, at incredible speed, a number of things happened all at once.

  Brainy scientists say that it is aerodynamically impossible for a human being to fly. The laws of physics do not allow it.

  And what I would say to those scientists is this: Quit flapping your gums, Einsteins. You might know plenty about science and mathematics, but you don’t know what a human is capable of when he finds a snake in his bed. But if you wanted to conduct an experiment to find out, all you’d have to do is place one terrified kid (for the sake of argument, let’s call him Rafe Khatchadorian) in close proximity to a giant snake, and you would see unaided human flight take place in about two seconds flat. Guaranteed.