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I WOKE SLOWLY, UNABLE to remember where I was. Sleepily I looked around the room. Ms Loti was asleep on one of the other beds. That’s right...
Bang! It all came back to me. I was really awake after that. I jumped up and looked at the time. It was seven o’clock. The sun was blazing outside and the birds were singing loudly. No rain. No kitchen noises. No complaining kids. No jeering or teasing or gossiping voices going past the screen door.
But there was something else instead. A kind of hooting noise, mixed with whistling and shouting and laughter and splashing. It sounded like the biggest pool party ever.
Ms Loti sat up too. We looked at each other.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked around. “Where’s Lucy?”
“I don’t know.” But straight away I knew that I did know. “The pool!”
We both ran out, across the courtyard, along the covered walkway, and around the corner. The pool was packed.
We went down, slowly, fascinated and horrified by the thought of what we were going to see. Imagine something halfway between a human and a seal, with beautiful multi-coloured spotty skin and bright little eyes and a happy cat-mouth, with three sausage-sized horns each side of its face.
Then imagine all your school mates dressed up like that. Then imagine them all in a swimming pool, leaping and dipping and splashing and spouting huge mouthfuls of water at each other as if it were the nicest thing you could possibly do to a friend.
Then imagine your whole body freezing up in terror.
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I’M SURE THEY WOULD have noticed us, except for one thing. Coming down the hill were about ten more of them, the most human-like of the bunch, and in their midst they were carrying the caretaker. He was struggling and shouting and swearing but his captors just whooped happily and brought him closer, then threw him clear across the fence and into the pool. There was a huge frenzy of water spouting out in the middle. I saw the poor man struggle and gurgle and cry out.
I turned to Ms Loti, tugged silently at her shirt. She looked at me. I silently passed her Mr Prior’s keys, trying to send her my idea without saying a word out loud. She looked at me blankly. She wasn’t getting it.
I shook the keys. “We have to escape!”
That did it. There was a whoop from the pool. I turned. Lucy, or at least the thing that had once been Lucy, was looking at us intently. Then she spoke to the others, not in English. More like seal talk. They all surged to our side of the pool. “Come in!” the most human of them called to us, “The water’s lovely! Aww, go on Ms Loti! Come on, Nathan!”
I began dragging her away. The things in the pool were dipping their faces, lifting their heads, almost using those horn things like targeting sights.
I ran.
Water spouts started hitting the ground all around my feet. Next thing Ms Loti sped past me, dragging me with her instead of the other way around!
We ran to the car park. She fumbled with the keys in the lock of Mr Prior’s SUV. She got it open and we both piled in. The engine started first time.
“Go!” I shouted, “Just boot it!”
I looked back down the hill. The things had not chased us as I had expected. Instead the most developed of them had set off across the lawn towards the flooded creek in the valley, skidding across the wet grass like those trained seals do in those theme park shows.
Then I realised what they were trying to do.
“Please, Ms Loti, drive as fast as you can!”
Of course she didn’t. She drove very sensibly, and I was going mad with terror! I had no idea what those things were capable of, or how fast they could swim! They were trying to head us off at the bridge.
“Faster! Faster!”
There was no other traffic. Nothing. We had the road to ourselves. The flooding didn’t seem as bad. When we reached The Flat I shouted aloud with relief. “The road is clear!” At least it was on our side of the bridge. “Go! Go! Boot it!”
We screamed along the straight and up the slope to the bridge. It was still there, a big solid concrete bridge, and as we went over the top I got ready to shout in triumph.
My shout shrivelled in my throat. The flood stretched clear across the farmland ahead. The road was still under water!
Ms Loti hit the brakes and we slithered to a stop. The engine stalled. She just sat, gazing in horror at the flood.
“Mr Prior did it!” I shouted at her, “it was about that deep yesterday behind us and we got this far! It’ll be okay!” Then I remembered: she was scared of water, just like me.
I could see the roadside posts sticking out of the flood so I knew how deep it really was, and all the posts were still there in a line which meant (I hoped) that the road was still all there between them. And the SUV was really high off the ground.
“Go on!” I pleaded, but she was winding down her window instead. I yelled at her like I did when I caught my baby sister using my expensive movie-theme toothpaste as hair-cream, “What are you doing?!”
“Trying the phone.”
“No! We’ve got to drive! Go on! You can do it!”
Then we heard it. “Hoo-whoop! Hoo-whoop!” Coming from upstream.
“They’re coming!” I screamed, “Go go go!”
She started the engine, put it in gear, eased out the clutch. We rolled forwards into the flood. She changed to second gear.
“Not too fast! Not too fast!” I squawked beside her. Water surged around the front of the RV but the engine kept humming away steadily.
It looked like we were going to make it!
“Hoo-whoop! Hoo-whoop!” It was getting louder. I looked upstream across the cabin, out Ms Loti’s side. I could see them now, dipping and rising in the muddy water, their horns making beautiful trails of water on each side of their alien faces.
Such happy-looking faces.
“Hoo-whoop! Hoo-whoop!” Getting closer, closer.
Then, with a cold shock of fear, I realised that Ms Loti’s window was still down!
“Wind it up! Wind up your window!”
She was moving much too slowly. Her hand was jerking on the winder, stopping at each turn of the crank, as if struggling with something unfamiliar. The window crept up. The aliens swam closer. Ms Loti turned towards them, trying to gauge their distance perhaps, or maybe just having to look at the scariest thing in sight.
I saw an alien face dip into the water, come up, the happy alien lips start to pucker up, then it came. Spout!
It came at us, so very accurate, hitting the final tiny gap at the top of the glass. Water sprayed into the cabin. Droplets flew across the dash-board. I saw a lot of it bouncing off Ms Loti’s hair.
She shook herself, sending off more.
I cringed away from it all, almost going right down the gap between my seat and my door.
Then her window shut. The next spout bounced harmlessly away. The SUV surged forwards. The creatures fell behind. The floodwaters thinned. As the wheels momentarily edged off the tarseal we lurched about inside, then Ms Loti got us back on line. We were picking up speed. The water was thinner. We were out of the flood!
Third gear, then fourth! The road rolled under our wheels, faster and faster. Ms Loti was saying nothing. I was slumped like a nervous wreck in my seat, my breath heaving like I’d just run a thousand metres.
It was over!
We were safe!