Floods 7 by Colin Thompson Read Free Book Online

ship. Also, that would have meant transforming herself twice for each ship she landed on and she really needed to keep her transformations to a minimum. 20
    Plenty of time , she thought, to come up with a nice welcome. Something they will never forget .
    Of course, they wouldn’t have to remember it for very long, because, apart from Mordonna, who the Hearse Whisperer would take back to her father in Transylvania Waters, the rest of them would be dead. So her wonderful welcome would be the very last thought in their heads.
    Well, actually , she thought, my little welcome ceremony will be the thought before the last thoughtin their heads. The very last thought will be something along the lines of ‘Ahhhhhh, I am dea…’
    The Hearse Whisperer laughed so much, she nearly collided with a Boeing 747.
    â€˜So actually,’ she said to herself, ‘they will forget, because they’ll all be dead. And as my old grandmother used to say, “Dead men don’t keep diaries.”’
    This made her laugh even harder and almost sent her crashing down into the sea.
    â€˜Hello, sweetheart. I haven’t seen you in these parts before,’ said a male albatross, drifting across to her as she got her balance again. ‘You’re an exceptionally gorgeous young lady.’
    â€˜Have you heard of fried chicken?’ snarled the Hearse Whisperer.
    â€˜No, darling. What’s that then?’ said the albatross. ‘My name’s Albert, by the way. Albert Ross. What’s yours?’
    â€˜Death,’ said the Hearse Whisperer, turning him into the thing he hadn’t heard of. ‘And this is a fried chicken.’
    Considering they were out of sight of land in every direction, it was amazing that Albert, the fried chicken, did not land in the sea. He plummeted down towards the sea, but just as he was about to dive into it, a ship got in the way and he landed on someone’s head.
    â€˜That,’ said the captain, looking down onto the deck where the ship’s nurse was giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation plus a little salt and pepper to a child with a roast chicken stuck on its head, ‘is not something you see every day.’

    The rest of the journey to Tristan da Cunha was fairly uneventful apart from a close encounter with a UFO, which the Hearse Whisperer programmedherself to forget about because she knew no one would believe it, and nearly colliding with some bearded millionaire racing round the world in a hot-air balloon.
    Tristan da Cunha is the most remote place on earth. It is the tip of an almost, but not quite, extinct volcano and is home to around two hundred and seventy-five people. If it did not really exist, it would have had to have been made up. 21 It was named in 1506 by an explorer who was the first human to see it. Even though he didn’t actually land on the island, he still named it after himself. In 1810 an American became the first person to go and live there, and he renamed the group of islands The Islands of Refreshment. They were not very refreshing for him because he fell into the sea and drowned two years later. The very large lobster that ate his remains is reported to have found him extremely refreshing. Incredibly, the current Island Governor had worked in Belgium before beingpromoted to look after the most remote place on Earth.
    The Hearse Whisperer landed on the rim of the sleeping volcano, transformed back into her own body and looked down over the small town. It would be four weeks at the very least before the Floods would arrive by sea. She could have a holiday.
    â€˜A holiday?’ she said to herself. ‘Now I know I am getting old. I don’t do holidays. I do spying and killing and pain.’
    â€˜And I don’t do talking to myself,’ she added.
    â€˜Now I am depressed,’ she said out loud.
    â€˜You’re depressed? You’re depressed?’ said a rat that had crawled out from under a stone.