Love Is Blind by Kathy Lette Read Free Book Online Page B

intensified. And then she realised that two cold sinister eyes were staring directly into her face. She dug her nails into Jacko’s arm. He yelped but then followed the direction of her gaze.
    ‘Shit. A King Brown,’ he said, quietly.
    ‘K … King B … Brown?’ Anthea stammered.
    ‘One of the most poisonous and aggressive snakes in the world. Keep still.’
    All Anthea could think about was how much nicer the snake would look as the belt of a catwalk model. The King Brown had obviously been sheltering in the hollowed out section of the tree and had now slithered out on to the nearest branch. All three of them were marooned there, just looking at each other.
    ‘What … what are you going to do?’ Anthea squeaked.
    ‘Gee, I don’t know,’ Jacko said sarcastically. ‘Why don’t I bend it into some fancy party-balloon shapes for you?’
    He suddenly lunged for its tail. The snake hissed, fangs glistening. Moving with lightning speed (an expression Anthea only now fully understood, having nearly been toasted by Mother Nature earlier), he grabbed the snake by the tail, lassoed it in the air above his head and sent it flying. The snake arced through the air and into the churning stream. Anthea was astounded. This Jacko had more nerve than an unfilled tooth.
    Upstream, flames were now leaping over the creek and igniting the dry trees on the opposite bank. Anthea choked and spluttered in horror. The fierce, scouring wind became ravenous, eating all in its path. Trees waved drunkenly, bent at crazy angles, their lush foliage now twisted and twined by the hot wind. As they caught fire, branches scratched like witches’ fingers at the sky as if in pain.
    This was it, Anthea thought. She was going to be roasted alive in the Aussie Outback. It was then that she started sobbing. The poor woman was weeping and wailing so hard, she didn’t realise at first that her face was wet with raindrops and not tears. A great gunshot of thunder shuddered through the air. Cracking open one eye, she felt bewildered to find herself still alive.
    She saw sombre clouds wrestling through the smoky sky above them, bloated with rain. The burnt tree trunks, stripped bare of their leaves, stuck up like exclamation marks. And they had a lot to be alarmed about. Because right then the sky split open and it started to pour. It rained in torrents. The heavens seemed to be torn apart. This was obviously the storm that had caused the inland tsunami.
    Anthea had never seen rain like it. It was end-of-the-world, Noah’s Ark type rain. As the deluge dampened down the smoke, the bush hissed and smouldered around them. But the river was swelling even more. The branch they were clinging to was now half submerged. The earth around the trunk of the tree had been torn away, its exposed roots gnawed by the floodwaters.
    ‘Okay. We need to make for the bank before this tree is swept away. Let go of the branch but keep hold of me,’ Jacko ordered.
    Anthea reacted as if he’d suggested taking out her teeth with pliers. ‘No way!’ she bleated. She wanted to trust him, but couldn’t help feeling that getting back into the floodwaters would qualify her as the only living brain donor in human history.
    Jacko untied the belt which tethered them to the branch and slid confidently into the current. He held on to the tree trunk and signalled for Anthea to also get back into the water. When she wouldn’t let go, Jacko simply told her there was another snake making its way towards her. Needless to say, Anthea’s entry into the water was a little less elegant than his had been. It was more like a walrus giving birth. After she’d spluttered and flailed on the surface and drunk a gallon or two of water, Jacko surfed to her side in a spritz of spray, then simply put her on his back and swam strongly for the bank.
    The rain had turned the earth into the consistency of chocolate cake mix. It clung to her arms, legs, hair. This time it took a good ten minutes for her to