Spider Bite

  SPIDER BITE

  ‘HARRY!’ I yelled at the top of my voice.

  ‘CLIMB UP AND TURN THE GAS OFF!’

  ‘There’s a spider on me,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t you brush it off?’ I asked. ‘Harry, it’s only a …’

  I stopped short because I’d just remembered something. Didn’t the red-haired woman say a spider had bitten the pilot and made him unconscious? There was only one spider with a bite that bad …

  The Sydney funnel-web.

  Puffin Books

  Also by Justin D’Ath

  Extreme Adventures:

  (Can be read in any order)

  Crocodile Attack

  Bushfire Rescue

  Shark Bait

  Scorpion Sting

  The Skyflower

  Infamous

  Astrid Spark, Fixologist

  Echidna Mania

  Koala Fever

  Why did the Chykkan cross the Galaxy?

  SPIDER BITE

  JUSTIN D’ATH

  Puffin Books

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Group (Australia), a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd, 2007

  Text copyright © Justin D’Ath, 2007

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  puffin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228620-4

  For Vincent, the aviator

  1

  BALLOON CRASH

  Jordan saw it first. Or maybe it was Harry. Sometimes I still get them muddled up.

  ‘Holy torpedo!’ Jordan (or Harry) cried, eyes nearly popping out of his head.

  The other twin and I turned to look.

  ‘What’s that?’ squawked Harry.

  A line of tall Norfolk Island pines grew along the southern end of the park. Looming above them, only the top of it visible, was an enormous red, blue and yellow dome.

  ‘A hot-air balloon,’ I said.

  For a moment the twins and I stood in awed silence, watching the balloon float majestically towards us. And towards the trees.

  The pilot had better take it up a bit higher, I thought.

  Then Myrtle saw it, and all hell broke loose.

  Myrtle was our new dog. We got her two days after we arrived in Sydney – a bribe from our parents because none of us wanted to move here after Dad changed jobs. Myrtle was only six or seven months old when we collected her from the lost dogs’ home in Hurstville, but she looked fully grown. Part Newfoundland, part Great Dane, she was so big you forgot she was a puppy – until she saw something to chase.

  Poor Harry. He was holding Myrtle’s leash when she noticed the balloon. Her favourite game was fetch, and she must have thought the balloon was a giant ball. With a joyous howl, the overgrown puppy took off across the park. So did Harry. He should have let go, but he’s stubborn like me and he held on. Myrtle pulled him along behind her, yelping with excitement and picking up speed with every bound.

  Harry stayed on his feet for about a dozen metres, running full tilt, but gradually his whirling legs lost the race and he went flat on his belly. Myrtle kept going. Straining like a sled dog, she dragged my five-year-old brother across the dew-wet grass, with Jordan and me in hot pursuit.

  ‘Myrtle, stop!’ I cried at the top of my voice.

  ‘Here, Myrtle!’ yelled Jordan.

  We might as well have told our dog to do a headstand. Myrtle was on a mission. She wasn’t going to stop until she got the ball. But there was a line of trees in the way, then a road. Even though it was only six-thirty in the morning, this was Sydney, and the roads were already busy with people driving to work.

  Myrtle’s eyes were fixed on the balloon; she had no idea of the danger.

  My eyes were fixed on Harry, and on Myrtle’s thick red leash where it emerged from his hands. I had to get my timing exactly right. We’d nearly reached the trees, then it was only a few more metres to the road. Myrtle was about to rush out into the traffic, dragging Harry behind her. Neither of them would stand a chance.

  ‘Harry, let go!’ I yelled, and dived forward like an Olympic swimmer off the starting block.

  Harry doesn’t usually listen to me, but this time he must have heard the urgency in my voice and let go. I flew right over him and landed at full stretch in a prickly bed of Norfolk Island pine fronds. It should have hurt, but all I felt was the squashy cord of Myrtle’s leash in my fingers. Gotcha! I thought.

  Jordan caught up and grabbed Myrtle’s collar on one side. Harry jumped to his feet and grabbed the other side. We’d stopped her in the nick of time, but Myrtle was still unaware of the danger. Wagging her shaggy tail in my face, she barked excitedly up at the sky. Please let me go, she seemed to be saying, so I can fetch the big ball!

  ‘It’s a balloon, you silly –’

  I was interrupted by a loud, splintering crash in the tree directly above us. A shower of twigs, bits of broken foliage and bark fragments came raining down. This was too much for Myrtle: she went totally crazy, wriggling and yelping and leaping up against the tree trunk.

  I looked up through the crisscrossed branches and saw a large rectangular object about fifteen metres above the ground. It was the basket from the hot-air balloon, stuck in the tree. I knew it had been flying too low.

  ‘Is anyone up there?’ I shouted.

  A faint voice came from inside the basket: ‘… web … - unconscious … can’t …’

  It sounded like a woman. I couldn’t hear what she was saying because of all the traffic noise and Myrtle’s carrying-on.

  ‘Hold Myrtle,’ I said to the twins.

  A truck thundered past, so close that we felt its wind. I hesitated. There was no fence to stop Myrtle running out onto the busy road, and she was too big for the twins to control. Next to one of the trees was a water tap attached to a post. I tied Myrtle’s leash to it, then turned to my little brothers.

  ‘You guys wait here,’ I told them.

  Hooking my hands around a trailing branch, I swung myself up into the tree.

  2

  GET OUT OF THE WAY

  The basket was the size of a small dumpster. It hung in a nest of tangled foliage and bent branches about three-quarters of the way up the tree. Attached to the basket by a s
pider web of shiny wires was the balloon itself. Quivering and swaying in the early morning breeze, the huge red, blue and yellow envelope rose thirty metres above the treetops. It seemed to fill half the sky.

  ‘Help!’ the woman called, right next to my ear.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ I asked through the wall of woven cane separating us.

  I was directly underneath the basket, looking for a way to climb up and look in without getting myself entangled in wires and prickly branches.

  ‘I think my arm’s broken,’ the woman whimpered.

  I tested a branch to see how strong it was, then gingerly transferred my weight onto it. There was an ominous creak. The basket rocked.

  ‘Is there anyone else in there?’ I asked.

  ‘Just Anthony, the pilot.’

  I climbed a bit higher. Now I was level with the basket, no longer below it. But I still couldn’t see inside. ‘Is he all right?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s unconscious,’ the woman said. ‘I was trying to revive him when we crashed.’

  That explained why the balloon had ploughed into the trees instead of flying over them. But it raised another question: why was the pilot unconscious?

  There wasn’t time for me to worry about that now. The basket was tilted away from the tree trunk, lying partly on its side with its opening towards the park. To see into it, I had to wriggle out along the branches. They got skinnier and more prickly every centimetre of the way. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the breeze seemed to be gathering strength. The balloon swayed in the sky like an enormous, upside-down punching bag. It rocked the basket (and me) alarmingly to and fro.

  I have never been good with heights. I had to stop and take a few deep breaths to calm myself. My palms were sweaty and my heart rate was maxing out. Then I made the mistake of looking down.

  Ohmygosh!

  From the ground, the basket had looked about fifteen metres up. But looking down, it seemed more like fifty! My brain recoiled in shock. Every muscle in my body went into lock-down. I clung to the two branches, totally unable to move, as the wind slowly increased in strength and precious seconds trickled by.

  ‘Are you still there?’ the woman finally asked.

  ‘Y-y-yes,’ I gasped.

  ‘Please hurry,’ she said. ‘Anthony isn’t breathing properly. We have to get him to hospital. He needs antivenom.’

  Surprise shook me out of my zombie-like state. Antivenom. Wasn’t that for snake bites? First I moved one hand, then the other. Then each of my legs. Slow as a sloth, I worked my way along the branches until I was level with the padded basket edge. The balloon’s stainless-steel burner assembly dangled just above me. I saw a tiny flame inside it – like the pilot light in a gas heater. There were two on-off valves with red levers, and several gas lines that snaked down one of the aluminium support struts and disappeared from view. Being careful not to touch any part of the basket, I peered in.

  A red-haired woman sat huddled against two large silver gas cylinders that were strapped to the side of the basket. Her face was deathly pale and she supported one arm by its elbow with her other hand. Beside her, wedged awkwardly into a corner, lay the man she’d called Anthony. His eyes were closed and there was a bubble of spit in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Did a snake bite him?’ I asked.

  The woman shook her head. ‘A spider.’

  At that moment, a sudden gust of wind sent the balloon rolling across the treetops like a massive beach ball. It tugged at the basket, tilting our tree sideways. Timber groaned, wires twanged. I nearly lost my breakfast as the branches supporting me dipped sickeningly towards the park fifteen metres below. I could see the twins. One of them – most likely Harry – was aiming a stick up at me like a pretend gun. This was no time for games. Get out of the way! I wanted to yell at them, but my vocal cords were frozen.

  Suddenly there was the sound of branches snapping. The basket broke loose. It pivoted round in a semi-circle, swinging straight for me. I couldn’t let go of the branches to fend it off. All I could do was hang on and watch it get bigger, bigger, BIGGER …

  WHUMP!

  Everything went black.

  3

  NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

  For a moment I lay still, my eyes scrunched tightly closed, waiting for the pain to kick in. I knew I was badly injured. You can’t fall fifteen metres headfirst and not wind up in hospital – or worse.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘We’re about to crash-land.’

  I opened my eyes. I was lying with my head in the red-haired woman’s lap. Above her, framed in a dark rectangle of woven cane, were the gas burners. Above the burners was the huge, brightly coloured nylon envelope of the balloon. I’d fallen into the basket.

  But now the basket was falling!

  I took the woman’s advice and braced myself.

  CRUNCH!

  That was my second crashlanding in about fifteen seconds. But I felt okay – apart from the dead weight of the unconscious pilot lying on top of me. I pushed him gently to one side and struggled into a sitting position. The woman crouched next to me, clutching her broken arm. We had landed in the park. The basket lay on its side. A few metres away, the slowly deflating balloon sank to the ground like a huge, tired whale.

  One of the twins appeared in the mouth of the basket. ‘That was wicked!’ he said, which told me it was Harry.

  Then they were both there, grinning from ear to ear, as if my near-death experience had been a performance put on for their entertainment.

  ‘I think I’m seeing double,’ the woman said.

  ‘They’re twins,’ I told her. ‘Jordan, Harry, help us out of here.’

  We helped the woman first. She said she broke her arm when the balloon crashed into the trees, and it was very sore. She sat on the ground hugging it while the twins and I went back for Anthony. He was still unconscious. His body lay jammed between the two gas cylinders, as limp as a rag doll but fifty times bigger. I got Jordan to support his head, while Harry and I eased the unconscious pilot out onto the grass.

  As soon as we were all out of the basket, it began sliding slowly away from us across the park. The floppy balloon had filled like a giant parachute in the freshening wind and was dragging the basket along. There was a freeway on the other side of the park, but it was about three hundred metres away and I didn’t think the balloon would get that far before it deflated again.

  ‘Is he breathing?’ the woman asked.

  I bent over the pilot. ‘Yes. But he looks pretty crook.’

  ‘You’d better get help. But first, put him in the recovery position. Do you want me to show you?’

  I shook my head. We’d learned the recovery position in first aid at my old school. I arranged the pilot’s arms and legs how I’d been taught, then carefully rolled him onto his side. Perfect.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ the woman said.

  A man hurried towards us. His car was parked under the Norfolk Island pines with its door flung wide open.

  ‘Can I help?’ he puffed. ‘I’m a doctor.’

  The woman told him that Anthony needed antivenom. Before she could explain, a loud whoosh came from behind us. It sounded like a jumbo jet taking off. We all turned to look.

  It took me a few seconds to understand what was happening. The basket was still lying on its side, but it was sliding slowly away from us across the dewy grass. A column of flame three metres long went boiling up into the balloon. Somehow the gas burner had ignited. Suddenly the massive nylon envelope lurched up off the ground, dragging the basket upright.

  Now we could see what was going on.

  ‘Harry, Jordan, NO-O-O-O-O!’ I yelled, and started running towards them.

  4

  LAST CHANCE

  They were both in the basket. Jordan looked scared, but Harry was grinning like an idiot and doing a Wiggles dance. I ran after them at full tilt, yelling at them to shut the gas off. I could have saved my breath: now that the basket was upright, the on-off valv
e was too high for the twins to reach. Anyway, the roar of the flame made it impossible for them to hear me. It even drowned out Myrtle’s barking. I didn’t know she was following us until she went charging past me, doing about fifty kilometres per hour. Behind her, dancing along on the end of her leash, was the tap and a short piece of twisted pipe. She’d pulled it right out of the ground!

  The basket grew lighter as the balloon filled with hot air. And the lighter it became, the faster it moved. Pushed along by the wind, it bounced and skipped across the grass five or six metres ahead of me. For a while I’d been gaining on it, but when the balloon reached the long grassy slope leading down to the freeway, it began to move faster. Six metres stretched to eight, then twelve, then fifteen.

  There was a big concrete wall at the edge of the park to keep people off the freeway. It was high enough to stop the balloon – provided it stayed on the ground. But if the balloon took off before it reached the wall, it would sail over the freeway and float off towards the city skyscrapers in the distance, taking Jordan and Harry with it.

  ‘Jump out!’ I yelled desperately, as the basket slowly drew away from me.

  It didn’t draw away from Myrtle. Galloping like an oversized greyhound, she caught up with the balloon about forty metres before the freeway wall. Wild with excitement, she began leaping against the side of the basket in a vain attempt to get the giant ‘ball’ that hung in the sky overhead. Then she jumped too high and fell in on top of the twins.

  Myrtle weighs about seventy kilos. The extra weight slowed the balloon down. I caught up and threw myself across the basket’s rim. I wasn’t sure what I intended to do. If I’d had my wits about me, I would have reached up and turned the gas off. But I didn’t think of it.

  ‘Harry, Jordan, jump out!’ I yelled.

  Easier said than done. The twins lay in the bottom of the basket, trapped beneath seventy kilograms of tangled puppy. Myrtle couldn’t move. When she’d jumped into the basket, the tap had snagged on the edge and her legs had got caught in the rope.