The Last Elephant Read online

  ‘Has anyone ever ridden Lucy?’ he asked.

  Birdy shook her head. ‘Captain Noah doesn’t think people should ride animals.’

  Colt grinned. ‘We won’t tell him.’

  Taking hold of Lucy’s trunk, he led her over to the cattle yards, where there was a high wooden ramp for unloading animals from trucks. Colt made Lucy stand next to it.

  ‘Climb up and get on her back, Birdy,’ he said. ‘I’ll hold her steady.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘We’ve got to ride her,’ he said. ‘It’ll be too slow if we walk.’

  Birdy looked up at the huge elephant. ‘What if she doesn’t like it?’

  ‘She won’t mind,’ Colt said. ‘And you’re so little she probably won’t notice.’

  Birdy stood on tiptoes and stretched her hands straight up above her head. Even then, her fingertips were lower than Lucy’s eyes.

  ‘You get on first,’ she said.

  Colt told Lucy to stay still, then climbed the side of the ramp and slipped gingerly across onto her back. It was very high, very scary, but he had seen people riding elephants in old 2D televids and it looked easy enough. There was a place to sit just behind her head with his feet dangling behind her ears. Lucy flapped them, but otherwise she stayed nice and still.

  ‘Your turn now,’ he called down to Birdy.

  She rose up on tiptoes again, raised her arms and took a deep breath. Then she shot up the side of the ramp, flew across the gap and landed neatly behind Colt, wrapping both arms around his middle.

  ‘You should get a job in a circus,’ he said.

  Birdy laughed. ‘So should you, Superboy. How do you do that stuff like you did last night? I mean, who can lift an elephant?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Colt said. ‘Maybe I didn’t.’

  ‘You did! I saw you.’

  He shrugged. ‘I think it might be somehow connected with that ghost rat – how it bit me when I was a little kid and I didn’t die. What was that thing your mother said about rats?’

  ‘Rat magic. But it’s just a fairy story, Colt. Who believes in magic?’

  Who believes in supporting the weight of a four-tonne elephant? Colt wondered. It was all too weird. He didn’t even know how to ride one.

  Lucy wasn’t moving. Colt couldn’t remember how they operated elephants on the old televids. It wasn’t like riding a motorbike – there weren’t handlebars or controls. Maybe elephants were like horses. His mum had been telling him horse-riding stories since he was four.

  ‘Giddy-up!’ he said.

  Lucy didn’t move.

  ‘Giddy-up!’ he repeated, louder.

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Birdy.

  ‘It’s how you make a horse start up.’

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ Birdy said, ‘this is an elephant.’

  Colt rolled his eyes. He leaned forward and patted Lucy’s big bristly head. ‘Please start walking, Luce. If we’re still here when the bad guys come back, you’re history.’

  All of us might be history, he thought grimly.

  That was when they heard something in the distance. It sounded like an engine.

  ‘The rat cops!’ gasped Birdy. ‘They’re back!’

  ‘Lucy, please, start walking!’ Colt cried, flapping his legs in desperation.

  As soon as his heels touched her neck, Lucy started forwards in a slow, swaying walk. At some time in her life (probably before Captain Noah owned her) she must have been taught to carry people. She had just been waiting for Colt to tap her neck with his heels – that was giddy-up to an elephant.

  Colt didn’t know how to steer, but Lucy seemed to know where she was going. He and Birdy held on as best they could as their huge, Lost World mount swayed across the open area between the cattle yards and the big silver shed where the truck was parked. They passed a square concrete building with a tall black chimney and another building that looked like a lab. There was a big hay shed stacked nearly to the ceiling with cages, and a trailer filled with moldering dog collars and rusty horseshoes.

  The smell of death was everywhere. It made Colt’s stomach churn. Lucy smelled it, too. She increased her pace. The chain on her back leg rattled along the ground behind them. They were heading for a gap in the forest where a gravel road snaked off into the trees. It was the road leading out of Death Farm.

  But it was also the road leading into Death Farm.

  And the rat cops were coming the other way!

  Colt could see dust rising above the trees only a few hundred metres ahead.

  ‘Make her turn,’ said Birdy.

  But how did you make an elephant turn?

  ‘Turn, Lucy, turn!’ Colt cried. ‘Don’t go this way!’

  Lucy didn’t understand. She kept going straight ahead. She was running now. They reached the road and went bumping into the forest. At any moment, Colt expected the orange van to come flying around a corner in front of them. And then what would happen? He didn’t want to find out. Colt prodded Lucy with his right heel and pointed.

  ‘Turn!’ he commanded.

  Lucy turned. But instead of turning in the direction he was pointing (right), she went the other way (left). They hurtled into the forest, crashing through bushes and narrowly avoiding trees. Colt had to lie down to avoid being swept off their lofty perch by a frenzy of whipping branches. Birdy clung to him, her face pressed hard against his back. Over his shoulder, Colt glimpsed a flash of orange between two trees as the DoRFE van went speeding past. It didn’t slow down. Yay! The rat cops hadn’t seen them.

  But he and Birdy had other problems now. A thick branch thumped Colt’s arm, hard enough graze a patch of skin off his elbow. Birdy yelped in pain as something tore at her shoulder.

  Lucy was going to kill them at this rate.

  Grabbing the elephant by both ears, Colt pulled back on them. Hard.

  ‘Slow down, Lucy!’

  She got the message. Moments later, they had slowed to a swaying walk. Colt cautiously raised his head to see what was in front of them. His timing was bad.

  Whap!

  A huge spider hit him in the face. It clung there for a moment, its legs like bony fingers. Colt yelped and slapped it away.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Birdy asked behind him.

  ‘Tree spiders!’ he gasped. ‘Keep your head down!’

  They were everywhere. Huge grey-and-yellow spiders as big as human hands. Some were even bigger. Colt’s mother said rat flu hadn’t just killed the wild animals and birds, it was changing the whole environment. When there were birds, there weren’t as many insects – birds ate them and kept their numbers down. Now there were no birds and way more insects than there had ever been before. Millions got caught in spiders’ webs – it was spider heaven! Their webs stitched through the trees in every direction like a tangle of fishing nets. Each web sagged under the weight of a giant spider and the dried-up carcasses of its dead prey. Some were not quite dead. A doomed dragonfly the size of a Lost World parrot struggled feebly inside a cocoon of sticky web. More webs tangled in Colt and Birdy’s hair and stuck to their clothes, arms and faces as they desperately batted the huge, gross spiders away. It was like a computer game, except computer games don’t bite.

  Colt knew tree spiders weren’t dangerous. They could bite, but it didn’t hurt much. Some people even kept them as pets. You didn’t have to give them RatVax, so anyone could own them. But Colt just found them creepy.

  So did Birdy, judging from the way she was yelping and shrieking behind him.

  ‘Keep the noise down,’ he said, swatting at a spider the size of a small octopus. ‘The rat cops might hear us.’

  By the time they got through the tree spider colony, both of them were stitched up inside sticky knots of web. So was Lucy. It looked like she was wearing a loose white jumper patterned with the dark, wiggling star-shapes of tangled spiders.

  ‘OMG!’ cried Birdy. ‘Remind me never to ride on an elephant again!’

  ‘You won’t have to,’
Colt said, ‘if we can’t get her off Death Farm.’

  They reached the fence. It was made of heavy-duty chain-link mesh with razor wire curled along the top. It was as tall as Lucy. She stopped and sniffed it with her trunk, making a rumbling sound deep in her chest.

  What now? she seemed to be asking.

  Colt looked to the right. The road was in that direction. As was the gate leading out of Death Farm. Remembering how he had made Lucy turn last time, Colt prodded her with his right heel. It worked. She swivelled to the left and began walking along next to the fence.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Birdy asked.

  ‘Away from the road.’

  ‘But how will we get out if there isn’t another gate?’

  ‘We’ve got an elephant,’ Colt answered, searching the forest ahead.

  A few minutes later, he found what he was looking for. The naked white trunk of a dead tree stood just inside the fence. It was about twenty metres tall and had lost all of its branches. Using his heels to steer her, Colt guided Lucy into position, with her head pressed against the dead tree. Then he jabbed lightly with both heels, and said ‘Giddy-up!’ for good measure.

  Lucy pushed the tree. It rocked a couple of times. She pushed harder. There was a creaking sound. Lucy stopped pushing and flapped her ears. Colt gave her a nice long encouraging pat and prodded her with his heels again. Beneath him, the elephant’s huge body strained forward. Nothing happened for a moment. Then there was a loud creak, followed by the sound of rotten roots snapping underground, and slowly the tree started to fall.

  Lucy took a step backwards, and she and her two riders watched the tree topple away from them. It landed on the fence and flattened it, leaving a gap wide enough to drive a truck through. Or an elephant.

  ‘Go Lucy!’ Colt said, prodding her forward.

  They were out of Death Farm but they weren’t out of trouble. He knew the rat cops would come after them. As soon as they discovered Lucy gone, they would call in reinforcements.

  Colt wondered what time it was. The sun was halfway up the sky and still climbing. There were still hours of daylight left. If they could just find somewhere to hide until nightfall, he could leave Birdy with Lucy and go looking for a phone to call his mother. She would know what to do.

  He told Birdy his plan.

  ‘We need to find a cave,’ she said. ‘Or some really thick forest where they won’t see Lucy from an aeroplane or a helicopter.’

  The forest around Death Farm wasn’t nearly thick enough to hide an elephant. It was quite open, with very little undergrowth. The trees were hardly taller than Lucy.

  ‘Let’s see what’s over that hill,’ Colt said.

  The hill was about two kilometres ahead. It wasn’t very high, but it was higher than the surrounding forest. From the top, they might be able to see which was the best direction to go. They might even spot somewhere to hide.

  Lucy sensed their urgency. She walked fast. They came to three more colonies of tree spiders, but each time Colt was able to steer the elephant around them. Through trial and error, he was learning the signals someone had taught her back in her people-carrying days. A heel-nudge behind both ears meant go forwards. A double heel-nudge meant go faster. A nudge with one of his heels turned her in the opposite direction. And by squeezing his knees against her neck, Colt could make Lucy stop.

  He did it now, because they were three quarters of the way up the hill and there were no trees at the top. An elephant would be seen from kilometres away. Birdy jumped nimbly to the ground (one somersault) while Colt used a small tree as a ladder to get down. He still hadn’t learned the command to make Lucy kneel.

  Leaving her at the edge of the forest, he and Birdy ran the remaining hundred metres or so to the top of the hill.

  ‘Look!’ Birdy pointed. ‘The sea!’

  She didn’t need to point. The sea wasn’t far away – it filled the horizon. But Colt’s eyes were drawn to something else. Far to their right, just visible beyond the tiny toy-like buildings of a seaside town, was the mouth of a wide brown river. It looked like the same river that ran past Murray Landing. And that meant . . .

  ‘There’s the border!’ Colt cried. Now it was his turn to point. ‘Birdy, if we can get Lucy across the river, we can save her!’

  ‘Won’t there be a DoRFE checkpoint?’ she asked.

  ‘Not at the river mouth. They only have them on bridges.’

  ‘So how will Lucy get across?’

  ‘I think elephants can swim,’ he said.

  ‘What if she can’t?’ asked Birdy.

  A faint noise made Colt turn and look back in the direction of Death Farm. DoRFE’s infamous quarantine facility was hidden by forest, but something was above the forest. A tiny black speck. Back in the Animal Days, it might have been a bird. But that was years ago, further back than Colt’s memory. Now there were no birds left. The speck was growing larger. It was coming in their direction. And as it approached, the noise that had made Colt turn around grew steadily louder.

  Thwop-thwop-thwop-thwop!

  It was a helicopter.

  ‘If she can’t swim, she’ll have to learn,’ Colt said in answer to Birdy’s question.

  They started running down the hill towards Lucy.

  The quickest way to the river mouth was to ride Lucy along the beach. But getting to the beach was going to be a problem. The first kilometre or so was open forest, much like they had travelled through from Death Farm, and they made good progress.

  But then they came to a dead end. A brick wall. Lucy stopped two paces from it. The wall was higher than you could see over from the back of an elephant, and it stretched off in both directions, like the Great Wall of China. Spaced at regular intervals along this great wall were signs that said ‘Department of Wool Production’. It was a sheep farming facility.

  Farming facilities, or GovFarms, were all owned and run by the government. The walls were sprayed with a special deterrent to keep rats out – it smelled like Lost World cats, apparently. People weren’t allowed in, either, unless they worked there or had special passes. Colt had visited the cow farming facility where his mother worked lots of times, but he’d never been to a sheep farming facility. He’d never even seen a sheep.

  ‘Listen!’ Birdy said. ‘I can hear them!’

  Baa, baa, baa! It was a funny sound.

  Then they heard a sound that wasn’t funny at all – thwop-thwop-thwop-thwop!

  The helicopter sounded really close now. It had disappeared behind the hill, but at any moment it might come shooting over the treetops. They were wasting precious time.

  Colt gave Lucy a single-heel prod to turn her, then a double-heel prod to get her moving. They followed the wall for about a kilometre, until they reached a road that led down between a long series of similar walled farming facilities, all the way to the sea.

  ‘Giddy-up, Lucy!’ Colt said, giving her a double tap.

  Fortunately they didn’t meet any cars.

  But their luck only lasted until they reached the sea. It was the school holidays and they found themselves in the middle of a swimming beach. There were people everywhere.

  Lucy’s arrival caused quite a stir.

  Mothers screamed and snatched up their toddlers and babies. Children went running. Grown men dropped frisbees and cricket bats and charged into the sea.

  ‘It’s only an elephant!’ Colt called to a family with three crying children. ‘She’s tame – she won’t hurt you.’

  Birdy did a wobbly handstand on Lucy’s swaying back to show there was nothing to worry about.

  ‘Careful, you might fall off,’ Colt said over his shoulder.

  Her grin was upside-down. ‘Don’t be such a worrywart, Superboy. I’m a Flying Flynn.’

  A girl and her little brother ran along behind them. ‘We saw your elephant on HV!’ they yelled.

  Birdy settled right-side-up behind Colt again. She put one arm around him and waved with the other.

  ‘We’re famous!’
she said, as two girls in bikinis took holopics with their wrist-phones.

  Colt didn’t want to be famous. He just wanted to be invisible, so the rat cops wouldn’t find them.

  But it was too late. A large shadow came sweeping across the beach. Thwop! Thwop! Thwop! Thwop!

  Sprung! thought Colt.

  The helicopter hovered directly overhead. The wind from its rotor overturned beach umbrellas and sent clouds of sand swirling into the air. Colt didn’t look up. It took all his concentration to steer Lucy through the maze of towels, beach chairs and scattering, bather-clad bodies.

  ‘Hi Mum!’ yelled Birdy, waving up at the helicopter.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Colt hissed.

  ‘We’re on HV!’ said Birdy.

  Colt risked a quick peep at the sky. The helicopter was following them along the beach, about fifty metres off the ground. A man leaned out of its open door, aiming a twin-lens holocam, not a gun.

  It wasn’t the rat cops, it was Channel 12.

  ‘Isn’t that Verity Dingle’s channel?’ Birdy asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Colt. He gave Lucy a double prod to speed her up. They’d left the bathing area behind and there was nothing but open beach ahead. ‘Is she in the helicopter?’

  ‘I can only see the pilot and the guy with the holocam.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s people power,’ Colt said. ‘If this is going live, the rat cops won’t dare touch us.’

  But the helicopter only stayed with them for another seven or eight minutes. Suddenly its nose dipped and it banked steeply away. Birdy watched it getting smaller and smaller, until it was just a tiny black speck over the distant hills.

  ‘Rat poo!’ she said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Colt. ‘All we have to do is get across the river before the rat cops find us.’

  It looked easy. The beach swept away ahead of them like a wide sandy highway, all the way to a cluster of tiny buildings at the far end of the bay. That was the town they had seen from the hilltop. The town at the river mouth.