The Last Elephant Page 8

  ‘Go faster, Lucy!’ he cried.

  The river was about half a kilometre wide where it flowed into the sea and it wasn’t very deep. Lucy was wading across.

  But so was Officer Katt.

  ‘Is she gaining on us?’ Colt asked.

  Birdy looked back. ‘No. We’re getting away.’

  ‘Yaaay!’

  Colt wasn’t the only one cheering. The people from the town had swarmed down onto the riverbank behind Officer Katt. They had a good view of the chase. They could see the crazy rat cop falling behind as she waded out into the swirling brown water. Already it came up to her stomach. Forty metres further out, it hadn’t even reached the top of the elephant’s legs.

  Lucy was going to make it to the other side.

  Or was she?

  Suddenly the cheering stopped. Lucy had disappeared.

  ‘Shashlik!’ cried Colt.

  They had gone over a drop-off into a deep channel. Almost all of Lucy was under water. Just the top of her head and the tip of her trunk poked out. Her two riders were submerged nearly to their waists. But they were still moving forward. The elephant’s huge body slid through the water like a submarine as she swam slowly across the channel.

  A rusty steel tripod with a light on top – some sort of navigation marker for boats – poked out of the river just ahead. Colt prodded Lucy with one knee and she turned to avoid it. But no sooner had she swum past the obstacle than there was a sudden jolt and their forward motion stopped. A squeal of panic came from Lucy’s trunk. Her underwater body started swaying violently from side to side.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ cried Birdy.

  Colt looked back. The navigation marker just behind them was creaking and shuddering.

  ‘I think her leg-chain got caught on that steel thing,’ he said. ‘Quick! Swap places.’

  They changed positions. When Birdy was settled on the elephant’s neck, Colt told her to pat Lucy’s head and try to keep her calm.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Birdy asked.

  Colt could see Officer Katt getting closer. She was still out of stun-gun range, but she wouldn’t be for long.

  ‘I’m going to free the chain,’ he said.

  He slid all the way into the cool brown water and swam around behind the struggling elephant. From the corner of his eye, he saw the head and shoulders of the rat cop coming steadily towards him. She was holding the stun gun over her head to keep it dry. From above came the sound of the two helicopters.

  Here goes nothing! Colt thought.

  Taking a deep breath, he rolled forwards and dived.

  The water was muddy brown, but there was enough light from the sun to see Lucy’s massive bulk. He kicked his way down until he came to a huge swinging leg. At this depth, it was too dull to see anything else. Colt found the chain with his hands. It was stretched tight. One end was padlocked to the heavy iron band that was clamped around Lucy’s ankle, the other end was snagged somewhere in the murky depths below him. He tried to pull it free, but it was stuck fast.

  Colt couldn’t hold his breath for much longer. There wasn’t time to go up for air and come down again – Officer Katt was getting too close – and he didn’t want to waste his energy reserves by swimming all the way down to where the chain was snagged. So Colt went in the other direction until he found the big padlock that connected the chain to the clamp. Lucy must have felt him there, and stopped kicking. She was a smart animal.

  He couldn’t let her die.

  Colt’s skin started tingling – he knew that feeling now. Knew what it meant. Birdy had jokingly called him Superboy, and she wasn’t far wrong.

  Okay, he thought. Here goes.

  Gripping the chain in one hand and the clamp in the other, Colt tensed his muscles and pulled.

  SNAP!

  The big, high-tensile steel padlock – strong enough to restrain a four-tonne elephant crazed with early-stage rat flu – fell apart like a cheap plastic toy.

  Lucy was free.

  Colt’s head broke the surface. He took a huge gulp of air. For a few seconds he floated in the water, not moving – not able to move – just staring up at the sky.

  He knew he had passed out again. Knew this was a dream. Because the person peering down at him from the helicopter was . . .

  Something wrapped itself around him. Colt blinked and tried to shake his head in a desperate effort to wake himself. But it didn’t work.

  In the dream he couldn’t wake from – a dream which was quickly becoming a nightmare – a huge snake had grabbed him. He tried to struggle free, but the snake tightened its grip and lifted him completely out of the water.

  For a moment Colt’s legs and arms flailed helplessly in the air, then the snake turned him upright and placed him gently on Lucy’s head. Birdy wrapped her arms around him as the snake coiled away.

  ‘I thought you’d drowned,’ she said.

  ‘Still alive,’ he gasped. ‘Thanks for coming back.’

  ‘Thank Lucy,’ she said.

  At a prod from Birdy’s heel, Lucy started turning in the deep water to go back the other way. The navigation marker swung slowly past. And on the other side, chest-deep in the water at the edge off the drop-off, stood Officer Katt. She was definitely within stun-gun range now.

  And it was pointing right at them.

  ‘I advise you to get clear of the elephant,’ she said. ‘Because on the count of five, I’m going to shoot.

  ‘One, two, three . . .’

  The rat cop stopped counting. Because Lucy had disappeared. Where moments before there had been an elephant, now there were just two small human heads bobbing in the water.

  ‘Where’s it gone?’ snarled Officer Katt, her eyes darting back and forth, the stun gun aimed at nothing. ‘Show yourself, you stupid animal!’

  Which just proved how little the rat cop knew about elephants – Lucy wasn’t stupid at all.

  Suddenly there was a boil of water, like an underwater volcano, and a massive grey shape rose up in front of Officer Katt. Before she had time to move, Lucy wrapped her trunk around the startled rat cop and tossed her high into the air.

  The stun gun flew one way, and Officer Katt flew the other.

  Her scream of rage could be heard all the way across the river.

  Colt thought they were going the wrong way. He was so tired, it was hard to think clearly. Sitting behind Birdy on Lucy’s broad, swaying back, he couldn’t understand why they were heading towards the huge, cheering crowd, instead of away from it.

  Then he realised that this was a different crowd. All these people had been watching their HVs, too, but in another state. They had swarmed to the border to see Lucy arrive. To welcome her and her two passengers to their state – a state where DoRFE had no power. Where the last elephant in the world was a hero.

  Her passengers were heroes, too. Colt and Birdy were mobbed when they got ashore. Everyone wanted to tell them how brave they were, and to take holopics of them sitting (Colt) and handstanding (Birdy) on Lucy’s back.

  Colt spotted a boy with a bucket of chips and asked if he could have some. He got the whole bucket. Other kids gave chocolate bars, a banana, a bag of lollies, and three cans of soft drink. He and Birdy split them all, but Colt had the lion’s share.

  Pretty soon, he was feeling strong again, and wide awake.

  So it surprised him when the Channel 12 helicopter returned from filming Officer Katt’s rescue by the water police and he saw the same person he’d dreamed about when he was underwater.

  ‘Mum?’ he said.

  Kristin was first out of the helicopter when it landed. Behind her came Verity Dingle and her holocam operator. Channel 12 was still broadcasting live when Colt slid off Lucy’s back and sleepwalked (it still felt a bit like a dream) into his mother’s arms.

  ‘Thank heavens you’re okay,’ she said, nearly kissing him in front of everybody.

  Colt stepped quickly back, accidentally bumping into Birdy and her father. Mr Flynn had
been riding in the helicopter, too.

  ‘We’ve been so worried about you guys,’ Mr Flynn said.

  ‘Well, we were worried about Lucy,’ said his daughter.

  ‘Would you mind saying that again, please?’ asked Verity Dingle, thrusting a microphone in Birdy’s direction.

  While two of the four Flying Flynns were interviewed, Colt drew his mother to one side.

  ‘Mum, there’s something I need to ask you,’ he said softly. ‘You know that job Captain Noah offered you – to be the circus vet – are you thinking about taking it?’

  Kristin looked at him in the same wet-eyed way she looked at circus horses. ‘Would you like me to?’ she asked.

  Ten seconds later, Colt interrupted Verity Dingle’s interview to whisper something in Birdy’s ear. It was a mistake, because they were on national holovision.

  Three million people saw Birdy whoop with joy, then plant a big sloppy kiss on Colt’s cheek.

  Half a kilometre away, on the other side of the border, an old blue station wagon with one green door pulled into a vacant parking space next to the jetty. Its driver didn’t get out. He just sat there, staring across the river as he listened to a newsflash on his car’s out-dated FM radio.

  On the seat next to him was a speeding ticket.

  Beside it, one corner poking out of the man’s open wallet, was an old 2D photograph of a little dark-haired boy holding a big white rat.

  Colt followed his wobbly torch beam through the rain-streaked darkness. There was mud between his toes. As he walked past the large primates’ trailer, he shone his SmartTorch into its shadowy interior. Two orangutans were curled up in their nests of straw, and there were baboons huddled in the cage at the far end. Real live Lost World animals! It still gave Colt a thrill to see them.

  But then he noticed that the middle compartment was empty.

  Its door was open.

  The monkeys or apes that lived there had escaped! And out in the wild, rat flu would kill them in a few months.

  Colt thought about getting his mother. But what could she do? She was a vet – she knew how to cure animals, not how to catch them.

  There was no time to lose.

  Colt slipped out of The Menagerie and ran back to Mr Busby’s caravan. A pale light shone behind the blue-and-white checked curtains. Colt knocked on the door. He heard footsteps inside. The door creaked open. Mr Busby didn’t look pleased when he saw who it was, but Colt didn’t give him time to speak.

  ‘Some monkeys have got out!’

  ‘Which ones?’ asked Mr Busby, grabbing a coat from behind the door to put on over his singlet and shorts.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Colt said. ‘One of the cages is empty. I just walked past and noticed the door was open.’

  ‘Well don’t just stand there gawking, boy!’

  They ran back through Circus City towards the animal trailers. Mr Busby had a torch, too. Raindrops sliced like arrows through the twin beams of light. Colt’s heart jumped when he glimpsed a silver flash of reflected eyes looking back at him from beneath a motorhome.

  It was a ghost rat!

  1. By this time tomorrow, how many more species of plants and animals will become extinct?

  0-5

  15-20

  50-100

  150-200

  2. There are 1800 endangered species on the Red List (the main list of all the threatened species of plants and animals in the world).

  False

  True

  3. One of Australia’s most endangered species is the Lord Howe Island phasmid. A phasmid is a . . .

  Cousin of the Tasmanian devil

  Honey-eating bird

  Giant stick insect

  Very tiny fruit fly

  4. Fifty years ago there were over 100,000 tigers left in the world. Now there are approximately . . .

  54,000

  3200

  96,000

  159

  5. To help save endangered animals, you can:

  Buy recycled paper products whenever you can.

  Grow plants that are local to your area.

  Pick up rubbish that you see on the roadside so plants can grow.

  Visit wildlife parks and learn about nature.

  Turn the page to find out the answers . . .

  1. d.

  2. False. There are actually over 18,000 animals and plants on the Red List. You can read more about it at iucnredlist.org

  3. c. (At one stage there were only four Lord Howe phasmids left in the world, but a breeding program saved them from extinction. Phew!)

  4. b.

  5. All of these! Even tiny things that you do each day can help save our endangered species from extinction by protecting their habitats. There’s still hope!

  All the books in these action-packed series can be read in any order.

  Extreme Adventures:

  Crocodile Attack

  Bushfire Rescue

  Shark Bait

  Scorpion Sting

  Spider Bite

  Man Eater

  Killer Whale

  Anaconda Ambush

  Grizzly Trap

  Devil Danger

  Monkey Mountain

  Tiger Trouble

  Mission Fox:

  Snake Escape

  Panda Rescue

  Dolphin Danger

  Horse Hijack

  Puma Rumour

  Zebra Rampage

  Go Goanna

  Koala Round-up

  Visit justindath.com for heaps of great stuff about the author!

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

  707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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

  First published by Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 2013

  Text copyright © Justin D’Ath, 2013

  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.

  Cover and text design by Marina Messiha © Penguin Group (Australia)

  Cover image by Sam Hadley

  Colour separation by Splitting Image Colour Studio, Clayton, Victoria

  puffin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74253-588-3

 

 

 
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