Head shot, Terry had said. Easier said than done when she was thundering straight for me. Stand or kneel? Stand, in case I missed and had to run and reload. I thanked my lucky stars for a misspent youth having shooting competitions with my brothers. But even though I rated my skills as a marksman, the fact I only had one back-up round made me more than a little nervous. Okay, she was fifty metres now, and whatever was happening in her head, it was very apparent she’d decided I was the one she wanted to see, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t for a pat and a rub. Her head was up, her ears out and she meant business. A dark stain that must have been blood was spreading down the front of her head. How close did I let her get? Forty metres. I could hear her footsteps and her exaggerated huffing. All other noise disappeared as I honed my attention in on the centre of her head, tracking her movements. My brain registered her speed, made the calculation and estimate of seconds before she was on me.

I pulled the shotgun up to a shooting position, heard the loud click as I cocked the hammer, sighted over the top of the barrel. She was so close.

Her footsteps vibrated through the ground and up my legs.

My heartbeat pulsed through my ears.

I sighted down the barrel.

Finger on the trigger.

My heart beat.

Cassie’s face.

Heartbeat.

Footsteps, closer.

Heartbeat.

I breathed out.

Sighted

Squeezed.

30

The report shattered the vacuum of silence that had encompassed my world. In a seeming pinprick of time everything happened.

The kickback of the shotgun as the recoil pad slammed into my shoulder.

My gasp as my body recognised the need to breathe again.

The jarring of the earth as the elephant collapsed to the ground, a colossal wreck, her forward momentum leaving her only ten metres from where I stood.

The sharp smell of gunpowder.

Then stillness.

Then sound. My rasping breath, the pulsing of blood in my head, sirens in the distance. Whirring, jangling noise.