Page 86 of Fall With Me

But he should have been shooting instead of talking. You need to focus when you’re killing something, be it a rabbit, a deer, or a human being. Heather’s dad had told her that. He had killed eleven men in Iraq. He had laid down a deep, multitrack memory of every one of them. He’d never spoken to her about the individual kills. But sometimes she’d hear him talking in his sleep or on the phone…

You need to blot out the world. You need to focus. Matt didn’t. He checked to see where Olivia was, and he looked up as Owen came out of the cave.

It cost him two seconds.

She let gravity take her and she slid down the big shiny eucalypt root into the grass. She scrambled to her feet and began limping toward the old school bus.

Matt was unconcerned as he followed. He too wasn’t in the best shape, but he was certainly faster than her. “Where do you think you’re going, Heather? You think you’re going to get that bus in gear and drive out of here?”

He laughed at his own joke.

Heather hobbled to the back of the school bus and collapsed into the dirt.

This was as far as she could go.

Matt grinned.

The kids were trailing him. He pointed the rifle at them. “That’s far enough, you two!”

They looked terrified.

Heather managed to catch Olivia’s eye. It’s going to be OK. No. Really. I wouldn’t lie to you.

Heather crawled to her left.

Matt would want to make sure with his kill shot.

He would come close.

He would come direct.

The air this morning was thick, sweet, honeyed.

There were butterflies. An egret. An old crow.

Time had slowed.

She smiled at him.

“What are you grinning for?” he said and walked straight into the dingo trap.

He screamed and dropped his rifle as the jaws snapped shut on his ankle.

That would have been it for Matt but for the fact that the trap was very old and the spring rusted. It hadn’t broken his leg or severed an artery.

He stood there groaning and then with an almighty roar he managed to pry apart the mechanism.

“Shit!” he yelled and stepped out of the trap.

Blood was pouring from his ankle.

Heather hadn’t stopped to look at him. She was crawling for the rifle.

“No, you don’t!” Matt said and lunged at her.

The bluffing and the pleading and the reasoning were over. The game was different now. Now it was the oldest game ever invented.

Kill or be killed.