His plan B.
It was a jerrican of gasoline.
“This is your last chance to do something, Heather!” he yelled into the spinifex. “Whatever your plan is, Heather, it’s not going to work. We’re bringing more dogs tomorrow. We will find you.”
“No cops have come looking for you, Heather! No one has any idea you’re here! We’ll bloody get you,” Kate said.
“This is petrol, Heather. You really want me to do this, or do you want to give up? Last chance!”
Heather swallowed hard.
“All right, then, watch this!” Ivan said as he poured the gasoline over Tom. They were going to burn him alive in the chair.
She had only one round left. She couldn’t kill all four of them.
She knew what she had to do.
It was terrible, but there was no other choice.
Could she do it? She ripped off her T-shirt, wrapped it around the barrel, and tied it over the muzzle. She took aim.
The T-shirt would do nothing about the noise but it would help conceal the muzzle flash.
“For real this time, Danny,” Ivan said.
Danny lit a cigarette, took a puff, and threw the cigarette at Tom. There was a vast yellow fireball, but before Tom could even cry out, Heather shot him in the heart.
The shot echoed around the clearing.
“Where?” Ivan yelled.
“Anyone see?” Matt asked.
No one had seen.
Matt threw a blanket over the body to smother the fire.
The Toyota Hilux came with its bullet-cracked windshield and its leaking transmission. They threw Tom into the back.
“What’s your plan, Heather?” Ivan yelled. “We’re bringing more dogs! No cops have been round looking for you! No one’s looking for you here! You’re never getting off this island. Never!”
“That’s right!” Kate said and they got in the Toyota and they left.
Still she waited until it was fully dark.
“You nearly got me,” she whispered as she put Petra’s singed, ripped T-shirt back on. She slid backward through the grass. It was her and them now. She’d get off the island or die trying. When she was half a mile away from the cave, she turned south to gather more shearwater eggs. The tide was very low. Her sneakers sank softly into the wet sand.
Was that the moon? A brand-new moon after the dark of the moon?
Yes.
A sliver of beautiful white sickle moon defiantly upside down.
She got the eggs and headed home.
When she reached the burned plateau she took a last look at the one-tree hill.
“Goodbye, Tom,” she said.
44
The land had become dark.
A deep, dark ticktocking in time to the rotating stars. Olivia sat under the foliage of the eucalyptus trees. Dusty, dry, kind of ugly leaves, but each one a miracle engine that had spent the day converting light into food.
Birds in a V formation.
Starlight on the water.
She thought about Heather. Worried about her. She’d been wrong about her.
She sat on a root and cried. She cried about herself and her mom. She cried about her dad.
He was her dad, after all.
But Heather would get her and Owen out, not him. She knew that. She had to look after her little brother.
In the cave she could hear Owen cooking the snake by the fire. There wasn’t going to be much meat, he’d said. It was all bony and gross. But that was OK.
Olivia stood and peered into the darkness and waited for Heather.
Either Heather would come back or her dad and Matt and the others would come. She missed her dad. She loved her dad. But she wanted it to be Heather. Her mom would have wanted it to be Heather too.
She went inside the cave mouth. If you looked very hard you could see faint drawings on the walls. Stick men and women dancing with spears. In the light of Owen’s fire, they danced still.
The men and women with spears were attacking or fleeing from a monster with six legs.
After a while, Heather appeared in the cave mouth.
Olivia hugged her.
Olivia asked her a question without saying anything.
Heather nodded.
Heather put her arms around her and explained what had happened.
Olivia cried and Heather cried and they held each other for a long time.
“Look what I found,” Olivia said, sniffing and showing her the cave drawings. “Some of these images are thousands of years old but some must have been done in the last hundred and fifty years. That’s a man on a horse, isn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“They made a record of the black line, of the massacre.”
“What are you guys doing up there?” Owen yelled. “I’ve cooked this, come down!”