“Wow, it’s actually really work—” Olivia began, but Heather put her hand up to silence her. She’d heard something. Was that a dog barking?
“Wait here,” she said.
She scrambled through the mangrove bushes and climbed a little rise so she could see out to the heathland.
The sight chilled her.
Twenty people from the farm had formed a line and were making their way methodically along the edge of the plain. They were standing about fifty feet apart so they could cover three hundred yards of territory easily. The line included women and children, and most of them were armed. Someone was driving an ATV at one end of the line and there was a motorcycle at the other. Matt was there in his checkered shirt carrying his rifle; she heard him call out, “Blue,” and his lame old dog came over and eagerly began limping beside him.
They were about two hundred yards away, but they were moving slowly and systematically in their direction.
Heather watched one boy with a gun climb through the mangrove bushes and presumably begin walking along the shore.
It was a replication of that thing Jacko had talked about, the black line. They were going to hunt the four of them down the way their antecedents had hunted down the original Dutch Islanders and the Tasman people.
Heather ran back to the others. “They’re coming for us! We have to go!”
“How far are they?” Petra asked.
“Too close! Get up, Owen.”
“The bottle’s working!” Owen said.
“I’m sorry! We have to go.”
“We’re dying of thirst here!” Owen protested.
Heather pulled him up and Petra got Olivia to her feet, and they began running along the shore with the O’Neills in close pursuit.
17
The jaunty Star Trek: Voyager theme music began as the end credits rolled. The music was an ironic commentary on the previous forty-two minutes. Somehow Carolyn had missed this episode when it originally aired and had caught it only now on her Netflix binge rewatch. She was crying. In fact, she was quietly devastated. The only person who would understand was Heather. It was dark out. It was tomorrow in Australia. Heather might be up.
Carolyn’s phone was dead. She really needed to get a new one. It was barely able to keep a charge now. She plugged it in, and, yup, a text came through from Heather herself. It was a photo of a bird. A parrot. Heather sure liked birds. There were no other texts. But would Heather want to hear her wee-hour ramblings about Star Trek?
Carolyn had been so worried about her going overseas. Heather had never even had a passport before, and she had gotten way skinny lately. Probably wasn’t eating right. Still, she was a grown-up and married, and Tom was Mr. Rich Capable Doctor Guy.
Carolyn lifted her electric guitar off the floor and noodled with a tune. She hadn’t written anything in a year or two. She and Heather had written dozens of songs when they’d been teenagers. Music and Star Trek series, they had shared.
She put the guitar back on the floor.
She typed, Have you seen the Voyager episode “Course: Oblivion”？ and pressed Send.
Heather would reply as soon as she woke up or sobered up from her winery tour.
18
Heather now realized her mistake. Every few yards they had to duck under or climb over or go around or climb through the scrubby little mangrove trees. You couldn’t easily escape up this beach. Progress was nightmarishly slow.
Going around the bushes meant they were up to their knees in water, and the tide was coming in. She looked to her right to see where the high-water mark was and found a line of scum and seaweed two-thirds of the way up the bank.
We’re going to have to cut inland, she thought. But if they cut inland, they would be seen. It was afternoon now; the sun was heavy, huge, and orange in the northern part of the sky. Eventually it would sink into the mainland on the left, but that wouldn’t be for hours yet. Seven or eight hours, possibly.
She could hear the pursuers yelling to one another up on the mesa. They were getting closer.
At this rate of progress, they’d get caught in seven or eight minutes.
“Keep going,” Heather said as they fought their way through the bushes. The bark and the leaves weren’t particularly sharp, but still, they scratched at their skin. Skin that was already raw from thistle cuts and sunburn.
Headway was slow.
So stupidly slow.
Heather looked behind them. The tide was their enemy and their friend. It chased them and helped them. It hid their footprints, but in an hour this coastline would be underwater and they would have to move inland or swim.