The ants immediately began biting her. Their pincers were sharp and incredibly painful. Hans had to be in agony.
“Hans, it’s me, Heather,” she said.
“Heather?”
“Don’t try to speak. I’m going to get you out of here,” she said, giving him more water, wiping his face and neck.
“The children?”
“Are alive too. We found a cave and water. Don’t speak. Just hold on.”
“No. Heather. Get away.”
They had wrapped wire around his wrists and attached the wire to tent pegs and hammered the pegs into the ground. Same with his ankles.
“Heather…you must go.”
“Save your strength. Don’t say anything. You’re coming with me, Hans,” she said.
“No.”
“I’m going to get you out of here. We’ve got food and water. You’re coming with us.”
“You must go.”
“If I can just get these pegs out.”
“I am a dead man, Heather. A matter of hours…they cut a hole in my belly. I can feel them inside me.”
“I can save you. Don’t try to say anything more! I can do this,” Heather said, gagging as she pulled desperately at the pegs.
“I wouldn’t get…ten meters.”
“I can get you free!”
“And then what?” He looked at her. “Poor Petra is dead…I am dead, but—but you can do two things for me.”
“Tell me.”
“Did you bring your penknife?”
“Yes.”
“First…I need you to…cut my throat.”
“What?”
“You must help me…I am too weak to do it myself.”
She shook her head. “No, please, anything else.”
“I can’t do it, Heather. You…the carotid artery…is on the side of the neck. With your little knife, you can cut it and it will be over for me.”
“I—I—I can’t do that.”
“I need your help. Will you do it?”
“No.”
“I will hold your hand…I will guide you. Can you do it?”
She shook her head. But she knew he was right. Her mouth opened and a tiny “Yes” came out of it.
Hans told her the second thing he wanted her to do. It felt worse than the first. She agreed to do that too.
She took out her knife and opened the blade. She freed his right wrist from the wire. He held her hand and guided it to the carotid artery pulsing weakly on the left side of his neck.
“Here,” he said.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“What are you…afraid of?”
“Killing someone in cold blood.”
“Heather, please remember…that it is not you…who is killing me. They have killed me. They are the killers.”
She tried not to look directly at him. But she couldn’t help it. His face was a mess of bite marks, scabs, wounds.
“Please,” Hans said and she pushed in with the blade and together they cut his throat.
She scooted away quickly from the arterial spray, almost bumping into poor Petra.
The ants had eaten the skin off Petra’s face, and parts of her skull were glinting in the arc lights.
Hans bled out in under a minute. They were together again in death.
She shivered and allowed herself tears.
She took a deep breath and nodded at him.
A thought occurred to her. If Petra was here and Hans was here, why wasn’t Tom here too? What had they done with Tom’s body?
She looked frantically for him for a minute or two but it was obvious that they’d done something else with Tom.
Why?
Because they needed Tom.
Because they were going to put Tom in the car with her and the dead kids over on the mainland. They were going to try to make it look like a bad car accident. Over there, well away from here.
They were going to disappear the Dutch couple, but Tom must be in storage somewhere. A freezer in the house, no doubt.
She shook her head. “It’s not going to fly, is it, Petra?”
The intelligent Dutch woman’s dead skull grinned at her.
The Australian coroner would not be fooled, right? Sooner or later he or she would look under a microscope and notice that Tom’s cells had been distorted by ice. Ice in the heart of an Aussie summer? That didn’t make sense. The coroner would call the cops; the cops would trace the last movements of the doomed family…
She nodded grimly to herself.
That would do as a plan B. Screw them over from beyond the grave. Plan A was to screw them now. It was time to carry out the second part of Hans’s request. Enough hesitation.