She pulled on the nearest peg chaining Hans to the ground, the one at his left foot. Tugging it and wiggling it was the way to get it out. Heather hauled on the one next to it, and after some effort, it came out too. She heaved on the final peg at his left wrist. Hans was ready now to get his portion of vengeance.
38
Owen looked at the snake from behind his wall. He had built the wall inside his head, a wall with bricks just like in Minecraft. He hid behind the wall when he didn’t want to deal with things. There had been a lot of not dealing with things over the past year. He had not dealt with his mom’s death. He had not dealt with his dad meeting Heather. He had not dealt with his dad marrying Heather. He had not dealt with Heather moving in. He had not dealt with coming to Australia and his dad being murdered. He had not dealt with the three of them going on the run from actual Mad Max psycho-killers. Most important of all, he hadn’t dealt with the fact that all of it was his fault for hiding behind his wall and saying nothing…
The wall’s bricks were made of cinder blocks. Big gray cinder blocks that in Minecraft you could move around easily but that were harder to move in real life. He peeked over the top of the wall into the real world, into real life.
It was definitely a snake. The fire must have awakened it.
Snakes didn’t bother you unless you bothered them—if you stepped on one by accident or something like that. Snakes, everyone said, left you alone. Australian snakes were no different. He knew a lot about Australian snakes. He had researched Australian snakes on his phone and his computer for days before the flight. He hadn’t just read Wikipedia. He’d read e-books and gotten an actual book from Amazon. Owen knew he wasn’t good at sports. Everyone said he had “learning difficulties.” Some of the kids called him dumb when the teachers weren’t in earshot. His mom and dad had fought hard for the schools to accept his diagnosis of ADHD, and now he took his medicine and got more time on tests. He hadn’t had his medicine for three days now. Normally when he took a break from Ritalin and his anxiety meds, he got jittery and stressed, but he wasn’t feeling stressed now.
He felt OK watching the snake uncurl itself and crawl in the direction of sleeping Olivia. It was about six feet long and brownish yellow. In this part of Victoria, it could only be an Australian copperhead.
The Australian copperhead had hollow fangs filled with venom at the front of its jaw. He remembered completely verbatim what Wallace’s Snakes of Australia said about the copperhead: “Their venom is, by Australian standards, only moderately toxic, nevertheless a bite left untreated can easily kill an adult human. There is no copperhead antivenom.”
Copperheads had killed children in the past. They ate small prey such as possums and rabbits. Occasionally they went for bigger targets like wombats and wallabies.
Did a sleeping girl look like a sleeping wombat?
Maybe.
She was a good sister. Most of the time.
The snake had curled into a figure-eight shape. It raised its head. “They are shy and retiring by nature, and prefer to escape rather than fight where escape is possible,” the book had said.
Escape was definitely possible for this snake. There was plenty of room between the fire and the cave wall. No one was bothering it.
It must have gotten very hungry down here.
He supposed that if it did bite Olivia, that would be his fault too.
Owen went back behind his wall and built it a little higher.
39
If there’s one thing the Dutch know about, it’s water.
Hans had understood that the O’Neill farm was built over a sandstone aquifer. There were no rivers or lakes on Dutch Island, nowhere for rainwater to go but back into the ocean or down into those layers between the rocks. The O’Neills had been drawing water from the aquifer for decades, and the well had had to be drilled deeper, as the original water was not replenished. The actual wellhead itself was no longer necessary, as the water was pumped to a cistern, but they’d kept it.
Hans had seen all of this and knew it was a mistake.
Heather checked that the coast was clear. As the ants continued to bite, she pulled Hans by his feet to the well thirty feet away at the north of the compound. She dragged him slowly and carefully for fear of the dogs hearing or taking an interest. A few curious barks were all she heard. The dogs perhaps knew something was up but they weren’t overly concerned about it yet.
The well was covered with an iron grating to keep out birds and possums. She set down Hans and lifted the grating. It wasn’t heavy and she laid it carefully in the dirt. She felt another big raindrop on her neck.