“You don’t know. You don’t know much, do you, Matty? But I know. I know more than you think. I know you and Terry and Kate talked about setting up some kind of tourist hotel here, Matthew.”
“An eco-lodge, Ma. Terry’s idea. It’s all the rage these days. It would have worked. We could have brought a lot of money in. Rebranded. Secured our future. The trust fund’s running out. We need to think about things like that.”
“I know that! But you know why I didn’t think that was a good idea? You know why I don’t like strangers coming to the island?”
“Why’s that, Ma?” Matt asked.
She patted his leg and smiled and gave a little cackle. “’Cause I knew she was coming. Deep in my bones. Her…someone like her. We have a good thing going here. Open the window for me, will you?”
Matt got up and opened the window. The bush smelled acrid, weary, as exhausted as her. The night’s song coiled around her. The bush was indifferent. It didn’t care what happened to any of them.
“We have to go forward, Matthew. Forward. Forward into the past when everything was prey. It can be as it was—for a little while, anyway. You see?”
“Not really, Ma.”
“Just us, living simple. No eco-lodge, no strangers. I knew she would come and bloody ruin everything. Her, or someone like her. You know what she is, Matthew? She’s the monster. The bunyip. She’ll destroy us unless we destroy her. We got to get her.”
“But how?” Matt asked.
“When I first came out here to the island as a wee girl, I got lost. And you know how Terry found me?”
“No.”
“Sit down and I’ll tell you.”
46
Matt rode out of the farm on Pikey well before dawn. He was glad to get away. They had no water. No power. No one had a clue what to do except for him and Ma.
Heather was out there somewhere.
He would find her without dogs.
He had his trusty .22 small-game hunting rifle that he’d had for years. Maybe not the most deadly gun on the island, but it had low kick and high velocity, and he had never missed with it, not once.
He’d find her. He had to.
She was that thing outside that threatened their whole way of life.
He rode Pikey southeast over the kangaroo grass toward the prison.
He called in on Rory. His guts were rumbling and he threw up in Rory’s outdoor toilet.
Rory hadn’t seen her. The generator was down so the pump was down, so now he had no electricity or water. “If you see her, shoot her,” Matt said and he rode on to the far eastern shore, where the tide was low.
The sunrise on this side of the island was always a beautiful, unfeasible vermilion. But he had no time to wait for the sun today.
“Heather?” he tried on the walkie-talkie.
Static.
He rode down to the far south where the shearwaters nested. “Heather?” he tried as he walked along the beach.
Static.
West to the ferry terminal, but Kate, who was guarding the dock, had seen no sign of her.
“Heather?”
Static.
He rode northwest up the mangrove beach.
“Heather?”
Nothing.
He rode north over the grassland where the country became hilly.
“Heather?”
Static and then a voice: “Matt?”
Ah…so that’s where she was hiding. “Heather, why did you do all that to us? We have no power, no fuel, no water.”
“Sounds like you’ll have to bring the ferry over to get resupplied.”
“We’ll be guarding that ferry like it’s a barge out of Fort Knox.”
“You almost fooled me, Matt. You’re smart but I don’t think you’re as smart as you think you are.”
“It’s a pity, Heather. We could have made a deal. I know a lot of us wanted it.”
“You wouldn’t have kept to any deal.”
“Maybe, maybe not. You didn’t get to see the best of us. We were moving into the future. My brothers and I were planning an eco-tourism thing for a few years from now.”
“That’s a shame.”
“It’s a shame about Tom.”
“And Hans and Petra.”
“And Hans and Petra.”
“So what now?” Heather asked.
“What indeed?”
“Maybe we’ll stay. We like it here, me and the kids. We have water. We have food. You’ll all be dead in a week, but we’ll be fine,” Heather said.
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit. Olivia was pulling up some daisies this morning, and you know what she found?”
“What?”
“The daisies are really yam flowers,” Heather said. “We found yams. Growing wild. They’re all over the island. Did you even know that?”
“No.”
“It’s so rich in food, this place. You just need to know where to look. Hundreds of Aboriginal people used to live here.”
“I doubt that.”
“Doubt away. We’ll be fine out here in the bush while you roast and die in your wooden coffins.”
“All this was your fault,” Matt said bitterly.
“Oh, Matt, we’re so past fault now. We can stay or go. We can fly across the water if we want to. The crows will carry us.”
“Sounds like you’re hallucinating from lack of water.”
“Stay or go. Stay, I think. We have a mission. The crows will help there too.”
“What are you talking about, Heather? What mission?” Matt asked.
“Deep assignments run throughout all our lives. I was given meteor iron. It came with instructions. The past two days were just the start. Killing the dogs. Destroying your fuel. Poisoning the well. Blowing up your generator. I’ll be back every night. You’ll never find me. I was sent here, Matthew. I was sent here to form another line to erase your line. To erase you. Down to zero. Do you understand?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Get all the kids over there out if you can because I’m going to cleanse this island of the O’Neills’ presence.”
“Have you gone mad? Did you drink seawater?”
“We’re fine. We have fresh water. Plenty of it. This is our island now. We can live anywhere here, but you’re trapped. Trapped on an island that’s a tinderbox with a woman whose dad was a sniper and who trained her to be a sniper too.”
“Bullshit!”
“Oh, he was conflicted about it, sure, but he told me it was the only thing he was ever good at. I can strip and aim and shoot any firearm ever made. I can take out a sewer rat on the beach at dusk. I can knock the scut off a rabbit at a thousand yards. You’re all dead, Matt. You just don’t know it yet.”
Heather’s signal was coming in very clear now on the walkie-talkie. She had to be within a quarter mile of where Matt was riding. There was a clump of eucalyptus trees up on a hill to the west. He’d noticed them many times before but it had never occurred to him to wonder where those big old trees drank from.
Plenty of water, she’d said.
“What’s your point, Heather?”
“The point, Matt, is that time is running out for you and Ma and the others. The police are going to be here very soon and they will be looking for us and they’ll find us, and the lot of you will be up on murder charges. Every one of you. I will make your life hell until then.”
“Are you suggesting a deal?”
“Leave us the ferry. Everyone stay on the farm until we’re off the island.”
“What’s in it for us, Heather?”
“I’ll tell the cops Jacko killed Tom and Petra and Hans. And I killed him in self-defense.”
“And what about Danny?”