“We won’t mention Danny.”
Matt nudged Pikey down from a canter to a trot. He was approaching the eucalyptus trees now. The sun had finally risen on another scorching day. He took his rifle out of its leather holster.
“Easy, girl,” he said to Pikey. He dismounted and tied the horse to a tree.
He was feeling bad again. He dry-heaved and then pulled himself together. He pressed Talk on the walkie-talkie. “I’ll have to run this past Ma,” he told Heather.
“Do that.”
“I will.”
He walked through the trees and there in front of a cave mouth he had never seen before was the little girl. Digging for yams, like Heather said.
47
Heather looked at the radio and waited for Matt’s response. Maybe there was a way out of this without more bloodshed. Without putting the kids’ lives at risk by trying Olivia and Owen’s plan.
Matt was the cleverest and possibly the most reasonable one of the family.
“Matt?” she said into the walkie-talkie. She’d been standing guard with the Lee-Enfield and hadn’t noticed anything wrong. But the silence now was worrying.
What—
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Matt said, not through the walkie-talkie but from somewhere really close by.
Heather shrank behind the tree trunk.
Oh my God. He was here.
“Come out, Heather! I’ve got your little girl. I’ve got a gun pointed at her. Come out!”
How had he found—
“It’s so boring, isn’t it? To count down from three? But that’s what I’m going to do, Heather. Three, two, one…”
Heather stepped out from behind the eucalyptus tree.
“I’m here,” she said.
Matt was holding Olivia by the scruff of her neck with his left hand. He had a rifle in his right hand that he was pointing at her.
“Drop your gun or I blow this one to kingdom come,” Matt said.
“Matt, no! We can make a deal.”
“You Yanks and your bloody deals. Drop it now or she’s dead!”
Heather dropped the Lee-Enfield.
“Very wise,” said Matt. “Now put your hands up high.”
She put them up.
“If you want something done right, you do it yourself,” Matt said with a grin.
“How did you find us?”
“Your dad was in the army and he never taught you about radio silence? Triangulation?”
Her face fell. Triangulation. Yes. “I’ve been trying to remember all the things he said.”
“Oh, mate, you should see your face. You look gutted. Come over here, slowly.”
She walked toward him.
When she was twenty feet away he said, “That’s enough.”
“Here?”
“Hands high in the air, please. I don’t want any last-minute heroics.”
Heather put her hands up.
“Where’s the boy? Don’t lie to me.”
“He’s still sleeping, in the cave. We found a cave.”
“He’s in for a rude awakening. Hands higher, please. And farther apart.”
She did as she was told. “You’re not going to take me in, are you?” she asked.
Matt shook his head. “You know what? You’re so much trouble, I think this is the best way for all of us. Ma says you’re the bunyip.”
“I keep hearing that word. What does it mean?”
“A monster from Aboriginal mythology. Hundreds of years ago, the bunyips were represented as a kind of emu, but gradually, as Europeans and their totems entered the Dreaming, the devil, the bunyip, came to be seen as white men on horses.”
“Yes. I understand. The monster is us.”
“The monster, indeed, is us. You’ve learned, Heather. There’s nothing more the island can teach you. Close your eyes.”
Letting Olivia go, he took aim at Heather. He braced the rifle against his shoulder and looked down the sight.
And then he shot her.
48
All she could do was fall.
It was so easy to fall.
People did it every day. The planet didn’t want them up there walking around. It wanted them closer. It wanted them to become part of it.
Under the gum tree, she fell.
And in the falling, she saw the sky and the crow and she heard the rifle crack.
A sledgehammer hit her shoulder. Right where the shotgun-pellet wound had been starting to heal.
The back of her neck hit a tree root.
The pain knocked the breath out of her.
Matt hadn’t killed her with his first shot, but it didn’t matter.
He’d put her down.
She was down and her gun was gone and he was walking toward her with a rifle.
Olivia tried to grab his leg but he kicked her off, hard, and she doubled over in agony.
Heather looked at her shoulder. The rifle shot seemed to have gone straight through. Only a .22-caliber round but, oh Jesus, it hurt. But at least she could still feel something, which meant that she was still alive.
“Well, well, well,” Matt said. “You led us a chase, didn’t you? Shook things up around here.”
“I tried to…what will you do now?” she said.
“I’ll finish you, I think, and I’ll bring in the little ones,” Matt said.
“I know you, Matt. You’re not like this. Do you think this is the right thing to do?”
“To defend my family against interlopers who have wreaked havoc on us? Yeah, mate, it’s the right thing to do.”
But he should have been shooting instead of talking. You need to focus when you’re killing something, be it a rabbit, a deer, or a human being. Heather’s dad had told her that. He had killed eleven men in Iraq. He had laid down a deep, multitrack memory of every one of them. He’d never spoken to her about the individual kills. But sometimes she’d hear him talking in his sleep or on the phone…
You need to blot out the world. You need to focus. Matt didn’t. He checked to see where Olivia was, and he looked up as Owen came out of the cave.
It cost him two seconds.
She let gravity take her and she slid down the big shiny eucalypt root into the grass. She scrambled to her feet and began limping toward the old school bus.
Matt was unconcerned as he followed. He too wasn’t in the best shape, but he was certainly faster than her. “Where do you think you’re going, Heather? You think you’re going to get that bus in gear and drive out of here?”
He laughed at his own joke.
Heather hobbled to the back of the school bus and collapsed into the dirt.
This was as far as she could go.
Matt grinned.
The kids were trailing him. He pointed the rifle at them. “That’s far enough, you two!”
They looked terrified.
Heather managed to catch Olivia’s eye. It’s going to be OK. No. Really. I wouldn’t lie to you.
Heather crawled to her left.
Matt would want to make sure with his kill shot.
He would come close.
He would come direct.
The air this morning was thick, sweet, honeyed.
There were butterflies. An egret. An old crow.
Time had slowed.
She smiled at him.
“What are you grinning for?” he said and walked straight into the dingo trap.
He screamed and dropped his rifle as the jaws snapped shut on his ankle.
That would have been it for Matt but for the fact that the trap was very old and the spring rusted. It hadn’t broken his leg or severed an artery.