The Island(42)

The flies. The heat. Sluggish, cigar-shaped clouds moving through the sapphire sky like evil alien ships.

“It’s coming closer now,” Owen said.

He was right; the Toyota was heading straight toward them. Could they have been seen? Of course they could have.

“Nobody move,” Heather whispered.

The engine revved, and the Toyota bumped over the terrain.

Closer.

Closer.

It leaped the dried-up stream about twenty yards ahead of them, stopped, turned in a big circle, and headed away again.

Heather was lying next to Olivia. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving. She was praying. Heather had never really learned how to do that properly. Tom had taken the kids to church most Sundays. She’d gone once and told Tom that she didn’t want to go back, and he’d been OK with that. As churches went, it had seemed pretty inoffensive. Just plain wooden benches and a harmless old man up at the front telling people to be good, not the terrible hypocrisy-ridden place her father had said church was, but she supposed it all had to do with the denomination. She watched Olivia, fascinated. Her message was going straight from her to God. Heather found that she was holding her breath, waiting for an answer or a bolt of lightning or something, but the only sound was the whooping from the Toyota.

It was coming back their way again.

Men’s voices:

“Where are they, Hans? Tell us!”

“Faster, you drongo!”

“We’ll learn that Kraut!”

“Come on, Kate, step on it!”

“Whoo-hoo! It’s like the movies, ain’t it?”

“In spades, mate!”

“Hans! Tell us where they are!”

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“Where are you going to hide, kiddies?”

“They hide in the grass and we’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow their bloody house down, won’t we?”

Olivia was shaking all over. Heather stroked her hair. “It’s going to be OK, baby,” she found herself whispering.

“We can’t stay here forever. They will bring all the other cars. The whole farm will come. They know we are here,” Petra protested.

“Just stay down. We don’t have any choice!” Heather said.

The Toyota was roaring toward them again, across the parallels and meridians in another intersecting curve. Olivia put her hands over her ears as the engine revved like a monster and the pickup jumped the ravine just five yards behind them.

Surely they had been spotted?

Heather waited for a screech of brakes or a gunshot.

But the Toyota kept going.

It headed out onto the scrub, and then—

A crash followed by silence.

Men began yelling. The Toyota had stopped. Engine turning over. Wheels spinning.

“Wait here, kids. I’m going to take a look.”

“I’ll come with you,” Petra said.

Heather climbed out of the hollow and scrambled up the dirt embankment. The Toyota was in a gully three hundred yards to the south, its front wheels in the air. They’d tried to jump the gap but hadn’t made it. The truck had hit the side of the gully in the middle of the front axle and was stuck.

It wouldn’t be too difficult to get the Toyota out. Another vehicle could pull it, that one down at the ferry or the ones back at the farm. But they hadn’t seen that yet and hadn’t realized they were going to need more than manpower. They were trying to rock the Toyota out of the ditch, which would never work.

Matt went around to the front of the car and began untying Hans. If he was still alive, they were going to make him push too.

Heather stared at Matt. She had thought he was going to be the voice of sanity, that he was going to help, but he had made his choice.

“This is our chance to get out of here,” Heather whispered to Petra. “This will keep them busy for half an hour. They’ll need a winch. We should go.”

“Where will we go?”

“It’s going to get hot. I think we should head for the mangrove trees by the water,” Heather said.

The shore was half a mile to the northeast.

“And then what?”

“We’ll worry about the ‘then what’ when we get there.”

“I shouldn’t leave Hans, I—”

“I’m sorry.”

Petra shuddered and sobbed and finally whispered, “Yes.”

They climbed back down into the hollow and explained what was happening. “We’ll head for the trees by the shore,” Heather said.

The dry streambed was going in the direction they wanted. They crawled along it for a hundred yards before it became too narrow, and then, gingerly, they climbed out onto the heath. The men were swearing loudly and kicking at the car.

“This way,” Heather said. “Be sure to keep low.”

The grass more or less covered the kids but Heather and Petra had to run in a crouch, Groucho-fashion.

It took them half an hour to make it to the mangrove trees, which ran along the narrow beach for several hundred yards.

When they got into the shade, both kids flopped onto the sand. Owen had taken off his hoodie and tied it around his waist. His T-shirt was drenched with sweat. Olivia sank down next to him.

Heather sat on a rock and tried to gather her wits.