The Island(49)

She squatted in the grass and considered the situation.

Matt was clever, but he wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. She wouldn’t have played it like that. She would have turned the lights off and made everything seem like normal. Just have a few guys waiting in the darkness for her to approach the well.

The man on the roof of the barn did not look particularly concerned. He must have figured it would be a miracle if anyone had survived the day on the island in hundred-degree heat without water.

Heather backed away from the spotlight beams and gave the farm a wide berth. If she could help it, she wouldn’t go anywhere near there.

Far too dangerous.

But she had a plan B.

She turned south and kept going until she hit the road.

She listened for the ATV, and when she didn’t hear anything, she headed east again.

Her mouth was so dry, it was as if her tongue were made of sandpaper.

Her brain was operating in slow motion.

East.

Across this tundra.

Across this nothingness.

Over this land without a Dreaming.

The road was warm.

The night was warm. The sea breeze had decided not to come.

Little animals were scuffling about in the undergrowth. She fantasized about catching one and sticking her knife into its belly and drinking its blood.

What she wouldn’t give for a glass of water. Didn’t have to be cold water. Muddy ditchwater would do. Anything. She looked at the sky. Was there any chance of a rain cloud?

No. She could see in every direction all the way into space. There was nothing between her and the vacuum.

She marched on.

On.

She was so light now, she could feel the stars tugging her. The other worlds. The other civilizations.

How easy it was to drift upward.

You just let yourself go.

Go.

Up, up she went on a thermal until she could see all of the island. All of the bay. All of the state of Victoria. The rest of the great sleeping continent.

Higher. Deeper.

Now she could see all of Australia and New Zealand.

That looming presence in the south was Antarctica. So close to all that frozen water.

Farther up she went until she could see all of the Earth spinning on its axis through the darkness. Goose Island had its share of crackpots. She knew at least two people who were flat-earthers. If she ever came back, she would tell them that they were mistaken. She had seen the round Earth rotating herself.

If she ever came back.

So lonely out here.

Lights coming toward her.

The space station?

A UFO.

No. Shit. A car.

Back to Earth like an incoming V-2. She dived off the road and flattened herself in the grass.

A Land Rover speeding along. Music blaring from the vehicle. Music Dopplering in her eardrums.

All we are saying is…

All we are saying…

All…

She buried her face in the grass as the headlights swept across the blackness.

She sat up and watched the taillights barrel down the road.

It was going to the farm but she didn’t care where it was going or what it was doing.

It was gone.

It had fallen into the past with yesterday and Tom and George Washington and Jesus and the painters of Lascaux and the dinosaurs and the dead stars that made the iron and nickel at the center of the Earth.

All gone.

She got to her feet and continued down the road.

In fifteen minutes, the old prison loomed out of the night. She slowed her pace and grew cautious but there was no real reason for caution.

All was dead here.

Rectangular pitch-black buildings. Silhouettes of abandoned farm machinery. She explored the equipment for a few minutes but there was nothing she could break off and use as a weapon.

She got down into a crouch and approached the nearest of the structures.

Most of the prison had been demolished, but a cellblock had been left standing: a long concrete-and-iron-bar building exposed to the elements. That little house on the rise must be the old guardhouse.

There were no lights on anywhere. She walked into the courtyard between the prison and the house and listened.

Nothing. In the far distance, she could hear surf breaking on the shore of the island.

The house was a two-story job with a balcony on the upper floor that went all the way around. She walked to the front door and examined it. A heavy wooden door with a keyhole. She tried the handle and then put her shoulder against it and shoved, but it didn’t move.

Heather took a few steps back and examined the building with a more clinical eye. She shook her head to try to get her brain working better.

Two floors. Brick construction. Corrugated-iron roof. There were large windows on the ground floor with bars over them. She did a circuit of the structure looking for any points of entry but couldn’t see any obvious ones.

Heather tugged at the metal bars covering the windows. Although they appeared rusty and very old, none of them seemed loose. She tried every metal bar on every window on the ground floor and then shoved her shoulder against the door again.

Sighing, she tried to figure out what to do.

There was no guarantee that the house would have water. Maybe this whole thing was a fool’s errand.

She walked back to the old cellblock and looked inside the individual cells. Cobwebs hung from all the doorways and the building stank of urine. Watching out for venomous spiders, she examined each cell for anything she could possibly use.