The Island(52)

“I am Trouble with a capital T. I’m Death with a capital D. If you give me any problems at all, I won’t hesitate to kill you. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Now, you just sit there and do nothing while I call Matt on the walkie.”

She wasn’t going to panic.

She had rehydrated and her systems were all beginning to tick back online.

He’d spoken long enough for her to realize that his accent was not Australian. Or not entirely Australian. He was originally from Britain or Ireland. What he was doing here was anyone’s guess, but crucially, he was an outsider unrelated to the people down at the farm. He was not family.

“I said sit down!”

She sat on a sofa that sagged in the middle, sucking her into it, trapping her. It would take her two or three seconds to get out of this thing. More than enough time for the man with the shotgun to blow her head off.

“My name is Heather,” she said.

“I know who you are. Sit there and shut up.”

The man began rummaging one-handed in a drawer next to the TV. He couldn’t find what he was looking for, so he turned on another light.

There was a hole in the window screen, and the room was full of moths and insects that began flying into the light bulbs.

The man found the walkie-talkie and sat in a chair a good nine or ten feet from Heather. “So you probably know there’s no phone lines out here. Not since the prison closed, anyway. But we keep in touch pretty good through these,” the man said, waggling the black-and-yellow walkie-talkie at her. Mocking her with it, it seemed. “Got these at Woolies. Ten bucks. Do the job. We all have ’em. Good range, too, unless you’re over one of the hills or something. Good enough to call Matt. We’ll have the boys down here in a jiffy.”

“Please don’t do that. I’m looking after two children. I just came to take some water,” she said.

“Steal some water, more like. You didn’t ask anyone, did you? Broke in here and took what you wanted, didn’t you? I told you people to leave. You should never have come here in the first place!” the man said and began fiddling with the radio.

“Please don’t call Matt. Please just let me go. I can tell you’re not part of the family.”

“Oh? How can you tell that?”

“You have a different accent than them.”

The man found the on switch to the walkie-talkie. He adjusted the volume and the room filled with the ominous sound of static. If he called Matt, she was dead and the kids were dead.

“You’re Irish, are you?” she guessed.

“Yeah, I’m Irish, what of it?”

“Where are you from? Are you from the same place as Ma?”

“Ma was a ten-pound Pom. You probably don’t know what that is.”

“No.”

“She come over on the boat all the way from Liverpool but she’s as Irish as me. That’s why I was allowed to stay here. I’m the only outsider that didn’t marry in. Have you heard of a place called Ballymena?”

Heather shook her head.

“That’s where I’m from.”

“How did you end up here?”

“I come over to work in the prison. Help close it down, really. Sort of stayed after that.”

“I saw your photograph on the mantel. You were a corrections officer in Ireland.”

“No, I wasn’t. I was a police officer.”

Heather’s heart started beating faster. “A police officer?”

“Yeah, something called the RUC. You heard of that?”

Heather shook her head again. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Rory.”

“Nice to meet you, Rory,” she said.

He grunted a response and continued to fiddle with the walkie-talkie.

She leaned forward on the sofa. “I’m looking after two children. Owen is twelve. Olivia is fourteen. Owen is badly dehydrated. He’s going to die tonight if I don’t get back with water. And the rest of us—you know what they’re going to do to us, don’t you? They’re going to kill us all. They’re going to rape me and Olivia and then kill us.”

“That’s none of my business,” he said.

“Back in Ballymena would it have been your business?”

“I suppose,” Rory said and smiled. “You think you’re smart, don’t you?”

“No. I’ve screwed everything up.”

“Matt told me about you. He said you were crafty. That I was to watch out for you.”

“You have to help us! Against them.”

Rory shook his head. “I can’t afford to do that, can I? If they find out I helped you, they’ll be after me next, won’t they?”

“Tom’s…my…the kids need water.”

“It’s not my problem, love. I didn’t ask you to come here, did I? This was your choice. None of this is anything to do with me. You hit Ellen with your car. You can’t involve me in it. I’ve nothing to do with it and if they find out I was even talking to you, I’ll be for the bloody chop, won’t I?”

“You can’t just let us have a little bit of water?”

“And then what?”