The Island(94)

She drove around the farmhouse, checked where the sun was, and headed east.

In the rearview mirror, she saw Matt on horseback galloping into the farmyard.

“Matt!” Olivia said.

“On a horse!” Owen added.

“I see him! Damn it. Keep an eye out behind us, Owen, they’ll be after us soon,” Heather said after a minute.

“I think they already are!”

“No way!”

She looked in the mirror.

A bunch of them had piled into the Toyota Hilux and were getting it going.

She looked ahead.

Red sun.

Lens flare.

In her head, music from the Pixies, “Gouge Away”—a little on the nose, but so be it.

She drove over the boggy heath, the Porsche bumping over the land. Not their land. Never was.

She hoped the kids were right. She hoped the pamphlet from the prison was correct. Two days a month, on the low tide with the full moon and the low tide with the new moon, Dutch Island became a peninsula.

“Look out!” Owen said and she swerved around the wreck of a VW Beetle, beautiful in its red rust, sitting in the grass like an ankylosaurus.

If they crash, they get another car. If we crash, we’re dead, Heather thought.

A bullet smashed into the rear window.

Olivia screamed.

“Everyone OK?” Heather asked.

“I’m OK,” Owen said.

“Should I fire back?” Olivia asked, holding Matt’s rifle.

“Just keep your head down, honey! Both of you!”

She drove around a tree stump and went straight toward a channel that might have been an old drainage canal or a river made wider by the rains.

The hood of the car dived nose-first into the canal and three things happened at once: something heavy ground against the axle, the car veered sideways, and a sheet of mud and brown water sloshed onto the windshield.

“Incoming!” Owen yelled as they slewed toward the wall of the far bank of the channel. They hit it sideways; the car stalled and then stopped.

She hit the wipers and the water-spray button. Nothing came out of the water spray and one of the wipers seemed to be broken.

The other worked and cleared a narrow arc in front of her face.

Visibility zero on the passenger side.

If they were impaled here against the side of the bank, it would be the end of them.

She looked in the rearview.

They were still on her ass.

She shifted down to low gear mode and pushed the start button. “Brace yourselves, kids!”

The car shuddered.

She pushed on the gas pedal until it was nearly on the floor. “Come on!” she said.

The engine growled and the Porsche seemed to understand what she wanted. Its front wheels struggled for purchase in the trench, churning mud and then slowly getting a grip. When she had sufficient momentum, she aimed for the far wall, and the Porsche began to climb over.

It climbed at a thirty-degree angle and she wondered if they were going to flip onto the roof.

Another bullet hit the back of the car with a clang and a terrifying ricochet through the side window. Glass splinters struck her on the right cheek.

“Come on, baby, you can do this, you ugly piece of shit!” she said, and thus encouraged, the Porsche crawled up over the trench and onto the heath again.

She switched back to drive mode and glanced in the rearview. She watched the Toyota disappear into the trench and held her breath for three seconds until she saw it struggle out again.

“Shit.”

Only a quarter of a mile clear run to the ocean now.

The ground was boggy but the Porsche didn’t mind. She heard it ascend through the gears. Third gear. Fourth.

Another bullet dinged inside the cab and punched a hole through the windshield. This time, the entire windshield cracked.

She couldn’t see anything.

She tried hitting the glass out with the flat of her hand. It didn’t move.

“I can’t see!”

Olivia smashed it with the butt of the rifle, and the windshield collapsed, spraying them with glass.

The walkie-talkie fizzed to life. “Give it up, Heather! You’re going to get yourself and the kids killed! Nobody wants that!” Matt said.

Olivia looked at her. “Do you want to answer?”

“Don’t worry about that. You just keep your head down.”

“I can answer him from down here.”

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Heather, please, pull over before anyone else gets hurt. We can talk this over. Ma agrees with me that this has gone on long enough. We can go back to the original plan,” Matt said.

She drove through the boggy grass and stole a look at the Hilux. The Toyota had much higher wheel arches and was making easier progress across the terrain.

But it was not so far to the sea now.

Another bullet sang past the car. She flinched after the bullet had already missed. Olivia sat up. Heather pushed her head down again.

Heather grabbed the walkie-talkie. “If we’re going to negotiate here, Matt, I suggest you stop shooting at us.”

There was a pause before Matt came back on. “We’ll stop shooting if you pull over,” Matt said.

“You stop shooting first and then we’ll talk.”

“Where are you going, Heather? This is pointless. There’s nowhere to go.”