Page 129 of The Island

The dogs were chained just under the front porch veranda. Three of them. Not bloodhounds exactly, but there was definitely hound in them. They were exhausted, lying there under the porch light, looking up occasionally as mozzies flew into the bug zapper, whining as the rain got heavier and colder. They were good dogs. They’d had an enjoyable final day on planet Earth.

She lay down in the dirt and got comfortable.

She took the rifle off her back.

Her father had grown up hunting possums and squirrels in the red maple and dogwoods of McCreary County, Kentucky, right on the Tennessee line. Heather was her dad’s only child, so he had wanted to show her the gun lore that his dad had shown him. Although she had never really been that interested, she couldn’t help but absorb a lot of it. And of course, now it came back. It had been coming back for days.

Always upwind. Always low. Always quiet.

Once inducted into the brotherhood of the gun, you could not forget. She made a little mound of dirt under the barrel just the way her dad had taught her to do it. She firmed the mound and made sure the barrel was horizontal.

It was.

She got comfortable and analyzed her target.

A west-to-east breeze, but not enough to make a difference over this distance, which was about one hundred yards. Maybe a little more; maybe four hundred feet. She looked through the binoculars and figured out where each of the dogs was lying. She flipped up the Lee-Enfield’s iron sight and flipped it back down again. A long-range sight was not necessary.

There was something glinting in her sight line five yards ahead to her left. She tried to ignore it but couldn’t. She laid down the rifle and crawled to the glinting object with the intention of covering it with dirt, but when she reached the spot, she found that it was a half-buried, ancient, unopened can of peaches. She put it in her bag and went back to her position.

She picked up the rifle and waited until she was still and the sight was motionless.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered and took aim at the dog with the white patch on its brown face. The obvious alpha. She aimed at its heavy flank. It was sleeping. She squeezed the trigger and the rifle cracked and kicked, and the dog rolled over in the dust. So much dust. The second dog stood up and began to bark. She pulled back the bolt, and the brass cartridge exited with a chiiing. She loaded the next .303 round and aimed through the dust at the second dog, which had a pleasing dingo quality to its face. She shot it dead through the neck.

She ejected the casing and loaded another .303 round.

All the house lights had come on now, and windows were opening.

She tried to get a bead on the third dog but the dust was rising in thick orange columns into the darkness, like a Hubble photograph of star-birth clouds.

A head appeared at a window on a lower floor. It looked like Ivan’s. He was yelling at someone in the farmyard.

His torso was an easier shot than the dogs—a big stationary target in a white T-shirt. But that wasn’t the plan and she let him be.

Growing consternation around the house now. Shouting, yells, even sporadic gunfire.

Someone began ringing a bell.

The rain started to pour down.

She looked back at the porch. The dust finally cleared and she aimed at the third dog. It was barking like crazy. She shot it in the chest, killing it instantly.

It had been a nasty business but a necessary one.

She ejected the round and loaded another. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and crawled twenty yards into the heath.

The rain was cold and heavy and good.

They might possibly have night-vision or thermal-imaging scopes, so this was not the time to stand and triumphantly survey what she had done. She prepared to move, but then Matt came out of the farmhouse with his dog, Blue. The dog began sniffing the air.

The wind had changed. She was between the bay and the farm, and her scent would be carried on the freshening breeze.

Blue started barking.

Matt let the dog off the leash and screamed at everyone to shut up.

Blue was coming straight for her.

He was a clever dog.