Page 150 of The Island

“I’m OK, Ma.”

“I sometimes wonder if we’re made of shit or if we’re made of light—what do you think, Matthew?”

“Um, I don’t know, Ma.”

“You don’t know. You don’t know much, do you, Matty? But I know. I know more than you think. I know you and Terry and Kate talked about setting up some kind of tourist hotel here, Matthew.”

“An eco-lodge, Ma. Terry’s idea. It’s all the rage these days. It would have worked. We could have brought a lot of money in. Rebranded. Secured our future. The trust fund’s running out. We need to think about things like that.”

“I know that! But you know why I didn’t think that was a good idea? You know why I don’t like strangers coming to the island?”

“Why’s that, Ma?” Matt asked.

She patted his leg and smiled and gave a little cackle. “’Cause I knew she was coming. Deep in my bones. Her…someone like her. We have a good thing going here. Open the window for me, will you?”

Matt got up and opened the window. The bush smelled acrid, weary, as exhausted as her. The night’s song coiled around her. The bush was indifferent. It didn’t care what happened to any of them.

“We have to go forward, Matthew. Forward. Forward into the past when everything was prey. It can be as it was—for a little while, anyway. You see?”

“Not really, Ma.”

“Just us, living simple. No eco-lodge, no strangers. I knew she would come and bloody ruin everything. Her, or someone like her. You know what she is, Matthew? She’s the monster. The bunyip. She’ll destroy us unless we destroy her. We got to get her.”

“But how?” Matt asked.

“When I first came out here to the island as a wee girl, I got lost. And you know how Terry found me?”

“No.”

“Sit down and I’ll tell you.”

46

Matt rode out of the farm on Pikey well before dawn. He was glad to get away. They had no water. No power. No one had a clue what to do except for him and Ma.

Heather was out there somewhere.

He would find her without dogs.

He had his trusty .22 small-game hunting rifle that he’d had for years. Maybe not the most deadly gun on the island, but it had low kick and high velocity, and he had never missed with it, not once.

He’d find her. He had to.

She was that thing outside that threatened their whole way of life.

He rode Pikey southeast over the kangaroo grass toward the prison.

He called in on Rory. His guts were rumbling and he threw up in Rory’s outdoor toilet.

Rory hadn’t seen her. The generator was down so the pump was down, so now he had no electricity or water. “If you see her, shoot her,” Matt said and he rode on to the far eastern shore, where the tide was low.

The sunrise on this side of the island was always a beautiful, unfeasible vermilion. But he had no time to wait for the sun today.

“Heather?” he tried on the walkie-talkie.

Static.

He rode down to the far south where the shearwaters nested. “Heather?” he tried as he walked along the beach.