Page 25 of The Island

“No one says anything until we’re on the other side,” Heather hissed.

“Mainland Australia, here we come!” Ivan announced. “You can get out of the car if you want.”

“We’re OK,” Heather replied.

A white wake boiled behind the ferry, and Dutch Island slowly began to recede into the distance.

Heather found that she had been holding her breath.

Ivan walked up to the car window.

“Anyone tell you about the foxes? Me and Kate have been trapping the little bastards. Invasive species. Kate’s got quite the collection of skulls. They pay us for them. The state.”

“We didn’t see any foxes,” Heather said, putting her hand over the blood on the steering wheel.

“All right. Well, look, if I see any sharks I’ll let you know and you can take a pic,” Ivan said and went back to the tiller.

“I think we—” Tom began and stopped as Ivan snapped the walkie-talkie off his lapel.

“What?” Ivan was saying. “I can’t hear you. I can’t bloody hear you.”

He put the diesel engine into idle. He banged the walkie-talkie and fiddled with its dial. “I can’t hear you, mate,” he said.

Heather’s knuckles were white as she gripped the Porsche’s steering wheel. Sweat drenched the back of her T-shirt. She knew she looked like shit. Police-lineup-guilty.

“Maybe we should—” Tom began.

“No,” Heather said.

“I think I got you, mate!” Ivan said. “Speak up.”

Ivan walked to the back of the ferry and had a conversation on the walkie-talkie that Heather couldn’t hear.

She didn’t like this at all. She took out her phone and thumb-typed Help to Carolyn, the last person she had texted.

Unable to send. No wireless signal, the report came back.

Ivan clipped the radio back onto his lapel.

He picked up a sports bag, unzipped it, and removed an object.

Heather leaned over the steering wheel to see what it was.

“What’s he doing?” Olivia asked.

“I don’t know.”

Ivan walked slowly back to the driver’s-side window. He pointed an ancient-looking revolver at Heather’s face. “Hand me all your phones and then get out of the car nice and slow-like. If you do any monkey business, anything at all, I’ll shoot one of the kiddies. Do you understand me?”

6

The Toyota Hilux was waiting for them at the Dutch Island dock. They were bundled into the back by a fierce blond woman with a pump-action shotgun.

This, they learned, was Kate, the youngest of Ma’s children.

“No talking,” Kate said.

The road from the ferry to the farm was bleak. Empty heathland punctuated by maybe a dozen abandoned burned-out vehicles dumped and left to rust. The farm itself was a motley collection of barns, sheds, frail Buster Keaton houses, two smaller homesteads, and a large farmhouse facing a yard. The buildings had corrugated-iron roofs in a state of disrepair. Children in dust-bowl overalls watched the car arrive.