Page 66 of The Island

“I shouldn’t leave Hans, I—”

“I’m sorry.”

Petra shuddered and sobbed and finally whispered, “Yes.”

They climbed back down into the hollow and explained what was happening. “We’ll head for the trees by the shore,” Heather said.

The dry streambed was going in the direction they wanted. They crawled along it for a hundred yards before it became too narrow, and then, gingerly, they climbed out onto the heath. The men were swearing loudly and kicking at the car.

“This way,” Heather said. “Be sure to keep low.”

The grass more or less covered the kids but Heather and Petra had to run in a crouch, Groucho-fashion.

It took them half an hour to make it to the mangrove trees, which ran along the narrow beach for several hundred yards.

When they got into the shade, both kids flopped onto the sand. Owen had taken off his hoodie and tied it around his waist. His T-shirt was drenched with sweat. Olivia sank down next to him.

Heather sat on a rock and tried to gather her wits.

The heat was unbearable. They had no water. Horseflies and mosquitoes were landing on them and sucking their sweat and blood with impunity.

“Can we drink that water, Heather?” Olivia asked, pointing at the sea.

“No, it’s seawater. We can’t drink it unless there’s a river pouring into it,” Heather said. She took off her shoes, rolled up her jeans, waded into the sea, and cupped a little bit to her mouth. She drank and spit it out.

“It’s not good to drink, but I want you kids to bathe in the shallows and cool off a bit. I’ll keep watch,” Heather said, wading back to shore. She would watch for sharks. Tiger sharks, bull sharks, great whites—these waters were thick with predators.

It was not yet noon and it was well into the nineties. At least it was slightly cooler here than on the heathland because of a hint of a breeze blowing through the channel.

“Perhaps we could make a raft, like Olivia said?” Petra suggested.

“That might be a possibility,” Heather agreed. The children were panting in the heat. “Kids, please, I want you to cool off in the shallows. But no deeper than your ankles.”

The kids bathed, and while they dried off, Heather and Petra walked up and down the beach looking for suitable mangrove branches or driftwood, but the trees were stunted and the branches narrow and twisted. They were more mangrove bushes than actual trees. They broke off a branch and put it in the water, where it partially submerged.

“I don’t know why it’s doing that,” Heather said. “Wood should float better than that.”

“I don’t know either,” Petra said. “We would need hundreds of branches to make anything that could support even Olivia’s weight. And how would we tie them together?”

“We could cut our clothes into strips and use those,” Heather suggested, but she was skeptical—what they were thinking of would require days of work, perhaps a week. They were already exhausted just from this morning’s exertions, and none of them had had any water since before dawn.

Owen was excitedly digging in the sand.

“What are you doing there, Owen?” Heather asked.

“Either of you ever watch Bear Grylls? His early shows, not the new shit ones.”

Heather and Petra shook their heads.

“I found a couple of plastic bottles on the beach,” he said.

“With fresh water?” Heather asked excitedly.

“No, they’re empty, but look,” Owen said, becoming animated for the first time in days. “I think we can make some kind of…yeah, hold on.”

He took one bottle and half filled it with seawater, then he took an empty bottle and held it next to it. “What’s the idea?” Heather asked.

“We make a still. Water evaporates from the full bottle into the empty one, leaving the salt behind.”