“Are you OK?” Heather asked, trying to get a look at his face.
“Don’t touch me!” he said, batting away her hand.
“She was just asking if you were OK,” Olivia said.
“Jesus Christ! I’m OK, I just fell!” he said, panting.
Petra crouched next to him. “You’re OK,” she said.
The engine was really screaming now. Heather peeked over the grass and saw the big black snorkel air intake of the Toyota creeping over the brow of the hill.
She hit the deck. “Crap.”
“What is it?” Petra asked.
“We have to keep low. Flat as we can. They’ve gotten the pickup truck up here. They’re going to be looking for us.”
She peeked up over the grass. They had stopped the truck and were gathered around the front of the vehicle.
“Maybe it broke down?” Heather asked hopefully.
“Are we going to keep running?” Olivia asked.
“We can’t,” Heather said. “I don’t think we can make it to those trees without being seen.”
“There’s a kind of, like, old streambed or something over there. Could we lie down in that?” Olivia asked.
“Where?”
“Over there, just where I’m pointing.”
There was indeed a very narrow fissure, possibly a dry creek bed, about thirty feet away.
“If they have dogs, the dogs will sniff us out and we will be trapped down there,” Petra said, looking at the creek.
“If they have dogs, we’re finished anyway. Olivia, you and Owen slither over to the dried creek and lie down in it. I mean slither—don’t crawl. Petra and I are going to stay here for a bit and keep an eye on these guys to see what they’re doing. Owen, did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“Go, then, both of you.”
Both kids wriggled on their bellies toward the streambed. Heather peeked back over the grass. The men were still gathered around the cowcatcher at the front of the Toyota.
“What’s happening?” Petra asked, peeking over the grass too.
“I dunno. Could they have cracked the crankshaft on the way up the slope?”
The men cheered and fired rifles in the air. They stepped away from the vehicle and got back in the cab. The Toyota drove toward them. Now Heather saw what the men had been doing. They had tied Hans horizontally to the cowcatcher and were driving with him on it. They gunned the car up to forty miles per hour, smashing into the divots of the terrain and becoming airborne on the small hills.
Hans was still alive, but if they kept this up, he wouldn’t be for long.
“No!” he began yelling. “No! No!”
Petra opened her mouth to scream. Heather covered Petra’s lips and pulled her down. “There’s nothing you can do for him.”
“But he cooperated! He was trying to help them. Matt would have seen that.”
“Matt’s not in charge anymore. Jacko and Kate are running things.”
Jacko had had that look in his eyes. Months, maybe years, of boredom and frustration. Now he was going to have some fun.
If this was what they did to Hans, who had tried to surrender peacefully, God knew what they were going to do to them.
“I have to help him!” Petra said, struggling to get to her feet.
16
As Petra tried to get up, Heather tackled her, pulled her to the dirt, and climbed on top of her.
“Listen to me! We have to hide or they’ll kill us too. They’ll rape you and me and Olivia, and they’ll kill us all. Do you understand?”
Petra was shaking her head no.
“They will kill us! Do you understand?”
Petra was sobbing now.
“We can’t surrender! We can’t,” Heather said and finally Petra nodded.
“If I let you go, will you stay down?”
Petra nodded again and Heather cautiously released her.
Now the Toyota was driving away from them. The men hadn’t seen them yet. Two of them were leaning out the windows of the cab, whooping and shouting. They did not appear to be doing any kind of rigorous search. They were driving this way and that, hammering the car for all it was worth.
The car did a slow 180 turn, and now they were coming toward them.
Heather ducked back under the lip of the grass.
Hans was yelling now. A horrible noise that Heather knew she would remember her whole life, however long that was. His voice pierced the general cries and the sounds of the engine. He was terrified and Petra could hardly bear it.
“Come on, let’s get down to the hollow,” Heather said softly.
Petra nodded, tears streaming down her face. She was gasping for air. Not knowing what else to do, Heather rubbed her back.
They slithered through the grainy red dirt and the sharp grass and reached the little dried-up creek where the kids had taken shelter.
“What’s going on?” Owen asked.
“They’re looking for us. Best we stay here,” Heather replied.
The two women lay down next to the kids while the Toyota careened this way and that over the scrub. The sound was more muffled down here, but occasionally Heather could hear a war whoop or a rifle shot.
Heather lay there and kept the kids’ heads down.
The flies. The heat. Sluggish, cigar-shaped clouds moving through the sapphire sky like evil alien ships.
“It’s coming closer now,” Owen said.
He was right; the Toyota was heading straight toward them. Could they have been seen? Of course they could have.
“Nobody move,” Heather whispered.
The engine revved, and the Toyota bumped over the terrain.
Closer.
Closer.
It leaped the dried-up stream about twenty yards ahead of them, stopped, turned in a big circle, and headed away again.
Heather was lying next to Olivia. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving. She was praying. Heather had never really learned how to do that properly. Tom had taken the kids to church most Sundays. She’d gone once and told Tom that she didn’t want to go back, and he’d been OK with that. As churches went, it had seemed pretty inoffensive. Just plain wooden benches and a harmless old man up at the front telling people to be good, not the terrible hypocrisy-ridden place her father had said church was, but she supposed it all had to do with the denomination. She watched Olivia, fascinated. Her message was going straight from her to God. Heather found that she was holding her breath, waiting for an answer or a bolt of lightning or something, but the only sound was the whooping from the Toyota.
It was coming back their way again.
Men’s voices:
“Where are they, Hans? Tell us!”
“Faster, you drongo!”
“We’ll learn that Kraut!”
“Come on, Kate, step on it!”
“Whoo-hoo! It’s like the movies, ain’t it?”
“In spades, mate!”
“Hans! Tell us where they are!”
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“Where are you going to hide, kiddies?”
“They hide in the grass and we’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow their bloody house down, won’t we?”
Olivia was shaking all over. Heather stroked her hair. “It’s going to be OK, baby,” she found herself whispering.
“We can’t stay here forever. They will bring all the other cars. The whole farm will come. They know we are here,” Petra protested.