She lay there in the sandy grass and looked at the stars. She stared at the starless space called the Coalsack. You couldn’t see that in the Northern Hemisphere. At Uluru, a guide had explained that it was a nebula, a vast dust cloud many light-years across. To the Aboriginal peoples, it had looked like the head of an emu. She closed her eyes. She was alone here in the nothing, but it was OK. Solitude was an old friend that welcomed her after all these months with kids and their friends and their mommies. It would be so easy just to keep her eyes closed. Just to lie here on the sand all night. Eventually, without water, all her systems would begin to shut down. Her kidneys would stop working and her heart would slow, and maybe, if she was lucky, it would just stop completely.
None of this was her responsibility.
She was just a kid herself.
She was twenty-four, but really, she was younger than that. She’d left home only a few years ago. She hadn’t really wanted to come to this island. The kids wanted koalas and she’d been trying once again to get them on her side.
The kids were not her kids.
They didn’t like her very much. In fact, they barely tolerated her. They weren’t her problem.
What was the difference anyway between dying here and dying in some trailer in the woods decades from now. It was all the same groove. The universe wouldn’t even blink.
Just lie here.
Drift.
Dream.
Fade away on the current.
She thought of Seattle. She thought of Goose Island and the Sound. Of her father and looking west through the yellow of seven p.m. She thought of “Into Dust,” that song by Mazzy Star that her mom liked.
The moments ticked slowly past.
So easy…
Too easy.
Your body is a longbow carved from hickory, her father said.
Your body is a blade sharpened by tears, her mother said.
Heather sat up.
She stood and brushed the sand off her jeans.
She righted the chair and steadied it in the sand and, after achieving equipoise, she put her left foot on the right arm. So far, so good. She put her right foot on the back of the chair. The chair began to list, so she jumped and grabbed one of the iron railings of the second-floor balcony. The chair fell from under her. She pulled hard on the railing. Her arms felt impossibly weak. This wasn’t going to work. If she could hook a leg up, take some weight off her— She swung her torso to the left and right; on a final leftward swing, she managed to lift and land her foot on the lip of the balcony. She hung there precariously for a second or two.
“Come on,” she growled and pushed off on her foot. She rose almost vertically, like the vampire in Nosferatu, and somehow found herself standing on the narrow part of the veranda on the other side of the railing. She stepped over the rail, and there she was on the second-floor balcony. Just like that.
“Oh God,” she said and caught her breath.
She walked to the door and pulled the handle, but it was locked. There were no windows open.
Heather had no idea if this building had a caretaker or not. There was definitely space for a couple of bedrooms up here but there were no signs of occupation. No hum of an air conditioner, no creaking boards, no snoring, no noises of any kind.
She stood there considering for a moment and then shoved her elbow into the glass panel above the door handle. It broke and fell out in two big pieces that shattered inside the house.
She went back to the rail, ready to jump and run.
She waited.
And waited.
Nothing stirred.
She put her hands gingerly through the broken glass and turned the handle.
The door opened and she went inside what was clearly a bedroom. There was a bed and a closet and a dresser. Everything covered with dust.
She hesitated for a moment and wondered if she could perhaps lie down on the bed.
She shook her head. Maybe up here there might be a…
She walked into the hall and—yes! There at the end of the landing was a bathroom. She ran to the sink and turned on the tap. Without any fuss at all, water came pouring out of the faucet. She looked at it in amazement.
All that water just pouring down the drain.
She touched it with her finger and then she cupped her hands, filled them with water, brought it to her lips, and drank.
It was like drinking the waters of heaven.
She cupped her hands and drank again and again.
Heather held her mouth under the faucet and let the water gush down her throat.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh, dear God.”
She splashed the water on her face and let it drip down. She put in the drain plug, filled the sink, and shoved her head under the fresh water. She blinked her eyes a couple of times to clear them of dust and dirt. After thirty seconds, Heather pulled her head out and sat on the toilet.
She unplugged the drain and let the water run out, fascinated by it, as if it were some exotic substance she had never seen before.
Heather didn’t want to stop drinking. She turned the faucet back on again and let it run directly into her mouth.
As her brain started to revive, from somewhere in its deep recesses, she remembered that drinking too much water too quickly could kill you, so, reluctantly, she removed her face from the sink and took a couple of final big sips.
Oh God, that was good.
She edged out of the bathroom and found a rickety wooden staircase that led down into a kind of parlor. A table, a sofa, an ancient-looking television set, a mantelpiece covered with framed photographs. She picked one of them up. It appeared to be a police officer—or, more likely, given the surroundings, a corrections officer.
She put the photograph back and went through a door into a hall that had been converted into a kind of reception area and ticket booth. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. Pamphlets about the old prison were piled up on a table next to an old-fashioned till. She put a couple of them in her back pocket to maybe use for kindling. In a fridge that wasn’t plugged in, there were a dozen small bottles of water.
Holy shit.
She found a cloth carrier bag and began loading the bottles in. She took all of them. This would help. This would help a lot. This would save them. And when they’d drunk their fill of water, they could come back here and refill the bottles from the sink upstairs. Perhaps they could even hide out here until the police came?
Perhaps.
Would Matt and the others notice the broken window upstairs?
Worry about that later.
She wondered if there was any food around.
There was a sign that said TEA/COFFEE 2 DOLLARS, which meant there had to be a kitchen somewhere down here, and if there was a kitchen there might be a cupboard full of food. She walked back into the parlor and looked for a door leading to a dining room or kitchen.
Something didn’t feel right.
Had she missed something?
Maybe there was food in the other room in a drawer or something.
No, that wasn’t it.
The floorboards.
A pressure change.
She held her breath.
The sound of breathing.
There was someone in the house.
How could there be? The place was deserted. There was dust over everything.
It was her imagination.
Or a possum, perhaps.
The hairs on her neck were standing up. Her body knew, even if she didn’t. The ancient alarm bells were ringing in her limbic system.
Then the light came on.
22
She froze.
“Drop the bag and put your hands up or I’ll blow your bloody head off,” a voice said.
She dropped the bag of water bottles and put her hands in the air.