“I think it’s a mine or a cave or something. Hold on.”
She removed more dirt and crawled into a narrow tunnel. It was barely an opening, just wide enough to squeeze through. Once it had been larger, but cave-ins and rockfalls had closed the passage.
She struggled through the opening and it began to get a bit wider. She flicked on Jacko’s lighter and saw that it was a natural cave, not a mine.
She went a little farther. She could breathe the air, so there was some kind of ventilation.
The tunnel was thirty feet long and she could stand now on the sandy dirt. It was much cooler in here than the world outside, and the acoustic properties were unusual. When she went around a dogleg in the passage, she saw the ground sloping down dramatically to what appeared to be a pool of water. That would explain the coolness and the acoustics.
She ran back and crawled out through the cave mouth. “It’s a spring! There’s water! A great big pool of it!”
“Is it drinkable?” Olivia asked.
“One way to find out. Follow me,” she said.
She flicked Jacko’s lighter on again and they trailed her along the passage. This time she noticed many more handprints on the wall and drawings of animals. They went around the dogleg and down the slope. There was enough space for them to stand quite easily around the pool.
“It looks dirty,” Owen said.
“That’s only the light, I think,” Heather said.
There was moss floating on the water and a few dead insects. She cupped her hands and took a drink.
It was saline and minerally, but it was definitely fresh water. Cool, too, coming from a deep source in the bedrock. She drank and felt energy rushing through her. She drank again, and her muscles began to loosen. She felt the sinews unclench in the back of her thighs. She felt her toes and thighs and fingertips.
Her brain began to unfog.
“I think it’s good, kids. It’s not going to taste like the bottled water you’re used to, but it’s fine to drink. Drink up. Slowly.”
Olivia hesitantly leaned forward and scooped a little of the water into her hands. She poured it into her mouth and looked at Heather and smiled.
“It’s good!” she said. “I like it.”
She began scooping handfuls into her mouth.
“Careful, not too much, you don’t want to overload your system,” Heather said. “That’s it, slowly, take a little break now.”
Olivia nodded and leaned back on the cave floor with a big happy smile on her face.
Heather had thought that Olivia would never smile again.
“That was awesome,” Olivia murmured.
Heather turned to Owen. “OK, kid,” she said. “Now you.”
“What if there’s poo in it?”
“It’s good, drink it,” Olivia said.
He dipped his finger in and licked it. “It’ll do,” he said.
Heather smiled.
“It’s cold down here. I’m actually cold,” Owen said.
“Are you ever happy?” Olivia said.
“I’ll get our stuff,” Heather said. “We’re going to hide here. I’ll start a small fire and then I’ll go try to lay a scent trail for the dogs. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Heather got a quick fire of moss and eucalypt going for the kids and went back outside. She got the rifle and the canteen and put them in the cave mouth. She rearranged the moss over the hole and ran down into the heath away from the hill. She rolled around in the grass, trying to get as much scent on the ground as possible, and then she ran to the beach. She left a ton of prints on the sand and was about to wade into the surf when the drone came zipping in from the sea and found her.
It hovered ten feet above her head.
She threw a pebble at it, but it just moved out of the way.
She wasn’t going to lead it back to the cave, and she couldn’t lose it on this damned beach.
It buzzed and zipped above her.
She could imagine Matt looking at her through his laptop or phone or whatever it was he used to control it.
She sat down on the sand and looked at it.
She wasn’t going to panic.
She was going to think.
Those four little rotor blades must use a lot of energy keeping that thing in the air. And the battery couldn’t be very big. How long could one of those things stay up there without needing to recharge?
She had no idea. An hour? Twenty minutes?
More likely closer to the latter.
The drone looked at her.
She looked at the drone.
It had to be at least a ten-minute flight back to where Matt was with the dogs. It had been hovering here for five. If he wanted to keep it, surely he would have to fly it back soon.
He’d made a mistake, showing himself. He should have hovered a couple of hundred feet up. Trailed her from the sky as long as he was able.
She smiled at the drone’s camera.
“What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?” she said.
The drone bobbed in the wind.
“A stick,” she said.
The drone dived toward her; she ducked, and it soared into the air and headed south.
“Must have heard that one before,” she muttered as she waded into the surf. She swam nervously north for two hundred yards and carefully walked onto the shore via rocks. The sharks had spared her.
She circled back to the heath the long way and took an even longer way back to the cave entrance.
The dogs were definitely coming. They would spend a lot of time on the beach.
That little diversion might buy her and the kids a few hours. Perhaps enough to get them through to nightfall. She hoped so.
She entered the cave. “Kids?” she said.
No answer.
“Kids!”
“We’re here. Is that you, Heather?” Olivia said, coming around the cave dogleg and holding the rifle.
“It’s me.”
They sat together by the pool and waited and watched the fire’s embers, and time continued on its silver arrow toward the end of the universe.
They couldn’t hear dogs or people or anything.
The O’Neills could be just overhead, or they could be a mile away.
They waited. And waited some more. Waiting in the sand by the pool in silence.
It was like one of those submarine movies. The men in the tin can bracing for the ship to drop a depth charge…
Finally, when she thought perhaps three hours had gone by, she crawled back to the cave mouth with the rifle.
The sun was going down.
No sign of anyone.
She listened.
No yelling.
No dogs.
She scanned the horizon with the binoculars. No one. She went back to the underground spring and told the kids that they were safe for the night. They would be back tomorrow. The dogs would not be so easily fooled by her swimming and would certainly find them tomorrow.
But that meant they had tonight.
32
The sun was setting on their third day, going down in a gaudy blaze of red and gold. Sinking on the people in their cars and in their houses and in restaurants and bars; on the rich and the poor, on the runaways and the forsaken and the nameless and the lost.
Above them, the first stars were coming out.
“We need food, Heather,” Owen said in a quiet voice.
“I know.”
She took off her shoes and handed them to Olivia.