Page 75 of The Island

Heather checked his pulse. It felt weak.

“There,” Petra whispered.

Three people were coming around the bend of the beach—Ivan and the teenage boy and the little girl. As they got closer, their conversation drifted across the water.

“Nah, mate, St. Kilda have no chance, they have no depth,” Ivan was saying. “Now, you look at the Bulldogs, that’s a team that’s going places. That’s a team that can get through the ups and downs of a season. You wait and see.”

“What are they talking about?” Olivia whispered.

“I don’t know. The important thing is they’re not talking about us. Their attention has wandered. That’s good,” Heather whispered.

Something nudged her leg.

She peered down into the water but couldn’t see anything.

Dolphins?

No, not dolphins. She knew that for a fact.

Something happened when there was an orca in the water off Goose Island. Some change in the vibe. You could feel the danger through your skin.

She floated there, moving as little as possible.

She tried to see, but the water here was deep and opaque.

Ten feet to her right, a fin rose out of the water for a moment and then slipped beneath the surface again. That was no dolphin. It was an immature blue shark. It was only about four feet long, and blue sharks mostly fed on squid, but they could give you a nasty bite whatever age they were. It was circling to her right.

She wasn’t sure if it had noticed them or not. One way to make a shark notice you was to start thrashing about and panicking.

She looked back at the shore.

Ivan and the children were almost parallel with them.

“I don’t want to go to school,” the boy said.

“It’s up to you, mate,” Ivan said. “Ma can’t force you to go. At least, I don’t think she can. But it’s school, it’s not jail, mate. I did it and I’m OK. Bunch of poofs, but I reckon you can handle yourself. And Geelong isn’t a million miles away.”

“You went to the same school as me dad, Uncle Ivan?” the little girl asked.

“I did, Niamh. Three years. Geelong Grammar. Like I say, they were all a bunch of bloody wankers, but I got used to it.”

“When Uncle Matty gets the drone working, can I fly it?” the boy asked.

“That’s a big if. Matt’s had that thing out of the box twice since he got it!”

Olivia was breathing hard. Owen’s breathing was shallow. Petra was holding her breath.

The blue shark was over to her right.

It abruptly changed direction and headed lazily toward her.

Shit.

They were all bleeding. That’s what had got its attention.

The fin went down. It was going for Olivia.

Heather couldn’t even warn her.

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