Page 95 of The Island

She didn’t know if they were doing that line thing again, but they weren’t fooling around today.

“What’s the water situation?” she asked Petra as they waded around a large clump of trees that was blocking the beach.

Petra looked in the bag. “One and a half bottles.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

Heather nodded.

“We will save them for the children,” Petra said.

“Yes,” Heather agreed.

Up the beach.

Through the flies.

In the sun.

In the red Southern Hemisphere sun.

Sunburn on sunburn.

Up the beach.

Running.

Moving.

Wading.

Swimming.

Resting.

Moving again.

North along the curvy shore.

No geographer or Google Earther knew this bit of shore as well as them. The rocks, the little bushes, the tide pools, the dried-up river estuaries. The bays that curved in, the headlands that jutted out. The swamp, the drowned mangrove trees, each gully, each rock, each—

“Look! Over there—what’s that in the sand?” Owen said.

“What do you see?” Heather asked.

“It’s something. What is that?” he said, running to a bit of the beach she couldn’t see. He picked up the object and showed it to her. “What do you think? This will come in handy, yeah?”

He gave it to her. It was a knife. A big knife. No—a machete, with a cracked wooden handle and a rusted blade about nine inches long.

“Yes, well done, Owen, this will help.”

She balanced it in her left hand and then her right. It was a rusty old thing that looked like it had been lying on the beach for a hundred years.

At least I’ll go down swinging, Heather thought. “Let’s take a water break,” she said. She handed their penultimate bottle to Owen and Olivia. “Ration it, just one sip each,” she said.

After that, she held it out to Petra, who shook her head.

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