The Island by Adrian McKinty

Author:Adrian McKinty
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: None
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

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.

“Have a seat on the sofa over there. Nice and slow-like.”

Heather’s eyes adjusted to the light. The man was skinny, rangy, medium height, about sixty-five. She recognized him. He was the man who had warned them to leave yesterday morning. He was wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with flip-flops. The shirt was encrusted with stains and hadn’t been washed for a long time. He had a stringy white-and-gray beard that dangled down to a point about eighteen inches beneath his chin. The shotgun was an old-fashioned, long double-barreled thing. It was impossible to tell if it was loaded or not. If someone was pointing a gun at you, you had to assume it was loaded.

She wasn’t sure if she could remember everyone who had been at the farm that day, but she didn’t think she would have forgotten that beard. Was it possible that he didn’t know what was going on?

“Sorry, I didn’t know this place was occupied. I was looking for some water,” Heather said.

“I’ll bet you were looking for water. This island is dry as a bloody bone.”

“Yes, it is. You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. We broke down and—”

“Save it. I know who you are. Do you know who I am?”

“No,” Heather said, deflated.

“I am Trouble with a capital T. I’m Death with a capital D. If you give me any problems at all, I won’t hesitate to kill you. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Now, you just sit there and do nothing while I call Matt on the walkie.”

She wasn’t going to panic.

She had rehydrated and her systems were all beginning to tick back online.

He’d spoken long enough for her to realize that his accent was not Australian. Or not entirely Australian. He was originally from Britain or Ireland. What he was doing here was anyone’s guess, but crucially, he was an outsider unrelated to the people down at the farm. He was not family.

“I said sit down!”

She sat on a sofa that sagged in the middle, sucking her into it, trapping her. It would take her two or three seconds to get out of this thing. More than enough time for the man with the shotgun to blow her head off.

“My name is Heather,” she said.

“I know who you are. Sit there and shut up.”

The man began rummaging one-handed in a drawer next to the TV. He couldn’t find what he was looking for, so he turned on another light.

There was a hole in the window screen, and the room was full of moths and insects that began flying into the light bulbs.

The man found the walkie-talkie and sat in a chair a good nine or ten feet from Heather. “So you probably know there’s no phone lines out here. Not since the prison closed, anyway. But we keep in touch pretty good through these,” the man said, waggling the black-and-yellow walkie-talkie at her.

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