Meanwhile, people were hiding down at the water’s edge around the island. They saw the boat disappear from view. Eskil Pedersen received desperate texts from those still on the island and replied: ‘Get away! Hide or swim!’
Then he rang the Labour Party leadership to alert them.
Lara was lying behind some rocks down at the shoreline, thinking about the chainsaw Bano had found the day before. That would have been good to attack and to defend oneself with, she thought. She had left her phone behind when she ran, and she so much wanted to talk to Bano. Bano was bound to have found a good place to hide. Maybe she was hiding in the cellar where the chainsaw was kept. That would be a great hideaway: the door could be bolted from the inside, and then you could pile things up against it so no one could get it open.
But Bano was not hiding indoors. She had been on the edge of the woods by the campsite when Breivik approached the café building. She was with some girls she did not know. Their names were Marte and Maria.
‘If there really is a person shooting, then somebody’s got to talk to him,’ said one of them. ‘We’ve got to ask him to stop,’ said the other.
As AUF members they had grown up in a culture of words. The debate must be won. It is the strength of your argument that gives you power. The young people on Utøya this Friday were used to being heard.
‘We won’t die today, girls. We won’t die today!’ said Bano as they stood there by the trees. They could hear the shots, but did not know where they were coming from. It was only when they saw a boy being shot down by the café that they ran. Up the hill behind the campsite. Over harebells and yellow bird’s-foot trefoil, over heather and wild strawberries. They ran until they reached Lovers’ Path.
On the path they met Anders Kristiansen. He was used to the sound of gunfire from the firing ranges at Bardufoss, where his father worked.
Now he was desperately ringing 112 for the emergency services. But they seemed permanently engaged. Finally he got through.
‘There’s shooting on Utøya!’ he said. But because the local emergency switchboards were jammed, his call was put through to a police district where they still had not heard what was happening on the island. The eighteen-year-old was told he was mistaken. It wasn’t shooting on Utøya, it was a bomb in Oslo.
Futile. Anders hung up.
They went further along the path. There were lots of them. They squatted down, poised to run. Beneath them, a long way below, the Tyrifjord lapped against the rocks. Some people were running by barefoot or in their stockinged feet.
On the path they were discussing whether it was genuine, or just some kind of joke.
‘It just isn’t funny to fool around like that,’ said one girl.
‘Maybe it’s some sort of PR stunt,’ a boy suggested.
The young people huddled down behind a slight rise in the ground. Sitting there, they could no longer see the café building where the last shots had gone off. That must mean that those firing could not see them either.
Then they heard heavy footsteps in the heather.
One boy suggested lying down in strange positions and pretending to be dead. It was too late to run away, after all.
Bano lay down on her side with one arm under her and the other thrown out at an angle. She had pulled the fluorescent yellow hood of the red sailing jacket half over her hair. On her feet she had the size 38 wellington boots.
Anders bent down beside her. He, who from his earliest years had always liked to have an overview, lay down on the ground. He who had learned rhetoric from Obama and was passionate about parliamentary debate found no more words. This eighteen-year-old who had fought wars in the forest with a gun carved out of wood now lay down to play dead. He put his arm around Bano.
The uniformed man had reached the slight rise, a few metres from them.
‘Where the hell is he?’ he asked.
Nobody answered.
He started at the right-hand end.
First he shot a boy.
Then he shot Bano.
Then he shot Anders.
The shots were fired at intervals of just a few seconds.
The two girls who had been with Bano on the edge of the woods when it all started were near the end of the row. They were holding hands. A bedtime song was going round in Marte’s head. It had come to her as she lay, listening as shot followed shot.
The song had soothed her when she was little and it soothed her now. She lay quite still, eyes closed.
Marte and Maria had only just joined the youth organisation and were on Utøya for the first time, to see whether it was the sort of thing for them. Their faces were turned to each other. They were wearing their new AUF sweatshirts. The flame logos on the chest were turned to the ground.
Marte stole an upward glance and saw a pair of muddy black army boots, and above them a chequered reflective band.
Then a bullet hit her best friend in the head. Maria’s body jerked, and the twitching ran down into her hand.
Her grip slackened.
Seventeen years is not a long life, thought Marte.
Another shot rang out. It was as if a current ran through her body, as if someone was playing drums in her head. There was a glitter in front of her eyes.
Then everything faded out. The ground beneath her disappeared, and then all sound.
Blood ran down her face and covered the hands her head was resting on. So much blood. I’m dying now, she thought.
The boy beside her was shot several times; he reached out his hand and said, ‘I’m dying.’
‘Help, I’m dying, help me,’ he begged.
But there was no one there to help him. Marte wanted to, but she could not move. He gave a jerk, but went on breathing. His breathing got quieter and quieter, until it stopped.
Breivik had put a bullet or two in each of them. Then he had gone back and shot them again. Those who had tried to get up were shot more times; one boy had five bullets in his body.
The weapons could be lethal over a distance of up to a couple of kilometres. Here, the gunman stood at the feet of his victims and aimed at their heads. The bullets expanded and fragmented when they made contact with tissue.
The killer was surprised by the sound emitted by people’s heads when he shot them in the skull. It was a sort of ah, an exhalation, a breath. How interesting, he thought. I had no idea.
The sound did not always come, but usually it did; he wondered about it each time he killed a person.
Twenty-five spent cartridge cases were strewn around them, some on top of their bodies. Five from the pistol, twenty from the rifle.
The smell of blood, vomit and urine hung about the eleven on the path. Two minutes earlier, the smell had been of rain, earth and fear.
From somewhere in the middle of the group came a faint moaning. Before long there was nothing but little cheeps. And then there was silence.
Marte’s brain was bleeding. Burnt gunpowder fouled the wound in her head. Then she too lost consciousness.
A few raindrops hit the ground.
‘Psst, Ylva, come here so I can cover you.’
Simon sat crouched on Lovers’ Path. Ylva Schwenke, one of the youngest girls from Troms, crept towards him. ‘Come here,’ whispered Simon, holding out his hand. He had been helping people get over the log. He was strong. They could hang on to him until they got a foothold and then let go and run to hide.