Free Falling, Book 1 of the Irish End Games

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sarah dug her heels hard into Dan’s side and the horse bolted from a walk into a gallop. Sarah never saw the ground rushing by beneath her in a blur of green and brown or the two small stonewalls that she and the horse vaulted over as easily as if they’d been puddles on a street. Her eyes strained to see the house appear on the horizon over the next hill. She willed the house to materialize intact and the smoke, which grew blacker and more pronounced the closer she came, to dissipate to reveal that the cottage still stood.

  When she crested the final hill on the homeward drive to the cottage, she sucked in a hard breath. The sound more than anything startled her horse, who shied violently, nearly unseating her. And she never took her eyes off the sight at the end of the hill: Cairn Cottage, fully engulfed in flames, and the forecourt pocked with lifeless bodies scattered like sacks of grain carelessly dropped from a wagon.

  Her energy slowly seeped from her. Her nearly maniacal urgency to be at the cottage gave way to an involuntary hesitancy to confirm her worst suspicions. Was it hope or certainty that she would find him safe that fueled her on the crazy gut-wrenching miles from Balinagh? Her weight rested solidly in the saddle as she surveyed the terrible scene below. And Dan came to a halt.

  She tried to control her breathing as she watched the forecourt with the motionless bodies and the raging fire. A part of her almost believed she could feel the heat. She stared, stunned and paralyzed. A sound came from just over her left shoulder but she didn’t turn.

  Gavin was laboring up the hill with his horse and wagon.

  “Cor, Missus,” he said, gasping for breath as if he’d run alongside the horses himself. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  His words shook her out of the moment and she gathered her reins tightly in her hands and pushed Dan down the hill with her legs. Once she was moving, she allowed herself to think the impossible: maybe he was still alive. The thought galvanized her into a full gallop down the hill toward the cottage, the appalled shouts of Gavin ringing in her ears behind her.

  She dismounted before Dan even downshifted out of the canter. The closer she got to the farm, she could see that many of the lifeless forms were animals—mostly their sheep. From the looks of it, all of them.

  Sarah stepped over several carcasses, each one mottled bright red against the dirty white of their wool, and went to the dead man lying face down in the center of the courtyard. Her gun in her hand, she made a quick scan of the forecourt before touching him. She knelt and turned him over. It was Seamus, his blue eyes open and unseeing, his throat cut in a bloodless white arc. Tears welled up in her eyes. She got a flashback of Seamus walking with John across the forecourt to the barn, his gait stooped and halting, his large hand resting lightly on her boy’s shoulder. She closed his eyes and saw her hand was shaking badly.

  Sarah felt the heat from the terrible inferno at her back as she jumped up to run to the stable. She jerked open the door but the barn was empty except for the bodies of the two little goats that had helped sustain them for the weeks and months since they had arrived. The sight of the little dead goats, for some reason, triggered a feeling of blinding rage in Sarah. She left the barn and ran to the paddock. It was empty except for more dead sheep.

  “John!” she screamed, her eyes scanning the entrance to the pasture and the little back courtyard outside the kitchen door. “John Matthew!”

  Gavin brought the wagon into the forecourt but his horses panicked at the proximity of the fire and he fought to keep them calm. He leapt out, grabbed their bridles and led them to the far side of the barn, all the while looking over his shoulder at the carnage and the dead body in the middle of the courtyard.

  Sarah approached the cottage. One of John’s dogs lay dead in her path.

  Quickly, Gavin unhooked the horses from the wagon, pushed them into the barn—not bothering to find a stall—and shut the door. He ran to Sarah who was kneeling by the little dog and looking at the burning cottage, her face a mask of unreadable agony.

  “Missus,” he said, breathlessly, “they’ll’ve taken the boy.”

  She didn’t take her eyes off the burning cottage.

  “This is what they do,” she said tonelessly.

  “No, they won’t have burned him in there,” Gavin said. He touched her arm gingerly. “You weren’t here when they came, so they’ll’ve taken him with them.”

  A look of hope flashed across her face and she turned to him.

  He nodded. “I’m sure of it,” he said. He looked at the burning house as a large piece of timber came crashing down in front of them, making them both take a step back. “He’s not in there.”

  Sarah looked back at the cottage and then at the dead puppy on the ground. She shook her head.

  “There’s also a woman,” she said. “Dierdre.”

  “Mrs. McClenny?” Gavin looked back at Seamus lying on the ground. “Aye, well.” He shook his head and looked at the cottage. “That’s not good,” he admitted.

  There was nothing they could do for the cottage but let it burn. They had nothing with which to put out the flames and it was too dangerous to attempt to retrieve any belongings from inside. Gavin went back to the horses, Dan included, and untacked and fed them. He put each of them in stalls, dragged the dead goats and the sheep to a small trench behind the barn, and began digging a larger trench for Seamus.

  Sarah sat in the unharnessed wagon as if in a trance and watched the cottage burn. What sun there had ever been that day had long disappeared behind a cloud, not to return. She held the gun in her hands, tracing the lines, the numbers, the indentations on it like one would a treasured talisman. Her eyes never left the cottage.

  She watched the outline of the porch crumble and she remembered sitting out on those steps just three months ago with David. She remembered watching the stars from those steps, and the feel of his warm lips on hers. Her eyes travelled to the chimney that jutted from the middle of the little cottage and she remembered the nights spent sitting around its hearth, the three of them laughing, playing cards, telling stories.

  The frame around the smaller living room window in front gave way and broke into pieces on the ground. She expected to see angry tongues of flame emerge but instead, a plume of grey smoke belched out into the early evening air. As she watched, she realized she was praying. Praying for guidance, for relief from pain, for hope that her boy was alive.

  She heard Gavin speaking from around the side of the barn but she couldn’t understand his words. He must have been speaking to her, she didn’t know. She had been staring at the house for a good ten minutes before she realized it had started to rain. She’d lived in Ireland so long she hardly noticed the sudden downpours any more. She watched as the flames slowly died and the air turned to a thick, stagnant layer of black fog.

  She leaned over the side of the wagon and threw up into the bushes.

  In all her nightmares of worry back home in the States about what could happen to her child, she had never come close to imagining the terror and agony of what she had experienced in the last hour. And while she lived with hope that, as Gavin suggested, John was not in the burning house, the knowledge that that meant he was with the murderous gypsies was nearly as unendurable. She held the gun to her chest like it had the power to change things. She finished her prayers with the plea to God Almighty that He keep John safe, that He help him say and do the right things while the gypsies had him to keep him alive, and that He help Sarah navigate the rest of this unfathomable nightmare.

  Gavin spoke to her again, this time louder and closer. He was saying something about the rain and how, Saints be praised, it had come at a divine moment. Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off the cottage. They were coming to a moment, she knew, when the rain would put out the fire completely and enable them to enter the cottage. And then they would know for sure.

  …And then they would know.

  “Missus?”

  Sarah dragged her eyes from the smoldering building to look at hi
m. He looked tired and filthy. His face was black from the soot of the fire and sweat and rain and created rivulets down both his cheeks. It made him look like he’d been crying.

  “I’ve built a wee fire,” he said, indicating with a jerk of his head the backcourt on the side of the barn. “The root cellar’s not been touched by the fire so I’ll check to see if there’s anything we can use to eat. Is that alright?”

  Sarah shifted in her position in the wagon to look back at the house.

  John was hungry all the time, too.

  “Fine,” she said dully.

  “I’ve buried the old man,” he said. “And me Da will be here soon. Maybe in an hour or so.”

  Sarah didn’t respond so Gavin turned to find the root cellar.

  She bowed her head and finished her prayers. It was all she could do.

  When she heard the shout, she stood up so fast that the gun dropped to the floorboard of the wagon. Instead of snatching it up, she left it there and jumped to the ground, facing the direction of Gavin’s shout.

  Something inside her just knew.

  He came running from around the corner of the barn. In the fading light of the day, she saw him run toward her, his arms pumping at his side, his head up, his eyes locked onto hers.

  “Mom!”

  And that was when she started to weep. When he launched himself into her open arms, she crushed him so tightly to her that he squeaked and still she cried. She kissed his tousled brown hair, his filthy, tear-streaked cheeks, his sweet little-boy mouth that was talking and exclaiming all at once.

  Thank you, God. Dear Lord in Heaven, thank you, thank you.

  They found Dierdre in the house.

  John told them that Seamus had made him run and hide in the root cellar when they heard the gypsies come. He had one of the puppies with him but couldn’t find the other. Seamus told him he’d come for him when it was all clear.

  “But he never came, Mom.”

  Seamus’s plan was for Dierdre to hold them off with the guns from inside the house. Then Seamus was to provide a distraction outside, facing down the gypsies, so that John could slip out the back.

  “You’re a brave lad, young John,” Donovan said, nodding at John. “You’re Da would be proud.”

  John nodded solemnly, but Sarah could tell Mike’s words were a balm to him. Donovan had come not forty minutes after John was found. He’d brought with him ten other people, five of them able-bodied men and the rest women and children.

  Donovan had wasted no time in clearing away the dead animal carcasses and bringing some order to the devastation. His men found what remained of poor Dierdre. They buried both her and Seamus that very night. Afterward, it was too late to do anything but build a campfire and create a bit of shelter against the night. His people pitched their tents in the paddock and set up their bedrolls in the barn. The women, silent as wights, prepared steaming pots of small-animal stew that simmered on flat rocks in the campfire.

  Sarah could not take her eyes off John. She watched him hungrily as he walked the camp, staying mostly with Donovan and Gavin. Her preference would have been to keep him wrapped in her arms. Her terror was too newly lived to be discounted by the fact of his existence. She now knew the sharp agony of the terrible loss of him and it was even worse than she’d ever imagined. Her joy to have him delivered back to her was tempered by the knowledge of how vulnerable they all were.

  David.

  She closed her eyes in exhaustion and held her hands to her face. She jerked her head up to see where John might be and discovered that Donovan had quietly sat down next to her.

  “Whoa, didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. He was holding out a metal cup in his hands.

  “You didn’t,” Sarah said. “I just…” She shook her head and nodded toward where John and Gavin squatted near the fire. “I’m never going to feel safe again.”

  Donovan held out the cup to her and she drank from it without thinking. It was some kind of homemade alcohol and burned all the way down her throat. The pain felt good and almost instantly she felt some of the edge of the day creep away.

  “Nor none of us, that’s the truth,” Donovan said with a heavy sigh. “I am so sorry we didn’t get here in time.”

  Sarah turned to look at him.

  “What a nice man you are,” she said.

  That made him smile and he took a pull from a flask he’d been holding in his hand.

  “You brought all these people here to help us.” She took another sip and let the alcohol do its work. She closed her eyes, willing the drink to calm her and not open up the floodgates of emotion as was all too likely.

  “Well, to be honest, we’re family, you see,” he said. “All of us related in some way.”

  One of the women approached. She wore baggy jeans and a tired smile. Her hair was gathered back in a single braid down her back. She handed Sarah a bowl of stew and a dented spoon.

  “You’ll be hungry,” she said.

  Sarah glimpsed over the woman’s shoulder at John who was eating and laughing with Gavin. She shook her head in wonder and accepted the warm bowl.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for everything.”

  “Sure, it’s nothing,” the woman said. “I’m Fiona, Mike’s big sister.” The woman knelt down across from Sarah. “We’ve heard a good bit about you from Siobhan and the others. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  “I guess we’re famous,” Sarah said. She spooned into the stew. “Those crazy Americans—coming to the remotest point on the globe so they can give up electronics and live the simple life.”

  Fiona frowned. “Sure, I’m not positive we are the remotest point on the globe,” she said wryly.

  “Sorry,” Sarah said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Fi’s just giving you a hard time,” Donovan said, frowning at his sister.

  Fiona ignored him. “Has Mike told you the news yet?”

  Sarah snapped her head to look at Donovan. “What news?”

  “Can you not let the woman have two mouthfuls before agitating her?” Donovan said to his sister.

  “There’s news?” Sarah repeated.

  Donovan took in a big sigh. “Now’s as good a time to give it, I guess,” he said. He jerked his head at Fiona. “Gather the others. I don’t want to say this twice.”

  Fiona picked up Sarah’s bowl from the ground where she’d laid it, winked at Sarah and left.

  “Is it good news?”

  “Were you expecting good news?”

  “I…I guess…I’m always hopeful that…” Sarah was at a loss for words.

  “That maybe help was coming?” Donovan said gently. “That any day now the Irish government would roll up with an aid truck busting full of food and jam, or that they’d get busy replacing the power lines?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  Donovan shook his head.

  “Look,” he said, “before the others get here I need to know what you want to do about the problems you’ve had here.” He glanced in the direction of the burnt house, now just a black shadow towering eerily in the background.

  “What I intend to do?” she echoed.

  “I mean, I assume you will be coming with us? There’s no real need to stay now, is there? Your animals are gone, your house is gone.”

  Your husband is gone.

  Sarah stared at him for a minute with her mouth open.

  “You should come with us,” he continued. “We’re building a community. We’ll watch each other’s backs and plant food and rebuild our little patch of the country. It will be safer for you with us. There’s a place for you and the boy if you want to come.”

  “I can’t leave,” Sarah said.

  “For the love of God, why not?” Donovan sputtered in frustration. “You have nothing left here. Will you be living out of the barn? Why would you stay?”

  “Because,” Sarah said, coolly, her voice as steely and flat as the heart that beat in her breast, “the bastards w
ill be back.” She looked at Donovan. “And this time I’ll be ready for them.”

  Now it was Donovan’s turn to stare.

  “You want them to come?” he said, his face twisted in confusion.

  “I don’t understand you,” Sarah said, standing up and brushing the dirt from her jeans. “They have destroyed my home, threatened my child, possibly murdered my husband and definitely murdered my friends and I’m supposed to walk away? I don’t know how you do things in Ireland, but we are not finished here. Not by a long shot.”

  After a pause, Donovan broke into a wild laugh that had the approaching group of men and women walk even faster toward them.

  “You’re crazy,” he said. “But thank you, Jesus, you have fulfilled every myth and fantasy I have ever had about how you Americans think. It really isn’t just the movies, is it? This is how you Yanks really are.”

  “So you’ll help me?”

  “God help me, I guess I will,” he said, turning to the crowd who gathered around him.

  “Alright, listen up,” Donovan said to them, “I’ve got news and it’s not pretty.”

  Sarah looked at the motley group of men and women standing in the forecourt of her holiday cottage. They were ragged and thin and not terribly clean but their eyes were bright and intent.

  They’re survivors, she thought. Good people to have with you in a fight.

  One of the women held a baby in her arms and Sarah was amazed to realize that the baby must have been born after the incident. Without electricity or doctors or formula or baby monitors. She smiled at the young mother.

  John wriggled out of the crowd and came to stand next to her. Sarah was astonished and delighted to feel his hand slip into hers. For him to do it in front of everyone, she realized, meant he must be feeling insecure about what Donovan was about to reveal. She squeezed his hand and brought her full attention back to Mike.

  “We now know what happened,” he said tiredly. “And knowing it helps us to know how long we’ll likely need to live like this.”

  There were several gasps from the group and one “Sweet Jaysus!” Mike held up his hands for quiet and spoke solemnly.

  “Like I said, it’s not good news, but knowledge is power and we’ll do well to remember that.” He took a deep breath, glanced once at Sarah, and began.

  “David Cahill’s boy, Craig, made it to Limerick and back and he’s brought us news about what happened. Now, Craig’s not here to tell you himself because he sustained some injuries on the road and he…well, he’s passed as a result. So we’ll be thankful to young Craig and the good Lord above for letting him get back home before He claimed him.”

  The group murmured impatiently and it was all Sarah could do not to scream: What did he tell you?

  “Basically, what happened was this,” Donovan said. “There was a nuclear bomb dropped by some still unidentified terrorist group over London four months back. I don’t know all the gigawatts and gaggo-rays of what happened or why they didn’t just drop the bomb right on London and be done with it but it seems exploding it up in the air was even worse. And since we’ve all been affected by it, that would seem to be right.” Donovan took a deep breath as if he were still processing the information for himself.

  “The nuclear explosion basically took out everything in the UK that was electronic. And since all our cars, our phones, our computers, and our power grid uses electronics to run, the bastards basically bombed us back to the Stone Age and that’s the simple truth of it.”

  One of the men stepped forward. “Is it true the cities are radioactive like they said at first?”

  Donovan shook his head. “A rumor,” he said. “Not true.”

  We could have left, Sarah thought. It would’ve been safe to leave after all.

  “When are they going to fix it, then?”

  “Well,” Donovan said, “Craig said the Poms have their hands full with their own country and then they’ll think about helping us.”

  “Typical.”

  “Plus,” and here he turned to look at Sarah, “A nonnuclear missile destroyed a good part of Boston.” He turned to Sarah. “That’ll be what most of us saw on the TV last September. Where did you say your folks lived?”

  John spoke up, his voice shaking. “Florida.”

  Donovan nodded. “If what Craig said is correct, the American south is fine.”

  “Thank God,” Sarah whispered, tears welling in her eyes. “Washington?” she said.

  “It appears it was targeted but the bomb went off course and detonated over the Atlantic.”

  “Incompetent idiots,” someone shouted.

  Donovan addressed the man who spoke. “Maybe. But from where I’m standing, competent enough.”

  “How long to rebuild?” Someone asked.

  “They’re working on that now,” Mike replied.

  “Our country will help you,” John said.

  Donovan turned to him and the effort it took to smile seemed to weigh him down.

  “Your country is helping its friend England first,” he said.

  He listened to the general agreement from the crowd before speaking again.

  “The point of how this new information affects all of us here is this,” he said. He paused for a moment to make sure he had their attention. “Now we know for sure that there is no one coming,” he said grimly. “We are on our own and likely to be for years to come.”