Even the children.
She twisted her arm out of Edgar’s grip and pushed away from him, but he quickly recaptured her and dragged her forward, forcing the crowd to part as he moved. Brian and two other men moved in front of them to prevent the mob from taking her before time. Sarah saw their faces close up and they were cursing her, some were screaming, several spat on her. One woman reached out and tried to slap her, catching only her ear but making it ring painfully.
Edgar hauled her forward to where, just a week before, the little outdoor market had stood—and probably would again by the weekend. There was a clearing and a small wooden platform that, before The Crisis, had likely served as a place where live bands would play on a summer’s evening.
Sarah stared at it as she approached. This would be the place where she left this world.
When Edgar reached the clearing he drew out his gun and shot it into the air, forcing the crowd into an immediate silence. “Oy! I need to read the crimes and the verdict before we get to it. I need silence.”
The crowd ringed the staging area. Sarah saw some of the men were tossing their rocks menacingly in their hands. Many carried burlap bags bulging with more rocks. Her terror edged up into her throat and her hands clutched spasmodically at her chest, as if she could somehow ease her labored breathing. How long would this take? How long would it take before it was all over?
“The convicted accused stands before you, good people of Boreen,” Edgar said loudly. “She has confessed to being responsible for the terrible destruction of our lives, our loved ones, and our country.”
Sarah saw many in the mob nodding. Loud shouts of assent punctuated the midmorning air.
“She has shown no remorse—which is typical, aye?”
The crowd roared its agreement. A child threw her stone. It landed at Sarah’s feet but it seemed to galvanize the crowd even further.
“And so she will suffer the righteous retribution of our laws. Our Irish laws, by God!” He turned to Sarah and pulled out his gun. Sarah found herself praying he would just shoot her.
“Yank, ya have been condemned to death by the good people of Boreen, County Wexford, Ireland, most of whom have suffered untold misery and the death of loved ones and family members because of you and your country. If you try to flee while justice is being served, I’ll shoot you in the legs. Do you have anything to say?”
Sarah turned to the crowd, her face white with fear and anger. The crowd quieted to hear her words. She took a deep breath, one of the last ones on this Earth she would be allowed to take, and said loudly and clearly…
“God bless America, you jealous bastards.”
30
The first stone caught her square in the stomach and she doubled over when it hit, gasping as the air escaped in a sharp burst of pain. Within seconds, a fusillade of rocks and bricks flew through the air. She cradled her head with her arms and turned away, feeling the impact of the barrage on her back and legs. Amazingly, most of the rocks hit near her or around her. If she had been praying for a quick death, she could see that was not to be.
The noise of the crowd had increased to a level of pandemonium that reminded Sarah of a college football stadium of screaming fans. Only in this case, they were calling for her blood.
In the pause before the crowd gathered up more rocks for a second onslaught, Sarah turned to look out toward the sea. It wasn’t much, she thought as she focused on the horizon and the white caps dancing across the surface, but it wasn’t the worst thing she could see in this life. The sound of another gunshot in the air made her snap her head around. Had Edgar mistaken her step toward the sea as an escape attempt? A rock whistled through the air and caught her viciously in the mouth. She cried out and brought her hands up to her face. A tooth was loose and blood seeped out past her lips.
Another gunshot and a single piercing scream sliced into the air around her.
Something was happening. She looked wildly around, her eyes darting everywhere at once. She saw Edgar pointing his gun at someone in the crowd. He was speaking. She could see his lips move but seemed to have gone deaf. She put a hand to the side of her head and pulled away fingers coated with blood. The crowd was moving aside, parting, and still Edgar aimed his weapon at them.
Was he helping her? Did that make sense?
And then she saw him. Saw what they were looking at. Saw what Edgar was pointing his gun at.
Mike.
On his horse, his rifle stock tucked against this side and pointed at Edgar and coming closer.
Coming for her.
Sarah clapped her hands to her mouth and then knelt and scooped up the largest of the rocks that had hit her. If the last thing she did was disarm the bastard before he could shoot Mike…
She flung the rock at Edgar’s head, drilling him in the cheek as directly as a line drive off a baseball bat. The gun fell from his fingers as he staggered against the blow and she could see his cheek open up in a wide gaping smile of blood and sinew. She snatched up the fallen gun from the ground in front of him and turned to the crowd, who had now dropped their rocks and were backing up as if one entity.
Before she could think of what to do next, Mike’s horse was pressing in on her. He never took his eyes off the crowd but reached down with one arm, and when she clasped his hand, pulled her up onto the back of his horse as if she’d weighed no more than a child. She clutched him around the waist with one arm while holding the gun out with the other hand.
The good people of Boreen, clearly concerned that their victim might be feeling vindictive, turned and bolted back to their cottages and huts. Sarah felt her hearing return the moment Mike spurred his mount to a clattering canter down main street, the men, women and children scattering before them. She jammed the gun into the back waistband of her jeans and wrapped her arms around Mike, leaning her cheek against his strong, broad back.
* * *
They rode without speaking for nearly an hour in a solid rain before Mike stopped. He pulled up next to a stand of ash trees and walked his horse down into the shallow ditch and up the other side to the pasture beyond. He dismounted and gently pulled Sarah out of the saddle. She cried out when he did and hated herself for doing it.
For the last hour, she had been happier than she knew she had any right to be. She didn’t deserve to be so joyous. Not with David dead and Papin lost for good. With every stride closer to Donovan’s Lot, and John, she rejoiced in her life given back to her, and in the warmth and strength she took from seeing Mike again.
“Let’s take a look at you, girl,” he said, holding the reins in one hand and tilting her face to him.
“Thank you.” Sarah felt the tears gather in her eyes and then streak down her face. “Thank you for not giving up on me. Thank you and thank God. I can’t believe I’m alive.”
“Nor me, lass.” He shook his head and Sarah thought he’d aged since she saw him last, just five weeks ago. His eyes were full of worry and the tension she felt in his grip on her arm tightened.
“How did you know to come? How could you have known?” Sarah couldn’t stop crying and she didn’t care to try. She had been strong for so long and it felt so good to just weep.
“I heard a rumor about an American woman being held on the coast. I didn’t know for sure if it was you but I had to see.”
Sarah leaned into him and let him put his arms around her. Her broken ribs made every breath a spasm of fiery pain, but it was nulled out by the comfort and strength in his arms. “I never thought I’d see anybody I loved again,” she said.
She thought she felt him start at that but he relaxed again. “Young John is fine and safe,” he assured her. “And waiting for you, although he doesn’t know it. I left camp yesterday only saying I had something I had to do. Didn’t want to get the lad’s hopes up. Are you hungry, Sarah?”
Sniffling, she nodded and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “How far away are we?”
Mike went to retrieve a small packet from his saddlebags.
He led her to a downed tree and settled her on it while he tied his horse’s reins to a branch. “It’ll be too dark to travel much longer today,” he said. “One more night, Sarah.” He handed her a piece of cheese tucked into a slice of fresh bread.
She took the bread and began crying again. His kindness, the lack of bugs or mold in the food, and the miracle that she would see John in the morning was all too much.
Mike sat next to her on the log and put his arm around her, being careful of her ribs. “It’s alright, Sarah. It’s all over now. We’ve got you.”
* * *
After she’d eaten, they rode for another hour before Mike stopped to make camp. He had no concern that the village mob would decide to pursue them, but Mike knew the more distance they created between them and the coast the easier Sarah would feel. Seeing her that morning, standing there, facing the crowd and believing she would die, was the most gut-wrenching moment in his life.
The bald wanker with the gun was lucky Mike didn’t just shoot him straight-out.
He made a small campfire and hobbled the horse before bringing out more food. Sarah, looking bedraggled and drugged—although she didn’t act it—sat on one of his bedroll blankets in front of the fire and faced west, toward her boy. They’d been lucky. It had rained on and off most of the day but the night looked to be clear, if cold. The first thing he’d done after their midday stop was to wrap her in his jacket, which had brought about another bout of tears.
A constantly crying Sarah was not a Sarah he knew, and it mildly unsettled him. He had seen her in life and death situations before where she never shed a tear. He tried to imagine what she must have experienced in the interim five weeks, but vowed he wouldn’t ask.
When she was ready.
He handed her another cheese sandwich and a canteen of whisky and sat down close to her. As much as he needed to see her and touch her, he was grateful that she seemed to want that too. He didn’t mistake it for anything other than what it was: the gratitude of an abused woman—and a new widow—reacting to the kindness of a friend. But it allowed him to touch her, to hold her, and he didn’t think, after the loss of her, if he could’ve borne an insistence that they treat each other any less intimately.
She took a long draught of the whisky and made a face.
“Drink,” he said. “It’ll do you good.”
“The Irishman’s perennial cry.”
That’s good. It meant she was coming back to herself.
“Speaking of nationalities, did you want them to kill you, Sarah? I mean, was there possibly a time when saluting your stars and stripes might have been a little less inopportune?”
Sarah grinned and his heart soared to see it. “It wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing short of me bursting into flames would’ve stopped them. In fact, now that I think of it, they probably were waiting for me to burst into flames.”
“Well, there’s bad feeling just now about the Yanks, no mistake. All the more reason…” He stopped.
She looked at him. “All the more reason, what?”
He shrugged. “That I’ll be minding you from now on.”
“I have a feeling you don’t mean that in the way I’m used to hearing it.”
“I mean protecting you,” he said firmly.
She took another long drink from the canteen and shivered as it went down. She handed it back to him. “Works for me,” she said, in another example of a Sarah he had never seen before.
That night, he placed their bedrolls next to each other with his nearest the fire so he could keep it going through the night. When he lay down, he was astounded that she lay down so close to him; it was almost like they were man and wife. He reminded himself that she craved the safety and security of human touch right now. She might even be imagining Mike was her David holding her.
As the moon flitted behind the lacy web of tree branches, dipping the campsite in and out of pale light, they lay silently together but Mike knew she was still awake.
“Mike?”
“Mmm?”
“I thought about giving my body for a boat ticket.”
He felt an irrational bolt of jealousy and anger at what she must have had to endure since he saw her last but forced himself to keep his tone mild. “We’re all thinking of doing crazy things to survive. It’s the times, Sarah.”
“I was a hair’s breadth away from it.”
“You would do what you need to do to survive, to see your lad again.”
“Mike, we have to find Papin.”
He sat up to give the fire a poke and reenergize it. She had briefly filled him in on the little gypsy whore that had travelled with her for a bit. “You know that’s impossible, don’t you?”
Sarah sat up too and inched closer to the fire. And him. “Mike, no.”
“Have you asked yourself, Sarah, why she didn’t come to you? Deep down, you must know.”
“I told her I wouldn’t leave her,” Sarah said, beginning to cry again. “I told her I was her family.”
“I’m sorry, darlin’ I truly am.” Mike pulled her into his arms, feeling her yield to him, her head tucked against his chest as she cried. “But your lad is waiting for you and he needs you, too.”
“I know. But how can I live not knowing what happened to her?”
“You’ll live. You’ll have to, for John’s sake.”
If not my own.
* * *
The helicopter appeared as the tiniest spec in the sky. John said when he first saw it—and he made it clear that he had been the first—he thought it was a seabird a long way off course.
How this could happen when Mike had gone off just the day before Fiona could well believe, because that was the kind of luck she had. She handed the handsome American co-pilot another cup of tea and wondered if he was really old enough to fly the helicopter. He was dressed in a US Air Force uniform and introduced himself as Captain Jim Rader.
Like every American she had ever met, he was confident and friendly. She figured the military component must have tempered the other typical American inclination to talk too much. The captain was unfailingly polite but also all business.
He’d landed in the pasture adjacent to Donovan’s Lot not an hour earlier, with a crew of three and a small family of American ex-pats who, like the Woodsons, had been on holiday in Ireland when The Crisis happened. She had no idea what their circumstances were or how they managed to stay alive and in one piece. They refused to get off the aircraft even to stretch their legs when the helicopter landed.
Captain Rader’s machine was bigger than anything Fiona had ever seen up close. John and Gavin and most of the other boys in the camp had crawled all over it and still hadn’t had their fill. She shook her head.
John.
Dear God in holy heaven. Was it herself that was supposed to make this call?
“Thanks for the tea, ma’am,” the young captain said, standing. “But we really need to be going. I’ve got another stop today before I deliver my cargo.”
“So it won’t be yourself that takes John back to the States?”
“No, ma’am. My orders are to collect the Woodson family and bring ‘em to Limerick. They’ll leave for the States from there.” He looked over his shoulder as John entered the cottage.
“That is one cool bird,” John said as he sat down next to Fiona. She noticed his eyes were brighter than she’d seen since Sarah was taken and his father slain. Boys and their toys.
“Would you like to ride on it, young John?” she asked him as she patted his knee.
He frowned, his eyes darting to the pilot. “Are you giving rides?”
The pilot reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “Nearly forgot this,” he said, handing it to Fiona. “It’s a copy of my orders, so you know I’m not kidnapping him. And…” he nodded at John, “…a letter from his folks in Florida.”
“Grandma and Grandpa?” John jumped up and reached for the letter. “They’re alive? They’re okay? Fi, let me see the letter.”
“It’s not addressed to you,” Fiona said, glancing at the letter with Sarah’s name marked clearly on it.
“I’m to bring the family with me to Limerick,” the pilot said. “Don’t know if we’ll be coming back this way.” He shrugged. “Don’t expect so.”
“So is the US back on its feet then?” Fiona asked. She gave John a strict look to be interpreted: settle down. He was standing, looking like he was about to burst with questions and excitement.
“Yes, ma’am. We never got hit, really. So we’re dropping food and supplies and gathering up all our nationals who were stranded around the world when the thing happened.”
“My dad died,” John said, his voice wavering. “He’s not here to leave with us.”
“Yeah, sorry, sport. That’s what Miss Donovan was telling me. That’s rough.”
“And my mom’s gone missing.” John looked at Fiona, as if to ask if she was reading the situation any differently than he was.
“Yeah, sorry about that, too. But my orders are to take you with me, son.”
“Take me? Back to the States?”
“That’s right.”
“But what about my mom?” John looked from the captain to Fiona.
Fiona stood and walked to the door of the cottage. “Could you give us a moment, please, Captain Rader?” she said, smiling at him.
“I need to be leaving, ma’am.”
“Yes, I know. We won’t be a tick.”
When he nodded and exited the cottage, John sat down hard in one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m not leaving without Mom.”
Fiona sat next to him and picked up his hand. “John, this is the moment we’ve all prayed for.”
“Maybe you have. I haven’t prayed for this.”
“Your grandparents are distraught with worry for all of you—”
Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games Page 22
