She hurried across the cottage sitting area, the fireplace long gone cold, to the other bedroom. It was freezing in his room.
“John, lad?” She moved to his bed and knelt. She could see his face was wet with sweat. He’d been in hell a good while before the horror of it finally woke him to cry out.
“She needs me, Fi,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I can tell she does.”
Well, that’s a safe bet, Fiona thought sadly. Wherever the poor woman is she’s likely to need a lot of things.
“Whisht, John,” she said soothingly, straightening his covers. “It’s just a dream, leanbha.’”
“It felt so real,” he whimpered.
“They always do. I’ll make us a cup of tea, aye? Unless you think you can go back to sleep?”
He shook his head.
“Didn’t think so.” She stood up to leave.
“Fi, does it mean nothing that I can feel her alive somewhere in the world?”
A breath caught in Fi’s throat and she returned to kneel by his bed again. Tonight the lad would break her heart in every way that it could be broken. “I’m sure it means something,” she said.
“And with Mr. Donovan home, I’m just to hope she finds her way back home on her own?”
The lad used to call her brother Uncle Mike. Should she tell him that Mike might go out looking for her again someday? Mike already talked about doing just that. Would it only be getting the boy’s hopes up?
“Your mother’s a resourceful woman,” she said, finally.
“I know. Mr. Donovan used to call her a female John Wayne.”
“Aye, he did, I remember.” She watched a tear escape his eye and trail down his cheek. Did everything have to feel like a knife to the heart these days? She squeezed his hand. “I’ll get us that tea, leanbha.”
* * *
Sarah heard them talking before she opened her eyes. Men’s rough voices. She could tell she was no longer on the boat and that she had been placed on something a little more comfortable than a wooden floor. It was a pallet of some kind, probably straw. Her head hurt terribly and as much as she dreaded making anyone aware of the fact that she was conscious, she couldn’t help it. She turned her head and retched up bile and water.
“Aw, feck me, she’s puking all over the floor! Get a bucket, ya eejit! I told ya I wouldn’t put her there.”
Sarah wiped her mouth and opened her eyes. She was lying on the floor of what clearly used to be a convenience store of some kind. Long stripped of its shelves, the place looked naked and menacing. Two men stood over her. One of them had her gun.
“Oy! Awake are ya? Tried to feckin’ sneak on the ferry, didn’t ya? Ya bastard Yank.” The man squatted near her. He was slightly balding. He wore a pair of glasses with the frames taped. He looked exactly like someone she would expect to see in an H&R Block Tax office, or perhaps a manager of a corporate office. Maybe that’s who he had been.
In another life.
She looked from him to the other man, who returned her look with a sneer of disgust on his face. She could see it wasn’t the ferryman. This man was older and much, much angrier.
“Water,” Sarah said, her voice a rasping croak.
The bald man barked out a rude laugh. “Jaysus! She’s asking for water. You don’t at all understand your situation, do you, luv? Not at all.”
As soon as he spoke the words, it was as if another level of volume turned up in Sarah’s head and she was suddenly able to hear the sounds of people shouting outside. Her eyes glanced in the direction of the door, flanked by two large windows.
“That’s right, luv. There’s a lot of people ain’t too happy with you right now. There’s a lot who’ve lost loved ones, not to mention their homes, their feckin’ jobs…”
Sarah was pretty sure the bald guy was talking about himself.
“I…I didn’t do this,” she said. She knew it was a mistake before the words were out of her mouth. These people didn’t want to believe she wasn’t responsible. They were angry.
They needed someone to be responsible.
“What? Are you Canadian, then? Is that what you’re going to tell me?”
“That’s right. I’m Canadian.”
He turned from her and spoke to the man behind him. “Get Brian in here. He’s got cousins in Winnipeg. We’ll just do a little Q and A, eh?”
Shit. Sarah didn’t know anything about Canada except they had Mounties, and she wasn’t even sure they still did. “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind about me. Why are you holding me?”
“We’re holding you, because you tried to steal passage on the Blue Lady, which is a very serious crime during these times. But don’t worry,” the man said standing up and towering over Sarah, “we’re gonna try ya proper-like. With a jury of yer peers and a judge and everything.” He leaned over and smiled at her in what looked like a genuine sign of affection. “And then we’re gonna kill you.”
Sarah felt the blood drain from her face. The expression on the men’s faces was like nothing she had seen before. Possession. They were both clearly in the grip of a belief so profound and so unshakable that nothing she said would dissuade them. They wanted to kill her and unless she could find a way to escape, they would.
She wouldn’t waste any more words. She needed to look around, take stock in her surroundings and find a way, find some way out.
“Oy! American bitch! What’s the capital of Canada?”
Sarah looked at the newcomer, Brian. The one with the nail ready to drive into her coffin. He was middle age and flabby, as if he might have been chubby before The Crisis but now did not have that luxury.
Sarah stared at him. Nova Scotia? Toronto? Her shoulders sagged in defeat. What did it matter? Even if she’d been able to rattle off the entire Canadian parliamentary charter by heart, it wouldn’t help. She could see that by the mad glint in their eyes.
And she had no idea anyway of what the sodding capital was.
She shrugged. “I’m pretty sure it’s Go-Fuck-Yourself. Am I right?”
At first Brian just looked at her as if trying to decipher her answer.
Finally, the bald guy pushed past him. “Right. She’s American. Nobody else’d be so bloody arrogant about not knowing the capital of a neighborin’ country. Makes me sick.” He grabbed Sarah by her sweater and jerked her to her feet. Her head spun and she grabbed at the store counter to steady herself.
“Alright, Miss America, your accommodations await. Dinner’ll be in directly. That’s a joke, by the way.”
Sarah’s knees gave out on her and for a moment she wondered if they hadn’t drugged her. She looked wildly around the store to see if there wasn’t something she could use as a weapon. She could see the people now on the other side of the window.
Where had they all come from? Were they just waiting for some likely candidate to come along so they could all vent their frustrations?
Brian moved ahead of her and pulled open the heavy door to the walk-in freezer. “Don’t worry, thanks to you lot the electricity’s turned off. You’ll still freeze your tits off, though.”
“I can’t…there’s no air in there,” Sarah said, panic leaping into her throat. I can’t go in that freezer.
“There’s just enough,” the bald guy said, giving her a shove that sent her falling head-first into the cold storage. Without another word, he shut the door behind her and she heard the lock slam down.
Her cell was roughly twenty feet by ten. What little she knew about freezers, she assumed the ceiling, walls, floor and door were at least four inches thick, probably with some kind of insulation, but covered in sheets of impermeable steel. It was totally dark. She was able to feel empty shelves in the freezer but nothing else. After her initial ten minutes of frantic groping, her heart pounding in panic, she settled on the floor and drew herself into a tight ball, gripping her knees with her hands.
So here she was, she thought, shivering violently. Everyone she ever loved in her life was either dead,
missing or all alone in the world. And unless a miracle happened, she would die before the week was out.
Is this really the end? Is this how it all ends? If she had left Papin, if she had just walked on to Balinagh and Donovan’s Lot, she would be with friends tonight, her boy in her arms. But she couldn’t stop the thought that reminded her that she had to go back for Papin, even if it meant the death of her. She succumbed completely to the full brunt of that knowledge as the tears came. Hearing her hopeless sobs reverberate off the walls of steel—the gasping cries of a person who’s lost everything and everyone—drove her deeper into despair.
She must have slept at some point, cold or not, because when the door opened blinding her with the dim light from the store interior, it felt like only minutes since she’d been entombed. Weak from lack of food and gasping for air, Sarah sat hunched against the wall as her captors shoved a tray of bread and cheese across the floor to her. She saw an uncapped bottle of cola and looked at it with as much stunned amazement as if it had been a seven-tiered wedding cake.
“Eat, Yank,” the man said. Sarah looked up, but he was backlit against the glare of the store windows and she couldn’t see his face. She crawled to the tray and reached for the cola first. It was flat and warm but also sweet. Her stomach lurched with nausea at the first sip but she forced herself to keep it down. Her eyes filled with unwanted memories of a childhood of cold sodas in the summer.
“We had the trial last night,” the man said. She recognized the voice as the bald man’s. “Sorry to have to tell ya, but you were found guilty.”
His words just felt like water pinging off a tin roof. Their meaning meant nothing to her. This mob would do what it wanted and words and entreaties or even proof, if she’d anything like that to show them, would not stop them from their endgame. She tore a piece of bread in half and stuffed it in her mouth. It tasted of mold.
“We’ll have it all read out to you good and proper later today. Didn’t want you to be so weak with hunger you didn’t know what was happening.”
She finished chewing and took a last sip of cola to wash it down. “What is your name?”
That seemed to startle him. He even took a step backward. “Not that you need to know,” he said, “but it’s Edgar MacIntyre.”
Sarah nodded. “Who were you before The Crisis?”
“Who was I? Who was I?”
She could see he was clenching his fists in frustration. He glanced over his shoulder and Sarah wondered if they were alone in the store. She didn’t hear anybody else. Even the noises from the mob outside were gone, and she wondered if they’d left to go back to their cold little cottages to curse the Yanks and blame the woman they held in their local Jiffy-Market for all their miseries and discomforts.
“I was the manager of an auto parts distribution plant, if you want to know,” he said, biting off every word. “That’s who.”
Sarah ate the last piece of bread and slumped back against the cold steel wall of her prison. “So you were somebody important,” she said in a soft voice.
“Bloody right, I was.” He hesitated for a moment, as if he would say more, then turned and stomped out of her sight, leaving the door open and the tray on the floor.
Sarah waited. She knew he hadn’t left the store and wondered if he left the door open because he was afraid she’d asphyxiate before they had a chance to properly murder her.
She stood up and inched toward the open door.
“I can see you, Yank, so don’t get any bright ideas.”
Edgar’s voice carried to her from the shop interior. Two more steps and she stood in the doorway, her knees shaking and wobbling, her hands clutching the hinges of the freezer door. The relative warmth of the shop tickled her face and she took another step towards it.
“That’s far enough.”
“I’m freezing in there.”
“You’re uncomfortable is all.” Edgar appeared from around the corner. He was holding a ceramic mug with steam coming off the top. Things weren’t so terrible he wasn’t able to make himself a cup of tea, Sarah thought as she saw him.
She knew talking wouldn’t help. Just seeing the cold dead look in his eyes told her that. He sipped his hot drink and watched her over the top of his mug.
But she couldn’t help it.
“Is it fair to blame me for something my country might have done?”
“Might have done? See, that’s kind of you Yanks all in a few words, ya know? Might have done?”
“Well, it wasn’t me, personally. I am a wife and mother. I…I have a young son who needs—”
“Not interested, Yank,” Edgar said, scowling over his steaming mug. “If I was you I’d breathe while I could. We got a schoolteacher in town says thirty minutes of oxygen, like, and then you can go back in ‘til we’re ready for you.” He laughed harshly. “So breathe while you still can.”
Sarah tried to imagine if he had always been an evil, heartless man or if there had been a reasonable mind somewhere down deep at one time. It didn’t matter. This was who he was now and she could see only brute force could possibly save her. She leaned against the doorjamb as her knees began to give way.
Force was the very last thing she possessed now.
She hated herself for mentioning John to this man. Hated her appeal using his precious name and the fact that it was disdained. She hated reminding herself out loud that John was just a boy who needed his mother. Her heart squeezed as an image of him came to mind.
She looked around the store interior. It looked like any convenience store in the States, except for the lack of goods on the shelves. The floor had debris and broken furniture scattered about, so this was probably one of the first places looted when the lights went out.
She could see any number of items scattered in the rubble that might be used as a weapon. But she could also see her own gun stuck in Edgar’s front waistband. In the end, nothing she could get her hands on—if that was even possible given her weakened state and the fact that he wasn’t taking his eyes off her—would help her against a handgun.
“Don’t move any closer,” he said. “You can get all the air you want from right there.”
“It’s freezing in there.”
“Should I care about your comfort when you’re the reason my Amy is gone?”
Of course. In a world with no laws and no recourse for the wicked deeds or bad luck for the tragedies that came after The Crisis, he and many others would need someone to atone.
“Your wife?”
“Shut yer gob. Don’t even say her name. Yes, my wife. In chemo for six months before you feckers dropped the bomb on us and then dead not a month later after the docs all said she’d beat it. You bastards.”
Sarah knew it was useless to mention that it wasn’t the Americans who had bombed them. In the end, it didn’t matter. It was US actions in the Middle East that prompted retaliation to their allies, leaving as just a small part of the result a woman who should have lived but who had died instead.
“It’s not just me,” Edgar said. “Every man and woman out there,” he jerked his head to indicate the crowd that was once more gathering outside the window, “has lost someone because of you feckers. Time you learned that you bastards can’t act like you own the whole world.”
And killing me will, of course, achieve that in your fevered, festering little mind, Sarah thought hopelessly.
“Back inside,” Edgar said, abruptly, slamming his mug down on the counter nearest him. “It may not make much of a dent in what your people do next, but we have damn little left to lose anyway. Inside,” he snarled.
Sarah staggered backward into the freezer as he slammed the heavy door in her face. With the darkness and the relentless cold came a sudden silence, too. Then, with just the amplified sounds of her terrified breaths coming in ragged pants, she slid to a seated position with her back against the cold steel wall to wait.
* * *
Edgar was wrong. They didn’t come for her later that day. She had
been allowed to breathe and eat three more times before they finally came for her. By then, she was ready to have it be done.
Every time Edgar opened the door, she wondered if this was the day. When, after the third day, the door opened and three men stood in the opening, she knew it was time. The daily food had given her enough strength to survive, and when she wasn’t praying or trying to sleep to hurry the time, she spent the long hours in the cold room pacing and moving. It kept her warmer and her limbs from locking up.
She was standing when they finally came for her.
“Oy! Ready for us are you?” The man, Brian, stepped into the room and grabbed her by the elbow to pull her out. “Blimey, it’s cold in there. Well done, Ed. Well feckin’ done.”
The warmth of the shop interior washed over her as she stepped out of the freezer, the light blinding her. She stumbled as they pushed her toward the door, one man holding each elbow. She was grateful that they hadn’t bound her. She could see it was raining outside and the thought came to her: Ireland is green because Ireland is wet. Had it really been only fifteen months when she had first said those words? So full of excitement with David and John to start their vacation in Ireland.
Brian let go of her long enough to open the shop door and she was ushered out onto the street. She felt the rain on her face, and saw the mob of people crowded outside the shop. Their faces were angry and full of hate. One woman held a rosary and her face was shut into a grimace. Sarah didn’t think she was praying for her.
Before she had a chance to fully take in the scene, she heard a shout and then felt a terrible punch on her chest. She staggered against the assault and her knees buckled but Edgar pulled her back from the ground. “Oy!” he shouted to the crowd. “Not yet! We’ll do this proper, I said!”
Sarah saw the rock on the ground at her feet. Her ribs screamed with every breath she took.
Dear God, they’re going to stone me to death. She turned to Edgar, who still had her gun in his belt. She’d assumed they would shoot her, or, at the very worst, hang her. When she looked at the crowd—getting louder and more unmanageable by the minute—she could see that all of them, every single one of them, was gripping a rock or brick in his or her hands.
Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games Page 21