“Six hours if the roads aren’t too bad.”
“Good.” She turned to Declan standing by her window. “I hope you didn’t give them any water. I’m not feeling charitable about bathroom breaks.”
Declan leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“You’ll find him, lass,” he said. “Mind your man doesn’t kill ‘em both when you do.”
Sarah smiled and thanked God for Declan’s ability to make her do so. Mike climbed in the driver’s seat and started the Jeep. He put his hand on Sarah’s hand.
“Ready?”
“Mike, what if they’ve left the country?” she asked, biting her lip.
“Then that’s where we go.”
She let out the breath she didn’t realize up to then she’d been holding.
“Right answer.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The downpour was a relentless curtain of rain. Six nights of sleeping in ditches and under rotting logs in the woods for warmth and shelter had made the overturned fishing boat feel like a luxury bed and breakfast by comparison. John crawled to the edge and peered out into the gray deluge. He had felt the nearness of the sea for the last day of walking. The air was sticky and had settled on his skin the closer he walked to the coast.
Gavin had come this way.
John pulled the last energy bar out of his pack. He placed the wrapping in front of him while he chewed and carefully savored each bite. He’d have to plant the paper somewhere easy to find. Not that most trackers wouldn’t look under an overturned boat. John certainly would. But he needed to make it as easy as possible.
Deep in his heart of hearts, he wished both Mike and his mom would just sit tight until he came back to them. But he knew he had already taken too long. They would be looking for him. He could erase all traces of his trail and hope they’d give up and go home which, knowing those two, wasn’t likely. Or he could let them see what he saw: that Gavin was headed to the coast and more likely beyond to the United Kingdom.
John swallowed the last bite of his breakfast. Going forward, finding things to eat would be a whole lot trickier.
The shower eased as the first rays of the sunrise began to light up the cramped landing that anchored the line of cement boat ramps along the sea. He was surprised there was no activity on the water. There were a few men fishing from a lone, dilapidated dock, but the half dozen fishing boats he could see all remained beached.
John thought of the message Gavin had left for him and flushed with pride that he’d known John would follow him. Gavin had left his car keys—a jump drive on a glittering chain that John had seen hundreds of times—at a crossroads marker directing to inland and coastal routes.
The keys were half buried on the eastern side of the sign that pointed to Wexford—and anchoring the crumpled note written in Gavin’s hand:
John—
Heading to Fishgurd!!!
So go home, ya berk
Gav
Nothing about the note made any sense. Why leave a note if you wanted to ensure no one followed? Why not just cover your tracks? Does that mean the note was written under duress? And why Fishguard? Gavin’s grandfather lived in Fishguard. Is that why he was going there?
John squirmed out from under the boat, cringing as the first sheet of rain slammed into him. But his hunger was gone and he was well rested. Clearly he wasn’t going to be able to have everything go his way. He hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder. By keeping to the woods and avoiding the roads, he’d also avoided any possibility of running into anyone who might want to relieve him of his bag. In it he carried a gun, a little money—largely useless but perhaps worth more in England—and a GPS receiver and charger, also presently useless.
He’d seen the ferry barge yesterday when he first arrived. It was around the front of the first row of fishing cottages that faced the sea. Staying as close as possible to the line of submerged boat ramps to prevent anyone from taking him unawares, John jogged down the edge of the water line until he turned the corner. The barge was still there.
The barge driver sat inside the wooden pilot’s cabin in the center of the barge. John shivered in the rain and walked closer until he came into the driver’s field of vision. He could see the steam rising from the cup of tea in the man’s hand. The pilot opened the door of the cabin and stood there, holding his tea and watching John approach.
“Excuse me,” John called. “I’d like to cross today.”
The man looked at him as if John was a hallucination. Finally, he beckoned John to come down the gangplank and onto the barge. Flipping his collar against the downpour and fighting the trembling against the cold, John hurried down the walkway and boarded. He walked to the cabin where the driver still stood in the door.
The driver was tall with a substantial gut straining across a sweater full of holes. He wore athletic shoes and jeans that looked like they’d never been washed. He frowned at John.
“You say you want to cross, young fella? You have the fare?”
John licked his lips as he saw the man’s eyes go to the pack on his back.
“I’m happy to work for my passage,” John said.
“You a Yank?” the man said in surprise.
“Maybe.”
“No worries, lad. I don’t care where you come from.” Suddenly the man stepped back and motioned him inside. John let out a sigh as the immediate warmth of the shelter hit him.
“Why do ye want to go to Wales?” the man asked, examining John from head to toe.
“I have a friend there.”
“Well, you’re that lucky, so ye are. Today’s my last trip across. Probably in my lifetime. Not sure I should even be going today except I’ve got a load of trout to deliver that ain’t been paid for yet.”
“Why are you stopping then?” John asked. “If it’s profitable for you?”
“Sure, you haven’t heard of the sickness what’s coming?” The driver scratched his large belly with a free hand. “The only thing that’ll save Ireland now is we’re cut off from it by the sea.”
John looked out the window toward Wales. Visibility was poor today but even on a good day he wasn’t sure he’d be able to see the other side. Sheets of grey water poured from the skies.
The barge ferry driver continued. “My man in Fishguard says there’s Irish guards in the streets making sure nobody comes across from there. Even people in their own crafts, if they’re caught trying to cross to our side—they’ll be shot.”
John leaned against the wall in the small pilot’s hut. He felt a flutter of fear and premonition. “All because of this illness on the mainland? It’s that bad?”
“Aye. So I’ll be thanking you for helping to clean me trout in exchange for passage and wish ye safe journey, too, boyo,” the pilot said, noisily finishing off his tea before giving John a stern look.
“Just know this—you’ll not be coming back.”
<<<<>>>>
The adventure continues!
Rising Tides
Book 5 of the Irish End Game Series
The tides are definitely rising in the 5th installment of the Irish End Game Series. Rising Tides is the story of two desperate journeys to find lost loved ones culminating in a shocking discovery—one with the power to destroy all of Europe. Mike and Sarah, searching for both John and Gavin in every bungalow and hillock in Ireland in the midst of a mysterious world plague, instead find the stuff of every parent’s nightmares.
RISING TIDES
Book 5 in the Irish End Game Series
Susan Kiernan-Lewis
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
>
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Epilogue
CHAPTER ONE
It is impossible to believe that this is the same vibrant city I first flew into four years ago.
Sarah sat in the front of the Jeep Wrangler, an uneaten sandwich on the console between her and her husband, Mike. She stared out over the panorama of the damaged city.
Dublin. Once the grand mecca for communications technology and creative invention. The phoenix that rose from its own ashes when the city recreated itself from hatred, bigotry and fear now hovered over it like a black harbinger of doom. Sarah didn’t want to think of her first visit to Dublin…with David. It wouldn’t help. In fact it would make everything worse.
Because John had been there, too.
“You all right, then, love?” Mike asked, his face knitted in worry as he watched her.
She attempted a smile. “Just letting memories get in the way.”
He reached over and squeezed her hand firmly with his large, warm one.
“One night,” he said. “And we’ll be on our way.”
It was always one more night. Always something standing between Sarah and the effort to get going, get out—and start searching. And how long had John been gone now? A week? How far could a child get in a week? Especially a child as inventive and intrepid as John?
But Mike was right. Surely to God, this had to be the end of the waiting.
After leaving their fortified compound in southern Ireland, they’d driven into the city late this afternoon on what was left of the M50 motorway, the semicircle road which intersected Dublin. Their two passengers—prisoners, really—were unceremoniously deposited with the New Dublin Garda Sìochàna although not quickly. At least not as quickly as Sarah had hoped.
Why was she surprised? When they drove over the Father Matthew Bridge on their way to the government complex, it occurred to her that someone might have an issue with one of their prisoners—a Catholic priest. Would he get a fair trial? Would they be willing to imprison him?
In the end, she had to let it go—as Mike was always urging her to do. Let whatever would happen, happen. And if it turned out she couldn’t live with it, well, she could always come back and deal with it later.
Sarah ran a hand over her face to quell the nausea building in her.
Trust me to get morning sickness now of all times. It was strange enough to be pregnant at forty-four. She passed a hand over her abdomen and watched Mike’s eyes follow the movement.
At least this little one is safe and I know right where he is at all times.
“You’re not hungry, Sarah?”
“Just a little queasy.”
“Aye, well, we’ll save it then.” He wrapped a sandwich in paper and stowed it inside the console.
The United States embassy—or what was left of it—had offered them quarters for the night which Sarah and Mike were only too happy to take them up on. Surprisingly, Dublin didn’t look like a ghost town. Far from it. If anything it looked like every person in the entire country had opted to move here after the bomb dropped.
Except for government vehicles, there were no cars on the streets. She and Mike had prompted more than a few curious stares when they drove into town. And because there were few working cars in Ireland—and most Dubliners wouldn’t know the tail end of a horse—the city dwellers appeared to have latched on to the next smartest thing. There were bicycles everywhere. They were parked under trees, inside stairwells, and in the burgeoning greenscapes that seemed to be slowly taking over the city.
As Sarah watched the cyclists zip up and down the streets without benefit of traffic lights or any obvious road rules, she couldn’t help but wonder where these people had to go in such a hurry. And what did it matter? Why not just walk? There was no job to get to, no late afternoon barista date to make, no classes to be late for. Was it just habit?
The light had nearly faded, reflected from the broken windows in the building opposite where they sat eating their supper. Although she hadn’t known Dublin well before the bomb dropped, Sarah was pretty sure this section of town would have been the business district. Even now, four years later, the glass and stone buildings shot straight up into the sky. Without working elevators—or employers—she found herself wondering what the structures were used for.
Since there was no one to care where they went or what they did, she and Mike parked in the middle of Saint Stephen’s Green. Sarah thought she saw glimpses of the city trying to right itself but possibly that was just the carry over from their long day spent in fairly modern environs processing the prisoners. The complex where the Garda Sìochàna and provisional government were housed had electricity to go with its red tape. It was hard to believe that just a few steps outside the government compound were weeds growing out of pavement cracks, graffiti-scrawled walls and streets full of tents, primitive food kiosks and abandoned vehicles.
“It’s in better shape than I thought it’d be,” Mike remarked. A large man, Mike had been a fisherman back before the Crisis. He looked wedged into the driver’s seat of their Jeep Wrangler.
“All of these people,” Sarah said in amazement. Even the park was crammed with tents and sleeping bags. Some people had piled the park benches with what appeared to be all their worldly belongings. “It’s like a whole city of homeless people. Why don’t they just go sleep in the abandoned buildings?”
“Maybe they do when it gets cold,” Mike said, finishing off the last of the sandwich they’d bought with the food chits given to them by the Embassy to use as money on the street. The food sellers would then exchange the chits to pay for rent or other supplies they needed from the government.
“It’s a hell of a way to live,” she said softly as she watched a young mother holding the hand of a child as she wandered through the park.
“Now, don’t be inviting all of Dublin to come live with us in Ameriland,” Mike said. “We’ve got about all we can handle as it is.”
Sarah turned and rubbed his arm. If she was exhausted, then Mike must be too. He’d driven the whole way up from the south.
“Let’s go find our quarters,” she said. “I want to be on the road early tomorrow.”
*****
Liam O’Reilly stood in the window of the provisional government building and watched the streets below. The compound was encircled by tall stone walls, each topped with coiled barbed wire. Even after four years more people came pouring into Dublin every day. It’s a wonder the poor sods survived as long as they had out in the country. Even so, most of them got a rude awakening in the city.
“It appears to be a hundred kilometers south of here,” his assistant Shane Sullivan said as he leaned over O’Reilly’s desk. O’Reilly turned from the scene outside the window. Sullivan had been a Junior Minister before the bomb dropped. Like O’Reilly, he had moved up considerably in the last few years. With no family to hinder or distract them, both O’Reilly and Sullivan had done well with the changes in the new world political scene.
And if this business with America carried forward, there might literally be no end to how far they could go.
“What was there before?” O’Reilly asked, walking back to the desk.
Sullivan was looking at a map of Ireland, his thick index finger sitting on a spot midway from both coasts where Donovan’s compound was located.
“Nothing. A pasture maybe.”
“Had to be owned by someone.”
“Probably but whoever it was, he’s likely dead now. That area had a blistering series of attacks from
local gangs right after the bomb dropped.”
“How long has his compound been there?”
Sullivan frowned. “Four years? Why?”
“Is it true they’ve got electricity there? And electronics? That it’s a world unto itself?”
“I think so. Why?”
“We’ll have to do something about it.”
“She’s an American national.”
“She’s whatever we say she is, Shane. Her passport, if she still has one, is bollocks. Besides, the US has its hands full right now.”
O’Reilly’s mobile phone rang. He picked it up from the desktop and answered it after a brief inspection of the screen.
“I wondered when I’d hear from you.” He shook his head at Shane to indicate he needn’t leave. He listened quietly for a few seconds and then interrupted the person on the other end of the line.
“I don’t give a sod about any of that,” he said. “As long as you hold up your end of the deal. You do still want the lithium, I assume?”
He watched Shane sit down at hearing O’Reilly’s words, his face its usual study of worry and indecision.
“It’s really very simple,” O’Reilly said into the phone. “Either get the cure or promise me no one will get it.” He disconnected and tossed the phone down on the desk. Shane’s eyes stayed on the phone.
“Our man in London,” O’Reilly said, enjoying Shane’s confusion.
“Is everything all right there?”
“I’ve got it handled.”
“You can’t trust the British.”
“He’s Scots, as it happens.”
Shane snorted and looked about to speak but stopped himself.
“Don’t worry, me boyo,” O’Reilly said, grinning at his aide. “The end goal is the only thing that matters and that is well in hand. Trust me.”
Shane stood up and pointed to the map on the table in front of them.
Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6 Page 25