Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  “We’ll be fine, love,” he said.

  Even she could hear the hopelessness in his voice.

  *****

  “Should we have them picked up?” Shane asked.

  Liam tapped a pen against his bottom lip and stared out the window of his office.

  “No real point,” he said. “They’ve got no money, no car.” He shrugged. “Why not let nature take its course for a change, eh?”

  Shane nodded.

  “Did we in fact seize her bank funds?” O’Reilly asked.

  “We didn’t, no.”

  “Well, it’s a bloody good idea. Do ye see how that happens, Shane? Some of the most fortuitous events in history have come from a totally unexpected source. Take care of it straightaway.”

  “There are a couple of other matters we need to get sorted,” Shane said. “The efforts toward the cure for one.”

  “I’m assured that that’s in process. Or should I say, permanently in process?”

  Shane knew as well as O’Reilly did that the rampant illness infecting most of Europe and the United Kingdom had been the single best thing to happen to Ireland—before or after the bloody EMP went off. With Ireland shutting its borders and establishing itself as the only country untouched by the plague, it had the singular opportunity to rise above where it had always rested before.

  Want a place to hold a high level summit meeting of top world leaders? There’s only Ireland left unaffected by death and illness.

  Want to invest in a country’s natural resources with a workforce that’s quadruple the average population of any country in Europe? Ireland’s workers are second to none in skill set and ability to work long hours for little to no money.

  All countries’ future economic health would be dependent on access to Ireland. All industries factories of the future—garments, plastics, electronics—would need to be sited in Ireland or perish.

  And then there was the matter of the obscenely rich. Got a million or two US and want a spa experience where you don’t have to worry about dying from some disgusting world disease? We’ll even throw in a castle tour and some fishing.

  And it all depended on one thing—that no cure be found any time soon.

  O’Reilly wasn’t a fool. He knew eventually they’d nail it. But not this year. And that gave him the time he needed to build the separatist empire in Ireland that would have the rest of the world—even that bugger America—coming to him on its knees for labor, for natural resources—for one spot on Earth that was safe.

  As he had said many times to Shane: Can you imagine the power of being the leader of the only country in the world virtually untouched by the plague? We’ll be the next US—only better because we’ll avoid all the mistakes they made.

  O’Reilly knew he didn’t have a reach long enough to control all the world’s scientists. After all, until two years ago, he’d been a middle management politician with an office in the basement of the government house. But what he did have was a man in a very high, very trusted position in London government who was extremely motivated to help O’Reilly delay the cure for as long as possible.

  “There’s problems at the mine again,” Shane said.

  “Jaysus, Shane. Do I need to remind you how important that fecking mine is?”

  The same year of the EMP, Ireland had discovered a significant lithium depository off their northern shore. While it would have been a game changer in any economic climate, the fact of a weakening, sickening Europe and United Kingdom tipped the promise of wealth and power dramatically in Ireland’s favor.

  “The bastards are either revolting or dying on us.”

  “If they’re revolting, then we’re feeding them too much.”

  “They need the calories to work the necessary long shifts.”

  “Bull shite. Who’s in charge down there?”

  “Kirkpatrick.”

  “Tell him to cut the rations by a third. If they’re still giving him a hard time, by half.”

  “They won’t last at that rate. They’re already dying at nearly five a day.”

  “Then find new ones. Jaysus, Shane! Do I have to do your job too?”

  Shane flinched but otherwise showed no reaction to O’Reilly’s insult. He stood up and went to the door.

  “If the Donovan compound does have a sat phone,” Shane said grimly, “we need to get to it before those two get back home.”

  “Agreed,” O’Reilly said, swinging his feet onto the top of his desk and picking up a folder. “And as a bonus, I imagine a compound of hardy souls carving a life out of the countryside will have a few able-bodied men who might be handy, say, with a shovel in an ore mine, wouldn’t you say, Shane?”

  Shane smiled. “I imagine they will,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  John awoke from his pallet of blankets on the porch floor. As tired and wet as he’d been last night, there was sickness in the house and it didn’t take a genius to figure out it wasn’t a safe place for him. He tapped on the front door and opened it to see the old man in the kitchen making tea. John watched him shove a chair leg into the potbellied stove. It was next to the nonfunctioning electric stove.

  “I’m Bill Walker,” the old man said without looking up. “You’ll have a cuppa?”

  John remained in the doorway. “Yes sir. Thank you.”

  “She’s gone now,” the old man said as he set the kettle on the stove and turned to look at John. “In the night.”

  John looked in the direction of the bedroom.

  “I’m so sorry, sir.”

  “The doc told us fifty-fifty.” The man sat down on a kitchen stool and covered his face with his hands. John didn’t hear weeping but he could see the old man’s shoulders shaking. He wasn’t sure what he should do.

  A part of him couldn’t believe he’d shot and killed a man last night—without warning. He’d been trained on a lifetime of westerns and American sensibilities. You don’t just kill someone! Even the worst bad guys got a chance to surrender or rethink their choices before you blasted them.

  But not last night. Last night John used the fact that the man thought he was just a stupid kid in order to get the jump on him. Yeah, a part of him couldn’t believe he’d done that. But probably worse was the fact that John had fallen right to sleep last night.

  The old man stood up as the kettle began to whistle. His face was dry as he poured the steaming water into a teapot.

  “I don’t have milk. Nobody does.”

  It made John think of how everyone at the compound had milk and sugar, too for their tea. Plus jam. In fact usually four or five kinds. And always home-baked bread. His mouth watered to think of it. He felt a sickening sensation in his chest. He missed home. He missed his mom and Mike and Gav.

  It occurred to John that he probably shouldn’t drink the tea, or anything else prepared in this house.

  “It’s fine black,” John said. “What will you do now?”

  John had never buried anyone. In fact, he’d only ever watched the compound men do it and he had no idea what the compound women did to the body beforehand. He glanced toward the bedroom again.

  “Oh, I imagine I’ll just wait and things will go along as they’re meant to.” The old man poured tea into two mugs. “I’m grateful for your help last night. She was able to go in peace and I’m thankful to ye for that.”

  “Have they been…coming around before?”

  “Oh, aye. They’re afraid, ye ken. Of catching it.”

  “Once they know she’s…gone, they should leave you alone.”

  The old man looked out the kitchen window.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “When I awoke this morning, I felt the first symptoms of the bugger meself.”

  John’s fingers tightened around the doorjamb at his words.

  *****

  Later that morning, John helped Mr. Walker wrap his wife in a bed sheet and carry her to the curb where she would be taken away for burial—and which would announce to the neighborhood that
the sickness had left their house. Then he set out for the clinic in Fishguard. The body of the man with the bat was laying face down in the front drive. Walker didn’t seem to think it was a problem. The government health workers who went around scooping up the dead every morning would just add him to the pile.

  John was sure he was seeing a preview of life in Ireland if the disease ever jumped the channel. He had to admit it was smart to refuse entrance to anyone from the United Kingdom. As far as Ireland was concerned, the rest of the world was in quarantine. It made sense. John had already made a pact with himself that he wouldn’t worry about how he was getting home until he had Gavin. Together, they’d figure something out. It was just unimaginable that they wouldn’t.

  John knew he was welcome to stay with Mr. Walker as long as he wanted. The only question now was, did he want to? If only a percentage of people got the illness, it was starting to look like the percentage was growing—or people had their data wrong. In any case, staying in a house with one hundred percent sick people in it didn’t add up in anybody’s balance book. He would have to leave. And after bailing on work at Quig’s today, he’d have to find another way to find food, too. But he’d already wasted too much time. If he couldn’t find anyone who’d seen Gavin at the clinic, he would have to rethink his strategy. How could nobody have seen him?

  The walk to Fishguard was hard going because the path wove in and out of a dense tangle of trees and bushes which had grown over the walkway. There was a road but Mr. Walker insisted the footpath was the fastest way. After a while John crested a steep hill and stood on a promontory with his back to the North Atlantic to balance himself against the wind. From the rocky escarpment he looked back at Lower Fishguard. It resembled an artist’s interpretation of a medieval fishing village. Fishing boats dotted placid bays and foaming waves crashed on rocks along the coast. While John couldn’t see Ireland from here, he could see the flotsam and jetsum of broken boats on the shoreline.

  And a body.

  Was the world going mad? Further out, he saw diesel-powered patrol boats with the bright colors of the Irish Garda splashed across their sides. So they were serious about not letting anybody in. John’s eyes drifted back to the body on the beach. Had that been someone who was trying to get home to Ireland?

  He turned his focus to getting to Fishguard. Maybe he’d been wrong and it wasn’t Lower Fishguard that Gavin had gone to, although, knowing Gavin, he wasn’t likely to make the distinction—at least not in a hastily scribbled note:

  John—

  Heading to Fishgurd!!!

  So go home, ya berk

  Gav

  After scrambling down a precipitous patch of slippery rocks on the trail, John could see the newer part of Fishguard below him. Steps had been cut into the steep hillside below, and at the bottom stood a long row of shops. Behind them in the distance were several modern tract housing developments. But at the end of the street he could see what must be the clinic. There was a line of at least a hundred people standing in front of a large building. Most were standing, but some were lying down. And some weren’t moving at all.

  For a moment, John felt a twinge of fear at the thought of going down there into that. He’d thought Lower Fishguard had the disease bad. But it was nothing compared to this.

  The wind from the channel clawed at his jacket and his long hair and suddenly the rain began pouring down. Watching his footwork as he descended the steep steps, John reached the street. At the end of it, shoved out on a precipice overlooking the bay, was a four-story mansion that looked like the Haunted House in Disney World. The sign in front announced it as the Fishguard Place Hotel. But it must have been at least four years since anyone stayed there as a paying guest.

  John tightened his grip on the straps of his backpack and focused on getting past the long line of sick people to the front door. A few gave him a dirty look as he passed them but most were too sick to care. The illness seemed to have hit everyone equally—young, old, white, dark. John had always been told that the UK was better off than Ireland after the EMP. But what he saw now was worse than anything they had in Ireland.

  This was death on two feet.

  He was closing the gap to the front door and could see that on the second level there was a screened-in veranda overlooking the parking lot. There were beds on the veranda. As he approached the front of the line, he slowed to try to imagine how he would handle cutting in front of these genuinely sick people in order to get inside. He looked nervously at one of the listless women in line. Her eyes were so glazed and unfocused that she looked like she was already dead.

  Did he really want to go in that place? As this thought passed through his mind, he noticed a scrum at the front of the line just outside the front door. Several men were shouting and shoving at each other.

  Suddenly, he saw him. In the middle of the crowd, Gavin’s shaggy red hair popped up above all others as he pushed a bigger man aside. John stopped, his mouth open as he watched Gavin present himself to an unseen man in the doorway and then step inside and disappear into the interior.

  “Gavin! Gavin!” John shook off his shock and bolted for the front of the line, pushing past the people in line. The front door was closed and a thin man wearing a surgical mask and gloves stood barring the entrance. He put a hand toward John’s chest but didn’t touch him.

  “Whoa, there, laddie. You’ll wait yer turn now.”

  “Buggering sod!” The man next to John snarled. “Get back, ye bastard!”

  “My friend just went in there,” John said. “I have to go in.”

  “Well, if he went inside then you really don’t,” the man in the mask said. “Unless you’re sick too?”

  The man behind John grabbed his backpack and wrenched it off him in an attempt to get John out of line. “Get out ye bastard!”

  The masked man came to John’s defense. “I will send you to the back of the line if you don’t step back right now.”

  The man, still holding John’s backpack, blinked at the doorkeeper and then meekly nodded. He handed John his backpack.

  “Now, I’m just going to have a word here and then the boy will be leaving. Okay?”

  The man behind John nodded again.

  The gatekeeper turned to John. “Okay?”

  “My friend went inside. I just saw him and I’ve come all the way from Ireland to find him.”

  “Look, I’m sure the doctors are doing all they can in there, me boyo but if you don’t have to be inside…believe me, in there? The healthy get sick and the sick get sicker.”

  “If they’re not getting better why is everyone coming here then?”

  “Because they’re desperate.”

  “I’m desperate too.”

  “Go in that door and you soon will be. I’m sorry. Give me the name of your friend and I’ll ask someone.”

  The doorkeeper adjusted his mask and his eye caught another problem down the line as one woman began vomiting. “Everyone step back!” he shouted. “Do not let it touch you!” He hurried from the door to pull two gawking children away.

  The front door was unguarded. John hesitated and reran the image in his mind. It was Gavin. He was sure of it. And if Gav was sick, that was all the more reason why John needed to be with him.

  He put his hand on the door, pushed it open and slipped inside.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The girl seemed to come out of nowhere although later John would realize she’d been sitting in a hidden alcove in the foyer where was reading a book. There was a mask across her face as she stood looking at John. She had the most expressive blue eyes John had ever seen.

  “Only sick people allowed in!” she said.

  John hesitated. Within seconds the door bouncer was going to realize that John was inside. John looked over her shoulder at the more than sixty people milling about the lobby. It looked like a scene out of one of the first rings of hell.

  The smell alone would qualify it for that.

  “How do you know I’
m not sick?” he asked.

  “I have a gift for the obvious. You’re not sick. So you can’t come in.”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Not in here.”

  “Yes, in here! I saw him come in.” John was desperately scanning the lobby. Gav couldn’t have gone far. He’d just come in!

  “Give me his name and if he’s in here—”

  Gavin had his back to the front door. He was being helped onto a gurney of some kind. He had a weird slope to his shoulders and his hair was longer than it should have been.

  “That’s him!” John said, pointing past her.

  “If I turn around to look you’re not going to run past me, are you? I’ve seen American movies. I’m not dumb.”

  John tore his eyes away from Gavin who, second by second, was morphing into a total stranger. He looked at the girl and the sadness and disappointment welled up in his throat until he thought he’d burst out crying right in front of her. His face must have telegraphed as much because she put a hand out and touched his arm.

  “Oy. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

  “It’s not him,” he said, as he watched the tall redhead being wheeled down a long hall. “I was so sure.”

  The front door opened and the man who’d grabbed John’s backpack was ushered in. He didn’t bother looking at John but stumbled into the lobby where someone in faded scrubs grabbed his arm and led him away. The masked doorman squinted at John.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  The girl turned and picked up her book.

  “Don’t mind us, Paul,” she said to him. “He’s fine. Come on…what’s your name?”

  “John.”

  “Now we just need a George and a Ringo,” she said cheerfully. “Come on. I have a room down the hall.”

  John followed the girl down a narrow hall to a half set of stairs. He could see the feet of all the waiting people outside through the windows by his head.

  He had been so sure it was Gavin.