Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
Chapter 1
The gate was wide open.
Sarah could see the interior of the compound from where she stood at the end of the straight drive leading to it. There was no sign of life inside. She expected that. They’d all braced for it. But seeing it was something else. Seeing it was a gut punch of reality that imagining couldn’t come close to.
She and Mike had walked sixty miles to get back. Because of her late-stage pregnancy, the trip—which should have taken two days—took four. Now she stood at the end of the long road home looking at the haven they’d left six months earlier, the place she’d dreamed of so many nights on the road—their place of fellowship and comfort. And her strength began to falter.
There was no way their friends and family—Fiona, Declan, Archie—would have left the gate open. Absolutely no way. The fear Sarah had pushed aside ever since John told them he’d found the compound abandoned now slithered unabated into every part of her.
Mike put a hand on her elbow to steady her as they stood in the road. Dark rain clouds threatened overhead.
“You all right, love?” he said in a low voice.
She took a deep breath and leaned on his arm. If anybody wasn’t all right about this, it was Mike. Ameriland was his creation. Every nail in every cottage, he’d either pounded in himself or directed. Every family who lived here he saw as his personal responsibility.
“I’m good,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. “Just give me a minute.”
Sarah’s son John trotted up to them.
“Mike?” he said. “You mind if Gavin and I go on in?”
Sarah looked at Mike, her eyes wide with worry. What if there were bandits or wild animals inside?
Mike’s son Gavin and daughter-in-law Sophia came to stand next to them. All five stared at the looming compound walls at the end of the long straight road.
“Hold up,” Mike said to John, “and we’ll finish the journey together.”
Sarah saw the impatience in John’s face. At fourteen he was still so young. Too young to realize the only thing waiting for them inside those walls was pain.
“I can’t believe it,” she murmured, still staring at the open gate. “What could possibly have happened?”
Mike didn’t answer but she felt the tension in his grip as he held her arm. She stumbled as they walked and Mike’s fingers pinched into her to keep her upright. She pulled her arm from his grasp.
“All of you go on,” she said. “Just do me a favor and don’t get shot.” She put a protective hand on her abdomen. The baby, clearly awake and annoyed at the adrenaline and nervousness Sarah was channeling its way, kicked and squirmed as if to say Go in already!
Gavin led the way with John right behind. Sophia looked at Sarah, her brow knit in concern. Mike patted her on the shoulder as he walked past.
“Stay with Sarah,” he said. “We’ll give the all clear when you’re to come in.”
He strode down the remaining yards to the compound and disappeared through the gate. Just the sight of him—so tall and broad shouldered, so sturdy in the face of whatever trial they’d had to face in the last six months—vanishing inside, made Sarah quicken her own steps.
“Da says we are not to follow just yet,” Sophia said with her thick Italian accent.
“It’s abandoned,” Sarah said, sounding more confident than she felt. Although most people—even those who’d taken over a compound that didn’t belong to them—might logically lock their doors, who’s to say what thugs and riffraff would do? Perhaps the people inside were so drunk they didn’t know or care that the gate was wide open.
Still holding her abdomen, Sarah stepped through the gate. John stood to her immediate left on the porch of the cottage that used to be theirs. Gavin was already coming from the back of the compound where the gypsies lived. His face was solemn. Mike was nowhere in sight.
Even without looking in every corner herself, there was something about the feel of the place that told Sarah it was deserted.
“It is much as Gavin described to me,” Sophia said quietly.
Sarah’s stomach clenched in nausea. The atmosphere of the place was so violated, it was hard not to believe that something bad had happened here.
“Did you find anything?” she asked Gavin.
“Nah. Da’s checking out the garage and the southern perimeter. Find anything, John?” he called.
John shook his head. Sarah knew her son felt guilty about his part in all this, as if his leaving had somehow triggered whatever had happened to the compound. Was that possible? Were they connected?
“I need to sit down,” Sarah said moving to the center fire pit in front of the cottage. She could tell it was long cold. She sat on one of the stacked cairns. The gypsies—and old Mickey Quinn—had often sat here in the evenings telling stories, singing and drinking poteen. She knew what had happened to poor Mickey—but what of everyone else? There was nothing obviously out of order with the place. It hadn’t burned or flooded. It hadn’t been taken over by anyone else.
What would make everyone just pick up and…leave?
John jumped down from the porch and joined them in front of the fire pit. It occurred to Sarah that at least they hadn’t found any bodies. In her mind, that meant there was still hope that whatever had happened, it could all somehow be put back together again.
**********
Checking the stables was the first order of business, Mike thought as he strode toward the back of the compound. He could tell from the minute he walked through the gates that there was nobody in the place. Hell, the gate swinging open and unbarred had said that loud and clear.
The silence of the place was overwhelming. Not a goat or a horse’s whinny. Yes, it was deserted. But hadn’t they known that since the minute John had told them so? Every step they’d taken to get to this point from Rosslare had been filled with dread, some of it voiced and some of it just germinating and growing in his mind as they travelled.
He had been so sure that the answer to why they had all left would be clear to him once he saw the compound. But that answer was no more evident than it had been on the road from Rosslare. There was nothing obviously wrong with the place to hint that the people had been driven out. With the exception of the odd campfire remnant here and there indicating the compound had been visited by transients, the place looked much as it had the day Mike and Sarah left five months ago.
Mike heard the faint sounds of voices conferring at the front of the compound. Sarah and Sophia must be inside. He’d forgotten to tell Gavin to pull the gate closed but until they found out if they were truly alone inside, perhaps that was just as well. The stable was located next to the garage they’d built the year before. When Mike saw the stable doors open, he realized with dismay how much a part of him had been hoping the animals might still be there.
With no one to feed or care for them? He shook his head. Like most hope, it had been irrational. But he’d held it even so. He approached the barn slowly and then stopped. Large tire tracks led from the garage.
There was only the heavier truck left after he and Sarah took the Jeep Wrangler. The garage door was open and as he walked closer, its darkened interior morphed slowly into a cavern filled with trash and empty, tipped-over fuel cans. There was no darkened hulk inside where the truck should be. The tracks told that sto
ry clearly. They looked to have once been carved deeply into the dirt but months of wind and rain had erased all but shallow outlines. Whoever had taken the truck had taken it fully loaded.
He walked to the stable and glanced in briefly to confirm that there were no horses inside. He saw the leather tack and harnesses still on their hooks, and the saddles perched on their wooden racks.
So they didn’t take the horses but either freed them or just let them wander away as they would. Mike tried to imagine Declan agreeing to any of this. He tried to see his brother-in-law—so logical and practical—letting their horses just…go. Mike walked away from the stables in frustration.
Horses gone, truck gone and loaded with God knows what, everyone in the place gone. He glanced up at the northern watchtower where they kept most of their surveillance and communications equipment—at least whatever Declan hadn’t destroyed last fall in a moment of insanity. It was likely that the truck was loaded with food stores and their armory but only a careful inventory of the camp would reveal exactly what was missing.
He knew Sarah would be getting nervous the longer he was gone but the north watchtower was an ideal place to survey the entire compound. He picked up his pace heading toward it, scanning his immediate surroundings as he went. Everything looked normal, everything in order. That was what was so maddening. There wasn’t even a tipped over bench to indicate there’d been a struggle or an attack.
It was like they all just vanished.
As he turned the corner around the last line of cottages and mini-sheds which bordered the perimeter of the compound, he saw the first thing since entering the camp that looked out of place. In the small patch of garden that used to belong to old Siobhan Murray was a wooden table with a large bowl in the center. Frowning, Mike walked over to the table. The bowl was full of rainwater and a bloated mass of spongy material floated at the bottom. It was dough. Set out to rise.
And someone had never come back to fetch it. He realized this was the first piece of evidence that showed that something unexpected had happened. As he looked away from the bowl, he saw a scrap of color on the ground that caught his eye. Stepping behind the table, he stopped.
A body lay on the ground. Now mostly bones and tufts of hair, the flesh destroyed by weather and animals, it had on leather boots and a floral blouse and skirt. Even though he knew the hair was wrong to be Fiona, Mike’s heart seized up at the sight. It was what he’d been fearing to see around every corner and down every path.
Chapter 2
All of the food stores were intact. Not only had their people not taken any of the food harvested last year—but whoever had squatted in the place in the interim hadn’t known about it or bothered to take it either.
Sarah sat with Mike opposite John, Gavin and Sophia at the table in her old cottage. John and Gavin had found wood for the cook stove as well as canned jam and sweet potatoes. The bread on the shelves had long molded, the meat in the smoke house was rotten. They still had some smoked fish they’d brought with them on their journey from the coast, which they ate with a bottle of Pinot Noir from the stash Sarah had brought back from the States the year before. The wine was stored in one of the hand-dug cellars near where the gypsies had lived. Obviously any vagrants or transients hadn’t looked there for anything of value.
“Does it make sense that our people wouldn’t take the wine?” Sarah asked as she handed Mike a plate of fish with corn that she’d canned the summer before.
“They must have left in a mad hurry,” Gavin said. “No one who wasn’t the full shilling would leave wine behind.”
“But the guns are all gone,” Mike said. “And the truck, the petrol, the livestock and all the electronics. It doesn’t make sense. Any of it.”
“What could make them leave?” Sarah said, shifting her bulk uncomfortably in her kitchen chair.
No one answered. It was the question they’d all asked, out loud or to themselves, all afternoon long. Why take the truck but leave the wine and the food?
“How long do you think?” Sarah asked, breaking the silence. Mike’s grisly discovery in the northern perimeter of the camp had given a new edge to the mystery and one that seemed to counter the possibility that their friends would be coming back.
It was Sarah who identified the body as Kendra by the woman’s signature wiry red hair worn long in wild tendrils about her shoulders. Even without a recognizable face, there could be no mistake. Every time Sarah thought of Kendra, she wanted to weep or vomit or both. Before they left last November to search for Gavin and John, Kendra had been one of the women who’d stepped up and bravely helped rebuff the group of druids intent on capturing and killing their children.
They found two bullet casings. One on the ground beneath the body and one lodged in the skull. Kendra had been shot and left to the crows.
Gavin sat close to Sophia, his arm draped over her shoulders. Mike stood up and held a hand out to Sarah to help her to her feet.
“At least four months,” Mike said. “Maybe longer. The place has been vacant a long time.” He helped Sarah to the sofa where she sat down heavily. He sat beside her and eased her feet up into his lap. He slipped off her boots and began massaging her feet with his large warm hands. Sarah groaned.
“But why has no one else moved in?” Sophia asked.
“Good question,” Mike said.
“It looks like our people just left and didn’t bother closing the door behind them,” Gavin said.
“It is truly a mystery,” Sophia said, resting her head on Gavin’s shoulder.
“Whatever happened, it’s pretty clear they were forced out,” Mike said. “Kendra’s death tells us that. No way they would’ve just left her like that.”
“But why was she the only one fighting them?” Gavin asked.
“The gypsies wouldn’t fight,” Sarah said. “They’d run.” She looked at Mike who frowned. “You know they would. Declan wouldn’t, but the others would.”
“In the morning, we’ll go into the village and see if anyone’s heard anything.”
“Can I come?” John asked.
Mike didn’t look at Sarah but nodded his assent. She knew she couldn’t always keep John safe and she also knew that her attempts to do so often did more harm than good. Still, it was hard to let go.
“Sophia and I will try to clean up the place while you’re gone,” Sarah said. She looked at Gavin. “Will you be wanting your own place, I suppose?” She watched him exchange a glance with Sophia.
“Here’s good for now,” he said. “Plenty of time for thinking about that later.”
Sophia breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed against him again.
John picked up Sarah’s glass of water from the kitchen table and brought it to her on the couch.
“Everything will be okay, Mom,” he said. “We’ll find them.”
There was always something. There was never just a moment when everything was fine and everyone was where they were supposed to be. Would there ever be?
“I know, darling. I believe it,” she said, forcing her smile to reach all the way to her heart as she said the words.
*****
The next morning broke cold and wet. It was late March. Almost too late to plant. When Sarah asked Mike last night how long they’d been gone, Mike knew they were assuming he was going on the condition of Kendra’s body and to a certain extent he was. But more than anything, he guessed the time frame because there were certain things that should have been done in November and December—things like cutting extra firewood and canning—that hadn’t been done. That meant they’d been gone nearly as long as Mike and Sarah had been.
Could he have prevented whatever had happened if he’d been here? There was no knowing. It seemed to him that ever since Gavin had gone missing six months ago—and everything in between—Mike had been in a constant state of trying to get to the next stage—of scrabbling to find Gavin or John, of trying to hold Sarah together while they waited for John, of hurrying back to Ameriland to
find out what had happened, and now of racing to the village of Ballinagh to see if answers could be found there.
He couldn’t remember a time when life was just one day after another, one foot in front of another. Ever since the druids showed up, he’d been putting out fires and praying for something to happen.
And he was still doing it.
He looked over at Sarah in their bed and marveled that it had been so long since they’d both been in it. They were finally home—with both boys back safe and sound—but now everyone in the damn compound was missing.
“You’re not leaving before breakfast, are you?” she asked around a yawn.
“Nay,” he said, “but I hear the lass up boiling Gav’s tea. What I wouldn’t give for an egg.”
“Maybe you can bring a couple of hens back from Ballinagh?” Sarah sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes.
Mike thought she looked as beautiful as he ever remembered seeing her. Full with his child, her face glowed with youth and life. Her lips looked starkly pink against her pale skin.
“We don’t have time for monkey business, if that’s what you’re thinking, husband dear,” Sarah said with a grin.
“Am I so transparent then?”
“On some things, yes.”
He leaned down and kissed her. “I love ye, Sarah Donovan.”
“I love you, too,” she said. “We’ll find her, Mike. She might even be living in the village.”
“Aye.”
The fact that Fiona and the baby Ciara—not to mention Fiona’s husband Declan—weren’t in the compound felt like the biggest mystery of them all. Nobody was tougher than those two. They would not have walked away without a fight. Mike began to leave and then stopped and returned to Sarah, dropped to one knee and placed his hand on her swollen belly.
“Sure you have to know, darlin,” he said in a whisper hoarse with emotion, “that nothing matters more to me than you and this one.”
“I know.”
“And I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure that he gets the chance to live in an Ireland that’s safe. This is our future right here. Ye know that, aye?”
Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6 Page 49