Free Falling

by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” she said. “Dad will let us know in a bit.”

  David stood in front of the TV holding his breath and trying to take it all in. His mind churned with the terrible images, the panic in the newscasters’ voices, his own tumultuous thoughts.

  An hour later, the rain had stopped and David and Sarah sat on the front steps of the cottage. The clouds had blown away, leaving a clear blue sky. John hung on the fence of the adjoining corral talking to the horses and feeding them carrots.

  “What do we do?”

  David shook his head. “It’s bad,” he said. “They’ve shut down all flights in and out of the States. Indefinitely.”

  “So we can’t get home.”

  “And I tried to call the American embassy in Dublin,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “But it just goes to a recording.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Should we drive back to Limerick?” Sarah watched her son as he laughed while petting the forelock of the biggest horse.

  David frowned. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said. “It’ll be crazy there. Probably wouldn’t be able to get a hotel room. At least here we have a place to stay.”

  “Did they say who did this to us?”

  David took his wife’s hand.

  “They’re suggesting some place in the Middle East, big surprise. They made it sound like whole cities are affected.”

  “Which cities?” Sarah felt the panic rise in her throat. “Washington?”

  “I...I couldn’t tell. It wasn’t much in the way of news. It was just, you know, mayhem and fire and explosions. The Irish newscasters didn’t know. Just knew the US was under attack.”

  All of a sudden a bright flash appeared in the sky, turning the horizon briefly white with its intensity.

  “John!” David shouted. “Come to me, son!”

  The boy dropped from the fence, and trotted over to where his parents sat, a questioning frown on his face in response to the panic in his father’s voice.

  It was over in less than five seconds. The brightness faded and the sky returned to a bright Irish fall day.

  “What the hell, David?” Sarah was on her feet. “What just happened?”

  “I’m not really sure,” he said.

  “What was that big flash?”

  “Sarah, calm down. Let’s all just calm down.”

  “I’m scared, Dad,” John said, prompting David to hold him even tighter.

  “Look, you guys,” David said. “We’re together and we’re safe. That’s what’s important.”

  Sarah looked at him with fear growing in her eyes. “Something just happened here, didn’t it?” she said.

  “I don’t know, Sarah,” David said. “Maybe.”

  She stood up. “We need to get into town and see if anybody knows anything there.”

  He could see she was terrified. His own heart was pounding fast in his throat. He looked out over the pasture where the flash had lit up the sky. Everything looked so normal now. So peaceful. So beautiful. The birds were singing.

  “Sarah, let’s stay calm, okay?”

  “John, wanna go into town?” Sarah held out her hand to him. “Keys, David, please,” she said, her voice becoming shrill.

  David stood up. “I’ll drive,” he said.

  They all got into the small rental car, buckled up and then sat in the driveway facing the main road.

  The car wouldn’t start.

  “Crap,” David said.

  Sarah looked over at him. “Do you know something?” she asked in a frantic note.

  “I was afraid of this,” he said. “The car’s too new. If there’s really been some kind of nuclear explosion—”

  “Are you serious?” Sarah gaped at him. “Is that what you think happened? Ireland had a nuclear bomb dropped on it?”

  “Mom? Dad? Is everything okay?” John’s voice shook.

  David opened the car door. “Let’s don’t do this here,” he said. “Come on, sport. We’re not taking the car today.”

  As Sarah jumped out of the car. Her purse spilled onto the dirt driveway.

  “David, why is the damn car not starting?”

  David ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation. “It’s a world catastrophe, Sarah,” he said. “If something happens to America...I mean…when it is in crisis, the rest of the world is affected too.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said angrily, as if David were somehow responsible.

  John looked from one parent to the other. “Did America get bombed?” he asked.

  David turned to him and put his arm around him. “Yes, son,” he said.

  “So, why doesn’t our car work in Ireland?” he asked.

  “That’s what I would like to know, too,” Sarah said, as she knelt in the dirt picking up the contents of her purse.

  “If England was bombed too—” David said, waving his hand in the air.

  “Did you hear they were?”

  “No, but they’re our allies, and if they were hit,” David said, “Ireland is close enough to be affected.”

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  “That big flash that just happened,” Sarah said. “Was that us getting bombed?”

  “I don’t know, Sarah,” David said. “Maybe.”

  Sarah stared at the car as if she were in a trance. “I guess this answers any question of evacuating to Limerick,” she said, turning and moving slowly in the direction of the porch steps.

  “Or anywhere else,” David said, looking toward the dusky blue horizon.

  “So, now do we ride?” John said brightly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The first day had been the hardest.

  The terror and insecurity of knowing just enough and nothing more was literally almost more than Sarah could bear.

  Were their homes bombed? Was Washington still there? Were her parents still alive? The frustration of no news—of not being able to do anything while death and destruction dismantled their country—was an agony. All she could think was: we have to do something!

  The town of Balinagh was ten miles away—too far to comfortably walk over rough and rocky Irish back roads—but there was no other way of getting there.

  “Why can’t we ride?” John asked for the hundredth time.

  “John, please stop asking me that,” Sarah said. “We don’t know if these horses are used to being ridden—”

  “There are saddles all over the barn.”

  “But if they haven’t been ridden in a while,” Sarah replied as patiently as she could without screaming, “they’ll be too difficult for us to handle.”

  “Not for you,” he said stubbornly.

  “It’s been too long since I rode,” she said. “I’m too rusty to be jumping on some horse I don’t know.”

  “They seem gentle,” David offered.

  Sarah stood up from the porch step where she had been sitting.

  “Both of you, listen to me,” she said with exasperation. “They might be gentle on the ground but hell on wheels once you’re in the saddle.”

  “Why don’t we try one out in the paddock?” David looked at his son who nodded enthusiastically.

  “David, are you serious?” She looked at him with horror. “And what if one of us breaks something? Are you going to set the bone? Horses are not like golf carts, you know. They have minds of their own.”

  So that day they walked into town. In slightly less than four hours, they arrived tired, foot sore, blistered, and thirsty.

  The first person they met was Siobhan Scahill, the dairy and pub owner.

  “Sure, why would you be walking and you with three big horses just standing around?” she said as soon as they walked into her grocery shop which was lighted only by the daylight coming in through the big shop windows.

  Sarah wanted to slap her.

  “Mom says we need to take things slow,” John replied.

  “Sure, it’s slow you’ll be taking things, all
right,” the woman said. She reached over and tousled John’s hair. “But I’m sorry for your troubles. Sure, the Americans are a hard lot to take for the most part but we love ‘em, God knows we do. My own boy, Michael, lives in New Jersey.”

  Sarah tried not to break down crying right in the store.

  “Have you heard from him?” David asked. “Or any news at all?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Sure, no,” she said. “Just something terrible bad, that’s for sure. The telly went out about two hours ago with the rest of the power.” She indicated the dark overhead light fixtures. “My Michael is hard to locate at the best of times. If I don’t hear from him in another few weeks, I’ll start to worry.” She nodded to the shelves in her store. “People have already come to stock up and I don’t expect much in the way of deliveries, now do I? What took you so long to come to town?”

  “We woulda driven,” John said. “But our car won’t start.”

  “No, nor anybody else’s,” Siobhann said. “Although Jimmy Hennessey did say he got his tractor to working.”

  “You’ve got nothing at all?” David asked, looking about the store. “No milk, no cans of stuff?”

  “Sorry, no,” she shook her head. “I’m dead cleaned out. But you’re staying at the McKinney place, aren’t you?”

  “McGutherie,” Sarah said.

  “McGutherie’s burned down last year,” Siobhan said.

  Last year?

  “I’m sure it’s the McKinney place you’re at now,” Siobhan said. “Friends of the McGutherie’s. More of a weekend cabin, not really a tourist rental?”

  “That explains a lot.”

  “But you’ve got the goat, don’t you?”

  “There’s a goat?” John said.

  “Sure, there’s a goat and sheep and didn’t Mary McKinney keep a stocked root cellar? Have you looked?”

  David gave his wife’s shoulders a squeeze. “We’ll look,” he said. “Where are the McGuthries now?”

  “They’ll be living in London, won’t they?”

  “But the emails I got from her said there were caretakers. We don’t know how to take care of horses, or where to wash our clothes—” Sarah felt the panic blossom in her chest.

  “Well, sure you’ll be needing to take care of the horses. Don’t tell me the poor things haven’t eaten since you’ve arrived?”

  “They’ve eaten some grass,” John offered.

  “I suppose there’s horse feed in this root cellar, too?” David said.

  “There is.”

  “And the caretakers?” Sarah persisted, refusing to be shamed by the woman.

  “I’ll not be knowing anything about any caretakers,” she said. “Unless it’s yourselves.”

  “We’re the caretakers. Great.”

  “Who’s been taking care of the horses until now?” David asked.

  “Likely that would be the Kennedys. They live about five miles the other side. Now they know you’re there, they’ll leave it to you, I imagine.”

  “How much for this lantern?” David pointed to a kerosene lantern sitting high up on a corner shelf.

  “Sure, there’s bound to be ten of ‘em at Cairn Cottage,” the woman said.

  “That’s the name of our place?” Sarah asked.

  “I’d like it all the same,” David said, reaching for his wallet. “And I see you still have matches and a jug of kerosene.”

  As David and the shopkeeper busied themselves filling a small but essential shopping bag, Sarah stepped outside and looked down the deserted village street. John followed her.

  “Will we get rickets?” he asked her.

  “What, sweetie?”

  “Rickets. We read about it in school. When you don’t get fresh fruit and stuff your bones start to go bad.”

  “No. We’ll find fresh fruit and vegetables.”

  “How about a hamburger?”

  “That may be a bit trickier.”

  A few moments later, David joined them.

  “She said she’ll hold our lantern and fuel ‘til we’re ready to leave. There’s a little restaurant down the way,” he nodded down the street. “Siobhan thinks they’re still serving. Guess the locals don’t eat out much.”

  “Siobhan?”

  “Yeah, she’s not really awful. In fact, I think she means to be helpful. Just Irish-y.”

  “Let’s eat, guys,” John said, pulling his parents down the street.

  Sarah walked ahead of David. Maybe because she didn’t look like she was walking with anyone, a man coming toward them in the opposite direction got eye contact. Her first impulse was to smile, as she might at the drive-through cashiers of a fast food restaurant, so it startled her when the man leered back. He was thin and young and dirty. Sarah noted his filthy beard and scruffy clothes which looked like he’d slept in them. She smelled him as he walked past. Stung by his visual assault, she turned to get David’s attention as the man passed.

  “Did you see that?” she said. But David was looking at the shuttered and dark village windows. He met her eyes with a distracted, vacant look that told her he wasn’t listening or even seeing her.

  Peeved and tired by the already long day, Sarah shook off her annoyance and focused on keeping up with her son.

  “Wait for us, John,” she called, hurrying to catch up with him and leaving David to his private reflections.

  Later that afternoon, stuffed with mutton and potatoes, they collected their purchases from Siobhan’s store and made the long walk home. John was tired and so fretful. Sarah began limping before they had turned the first corner out of town. And David’s shoulders were aching from carrying the heavy bag by the time, four and a half hours later, they finally walked into the frontcourt of Cairn Cottage at twilight.

  David opened the door to the dark interior of the cottage. He went in first and set the bag down. “Power is definitely out,” he called to them. “Give me a sec to get the lantern lit.”

  “I’m tired, Mom.” John sighed heavily.

  Sarah wrapped her arms around him, grateful they were so far away from the destruction and confusion of what was happening at home, and then feeling instantly anxious about her parents and what they might be experiencing at that very moment. It seemed like such a basic, little thing, she thought, to have a warm, well-lit place in which to curl up tonight. “I know, angel,” she said. “Just a few more seconds and you’ll be in bed.”

  A few moments later, the one room of the cottage glowed warmly from the kerosene lantern.

  “We’re good, family,” David said.

  Later that night, as John slept soundly in the big bed, Sarah and David sat on the porch with the lantern between them and finished off a bottle of Pinot Noir.

  “I can’t imagine what’s happening at home,” Sarah said, shivering in her heavy sweater.

  “I know.”

  “And you don’t have any theories about what happened? That’s so unlike you.”

  David sighed. “From what I saw,” he said, speaking deliberately as if carefully choosing every word, “and from what Siobhan heard from other people in the area, I think what happened is that a nuclear bomb exploded over London or maybe the Irish Sea.”

  “Oh, my dear God.”

  “And the reason that’s my best guess,” he said, putting his arm around Sarah and giving her a reassuring squeeze, “is because of the big flash we saw earlier and because none of our electronics work any more.”

  “Nuclear radiation did this?”

  “No, it’s called electromagnetic pulse. It’s hard to explain but the results of it are what we’re experiencing now.”

  “If it is this electromagnetic thing, how long until things get back to normal?”

  “Everything has to be rebuilt,” he said. “All the cellphone towers are fried, all the cars, the power grid. It’s a total destruction of the infrastructure.”

  Sarah stared out into the dark Irish night.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, her voice a w
hisper.

  “I’m sure everyone is already working on rebuilding things,” he said. “But it will take time.”

  “In the meantime,” Sarah said, “We’re safe?” She looked at him for confirmation.

  “We’re safe,” he said.

  She tilted her face up to her husband. They kissed and then sat in silence a moment. Sarah could see David was working something out in his mind. As the wife of a philosophy professor, she was used to long bouts of silence between them as he mulled through complex thought.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “Just wondering,” he said, rubbing her arm and looking out into the black Irish night. “Where do you imagine that damn goat is?”

  When they awoke the next morning, Sarah made cheese sandwiches and mugs of tea for breakfast. The first thing they did was locate the root cellar. They found potatoes, two cases of a decent Côte de Rhône, three bags of flour, sweet feed for the horses, and several dozen tins of meat.

  David dragged a bag of feed and the three of them went into the stables. It was obvious that the horses’ stalls had not been mucked out for weeks.

  “Oh, shit,” Sarah said when she saw it.

  “Literally,” David said.

  “What do we do?” John asked, holding his nose.

  “First, we get them out of there to someplace where they won’t run away so we can feed them and clean out their stalls,” Sarah said. “I’ll do one and you do two,” she said to David. “And you stay out of the way so you don’t get kicked,” she said to John.

  “Aw, Mom.”

  She took a leather halter off the hook in front of the first stall.

  “I can’t believe we’re on our own with these animals,” she said. “Unbelievable.”

  She opened the first stall door. The name “Dan” was on a tarnished metal plaque on the door.

  “Whoa, there, Dan,” she said as she stepped into the stall. “Just gonna arrange breakfast and do a linen change, big guy.” Carefully, she approached the horse and slipped the halter over his head. “Hand me the lead, would you, David?”

  He looked around.

  “It’s like a big rope or leash,” she said, buckling the halter. The horse was big, at least seventeen hands. He was a dark bay with a blaze on his forehead. She was grateful for his calmness and tried to force herself to relax.