Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games (12 page)

And a cold one.

Night fell quickly once the light started to go. She dropped the sticks and the spindle and the rock and went to wrap up in the thin blanket from her pack. She hated to sleep out in the open but there was no other option. There were no trees big enough to hold her in this section of the park. Declan had said there were caves, but after her run-in with the bear, Sarah felt better about her odds sleeping out in the open.

She pulled the gun out and dropped it in her lap and wrapped the blanket tightly around her shoulders and leaned up against a large rock. It still held a tiny bit of warmth from the day's sun. It was hard to believe she had spent all day hunting for food that she now couldn't eat. She was angry and frustrated with herself but she knew it couldn't be helped. She had made it this far and she was alive.

Tomorrow would bring another day of opportunities. Tomorrow she would eat. One way or the other.

She slept badly, awakening at every creak in the earth, every hoot or peep from any of the forest's birds and creatures. Every time she awoke, she gripped the gun in her lap as if she might need to defend herself against monsters in the dark, and every time she was soothed back to sleep by the calm, normal sounds of a forest just going about its business.

In the morning, she was ready to move on. She steadied herself against a tree after jumping up too quickly and feeling the leafy canopy overhead swirl and rock around her as a result. She would need to eat today somehow or she would be crawling to the coast. She went back to the creek and drank her fill, wishing she had something to carry water in. She packed up the rabbits in her pack and headed into the woods, going due west.

Even hungry, Sarah immediately noticed the difference in her affect. Declan was right. There was still plenty to be afraid of and she kept her eyes and ears alert for animals, or people, who might be lurking in the brush. But the constant fear she had lived with ever since she killed Gil and fled Correy's house, that was gone. Just looking around this wilderness it was clear nobody would be here if they didn't have to be. Surely not the likes of Angie and her riffraff gang.

No, she didn't need to worry about Correy here. And the peacefulness of that gave her a strength and an optimism that helped buoy her in the absence of the food she so desperately craved.

She decided to keep it simple. If she came across water, she stopped and drank as much as she could. When she needed to rest, she set up a stick to measure the sun and confirm that she was traveling west. If she found berries she recognized, she would eat them on the spot and strip the bush by filling her pack. Unfortunately, she didn't expect to find many berry bushes at this time of year. She would stop two hours before nightfall to make the fire. If she failed tonight, she would eat the rabbits raw.

It rained a cold, nasty rain midmorning that got stronger and more fierce as the day went on. Drenched and miserable, she realized that the matter of the fire had been taken out of her hands. She might as well eat lunch as opposed to waiting, because there would be nothing dry enough for her to make a fire with. In a way, it was a relief not to have to fight the battle.

Around noon, she found a stone overhang that gave protection from the worst of the storm, and, using the knife she had taken off Gil, she cleaned and skinned the rabbits. She cut off a small strip of meat and swallowed it without chewing. She caught water in the cup Declan had given her in the pack and chased the meat down with a cupful. Nothing came back up and so she did it again and again until she felt the agony of her stomach relent and although hardly sated, she was no longer starving.

14 days after the attack
, she thought.
I'm alive and I'm fed and I'm moving ever closer back home.
She gave the first honest smile she'd felt since the attack as she drank from the gypsy cup and stared out at the forest through the curtain of rain.

By God, she was going to do this.

T
wo hours later
, the trail was a flood of debris crashing down a flume of muddy water. Sarah sat on the rock and shivered in her wet blanket. The sun had never made another appearance after the rain started in earnest. A lost day. There was no way she could walk in this mess. A flash of lightning slashed at a tree a hundred yards away from her, accompanied by a crash of thunder. Sarah jumped. She pressed her body farther under the stone overhang,

There was nothing she could do but wait. Even once the rain stopped, if it ever did, the flooding could go on for days. The creek had probably overflowed its banks and now whatever had been dry land was underwater. She pulled the blanket tighter around her.

Forty miles in ideal conditions
, she thought.
Forty miles of overland trekking where I might average fifteen miles a day if I find food enough to fuel me and nothing else slows me down
. That's three days if nothing goes wrong. That's three days on the
other
side of however long the storm would slow her down.

She glanced at the raw rabbit and realized she might as well eat again. She wasn't going anywhere at least until tomorrow. She said a prayer of protection for her parents in Florida in the hopes that they still lived, and for her boy and everyone at Mike's camp, and for herself and for poor Dez, and for Declan's family. She ate and drank, then curled up and slept soundly the rest of the afternoon and through most of the night. The last thing she needed to worry about was attack by man or beast. Not in weather that wasn't fit for either.

When she moved her cramped legs and awoke the next morning, the sun was peeking through the canopy of tree leaves and the birds were singing. She felt strong and although she was hungry, it didn't weaken her, just motivated her to get going. Careful not to try to make up for lost time and end up with a sprained ankle slipping in the muddy trails or over fallen tree limbs, Sarah moved steadily west. Her thighs chaffed badly from the wet jeans. She draped her blanket on her backpack in hopes it might dry from the autumn sun shining down.

For the first time since she'd begun her journey home, Sarah almost felt like singing. She walked and scanned the bushes around her for berries. It wasn't until late afternoon—about the time she was thinking of finding a place for the night—that she broke through a line of young pines to see she was at the precipice of a gentle cliff, at the bottom of which was a settlement of several dozen homes.

Sarah stood on the ridge in shock, her mouth open, as she looked down on the small village, each domicile with a smoking chimney of warmth and the unavoidable aroma of cooking suppers.

S
arah didn't hesitate
. She needed warmth and a safe place to rest or she didn't stand a chance of surviving her attempt through the wilderness. She touched the Glock snug in the small of her back and descended the wooded hill to the encampment below. She didn't want to approach quietly. In her experience, people reacted poorly to be taken by surprise.

She prayed for the best and called out as she walked toward the settlement. “Hello, is anybody here? I am a friend. Hellooooooo.”

The children saw her first and Sarah thought that was a good sign. It was much the same at Mike's camp. The kids were usually not focused on their work and were more easily distracted by something new. Three boys and four girls, all around nine years of age, ran toward her and then stopped. One of the girls called out behind her, “Mummy! A stranger's come!”

Sarah stopped and held out her empty hands. She smiled at the children and was relieved to see most of them smiled back. A woman wearing jeans and athletic shoes appeared from behind the line of children. She was wiping her hands on a small towel she had tucked into the waist of her jeans. She didn't look unfriendly, but she wasn't smiling either.

“May I help you, Miss?” she said, eyeing Sarah's clothing and looking behind her to see if she were alone.

“I'm traveling through the Beacons,” Sarah said, smiling but feeling a rush of dizziness at the lack of food. “I was hoping I might stay with you for a night or two. I have food.” She twisted her pack around and pulled out the two rabbits.

The woman smiled. “Well, you're welcome, of course. Are you alone?”

“I am.”

She turned to address the children, “You lot go on and find Sandra's dad and tell ‘im we have a traveler what's come visiting. Go on now.”

The children disappeared in a rush back toward the interior of the makeshift village.

“My name's Sarah. I've become separated from my family and am trying to find my way back. I won't stay long, but a day or two would help me. I'm happy to work while I'm here.”

The woman took a few steps toward her, her hand out for the rabbits. “I'm Lexi,” she said. “Food is always welcome, but news even more so. You're welcome to what we have.”

The group had banded together, not unlike Mike's community—family and friends of family and neighbors. Quickly realizing that the new times would require a different kind of friendship and harmony to survive, they elected a leader and struck out deep into the national forest to create their community.

“We knew there were few enough what would choose to live in here,” Lexi said as she ladled up a large bowl of rabbit stew for Sarah. “But we have plenty of everything we need.”

“Because we
made
it happen,” her husband said pointedly. Adwen was a rough man, with arms coated in tattoos and a shaved head. Lexi told Sarah that he had been in construction before The Crisis, so he was good with his hands and knew how to give orders. In the changed world after The Crisis, that put him high up the ladder in the new society. “We learned how to hunt and we don't waste what we have. We plant what we need and guard the crops from the wild animals.”

Sarah gratefully accepted her second bowl of stew. “I was attacked by a bear up on the highway about a mile from the entrance to the park. I thought bears were extinct in the UK.”

Adwen nodded. “From the zoo. There's one not far from the park. The animals were starving after The Crisis. Not being used to hunting for themselves, most died pretty quick. But some adapted.”

“No bears in here?”

“So far, just the normal stuff.”

“How about wolves?”

“They were one of the ones that adapted. We haven't seen many, but they're in here with us.”

“And foxes,” a little girl said meekly.

Adwen grinned. “Yes, little one, and foxes.”

Lexi and Adwen's home looked not unlike Sarah and David's own cottage back in Ireland. It was primitive but had been made comfortable. It had a dirt floor but Adwen was working to make a wooden floor for them. The couple had two small children, a boy and a girl.

“I worked as a secretary for one of the big Honda dealerships in Hereford,” Lexi said. “When it all came down, me and my Adwen knew we had to leave the city. It weren't safe.”

“All kinds of
human
animals were adapting to the situation, too,” Adwen said, pulling a sleepy child into his arms at the dinner table.

“So we left,” Lexi said. “We gathered together them what was interested in coming with us and we set out. We've been here a full year. We've never been threatened and we've never gone hungry. Not a single day.” Sarah saw Lexi look at her husband with love shining in her eyes.

Adwen nodded. “The Beacons can be a fierce place,” he said. “Not many would choose to live here. Do ya ken how it got its name?”

Sarah shook her head.

Adwen arranged the sleepy child in his arms and smiled at his son, who sat listening by his knee. “The Brecon Beacons are said to have been named after the practice of our ancestors of lighting signal fires on mountain tops to warn of invaders.”

“They continued the practice,” Lexi said, “even in modern times, but more like to commemorate or celebrate a special event.”

“Like when Prince William married the Duchess of Cambridge.”

“Only she wasn't a Duchess then, idiot,” the little girl said to her brother from her father's arms.

“Now, now,” Adwen said, patting the girl's leg. “Hugh's right. They lit the torches when the royal couple married.”

“I'll bet it's a sight to see,” Sarah said.

“Oh, aye,” Adwen said, staring dreamingly into space as if seeing it in his mind's eye. “That it is. That it is.”

That night, Sarah slept with a full stomach in a warm bed. In the morning, she met Lexi at the kitchen table with a large wooden bowl of green beans in her lap.

“What can I do to help?”

“You've done enough just bringing food to the table.”

“Alright, well, what can I do to buy a flint from you?”

Sarah noticed how Adwen lit the cook stove the night before within seconds of their entering the cottage. The little house had been warm and snug all night long.

“A flint?” Lexi nodded. “You'll be needing one for your trip. I think we can help you with that.”

The rest of the day—day 16 after the attack—Sarah pitched mulch onto dormant vegetable beds, dragged buckets of water from the creek to the lean-to where the settlement donkeys and goats were kept, and mended tent tarp with a needle nearly as thick as her finger and about as sharp. She would have left on the third day, but the cold November skies opened up again and for three straight days drenched the little settlement, forcing everyone indoors for the duration.

No longer troubled by hunger, Sarah spent the long hours worrying about John and the trip ahead of her. In an attempt to give Adwen and Lexi a break from her constant presence, she began to spend part of her days in the communal lodge, a large hut at the end of the main byway off which the other huts and cabins sprouted. There, the women in the settlement gathered to swap advice and support one another. If there were babies, they were there in the arms of their mothers. It was where the elderly congregated too.

Sarah had been surprised to see them—it was the older population that had suffered the most from The Crisis. With no medicines and no accommodations made for their special needs, old people had been the first to succumb. This group sat closest to the cook fire in the communal lodge. There were only three old women, but they sewed and minded the children and dispensed what wisdom they could, given the situation.

Evvie was the first to greet Sarah when she peeked into the hut. Her hair was white, not grey, and Evvie kept it twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were very blue and twinkled, even when she wasn't smiling.

“Hello, there,” she said to Sarah. “I heard we had us a Yankee Doodle in our midst.” Her smile dimpled at her own joke. “I'm Evvie, Lexi's mother.”

“Oh, I'm so pleased to meet you,” Sarah said, holding out her hand. She wondered why Evvie didn't live in Adwen and Lexi's cottage but thought it was possible she and her son-in-law weren't a match made in heaven.

She sat down next to Evvie and saw that the old woman was making lace. “That is so pretty,” she said, indicating the strip of worn lace.

“A bit silly under the circumstances,” Evvie said, sighing. “Lexi has mentioned on more than one occasion that I'm a bit useless.”

That totally did not sound like Lexi to Sarah. “Y'all seem to have settled in here pretty well,” she said.

“Oh, my goodness. Are you Scarlett O'Hara? Because I loved that movie as a girl.”

Sarah laughed. “Well, I guess it's true you can take the girl out of the South but not the South out of the girl. Where are you from?”

Evvie smoothed out the lace and picked up her tatting needles again. “I was born in London,” she said. “Lived there all through the war, met my first husband…” She looked up at Sarah. “Not Lexi's dad, mind. I had a career on the stage.”

“You were an actress?”

“I was. After my husband died, I met Alvin and he wanted babies so I quit.”

“Wow. Where's Alvin now?”

“Oh, dead. I'm tough on husbands. That's what my third husband, Mark, says.” Evvie laughed and shook her head and then she sobered. “I do wonder what must have become of him. We heard such terrible things of what was happening in London.”

“Why weren't you in London with him?”

“I wanted to see my grandbabies. The Crisis happened during my visit last year.”

“I'm so sorry, Evvie. I'm sure you must miss him very much.”

“I do,” Evvie said quietly. “Still, my Mark is very resourceful. I do believe he will try to find a way to me, you see. In spite of what my daughter and her husband think.”

“Love will find a way.”

“Exactly.”

Fearing that the conversation might veer toward Sarah's own husband and not feeling at all ready to deal with it, Sarah steered the topic away.

“I'm from Ireland, and over there we all thought that The Crisis hasn't been so bad for the British people.”

Evvie snorted.

“I know,” Sarah said. “It's just that we were hoping England was getting itself sorted out and then y'all could come help us.”

“I don't imagine my country will be sorted out in my lifetime.”

Sarah noticed that Evvie spoke very matter-of-factly. She looked around the lodge and realized that the other women were sitting and listening to their conversation. She smiled at them and they smiled back.

“Is it bad out there?” one woman asked as she nursed her baby. Sarah realized that the child must have been born out here in the wilderness.

“It is,” Sarah said. “I, myself, was kidnapped and only managed to escape by…by sheer luck.”

“Kidnapped?” another woman said with a gasp. “Whatever for?”

“Oh, what do you
think
, Maizy?” the nursing woman said. “Use your imagination.”

Maizy turned her horrified eyes on Sarah.

“You're lucky to be here,” Sarah said to her. She glanced at Evvie, then back to the listening women. “I don't know how long it will take for proper law and order to kick in again, but right now hiding out sounds like a pretty good plan to me.”

“So you'll be staying with us?” Evvie asked without taking her eyes off her needlework.

“No. I have a child in Ireland. I have to get back to him.”

“They stole you away from
Ireland
?” Maizy said.

“They did. And that's where I'm headed.”

“I went to Dublin once,” Maizy said. “It took a long time to get there. And I wasn't walking neither.”

Sarah stood up to leave. “It will take as long as it takes.”

“When will you go?” Evvie asked.

“Tomorrow. The rains have finally let up. I've got a brand new flint to make my evening fires with and a pack full of vegetables and smoked meat. My blistered feet have healed and I've slept five full nights without once being afraid someone wanted to slit my throat or eat me.”

The women laughed nervously, but Sarah noticed Evvie did not.

T
hat night
after dinner as Sarah was sitting in front of the cook stove with Lexi's two children and trying to remember a Harry Potter storyline to tell them, Lexi responded to a knock at the door. In the five days that Sarah had lived with the little family, this was not an unusual occurrence. Most of the families in the settlement had visited her to hear for themselves what news she had to tell about the outside world.

Tonight, Lexi interrupted Sarah's storytelling to ask her if she would step outside to speak with her visitor. Perplexed, Sarah set the little girl, Tabitha, down and went to the door. Adwen was out with the men tonight. He had a still that they were working on, and now that the long days of planting and tending the gardens were over for the season he spent much of his day there.

Sarah went to the door and was surprised to see Evvie.

“Evvie? You don't have to stand out here. Why don't you—” As Sarah turned to usher Evvie into the cabin, it occurred to her that it was strange that Lexi hadn't insisted her mother come in.

“No, dear, thank you,” Evvie said. “I need to speak with you privately, if that's all the same with you.”

Frowning, Sarah stepped out on the doorstep and closed the cottage door behind her.

“Is everything alright?” she asked.

Evvie shook her head, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Of course, as you well know, everything is not alright and I'm sure they never will be.”

Sarah put a tentative hand out to pat the old woman's shoulder. “Oh, Evvie,” she said. “Things'll get better. And you're safe here in the meantime—”