Going Gone, Book 2 of the Irish End Games (14 page)

“Make us a fire.” Sarah stood and pulled out her slingshot. “I'm going to go bring home the bacon.” As she turned away, she stopped and then returned to Evvie and pulled out the handgun.

“Have you ever used a gun?”

Evvie eyed the pistol with what looked like growing horror. “Of course not.”

“Well, it's not complicated.” Sarah placed the gun next to her. “Not that I'm expecting you to need it, but if someone or something comes sniffing around before I get back…”

Evvie touched the gun with a tentative finger. “I will,” she said.

That night, they ate what Evvie said was a badger but neither of them much cared. It was fresh meat. Sarah ate hungrily, only mildly concerned of what the smell of roasting meat might lure to the campsite. After they ate, they faced the fire and let the warmth and light renew and restore them from the long day of walking.

“How much longer do you think?” Evvie asked as she wiped her fingers on the tail of the tattered blanket draped over her shoulders.

“I don't know. I don't have a good method for estimating miles. I was pretty much just going to walk until we reached the highway.”

“And then what?”

“Well, and then we walk to the coast and get on a boat to Ireland.”

“How old is your boy? John, right?”

Sarah nodded. It didn't help to think of John. Up to now, she'd discovered that thinking of him weakened her and made her want to curl up into a ball and weep. “Twelve.”

“That's young. Where's his father?”

Sarah cleared her throat. “Killed when they took me.”

“Oh, dear Lord, Sarah, I'm so sorry. Just a few weeks ago?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“You lost your husband just three weeks ago.” Evvie shook her head as if unable to understand the horror of it.

“Well, it's not like I
lost
him, you know? I mean, I didn't
misplace
him and neither did he die of natural causes. He was murdered.”

“I'm so sorry, Sarah.”

“No,
I'm
sorry. I don't mean to go off on you. It's just…I can't believe it, you know? Oh, what am I saying? You of all people know what I'm saying. People are no damn good. That's all. And it comes out in the worst of times.”

“Not true, Sarah,” Evvie said, tossing a piece of kindling into the roaring fire. “People haven't changed because of the circumstances. The rotters are still finding a way to take advantage. But the good people are still good.”

Sarah had an image of Declan and his family feeding and outfitting her when they had so little themselves. She knew Evvie was right. She just wasn't in the mood to agree at the moment.

“Whatever,” she said.

“And your parents?” Evvie asked gently. “Are they back in the States?”

Sarah nodded. “No word from them or about them.”

“You poor, poor girl,” Evvie said. When Sarah looked up she could see the sadness and the pain wreathed in Evvie's face. She held her arms out and Sarah surprised herself by coming into them. Evvie was stout, whereas her own mother was slim from years of tennis playing and careful calorie counting. But everything else was the same. The love, the comfort.

And as Sarah began to cry, hopelessly, tirelessly, for her own mother, for her boy and her lost husband, she felt somehow renewed and stronger cradled in the old woman's arms.

2
5 days after the attack
.

The day they emerged from the Brecon Beacons National Park, the sun shone bright against a relentlessly blue sky. It had taken a full five days to cover the distance of thirty hard miles. Sarah's jeans were loose and she'd taken to carrying the gun in her front jeans pocket. Evvie, too, had lost weight.

“Why are we not leaving the park?” Evvie asked when they stopped for lunch but didn't move on.

“I'm just making sure it's safe.”

“Are you expecting your friends to be waiting outside? How in the world would they know at which point you might exit?”

Sarah knew Evvie was right, but still she hesitated. The memory of Angie goading her thug to search the corpses in the ditch was fresh and vivid in her mind. She didn't know if it was personal or if Angie was just psychotic—maybe a bit of both—but that was nearly a week ago. By now she would be more determined than ever to find Sarah.

Sarah realized that a part of her was shocked that she had passed through the Beacons without mishap. She had fed herself—
and
an elderly woman—and kept them warm and safe through terrain that was rough and inhospitable and emerged unharmed on the other side.

Now if they could just stay that way.

“Sarah? Dear?”

Sarah looked at Evvie.

“It's not like you haven't had time to think of what you'll do when we got here.”

“I know.”

“And a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single foot forward.”

“Not really helping, Evvie.”

Evvie laughed and stood up. “I'm ready when you are, dear.”

“It'll be harder to find food out there,” Sarah said.

“You're stalling.” Evvie picked up her slim knapsack and turned toward the park exit. “Personally, I have high hopes of finding a proper bed for tonight.”

Sarah checked her gun and hoisted her pack onto her shoulder. Whatever was waiting for her, it was time to meet it head on.

“How far to the coast?” Evvie asked over her shoulder.

Sarah scanned the bushes beside them and ahead. The feeling of anxiety ratcheted up with every step she took now that she knew she was back on Angie's playing field. “Sixty miles.”

“My, that's far. How long do you think it will take us?”

Me, three days,
Sarah thought.
Us, more like six. If we're lucky.

“I'm not sure. Maybe a week.”

The highway at the edge of the park looked empty.

But that's what it would look like if they were lying in ambush
.

She wanted to slink out around the perimeter, hiding in the bushes, gun in her hand. But Evvie was in a hurry to get back to civilization and trotted out of the park and up the long sloping drive that led to the highway.

Sarah pulled the gun out and held in in front of her with both hands. Her head swiveled from side to side trying to take in the full perimeter as they walked. By the time they reached the top of the slope—uneventfully—that led to the highway entrance ramp, Sarah was already tired and her neck hurt.

“Can we hitch a ride, do you think?” Evvie asked peering down the road, one hand on a bony hip as if about to thrust out a leg to entice the next would-be motorist.

“I thought we'd stay away from the highways,” Sarah said dubiously.

“Oh dear, do you mind if we at least give it a try? I'm really hoping to find a hotel room for the night. Just the thought of a hot bath and a toilet where I don't have to use a handful of cold leaves to wipe me bum has given me the will to live for the last day or more.”

“I know it's been tough,” Sarah said, watching Evvie. Could they afford to go into town? Would they be less likely to attract attention because she was no longer a woman traveling alone?

“Here comes something.”

As soon as she spoke, Sarah heard the comfortable clip-clopping sound of a horse drawn cart. The memory of the terrible four days she had spent in the back of a cart much like this one came roaring back to her and it was all she could do not to grab Evvie's arm and dive for the ditch along the side of the road. Seeing Evvie's excitement and hope as she watched the cart approached made her hesitate.

“What if they mean us harm?” Sarah asked, trying to calm her racing heart as she stood with Evvie and watched the cart come closer.

“Then you can shoot them, dear,” Evvie said, smoothing back her hair into some semblance of order.

Sarah hid the gun back in her front pocket. “There's always that, I guess.”

The cart stopped several yards ahead of them. A man in the driver's seat stood up. “May I help you, missus?” he shouted.

“We need a ride to town, if you'd be so kind,” Evvie answered. “Can you give us a lift?”

“Aye, there's room if you'd like to come on,” he said, motioning to the back of the cart.

“I don't like it,” Sarah whispered hoarsely to Evvie.

“Think how much time we'll save,” Evvie whispered back. She trotted to the cart. Sarah kept her hand on the gun in her pocket. The man was probably in his fifties, she thought, although Sarah knew the year since The Crisis had aged everyone prematurely. While his voice was rough and harsh, she could see when she got closer that his eyes were kind, if tired.

He had seen bad things.

And yet still he stopped to give two strangers a ride. In the back of his cart were two large bushels of root vegetables, mostly potatoes.

“If you don't mind sitting in back with the spuds,” he said, gesturing to the flatbed of his cart.

“Not at all,” Evvie said. “What town are you going to, may I ask?” She gave Sarah a quick look to ascertain that she felt it was safe and then walked to the end of the cart. With Sarah's help, she placed her feet in toeholds on the cartwheel spokes and pulled herself into the back. Sarah let go of the gun in her pocket and did the same.

“I'm heading to Carmarthen,” he said. “And yourselves?”

Evvie looked at Sarah, who almost imperceptibly shook her head and gave her a warning look.

“Just a place for the night,” Evvie said, her eyes still on Sarah. “Carmarthen will suit us fine. You're Welsh, then?

“Aye,” the man said turning around, touching his patched cheese cutter cap. “Davey Smail. I bought yon spuds in Llangadog two days ago. Carmarthen's been hit hard since the Yank's Gift.”

Now it was Evvie's turn to warn Sarah not to speak with a severe look in her eye. “I don't believe I know that term, Davey. Whatever do you mean by the
Yank's Gift
?”

“Oh, it's just what some around here call the Black Out, ya ken? We don't know much about
why
it happened, but it's certain as the freckles on your face that it's the goddamn Americans what's brought it to our shores.”

“Well, I'd say that's a safe guess,” Evvie said and winced apologetically to Sarah, who shrugged. She closed her eyes and tried to appreciate the break from walking for what it was—a chance to rest up and still make some distance. But Davey's words reverberated in sinister tones in her head as she rode, leaning against one of the potato baskets.

D
ay 28 after the attack
.

The first night in a bed in nearly a month. The first bath that she wasn't terrorized in the middle of taking. The first time she was alone in a room without a dead body staring at her from the floorboards.

Sarah couldn't wait to leave…and Evvie wasn't budging.

“You said yourself the coast is almost five days distance,” Evvie said. “Just thinking about walking for five days makes me want to sit down and never get up again. You do know I'm old, right?”

Sarah sighed. “I can't leave you here.”

“Too right you can't!”

“But I need to go, Evvie. My son—”

“We've only been here one night!”

“One night is all we have money for—”

“You could work. The woman who runs this boarding house said she would be happy to let you work for our room and board.”

Sarah watched Evvie cross her arms on her chest, her mouth pulled down into a pout.

“I can't stay, Evvie.”

“And I'm too old to go!”

Sarah moved to where the older woman sat and picked up her hand. “The longer I stay, the more dangerous it is for both of us.”

“You don't know that.”

“I do. The people following me are desperate. If it was up to me we'd be sleeping in ditches and avoiding the highways altogether.”

“I can't do that,” Evvie said, her bottom lip trembling. “Just the thought of it…”

“I know.” Sarah patted her hand. “So here's what we're going to do.” She took a deep breath. “I'm going to work for the woman, Alice, just long enough to buy you a week's worth of lodging. That'll give me enough time to get home, get Mike, and come back for you.”

“You're crazy, Sarah.”

“It's the best plan I've got.”

Evvie looked out the cracked and dirty window in the upstairs bedroom that she and Sarah shared. The town of Carmarthen had obviously once been a thriving tourist's mecca before The Crisis—or the Yank's Gift as almost everyone they met called it. But now it was a dingy, ramshackle collection of huts and poorly constructed houses and buildings. There was a large tent city along its perimeter, but from the looks of it, Sarah thought, that was where most of the crime, prostitution and violence were centered.

“One week?” Evvie looked out the window as if expecting to see demons or bandits lining up to break into the boarding house as soon as Sarah left.

“One week. And I'll be back.”

T
hat evening at dinner
, Sarah made arrangements with Alice, the house's proprietor. She was a suspicious, tight-faced woman with bad teeth, but Sarah thought she could trust her. She wasn't sure she had much choice.

“So, you work for me for two days and I let the old one sit tight for a week.”

“Board too, mind.”

“Sure, sure. And when you come back, I get an extra twenty quid.”

“That's right.”

Alice shrugged as if to say it was all the same to her, but Sarah knew the house was only half filled with boarders who could pay Alice in any way at all.

“Where did you say you were from? I can't place your accent.”

“Donegal.” Sarah figured mimicking the way Fiona spoke would be an easier way out of the American accent problem than trying to sound English in England.

“Be faster if you turned a few tricks, you know,” Alice said, peering at Sarah as if wondering if there was something physically deformed about her that prevented this.

“No, thanks. I'm a hard worker. Just tell me what you need doing.”

“Oh, you can be sure of that. Starting tonight, unless you've got any more coin like last night? I didn't think so. The kitchen, if you please. Pedro will show you what needs doing. I hope you weren't planning on sleeping tonight.”

Sarah worked five straight hours that night rinsing dishes after she'd first dragged in buckets of water from the only working well in the town, nearly a quarter of a mile away. The water was brackish and smelled bad. She stripped all the beds in the house and dragged the heavy sheets and blankets to the basement where large vats and washtubs were filled with ice water. She sudsed and scrubbed the bed linens with coarse brushes. The temperatures dropped significantly outside and Sarah found her hard labor her only defense against the cold.

Just before dawn, dripping with sweat, she collapsed onto the wooden back steps of the house, so tired she didn't even feel the chill, her fingers blue and blistered, her legs aching as if she'd run a marathon. She looked due west—the direction where John was—and closed her eyes in prayer.

“Oy, want a bite?”

She turned her head to find a young girl bundled in a thick wool rug sitting on the top step of the stairs to the boarding house. She looked like a blonde Indian. Her eyes were large and almond-shaped, but her skin was light. She was holding out a meat pasty. Sarah took the pastry. She and Evvie had seen the stands set up on the main drag of Carmarthen, but the meat pies were expensive. It took all of Evvie's money for one night and board for two. The fragrance of the pies had tortured Sarah long into the night as she tried to fall asleep. She sank her teeth into the pie and immediately groaned with pleasure.

“Good, eh?” the girl said. “You keep it. I've already had two.”

Sarah forced herself to wrap the meat pie in a napkin and put it in her pocket.
Evvie will think she's died and gone to heaven,
she thought.

“Thank you so much,” Sarah said, refocusing on the girl. “I'll save it for me mum.”

The girl's eyes were bright and seemed to dance as she regarded Sarah. For a town full of so much desperation and pain, she looked remarkably well fed and cheerful.

“No worries. I seen you and the oldie-but-goodie come in yesterday. Where you from, then?”

Sarah recited the lie she and Evvie had concocted. “We're from Gloucester, heading for Narberth. I've a brother there working the fields.”

“Sure you do.”

Sarah blinked at the retort. Did the girl not believe her? In the dim light, it was difficult to see her expression. Come to think of it, what was this girl doing at the boarding house?

“And yourself?” Sarah asked. “Do you live in Carmarthen?”

“I'm from the Kale. Ever heard of ‘em?”

Sarah shook her head.

“They call us Welsh Romanies, but basically we're gypsies. I'm Papin.”

“Sarah.”

“You've got a secret, Sarah.” Papin smiled and Sarah was struck by the young girl's self-possession.

“I guess we all do,” Sarah said, wondering if she was being missed in the kitchen and should be getting back. She stood up.

“A man asked me tonight about someone who sounded a whole lot like you, except for you not being American.”

Sarah stopped in mid turn, her hand frozen on the wooden railing. She turned and took a step toward the young gypsy girl and squatted down on the step to look into her face. When she did, she realized the girl couldn't be more than thirteen years old.

“What man?”

“An Englishman with a lying face and hurting hands.”

“He…he hurt you?”

“He took what I was offering, but wouldn't pay me afterwards.”

The bite of meat pie threatened to come back up Sarah's throat. That explained how the girl had money. “When?”

“Tonight.” The girl nodded in the direction of the street. “There's a pub before the tents. Him and his mates are staying there.”

“What did you tell him?” Sarah's palms were damp and the cold night air lifted her long hair from her collar.

“Told him I didn't know no Yank. Which I don't, do I? What with you being from Gloucester and all. Or is it Ireland?”

Sarah's mind was a jumble of panic and questions. Had the girl revealed there was a strange woman just come to town and staying at the boarding house? How did the little gypsy guess it was Sarah the men were looking for? Were they asking everyone?

She and Evvie would have to go tonight. She couldn't leave her now. The men would question Alice, and likely Papin again, and end up with Evvie. She rubbed a hand across her face trying to imagine how she was going to do this with an eighty-year-old woman in the middle of the night with no food and no way to travel but on foot.

“What is it you want?”

The girl didn't answer immediately. She stretched out her legs and when she did, Sarah noticed that her thighs were bruised and her skirt was ripped. Sarah looked in the direction the girl had indicated.

“I want to go with you. Which ain't Narberth.”

Sarah was astonished. “
Go with me
? Whatever for?” Was someone chasing the little gypsy girl, too?

Papin shook her head as if shaking off Sarah's question like an annoying fly. “Doesn't matter. Besides, I can help you.”

Sarah watched her for a moment before speaking. “
How
can you help me?”

The girl brought her knees up on the wooden step and leaned forward eagerly. “I can move in with your mum while you get away. If she's with me, they won't think she's got anything to do with you.” The girl's eyes were bright with excitement and her words gave Sarah a surge of excitement
. I can leave,
she thought.

But something wasn't right.

“How can you come with me and also stay here with...with my mum?”

“I'll stay just long enough so there's no suspicion on her, like. Then, when I can, I'll follow you. Tell me where you're going next.”

“Alice knows I'm with the old woman.”

“Alice doesn't care who's with who.”

“But if they question Alice, she'll tell them.”

“They won't question her. They don't even know yet about the old lady.”

Yet.

“Oy,” Papin said, “weren't you planning on taking a hike anyway?”

How did she know that?
“Yes, but I'm coming back for her.”

“Then it all works out. Besides, what option do you have? The bloke who asked me about you was a real wanker. I wouldn't want him after
me
.”

Sarah sat down heavily next to the girl. “How long could you stay with her?”

“Until the men leave. Then I'll join you. Where is it you're going?”

Sarah paused. “The coast. To catch a ferry to Ireland.”

Papin's eyes widened. “That's a long way.”

“Especially on foot.” Sarah glanced at Papin's ballet-slippered feet. “You still haven't said why you're so keen to come with me.”

Papin stood up and brushed off the skirt of her dress. She looked to Sarah like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's clothes. “Does it matter?” She looked at Sarah and smiled before turning and walking to the top of the stairs. It occurred to Sarah that the look she gave her was one she might expect to see from a much older, much more jaded woman.

Sarah turned to head back to her room to awaken Evvie and tell her the change of plans. The piece of meat pie still felt warm and moist in her pocket.