CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

Katie’s scream filled the house. Sarah lurched to her feet. She needed to get to Katie to make her stop. But out of the corner of her eye she saw the man’s arm raise up. She tried to make her voice form words to tell Katie to be quiet. And then the explosion resounded off the rough stone walls.

Katie, finally quiet, lay on her back, the hole in her chest pumping the life out of her in a steady fountain. Sarah dragged her eyes away from the dying woman to look at the gunman. He was in his forties, balding, with a big paunch. He pointed his gun at Sarah. Her first thought was a prayer that they hadn’t hurt Mike on their way here.

“Oy, don’t shoot ‘er, Pete. I’ll be takin’ a piece of that first.”

The shooter lowered his arm. A much taller man pushed past him. His face was pocked and one eye looked as if it had been stitched closed. He shoved a handgun into his jacket pocket.

“Let’s go,” he growled as he grabbed Sarah by the arm and yanked her toward him. “I ain’t pretty but you won’t be looking at my face.” He glanced around the room as if in search of a bed or a table.

“They got shite here,” Pete said, walking over to Katie’s body and toeing it with his boot in disgust.

“What did you expect?” Sarah’s assailant said. “Check the berk in the doorway. He might at least have fags on ‘im.”

The world seemed to slow down. Everyone was moving in halftime. Sarah felt the man’s hands on her arm gripping her flesh like steel pinchers but she didn’t feel the pain of it like she should. It was almost like the video part of her brain was off track and the physical sensations weren’t matching up with what was happening.

She didn’t look at Katie or try to wonder if Phelan might still be alive. She only knew the moment she was in was being played out for her one frame at a time. The man ripped her jacket open and began to twist her shoulder around to push her onto the floor face first. She tucked her head at this movement and rammed it full force into his nose, feeling the cartilage crunch. A split second later she brought her knee up hard and slammed it into his testicles.

He whimpered and sagged against her. Over his shoulder she saw Pete watching them, his eyes wide.

“Feck me, ye fecking bitch!” Pete bellowed. “What have ye done to Jeff? I swear I’ll make it hurt before I shoot ya!”

When Sarah heard the gunshot, for a moment she thought he’d made good his threat until she saw the third man—the outside watchman—fall backwards into the house. He was holding his stomach and blood gushed out of it. Pete turned and fired his gun blindly at the open door. Sarah heard another shot and saw Pete’s head snap violently backwards. He dropped his gun and slowly crumpled to the floor.

“Mike!” she screamed. “There was only three!”

Please God, let it be Mike.

Mike stepped into the room, filling the door for a moment and blocking out all light. He looked at her ripped open jacket and then at Katie’s body. He walked to Sarah and shoved two more cartridges into his rifle.

“I’m fine,” Sarah said. But he took her arm in his free hand and led her past Jeff, moaning and writhing on the floor.

“You bitch, you bitch,” Jeff said, rocking in agony.

“Wait for me outside,” Mike said, giving her a gentle push toward the door.

“Mike—”

“Just do it, Sarah. Go on now.”

Sarah hesitated and then ran from the house, stepping over the two bodies and Phelan who was face down just outside. Dawn was breaking and there was a soft glow over the sea. The early morning chill pierced through her jacket.

She heard one gunshot ring out from inside the stone house.

 

*****

Daniel Heaton sat at his desk in the Palace of Westminster. Sometimes it was all he could do to believe that he came to work here everyday. Imagine, a Scotsman, an indifferent student and son of a butcher—sitting as a Member of Parliament. Everyday he passed through the Peers Lobby and walked down the Central Hall to enter the House of Commons where the country's Members of Parliament met. Even as a lad, he’d never aspired to this.

His office, although not lavish, was decorated with taste and style. At times like these, sitting in his office and looking through the window at the city stretched out below, he felt glad he’d never married. The fact was, the opposite sex had never interested him but, truth be told, neither had the same sex. Daniel Heaton had been happy to accept early on that his was a singular nature. He was sure he was well enough liked on both sides of the aisle and he never had trouble finding someone to go for the odd pint now and again.

But still, the only person Daniel Heaton MSP had ever really been remotely close to was his brother Finlay. He was fond of Finlay’s girl Gillian, of course. But he saw them rarely and was sure they didn’t pine to come to London any more than he longed to visit the sticks. Still, it was pleasant having a relation you had positive feelings for— probably even love. Made you seem more human in conversations with others. Yes. All in all very useful.

The phone rang and Heaton frowned. The plague had eliminated all tourist and school children tours of parliament but it had unfortunately also decimated support staff in the House of Commons. While there was a central operator ensuring that the more rambunctious nutters didn’t get through to an MP or in his case an MSP, it was still bloody tiring dealing with constituent contact when he’d been so comfortable with virtually none before.

“Hello?” he said cautiously into the receiver.

“How’s the cure coming?” A strong Irish accent purred in Daniel’s ear and he felt a flutter of nausea trickle through his gut. Liam O’Reilly. On paper, such a good idea. In the skin-crawling flesh, less so.

“These things take time,” Daniel said knowing it wouldn’t be enough to pacify the man.

“Indefinitely would be good.”

“I do understand your position, Liam. You’ve been quite clear on the matter. I’m confident a cure is not immediately forthcoming. At least not from the UK. Which is the whole reason I assigned it to my brother.”

“And if Europe finds one first?”

“The signs aren’t pointing that way but if they do, I have people in position who might be able to intercept it before it gets to the World Health Organization.”

“Jaysus, Heaton! Do you have to say this shite over the phone?”

Daniel sighed at the man’s quick temper.

There was a reason nobody liked the sodding Irish.

“We’re lucky to have mobile service at all,” Daniel said. “Trust me, our national security is not in a position to monitor every phone call. Besides, aren’t you using a burner phone?”

“I have a lot riding on this, Heaton. There must be no cure any time soon.”

“Not to worry, Liam. My brother is a lovely man but he couldn’t find a wildly-flatulent ox in a china shop. His reputation for incompetency is renowned in scientific circles. Even the berks here in London had heard enough of his lunatic theories to be astonished when I named him as lead on the project.”

“Do you know how close he is to finding something?”

“My eyes and ears in Oxford tell me he’s working on a new and improved bucket purification system.” Daniel snorted. “Unbelievable. Even for Finlay.”

“So he’s not reporting to you himself?”

“A very secretive man, my brother. Even when his secrets are total rubbish.”

“Yeah, well, make sure he doesn’t accidentally stumble onto the cure.”

“Trust me, my dear Liam, there’s no fear of that.”

 

*****

 

The days that followed the morning Mike and Sarah buried their new friends were filled with relentless, long marches. Mike hunted rabbits which they cooked and ate by day, leaving the evenings to hunger and hiding in the cold, wet woods. While they had a gun now what they had lost that terrible morning was one they found hard to forget. And they were still eighty miles from where they’d left the Jeep—if it was even still there.

Eighty miles was three days of walking in the cold and the rain with little to no food, with discouragement and heartbreak instead of hope that they might be reunited with the boys, and with fear and trepidation at just how quickly warmth and laughter can turn to horror.

Sarah couldn’t stop thinking of poor Katie, how desperately she’d wanted a baby of her own and how much hope she seemed to hold out that she could have that some day—at the compound with Mike and Sarah. To watch both of them come alive with hope for the future reminded Sarah of how she used to feel when the future was something to hope for.

And then to watch it die like so much else had died. So many others.

But worse than the realization that death and evil were right around every corner and under every rock was the stark slap-in-the-face realization that the idea of finding their boys alive in this wicked new world would truly be a miracle. And one thing Sarah knew like she knew every callous on her hand and every blister on her feet—miracles weren’t being granted any more.

The final day before reaching Rosslare they walked the last thirty miles straight down the highway, abandoning the protection of the woods. Sarah’s legs ached badly but she pushed past the pain. Her world was broken down into little bites now. Just make it to the next rise and then you can have a sip of water. Just make it to the Jeep and then you rest. The idea of the Jeep had grown to enormous proportions for Sarah. She knew John wouldn’t be waiting for her there but she couldn’t help but think all would be well, the pain would subside…and she’d feel the baby inside her again.

Ever since they’d left Dublin the first time, she’d felt the little tickling bubbles inside her that she knew was the baby moving around. She’d hesitated to tell Mike because even if he’d put a hand on her belly, he wouldn’t have been able to feel it. It was something only between Sarah and the baby. And as she remembered with her first pregnancy with John, it was a special time that would only last a very brief time.

But she’d felt nothing since the moment her would-be rapist had laid his hands on her. And while she knew she’d experienced more physical pain from attacks in the past, for some reason when that creature touched her she felt the blood in her veins freeze. Had he been so evil that he had the power to extinguish the life in her belly just by his touch? Or had she been so horrified by what she’d seen—the senseless murders of the young couple—that something had seized up inside her, taking the baby with it?

“Won’t be long now, love,” Mike said as he walked beside her. His long stride made it impossible to keep up with him but he slowed his pace for her. If he felt even a tenth of the anxiety and impatience that she did, she could only imagine what that must have cost him. He’d said very little since the horror in the little house above the beach. They’d worked silently to bury the Donovans then simply turned without a word and made their way south.

Now they were nearly there.

“Do you remember exactly where?” Sarah asked. She didn’t think she could bear another night of sleeping in the woods.

“Never fear.”

She didn’t want to tell him she could feel the warmth between her legs that told her she was bleeding.

If only they could get to the Jeep, everything would be all right…

They walked another hour, unmindful of the concern that they hadn’t stopped to find and cook a rabbit. There was food in the Jeep. They walked as the light began to fade from the sky as the late winter afternoon descended upon them. It didn’t matter. They were nearly there and that was all that mattered.

Mike saw it first. He sped up as he turned into the woods and slid down a small incline. She could see past him and glimpsed the metal of the vehicle glittering out from under the bough of tree branches he’d covered it with. Before she got thirty feet from it she knew there should have been more branches, more leaves…

She approached the Jeep after Mike and touched the back fender. All four tires had been slashed. The cloth roof looked like someone had taken an axe to it. The seats were gone entirely and so was everything they’d left in the back.

“I hid our guns in the woods,” Mike said grimly, looking at the ruined vehicle.

Sarah looked at him in shock.

“Why? Why would someone do this? What possible reason would someone want to do this?”

It made no sense. Steal the seats, fine. But slash the tires and destroy the roof?

“People,” Mike said with disgust.

Sarah’s legs gave out beneath her and she sagged to the ground, not caring that the sharp stubby stumps of damaged trees cut into her thighs.

“Sarah?” Mike was by her side, a steadying hand on her arm as if to pull her upright again.

“I needed it to be here,” she said, sobbing. “I needed to drive away from this nightmare! This fucking, monstrous excuse for a life!”

Mike knelt beside her and wrapped his arms around her. At first she struggled, so angry with the world and God and Mike that she wanted to hit him or scream until her vocal cords were raw.

Her sobs came pouring out of her. Mike tightened his hold on her and she let the tears and the sobs wrack her, not caring, never caring again. When she was finally quiet, she simply lay limp in his arms until the cold from the oncoming evening slipped between her and the ground and gently, insistently urged her to move.

“I’m okay,” she whispered unconvincingly to Mike. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, darlin’,” he said softly. “Never be sorry to me. I love ye so much, Sarah. It breaks my heart. But we can do this. You know we can.”

Don’t tell me to be strong for the baby. Don’t make me tell you that the baby is gone. I can’t bear any more today.

There was no sense camping near the Jeep. It offered no protection against the elements and it served to remind both of them of the evil that dogged their steps. Mike left Sarah leaning against the front fender to see if the hidden guns had been found. Sarah watched him go and listened as the woods became quiet once he’d left. It was as if the woods had swallowed him up and now she was alone. All alone with no food, no water, no hope. She stared into the dark gloom where Mike had gone and allowed herself to think for a moment of what she might do if he never came back.

The minutes stretched into an hour. Something was wrong. He hadn’t hidden the guns that far away. She looked around the Jeep. He’d left the rifle with her and she went to it now and picked it up, and checked that there was a cartridge in it.

She moved away from the Jeep into the woods in the direction Mike had gone.