Chapter 15

 

Mike could feel the dampness in his very bones. It leeched through his heavy denim jacket and settled in his joints and soft tissues. He swore out loud. He was too old for this shite. Would he ever get warm again? Or dry? He looked around the campsite. Carey slept sitting up by the tree with his head fallen forward onto his chest. Both Gavin and Jaz were already folding their bedding to go back on the horses.

Mike rubbed his hands together. Even though it was nearly April, it was wet and cold in the mornings.

“We’ll make a fire,” he said to Gavin.

“I thought we were leaving straight away,” Gavin said frowning. “Aren’t we in a hurry?”

“Sure, we need to get going,” Jaz said as she walked over to them. “Let’s shoot the bastard and take the Jeep. He said the mines were north of Dublin, didn’t he?”

“Jaz, shut up,” Mike said, “and go find some kindling to start the fire.” He walked over to Carey and kicked his foot. “Oy. Wake up.”

The young man shook his head and squinted up at Mike. “My arms…” he said. “They’re killing me.”

“Why didn’t they take you to the work camps?” Mike asked.

“Jimmy’s me cousin,” Carey said sullenly. “I need to piss.” Gavin walked over to stand with his father. Mike untied Carey’s hands as Jaz came into the clearing with sticks and branches in her arms. She dropped the kindling on the ground.

“You’re letting him go?”

“Do you know how to make a fire, lass?” Mike asked between gritted teeth.

Jaz ran over to him. “He would’ve lined up with the rest of them to roger me, you know he would.”

“I’m not letting him go. The fire, lass, please.”

She watched as Carey and Gavin went into the woods.

“All right,” Mike said tiredly. “I’ll be hearing your story now.”

“I told you,” Jaz said as she began piling sticks on top of a pad of dry leaves. “I left the compound when the Guards came. I told me folks I needed to go find Tommy.”

“Are the gypsies not planning on returning to the compound?”

“Why would they?”

“I don’t know. Help you look? Help us find the others?”

She shook her head and looked up as Gavin and Carey returned. “The people in the compound aren’t our family. That’s all over now.”

“What about Declan?”

She shrugged. “He knew we were leaving. He made his choice.”

Declan was a second cousin to Jaz. Mike considered telling her what happened to him but decided it didn’t matter. It sounded like the family had signed off on him anyway.

“Where are they? The rest of the gypsies?”

“They went to the coast but they won’t stay long.”

“You don’t intend to connect back up with them?”

Jaz held out her hand for Mike’s lighter, lit the leaves and sticks, then blew on the small flames to fan it into a larger fire. He squatted next to the fire, holding his hands out to its growing warmth.

“My place is with Tommy,” she said simply. “I go where he goes.”

“When you find him.”

“That’s right.”

“The thing is, Jaz, I need you to take the horses back to the compound.”

“No way.”

“Look, you can’t go to Dublin on your own. Do ye not see that, lass? You’ll just get…confronted again.”

Jaz jumped to her feet. Her long dark hair swung around her shoulders like a cape. Her eyes snapped in fury.

“I’m going to fecking Dublin! And so are you! What kind of leader are ye? You know where they are, you know they’re prisoners, and you won’t go?”

“We’re going after the women—” Mike said.

“No! We have to go to Dublin! If you don’t go with me, I’ll just go alone. It’s been four months! They need us!”

Mike ran a hand across his face and looked over at Gavin. Carey was kneeling by the fire, his hands retied in front.

“We can’t leave the horses here,” Gavin said. “And I sure as shite ain’t taking ‘em back.”

“Could I be of help?” Carey asked.

“Shut up,” Mike said.

This is all bollocks. We can’t leave the horses, we can’t go back, we can’t leave Jaz, and we have a fecking prisoner for Chrissake. He stood and walked to the edge of the woods with his hands on his hips, trying to think. If they were to reroute—go to Dublin after the men first—at least they knew where they were. He glanced at Carey. Might as well use the wanker for some good. Carey could direct them to the place where they dropped off the captured men. That way they could rescue the compound men and then have the extra manpower to rescue the women.

It wasn’t ideal but it was a plan.

“Fine,” he said, coming back to the campfire. “There’s a pasture up where we first saw this lot. Gavin, you and Jaz take the tack and hide it in the forest. Hide it good. Everything except the bridles. Then ride the horses to the pasture. It’s spring. There should be plenty of new grass to last them until we get back.”

Jaz jumped up and ran to Mike and threw her arms around his waist. “I knew you wouldn’t let them down!” she said. “Thank you, Mr. D.”

“All right, lass,” he said gruffly. “Go tend to the horses. Looks like we’re going to Dublin.”

 

**********

They made good time in the Jeep. Mike estimated they’d get to Dublin before dark. Mike drove and Gavin sat in the back seat with the prisoner. Gavin didn’t complain about the new plan to go to Dublin. Tommy was a good mate of his and Mike imagined Gavin rather fancied the idea of swooping in and rescuing his pal. The only thing that mattered to Mike at this point was speed. Get to where the men were being held. Get them released. Get back on the trail of the compound women and Fiona.

To that end he’d spent the drive to Dublin continuing to grill Carey. Mike had to admit the lad had been extremely helpful and even seemed contrite toward Jaz—although the lass wasn’t anywhere near in a forgiving mood.

“Have you not heard anything about a work camp for women?” Mike asked.

“For lasses?” Carey scrunched up his nose as if the thought was repellent. “What kind of work? Oh! You mean sex?”

“I don’t mean anything,” Mike said gruffly. “But if our men were taken to a work camp in Dublin and our women were captured at the same time…”

“Nah, I’ve not heard anything of the like,” he said. “We were told to find men—strong ones and young ones. Nothing about taking women.”

“So that wasn’t your lot?” Mike asked.

“The ones who raided your fort? No, that’s not how we work.”

“And that is?”

“We lie in wait and waylay ‘em, like,” he said shrugging. “As they come down the road.” He paused. “When I say it out loud like that, it sounds bloody rotten.”

“It is bloody rotten,” Jaz said earnestly. “It’s despicable. How old are you?”

“Twenty. You?”

“Feck off.”

“Never mind,” Mike said with a sigh. “When we come back this way we’ll be needing to ask around the villages to see if anybody heard or saw anything. Ye can’t steal away seven grown women and their children and someone not have heard something.”

Carey reacted as if he’d been slapped. “They took the kiddies, too?”

“Aye. Although maybe we should thank them for keeping them together.”

“Do you have kids?” Gavin asked suddenly. Mike knew Sophia had been on his mind today.

Carey snorted. “No, not at-tall. But me sister does and I’m grand with them. I wonder…I wonder where they are now.”

“How did you get separated?” Mike asked. His tone non-interrogative for the first time since he’d spoken to Carey.

“After the bomb, you mean? I was at a swim meet at school. Me Da was to have picked me up so of course he never came. We lived about twenty kilometers from the school. Over by Ballylickey. I’d begged them to let me go there. It’s not in our district but they had a better swim program.”

“You’re a swimmer?”

“Oh, aye. Well, I was. My coach thought I might have a chance at 2014 in Nanjing.” He shook his head. “We never even got to watch it on telly after all that, let alone compete.”

“You must have been really good,” Jaz said.

“I was. I guess.”

“And you never made it back home?”

Carey shook his head as though in a fog, as though he was seeing in his mind that twenty kilometer walk from his school to his house. “I didn’t.”

“What happened, lad?” Mike said kindly, his eyes alternating between the road ahead and the rear view mirror. He saw Gavin and Jaz were both listening intently.

Carey took a long sigh. “I met up with some tossers on the way home. They beat me pretty solid. Broke my collarbone. It never healed right. Even now it pains me almost all the time. I guess I was in shock after it happened. They said I was.”

“Who said?”

“The people who found me.”

“Would that be your cousin Jimmy?” Mike asked.

“Aye. Only he’s not my real cousin. But he took care of me. Once I was healed, we went to Dublin, lived on the streets for a year and got recruited by the New Black and Tans.” Carey looked out the window at the passing scenery of bright green pastures and fieldstone walls.

“I ate decent for the first time since me mum’s cooking.” He cleared his throat. “But I never found me way home again and now…now I’m afraid to.”

“Afraid you’ll find your family dead?” Jaz asked in a whisper.

“Nay, lass,” he said sadly. “Afraid they’d wish me dead when they see what I’ve become.”