Sarah 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.
That 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—”
“That’s just it, Sarah,” Evvie said. “I am very much not safe here. I have come to ask you if I might accompany you on your journey to Ireland.”