There had been no reason anyone could think of to wait any longer. While Sarah wanted to ride to Limerick to shop for Irish lace to wear on her special day, Mike made it clear he’d rather marry her in a burlap bag than wait another day longer than necessary.
And as it appeared that wearing a burlap bag was becoming increasingly likely the longer she talked of Limerick, she soon gave it up and found herself standing in the little chapel in Ballinagh in Fiona’s mother’s wedding dress, altered to fit, with every single person from Daoineville in attendance. In the end, the community opted to stick with the name Daoineville and hoped to erase all prior connotations in time.
There would be no aisle–walking or giving away the bride today. Mike and Sarah had both done all that once before. Sarah was glad that both their prior marriages had been happy, loving ones. As she stood now in the cold little chapel, she felt the approving presence of Ellen and David. As much as the two had loved her and Mike, she couldn’t imagine them feeling any other way about their union.
She held Mike’s hand in her own while clutching a nosegay of late summer blooms. He was handsome in his tweed jacket and Fair Isle vest. She knew she probably wouldn’t see him dressed so smartly any time soon, so she would enjoy every minute of him wearing it today.
It had not been two weeks since she’d returned to camp. In the interim, the airlift of supplies had arrived and the whole of Daoineville had been thrown into a whirl of ebullient productivity and vitality. They were now the only town outside of Limerick for over five hundred miles that behaved almost as much as any town in pre-Crisis times did. They had working electric interior lights, motion-activated flood lights, a satellite phone for emergency contact with the outside world, a small pick-up truck in addition to the larger one, C4 explosives, a cache of semi-automatic weapons, and enough medical supplies to outfit a small clinic.
Not all the camp’s changes were because of her. Mike had assigned a small group of men to patrol the perimeter, much like Brian Gilhooley had envisioned. The wolf puppies, while still not effective as guard dogs, at least hadn’t started eating the chickens and so judgment—and their fate—was reserved.
In the silk purse that lay in the pew behind her was the letter her mother had slipped into her bag before she left America. Sarah’s eyes stung with tears remembering her mother’s face when she told her she would go back to Ireland after all. In the letter, her mother forgave her with love.
“I understand your decision and I applaud you for doing it, my brave, brave girl,” her mother wrote. “You have always given so much of yourself to others. I know I couldn’t be truly happy knowing you walked away from this chance to be happy with Mike. We’ll see you and John again one day, darling girl, I swear we will. Until then, stay well, stay strong and know that you go forward with all my love, Mom.”
The priest cleared his throat and nodded at the gypsy standing behind him to begin the Irish wedding march. The older cleric living in the Ballinagh rectory had been replaced by Jamie Riley, a younger man sent by the Vatican to do missionary work in the field which, of course, both Ballinagh and Daoineville now definitely qualified as.
Father Riley nodded at Mike and Sarah as they stood before him. Gavin and John, dressed in their finest and stiff as starch, flanked them, proud and nervous, as if all four were about to be joined together.
Behind them sat Fiona, Declan, Siobhan and the rest of the community, gypsies included. When Sarah saw so many of the women crowding the little chapel with tears in their eyes to watch her marry Mike, she knew it was more than just baby shoes and peanut butter that had softened their hearts toward her.
Coming back when she didn’t have to had bridged the gap.
Mike looked down at her and smiled. The sight of him made her breath catch. He was so handsome she sometimes had to force herself not to look at him for fear she’d otherwise get nothing done in her day.
Today, their wedding day, she looked at him and felt her world fill with the pure joyous wonder of him.
“Are you ready, then, Sarah?” Father Riley asked softly.
Sarah tore her gaze away from Mike’s face and nodded, finding her voice strong and clear.
“Yes, Father,” she said. “I’m ready. With bells on.”
#####
Hang on for the first chapter in the next book in the series, Blind Sided:
Sarah didn’t like being this far from the compound.
At least not on foot. She shifted the bag of bandages, antibiotics and pain meds on her shoulder and turned to look at her sister-in-law Fiona who had stopped in the middle of the dusty road to rearrange the heavy gun belt on her hips.
“Why don’t you just get Mickey to make you one of your own?” Sarah said, frowning. “You’re about fifty pounds lighter than Declan. You need your own holster.”
“This works fine, ta,” Fiona said, grimacing as she jerked at the belt.
“I’ll bet your hip is rubbed raw with it. Honestly, Fi, you are the stubbornest person I ever met.”
“I’m that sure you’re talking about yourself,” Fi said. She hurried to catch up.
The road back to the compound was full of ruts and holes. Four years earlier, before the EMP obliterated all electronics in Ireland, this had been a well-maintained paved road. Now, with horses and wagons the main mode of transportation, it was often easier to walk on the verge of it or around it than actually on it.
“We couldn’t have taken the horses?” Sarah said.
“We probably should have,” Fiona admitted. “I didn’t remember it was so far.”
It was Mike’s fault anyway, Sarah thought as she stumbled over a rock in the damaged road. If he hadn’t had this idea that as the inhabitants of New Dublin—or whatever the villagers were calling the compound now—they were responsible for those in the outlying areas, she and Fiona would not be spending two days every month tramping all over the countryside dispensing food and medicine to the poor. Not that Sarah begrudged that. Not at all.
It was true that this part of Ireland had more harshly felt the effects of the dirty bomb that had exploded over the Irish Sea four years ago. At least more than other areas closer to the bigger villages and towns. It had been a long hard four years of learning to farm, finding alternate ways of communication and travel, and learning to survive. And in the end, most people in the outlying villages had struggled unsuccessfully to grasp the necessary skills—even at the cost of their own lives.
The compound was now the only town outside of Limerick for over five hundred miles that behaved almost as much as any town in pre-Crisis times. They had working electric interior lights, motion-activated flood lights, a satellite phone for emergency contact with the outside world, a Jeep Wrangler in addition to a larger truck, C4 explosives, a cache of semi-automatic weapons, and enough medical supplies to outfit a small clinic.
When Sarah returned from the States last year with nearly everything the average American Wal-Mart had in its inventory, the camp changed from a collection of tents and huts with a bunch of teenagers patrolling the perimeter, to a well-fortified town with enough food and medicine to make the last four years feel like they’d never happened.
To everyone living within its walls, anyway.
Sarah knew the villagers were counting on the new mill Mike was building to provide them with work and with a guaranteed supply of flour for the hard years ahead. Mike had sent teams out last summer to teach the locals how to farm and fish. But come autumn, they still had nothing in their larders and storage cellars.
Along with his son Gavin and Sarah’s son John, Mike had driven a truck full of corn, potatoes and smoked bacon to two villages last week. Even though it had only been four years since gas-powered vehicles were seen in Ireland, the truck was looked upon by the villagers like it was powered by angels and pixie dust—so amazed were they to see an operating vehicle again.
“I’m not even sure we’re doing any good,” Sarah said. “One guy in Ballinagh had a foot that was badly infected but when I tried to give him the antibiotics he just asked me if I could bring whiskey next time.”
“Aye, well,” Fiona said and shrugged. “Life’s hard now, sure it is. Mike should let them come live in the compound.”
“You know he won’t. And you know why,” Sarah said.
But when Sarah thought of Mike’s edict, it saddened her. It was one thing for her to want to close the doors. She always was a little stand-offish—but Mike was an arms-open-wide kind of guy. Until last year, he hadn’t known a stranger. But that was last year.
“I feel like Lady Got-Rocks,” she said, “going around dispensing bandaids and ibuprofen like some benign pharmacy fairy. Why can’t we just give the extra food and medicine to the priest? Isn’t that where the charity should be coming from? This is embarrassing.”
“Nobody likes charity no matter who it’s coming from,” Fiona said. “When work on the mill gets under way, it’ll be different.”
Mike had marked out a stretch of land outside the compound where the grist mill was to be built. Sarah had to admit the idea was brilliant. Not only because the people needed a food source that wasn’t based on electricity but because they needed to work.
“You’re just grumbling because your feet hurt,” Fiona continued. “Besides, not everyone goes to the priest. Or likes him, come to that.”
“What are you talking about? Father Ryan? Why wouldn’t they like him?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Sarah, but some say he rubs them wrong. Besides, most people have their pride and coming hat-in-hand to the local vicar—who would likely insist they stay for mass—is asking a lot from people who are already hard put upon.”
“Yeah, I can see where it’d be easier taking a handout from Mike and his Yank wife than sitting through an hour of church.”
Sarah didn’t feel as annoyed as she was sure she sounded. While the trip seemed like a lot of work for very little, the fact that Mike asked her to do it was all that really mattered. It was possible he was assuaging his guilt over not allowing anyone new into the compound. She wouldn’t make it harder on him, in that case. These were his people after all.
Even if half the time they were trying to kill him and everyone he held dear.
“Oh!” Fiona gave a gasp and stopped walking. Sarah turned to see what she was looking at. They were passing a broken down cottage on the side of the road—which didn’t mean it wasn’t inhabited. In the years since the bomb, cottages rotated through several different owners as people left for the towns—or England if they thought it might be better there—or were driven out by bandits and hooligans. The cottages stood vacant until gypsies or other wanderers moved in for a night or a month.
Before the bomb, a barking dog would alert you to the fact that the house was inhabited. These days that was rarely the case. As food became scarce, so did people’s pets. A pack of once-domestic, now feral dogs lived near the compound. They weren’t yet a problem to face but Sarah knew they would be some day.
“What is it?” Sarah asked, squinting at the house. The door was shut but a front window was open. A curtain fluttered inside and Sarah glimpsed a blue dish on the sill.
“Nothing,” Fiona said. She turned away but Sarah could tell she was troubled.
“Don’t make me go over there and see for myself, Fiona. As you’ve already pointed out, my feet hurt.”
“It’s a dish of milk,” Fiona said, motioning to the road ahead of them. “Let’s shake a leg or we’ll miss dinner.”
“Since we’ll be the ones making it, that’s not bloody likely,” Sarah said, still standing in the road. “What the hell is a dish of milk doing in a window sill?”
“Will you come on, then, Sarah Donovan?” Fiona said peevishly. “I’ll tell you as we walk if you’re that intent.”
Sarah hurried to catch up to Fiona who was walking quickly now as though she was trying to put distance between her and the cottage.
“Have you not heard any of the gossip at all?” Fiona asked.
“What gossip? And where would I hear it from?”
“From the village we just spent the day tramping around? Did nobody say a word to you?”
“Are you kidding? I’m the last person they’d tell any secrets to.”
“Well, sure, it’s not secrets, precisely, they’ll be keeping.”
“Come on, Fiona. We’ve got two miles before home. Don’t make me spend every step of it digging this out of you. The gossip. Spill it.”
Fiona scanned the sides of the road. “Sure, I don’t believe it myself, mind. But there is talk in the villages about someone who claimed that he saw something in the forest.”
“I’ll bite. What did he see in the forest?”
“Something not possible to see.”
“Okay, Fiona, you know how I said I had two miles to hear this story no matter how long it took?”
“Sarah, it’s just superstition but to rural people around these parts—”
“Up until four years ago, these rural people all had computers and iPods. So what are you trying to say?”
“I heard from two different sources that somebody claimed to see the trees in Daughton’s Way…walking.”
“Wait. You mean as in…walking?”
“It’s just silly gossip, Sarah. From a group of superstitious people who are likely to believe anything they hear, no matter how daft.”
They walked in silence for a moment before Sarah spoke again. “So what does that have to do with the house with the dish in the window?”
Fiona sighed and quickened her pace. “Nothing,” she said. “Only me old granny used to tell the tale that if you wanted to call the fairies to do your bidding, sure, you’d leave a dish of milk on a window sill.”
“The fairies.”
“Sarah, I’m as sure as you are that it’s all stuff and nonsense. I’m an educated woman, you know.”
“Then how come you’re acting like you’ve just seen a ghost?”
*****
Mike stood in the observation tower at the north wall of the compound. Climbing the wooden ladder in order to squeeze into the two-man room at the top of the structure had left him with a pounding heart. He hated heights.
Tommy Donaghue sat in front of the video screen. Tommy was a good lad, a little older than Mike’s boy Gavin and brilliant with electronics. Since the bomb—and before Sarah came back with her Santa’s bag of goodies last year—Tommy hadn’t had much opportunity to demonstrate his skills. Now he was able to keep things running and while the screen wasn’t connected to the Internet—that would still be years off—it was connected to six strategically placed video cameras in order to monitor the main entry points of the compound.
“It’s probably nothing, Mr. Donovan,” Tommy said, tapping the screen as Mike squeezed into the only other seat in the tower office. “But I thought you should know.”
Mike peered at the screen. “What am I seeing?”
“This is a tape of last night’s surveillance footage,” Tommy said. “If you look close you can see it. Just there in the woods.”
“Help me out, Tommy,” Mike said gruffly. Bad enough he had to climb up here like some teenager. He wasn’t going to play guessing games.
“It looks like something is shaking the bushes just here. You see?”
The video was grainy but clear enough. It showed the stretch of woods that lined the outside of the north end of the compound. A scraggly line of tall bushes merged into a thick forest of oaks and sycamores behind.
Sure enough, as Mike watched the bushes facing the compound started to shake. The movement increased in intensity until the bushes were agitating frenetically for several seconds before simply stopping.
“What the hell?” Mike said.
“I know,” Tommy said. “Time stamp says it started at three in the morning on the dot. Then the camera swings away and when it pans back ten minutes later, it’s stopped.”
“And you’ve never seen anything like this before?”
“No sir.”
Mike sighed. “Well done, Tommy. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it happens again. I’ll send Gavin out to check the area.”
Was it an animal? If so, the size and ferocity of the bushes’ movement would require it to be as big as a gang of tigers. But bushes didn’t just shake on their own accord.
As Mike made his way back down the ladder he saw Fiona and Sarah walking up the main entrance to the compound. Both women walked quickly and purposefully. His eyes went from his sister’s form to his wife’s. And he grinned. She even walked like an American, he thought. Ready to get right in your face if necessary. Ready to see what was around every corner. She looked up and spotted him and waved.
Ten minutes later, he met them in front of the main campfire at the center of the compound. There was still a large fire going in the center—the gypsies insisted on it—but since Sarah had returned from the States last year with six cookstoves and enough gas to fuel them, most people cooked indoors.
Fi unbuckled her gun belt and let it slide to the ground. Mike picked it up and frowned at her. Ever since she faced down the Gilhooleys last year, she’d had a new confidence that translated into an interest in guns and the compound’s security.
“You need a belt that fits you,” he said before turning to Sarah. “Good trip?”
She looked tired but her eyes sparkled with interest as he regarded her. “As usual,” she said. “Everything okay here?”
He stepped up to her and drew her in with one arm and kissed her. “Now it is.”
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Fiona said, pulling her gun belt from Mike’s hand. “Well, I’ll be going to find me own man, now, if you don’t mind. Sarah? Your kitchen or mine?”
Mike ran a hand down Sarah’s back and she smiled, her eyes never leaving his.
“Mine,” she said to Fiona without looking at her. “But not straightaway.”
“Sure you’ll be explaining to three hungry children that supper will be delayed because, please God, Missus Donovan has had to go six whole hours without Himself. I’m sure they’ll understand, demanding little shites that they are.”
“Okay, Fi,” Sarah said, taking Mike by the hand and pulling him in the direction of their cottage. “Five minutes.”
Regardless of what Fiona thought, Sarah didn’t want to jump her handsome six-foot four husband or at least not at the moment. She was footsore, exhausted and hungry herself. She just needed a few minutes wrapped in the sanctuary of the two of them. After their wedding eleven months earlier, they’d both discovered a respite from the worry and uncertainty of the lives they led. Whether in bed, united as closely as a man and woman can be, or standing side by side in the midst of a crowd, when they were together, they were whole.
Their cottage was larger than most of the huts that formed a tight ring around the compound’s center. Behind them was a ring of smaller cottages and behind those the sprawl of tents that housed the gypsies.
Sometimes when Sarah sat in her kitchen drinking a cup of tea and looking out the window that faced the compound’s center, she could almost believe nothing had changed and that it was as it had been—before the bomb had detonated over the Irish Sea in 2011 and for practical purposes flung all of the UK back to the nineteenth century.
She dropped her bag of medicine inside the front door and pulled Mike across the threshold and into her arms. He held her without speaking, his hand on the back of her head, his face buried in her long dark hair. Sarah heard the sounds of the few camp dogs barking in the distance and smelled the singular fragrance of somebody making soap.
“Bad day?” Mike murmured, pulling back to see her face. She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “It’s just…there’s so much misery out there, Mike.”
“I know. But think of the good you’re doing.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think I am. They don’t trust me.”
“It’s only how they are with outsiders.”
“They don’t act that way with Fiona.”
“Aye, but she’s Irish. They’ll get used to you. Or they won’t.” Mike kissed her and went into the kitchen.
They had one of two working refrigerators in the compound. The other was in what they called the processing plant, a small wooden structure between the gypsies’ camp and the last row of cottages. This was where the main storage of the harvest was kept along with any meat caught. Mike poured two glasses of water from a pitcher on the table and brought one to her.
“Did you know they’re calling us New Dublin?” Sarah said as she took the glass from him.
“Beats Daoineville,” he said.
Daoineville was the name given to the compound eighteen months earlier by a man who had taken it by force and who had since left the area in shame and humiliation.
Plus, he’d tried to hang Mike and Fiona’s husband Declan.
“I just think we need to resolve how we work with the people on the outside,” she said.
“I think what we’re doing works fine,” Mike said in his best and-we’ll-hear-no-more-on-the-subject tone. Sarah nearly laughed. Surely he knew her better than that by now?
“They’re like children,” she said. Going to the window, she thought she heard John’s voice and now watched him approach with Gavin. The two boys—both so different from each other—were as close as if they’d been born brothers. Just seeing John, laughing and unaware he was being watched, made Sarah’s heart fill with love and worry.
There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t wonder if she’d done the right thing by allowing him to join her back in Ireland.
“What makes you say that?” Mike said.
Sarah turned to him and frowned, trying to remember what she’d said. Her face cleared and she set the glass down on a table.
“Fiona said she heard in the village that people are starting to talk about trees that can walk and fairies roaming about.”
Mike’s face darkened. “That’s barking. I don’t believe it.”
“You can ask her at dinner tonight,” Sarah said, patting his shoulder on her way to the kitchen. The front door opened and John and Gavin burst in.
“We’re starving!” John called. “Hey, Da, Tommy said you were looking for us?”
Sarah stood facing them from the door of the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Mike said, dropping his voice. “I need you to check out the area on the outer wall of the—”
“Tommy showed us the tape,” Gavin said. “We already checked it out.”
“What tape?” Sarah asked.
“And?” Mike asked patiently.
“Bunch of broken branches and trampled bushes,” Gavin said.
“Any idea of what trampled ‘em?” Mike asked as Sarah came into the room to hear better.
“Cor, Da,” Gavin laughed. “You think we got a herd of wild water buffalo on the loose?”
“Water buffalo are by definition wild,” John said to Gavin.
“Blimey, you’re right, you little bugger!” Gavin grabbed John and began wrestling with him standing up.
“Gavin,” Mike said tightly.
“There weren’t any footprints,” John said, catching his breath but still in the grip of Gavin’s arm around his throat. “Not animal, not human.”
“Mike, what’s going on?” Sarah said, her hands on her hips. “What bushes? Where?”
“It’s nothing, Sarah,” Mike said, but he frowned in concentration.
“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” she said.
“Just something we’re checking on,” Mike said. “Nothing to worry about, I promise.” He gave her a quick kiss and herded the boys out of the house. “Come on, lads, your Aunt Fiona will be here presently with the bairn. You’ve got time to check on the horses before dinner.”
He turned and gave Sarah a wink and left the cottage. For a brief moment as Sarah watched them go, she felt a chill emanate from the very walls of the cottage and settle gently around her shoulders.