YOUNG MEN CLIMB out, four from each vehicle. Even I can tell they’re not Stability; their uniforms are improvised, they carry mismatched handguns, automatic weapons, crossbows, grenades, and knives, and they move like raiders, not trained soldiers. Mo and I stand side by side, but they walk past us as if we’re invisible. One, perhaps the leader, holds back and watches the bungalow as the others approach it, guns out and ready. He’s scrawny, tattooed, maybe thirty, wears a green beret of military origin, a flak jacket, like Ed used to wear in Iraq, and the winged figure off a Rolls-Royce around his neck. “Anyone else at home, old lady?”
Mo asks him, “What’s the story here, young man?”
“If anyone’s hiding in there, they’ll not be coming out alive. That’s the story here.”
“There’s nobody else here,” I tell him. “Put those guns away before somebody gets hurt, f’Chrissakes.”
He reads me. “Old lady says it’s all clear,” he calls to the others. “If she’s lying, shoot to kill. Any blood’s on her hands now.”
Five militiamen go inside, while two others walk around the outside of the bungalow. Lorelei, Rafiq, and Zimbra should be across the neighboring field by now. The strip of hawthorn should hide them from then on. The leader takes a few steps back and examines Mo’s roof. He jumps onto the patio wall to get a better view.
“Will you please tell us,” says Mo, “what you want?”
Inside Mo’s bungalow, a door slams. Below, in their coop, my surviving chickens cluck. Over in O’Daly’s pasture, a cow lows. From the road to the end of Sheep’s Head, more jeeps roar. A militiaman emerges from Mo’s shed, calling out, “Found a ladder in here, Hood. Shall I bring it out?”
“Yep,” says the apparent leader. “It’ll save unloading ours.”
The five men now reemerge from Mo’s bungalow. “All clear inside, Hood,” says a bearded giant. “Blankets and food, but there’s better in the village store.”
I look at Mo: Does this mean they killed people in Kilcrannog?
Militiamen kill. It’s how they carry on being militiamen.
“We’ll just take the panels, then,” says Hood, telling us, “Your lucky day, old ladies. Wyatt, Moog, the honor is yours.”
Panels? Two of the men, one badly scarred by Ratflu, prop the ladder against the end gable of the bungalow. Up they climb, and we see what they want. “No,” says Mo. “You can’t take my solar panels!”
“Easier’n you’d think, old lady,” says the bearded giant, holding the ladder steady. “One pair o’ bolt cutters, lower her down gently, job’s done. We’ve done it a hundred times, like.”
“I need my panels for light,” protests Mo, “and for my tab!”
“Seven days from now,” Hood predicts, “you’ll be praying for darkness. It’ll be your only protection ’gainst the Jackdaws. Look on it as a favor we’re doing you. And you won’t be needing your tabs anymore, neither. No more Net for the Lease Lands. The good old days are good and gone, old lady. Winter’s coming.”
“You call yourself ‘Hood,’ ” Mo tells him, “but it’s ‘Robbing Hood,’ not Robin Hood, from where I’m standing. Would you treat your elderly relatives like this?”
“Number one is to survive,” answers Hood, watching the men on the roof. “They’re all dead, like my parents. They had a better life than I did, mind. So did you. Your power stations, your cars, your creature comforts. Well, you lived too long. The bill’s due. Today,” up on the roof the bolt is cut on the first panel, “you start to pay. Think of us as the bailiffs.”
“But it wasn’t us, personally, who trashed the world,” says Mo. “It was the system. We couldn’t change it.”
“Then it’s not us, personally, taking your panels,” says Hood. “It’s the system. We can’t change it.”
I hear the O’Dalys’ dog barking, three fields away. I pray Izzy’s okay, and that these men with guns don’t molest the girls. “What’ll you do with the panels?” I ask.
“The mayor of Kenmare,” says Hood, as a couple of his men carry the first of Mo’s panels over to the jeep, “he’s building himself quite a fastness. Big walls. A little Cordon of his own, with surveillance cameras, lights. Pays food and diesel for solar panels.” A bolt affixing Mo’s second solar panel is cut. “These and the ones from the house below”—he nods at my cottage—“are going to him.”
Mo’s quicker than me: “My neighbor has no solar panels.”
“Someone’s telling porkies,” singsongs the bearded giant. “Mr. Drone says they do, and Mr. Drone never lies.”
“That drone yesterday was yours?” I ask, as if it’ll help.
“Stability finds the booty,” says the giant, “we go ’n’ get it. Don’t look so gobboed, old lady. Stability’s just another clan o’ militia, nowadays. Specially now the Chinks’ve gone.”
I imagine my mother saying, It’s “Chinese,” not “Chinks.”
Mo asks, “What gives you the right to take our property?”
“Guns gives us the right,” says Hood. “Plain ’n’ simple.”
“So you’re reinstating the law of the jungle?” asks Mo.
“You were bringing it back, every time you filled your tank.”
Mo stabs the ground with her stick. “A thief, a thug, and a killer!”
He considers this, stroking his eyebrow ring. “Killer: When it’s kill or be killed, yeah, I am. Thug: We all have our moments, old lady. Thief: Actually, I’m a trader, too, like. You give me your solar panels—I’ll give you glad tidings.” He reaches into his pocket and brings out two short white tubes. I’m so relieved it’s not a gun I extend my hand when he holds them out. I stare at the pill canisters, at their skull and crossbones, their Russian writing. Hood’s voice is less mocking now. “They’re a way out. If the Jackdaws come, or Ratflu breaks out, or whatever, and there’s no doctor. Instant antiemetic,” he says, “and enough pentobarbital for a dignified ending in thirty minutes. We call ’em huckleberries. You drift away painless, like. Childproof container, too.”
“Mine’s going into the cesshole,” says Mo.
“Give it back, then,” Hood says. “There’s plenty who’ll want one.” Mo’s second solar panel’s off the roof and is being carried past us to the jeep. I slip both canisters into my pocket: Hood notices and gives me a conspiratorial look I ignore. “Anyone in the house down below,” he nods at the cottage, “the lads need to know about?”
With acute retrospective envy, I remember how Marinus could “suasion” people into doing his bidding. All I have is language. “Mr. Hood. My grandson’s got diabetes. He controls it with an insulin pump that needs recharging every few days. If you take the solar panels, you’ll be killing him. Please.”
Up the hill, sheep bleat, oblivious to human empires rising and falling. “That’s bad luck, old lady, but your grandson’s born into the Age of Bad Luck. He was killed by a bossman in Shanghai who figured, ‘The West Cork Lease Lands ain’t paying their way.’ Even if we left your panels on your roof, they’d be Jackdawed off in seven days.”
Civilization’s like the economy, or Tinkerbell: If people stop believing it’s real, it dies. Mo asks, “How do you sleep at night?”
“Number one is to survive,” Hood repeats.
“That’s no answer,” snorts my neighbor. “That’s a huckleberry you force-feed to what’s left of your conscience.”
Hood ignores Mo and, with a gentleness I’d not have guessed at, he cups my hand under his larger one and presses a third canister into the hollow of my palm. Hope seeps through holes in the soles of my feet. “There’s no one in the house below. Don’t hurt my hens. Please.”
“We’ll not touch a feather, old lady,” promises Hood.
The bearded giant’s already carrying the ladder down the track to Dooneen Cottage when an explosion punches a hole through the tight quiet of the afternoon. Everyone crouches, tense—even Mo and me.
From Kilcrannog? There’s an echo, and an echo’s echo.
Someone calls out, “What the holy feck was that?”
The Ratflu-scarred kid points and says, “Over there …”
Rising into view above the fuchsia thicket we see a fat genie of orange-tinged oil-black smoke fly upwards, before the wind sucks it away over Caher Mountain. A raspy voice says, “The feckin’ oil depot!”
Hood slaps his earset and flips up a mike piece. “Mothership, this is Rolls-Royce, our location’s Dooneen, one mile west of Kilcrannog. What’s with that big bang? Over.”
Across the fields we hear the sickening percussion of gunfire.
“Mothership, this is Rolls-Royce—d’you need help? Over.”
Through Hood’s helmet we hear a smear of frantic speech, panicky static, and nothing more.
“Mothership? This is Rolls-Royce. Respond, please. Over.” Hood waits, staring at the smoke still streaming up from the town. He slaps his headset again: “Audi? This is Rolls-Royce. Are you in contact with Mothership? And what’s happening in town? Over.” He waits. We all do, watching him. More silence. “Lads, either the peasants are revolting or we’ve got company from across the Cordon sooner than we thought. Either way, we’re needed back at the town. Fall back.”
The eight militiamen return to the jeeps without a glance at Mo or me. The jeeps reverse down Mo’s short drive, and thump their way back up the track towards the main road.
Towards Kilcrannog, the gunfire grows more intense.
We can still recharge Rafiq’s insulin pump, I realize.
For now, at least: Hood said the Jackdaws are coming.
“Didn’t even put my bloody ladder back,” mutters Mo.
FIRST I GO and get the kids from White Strand. The waves in Dunmanus Bay never look sure which way to run when the wind’s from the east. Zimbra runs out of the old corrugated-iron shelter, followed by a nervy, relieved Lorelei and Rafiq. I tell them about the militiamen and the solar panels, and we walk back to Dooneen Cottage. Gunshots still dot-and-dash the afternoon, and as we turn back we see a drone circle over the village at one point. After a sustained burst of gunfire, Rafiq’s keen eyes see it shot down. A jeep roars along the road up above. We find a giant puffball at the edge of the meadow, and although food’s the last thing on my mind we pick it and Lorelei carries it home like a football. Fried in butter, its sliced white flesh will make the bones of a meal for the four of us—Christ knows when, or if, we’ll be seeing a ration box again. Probably I have about five weeks’ food in my parlor and the polytunnel, if we’re careful. Assuming no gang of armed men steals it.
Back at the cottage I find Mo feeding the hens. She tried to patch friends in the village, in Ahakista, Durrus, and Bantry, but the Net’s well and truly dead. As is the radio, even the RTé station. “All across the bandwidths,” she says, “it’s the silence of the tomb.”
What now? I have no idea what to do: Barricade us in, send the kids to some remoter spot, like the lighthouse, go to the O’Dalys at Knockroe Farm to see what happened to Izzy and her family, or what? We’ve got no weapons, though given the number of rounds being fired on the Sheep’s Head this afternoon, a gun’s likelier to get you killed than save your life. All I know is that unless danger is careering down the Dooneen track in a jeep, I’m less fretful if Lorelei and Rafiq are right by me. Of course, if we’re all absorbing high levels of radioactive isotopes it’s all pretty academic, but let’s take it one apocalypse at a time.
The commodity we’re most in need of is news. The gunfire’s stopped in the village, but until we know the lie of the land, we should steer clear. The O’Dalys’ll probably know more, if Declan’s got back okay. Their farm feels a long way off on such a violent afternoon, but Lorelei and I set out. I ask Rafiq to stay at the cottage with Zimbra to guard Mo, but tell him that, whatever happens, his first duty is to stay alive. That’s what his family in Morocco would want; that’s why they tried to get him to Norway. Which maybe wasn’t the best thing to say, but if there was a book called The Right Things to Do and Say as Civilization Dies, I’ve never read it.
WE FOLLOW THE shore to Knockroe Farm, past the rocks where I harvest carrageen sea moss and kelp, and across the O’Dalys’ lower grazing pasture. Their small herd of Jerseys approaches us, wanting to be milked; not a good sign. The farmyard’s ominously quiet too, and Lorelei points out that the solar panels on the old stables are gone. Izzy said earlier that Declan and the eldest son, Max, went into the village this morning, but Tom or Izzy or their mum, Branna, should be around. No sign of the farm sheepdog, Schull, either, or English Phil the shepherd. The kitchen door’s banging in the wind and I find Lorelei’s hand in mine. The door was kicked in. We pass the manure pile, cross the yard, and my voice is trembling as I call into the kitchen, “Hello? Anyone home?”
No reply. The wind trundles a can along.
Branna’s wind chime’s chiming by the half-open window.
Lorelei shouts as loud as she dares: “IZZY! IT’S US!”
I’m afraid to go farther into the house.
The breakfast plates are still in the sink.
“Gran?” Lorelei’s as scared as me. “Do you think …”
“I don’t know, love,” I tell her. “You wait outside, I’ll—”
“Lol? Lol!” It’s Izzy, with Branna and Tom following, crossing the yard behind us. Tom and Izzy look unhurt but shaken, but Branna O’Daly, a black-haired no-nonsense woman of fifty, has blood all over her overalls. I almost shriek, “Branna! Are you hurt?” Branna’s as puzzled as I am horrified, then realizes: “Oh, Mother of Jesus, Holly, no no no, it’s not a gunshot wound, it’s one of our cows, calving. The Connollys’ bull got into the paddock last spring, and she went into labor earlier. Timing, eh? She didn’t know that the Cordon’d fallen and gangs of outlaws were roaming the countryside taking solar panels at gunpoint. A messy breech birth, too. Still, she gave birth to a female, so one more milker.”
“They took your panels, Branna,” says Lorelei.
“I know, pet. Nothing I could do to stop them. Did they pay a courtesy call down Dooneen track, I wonder?”
“They stole Mo’s panels off her roof too,” I say, “but when they heard the explosion they left, before they took mine.”
“Yes, our crew cleared off at the same time.”
I ask Branna, “What about Declan and Max?” and she shrugs and shakes her head.
“They’re not back from the village,” says Tom, adding disgustedly, “Mam won’t let me go and find them.”
“Two out of three O’Daly males in a war zone is enough.” Branna’s worried sick. “Da told you to defend the home front.”
“You made me hide,” Tom’s sixteen-year-old voice cracks, “in the fecking hay loft with Izzy! That’s not defending.”
“I made you hide in the what?” says Branna, icily.
Tom scowls, just as icily. “In the loft with Izzy. But why—”
“Eight bandits with the latest Chinese automatics,” Izzy tells him, “versus one teenager with a thirty-year-old rifle. Guess the score, Tom. Anyway: I believe I hear a bicycle. Speak of the devil?”
Tom has only just time to say, “What?” before Schull starts barking at the farm gate, wagging his tail, and round the corner—on a mountain bike—comes Tom’s brother Max.
He skids to a halt a few yards away. He’s got a nasty gash across one cheekbone and wild eyes. Something terrible’s happened.
“Max!” Branna looks appalled. “Where’s Da? What’s happened?”
“Dad’s—Dad’s,” Max’s voice wobbles, “alive. Are you all all right?”
“Yes, thanks be to God—but your eye, boy!”
“It’s fine, Ma, just a bit of stone from a … The fuel depot got blown to feckereens and—”
His mum’s hugging Max too tight for him to speak. “What’s with all the cussing in this house?” says Branna, over his shoulder. “Your father and I didn’t raise you to speak like a gang o’ feckin’ gurriers, did we? Now tell us what happened.”
WHILE I CLEAN Max’s gashed cheek in the O’Dalys’ kitchen, he drinks a glass of his father’s muddy home brew to steady himself and a mug of mint tea to muffle the taste of the home brew. He finds it hard to begin until he begins. Then he hardly pauses for breath. “Da and me’d just got to Auntie Suke’s when Mary de Búrka’s eldest, Sam, calls round, saying there’s an emergency village meeting at the Big Hall. That was noon, I think. Pretty much the whole village was there. Martin stood up first, saying he’d called the meeting because of the Cordon falling and that. He said we should put together Sheep’s Head Irregular Regiment—armed with whatever shotguns we had at home—to man roadblocks on the Durrus road and the Raferigeen road, so if or when Jackdaws break through the Cordon, we’d not just be sat around like turkeys waiting for Christmas, like. Most of the boys thought it was a sound enough idea, like. Father Brady spoke next, saying that God would let the Cordon fall because we’d put our faith in false idols, a barbedwire fence, and the Chinese, and the first thing to do was choose a new mayor who’d have God’s support. Pat Joe and a few o’ the lads were like, ‘F’feck’s sake, this is no time for electioneering!’ so Muriel Boyce was shrieking at them that they’d burn, burn, burn because whoever thought a pack o’ sheep farmers with rusty rifles could stop the Book of Revelation coming true was a damned eejit who’d soon be a dead damned eejit. Then Mary de Búrka nnhgggffftchtchtch …” Max grimaces as I extract a small flake of stone from his cut with a pair of tweezers.
“Sorry,” I say. “That was the last bit of grit.”
“Thanks, Holly. Mary de Búrka was saying it’d do us no harm to follow the principle that the Lord helps those who help themselves, when we heard engines, lots of them, roaring our way. Like the Friday Convoy but much, much louder. The hall emptied, and into the square drove twenty Stability jeeps, plus a tanker, too. Four, five, six men got out of each. Big bastards, Ma. Big mean bastards. Stability guys and militiamen obviously from outside the Cordon. We were about matched man to man, but there’d not be much of a fight. They were armed to the teeth and trained to kill, like. This big Dub, he climbed on a jeep roof and spoke through a megaphone. Said his name was General Drogheda, and the former West Cork Lease Lands were now under martial law following the collapse o’ the Cordon. He’d been sent by Cork Stability to requisition all the solar panels on Sheep’s Head for government use, and to commandeer in Stability’s name the diesel that’d been delivered yesterday. Well, we looked at each other, like, ‘Not feckin’ likely.’ But then yer man Drogheda said that any opposition would be treated as treason. And treason, under Clause Whatever of the Stability Law Act of Whenever, would be dealt with by a bullet through the head. Martin Walsh walked up to this General Drogheda’s jeep and introduced himself as mayor of Kilcrannog and asked for a closer look at the requisition orders from Cork HQ, like. Your man got out his revolver and shot the road between Martin’s shoes. Martin jumped six foot in the air and six foot back. Drogheda, if that’s his real name, said, ‘Is that a close enough look, Mr. Mayor?’ Then he said if any hero tried to stop them they’d empty the food depot, too, and we’d be eating stones all winter.”
“Stability’d not behave like that,” says Branna. “Would they?”
Max drinks the brew, winces, and shudders. “Nobody’s sure about anything now. After Drogheda’d said his piece, about ten of the jeeps left the village along the main road heading Dooneen way, another ten drove to the edges of the town to get to work, while the rest stayed put. Then out came ladders from the back o’ the jeeps, and up went men from each crew onto every roof with a panel. A pair stayed below fingering their weapons, like, to discourage any argument. Meanwhile the tanker was emptying the fuel depot. We were all muttering and furious, like—these robbers’re robbing our feckin’ diesel!—but if we’d tried to stop them they’d have mown us down, cold, like, and taken the panels anyway. We knew that and there was feck all we could do. By and by the tanker was full, the roofs stripped of panels, and jeeps were coming back into the square, waiting for the ones that’d gone down the Knockroe road to come back, I guess. Then … it happened. I didn’t see it kick off, but I was with Da and Sean O’Dwyer when I heard a godalmighty ruckus from by General Drogheda’s jeep …”
Sparingly, I dab Max’s cut with antiseptic cream and he winces.
“Drogheda was yelling at a militiaman. He had an Audi symbol round his head, saying he was head of operations, and if yer man din’t like it, then he could … Well, it was to do with his mother’s … Doesn’t matter. The wind had dropped, the shouting echoed round the square, and I watched another o’ the scruffier militiamen stroll up behind Drogheda and, uh …” Max frowns, swallows, tries to stop himself crying, can’t, and the wheels come off his voice. “Shot his brains out. Point blank. Right feckin’ … there.”
“Oh, God, no,” whispers Izzy.
“Oh, my poor boy,” says Branna. “You saw that?”
Max hides his face in his hands and steadies himself for a few seconds, breathing deeply. “Oh, that was just for starters, Mam. The Stability men and the militias went at each other like dogs, dogs with guns. It was a hailstorm but with bullets, like, not hail.” He’s angry with himself for blubbing. “Like an old war film, with stuntmen falling off roofs, men crawling on the pavement …” Max looks away and shuts his eyes hard to keep out the picture but he can’t. “Us villagers scrambled clear, as best we could, but … Mam … Seamus Coogan got a bullet.”
I can’t help it: “Seamus Coogan’s hurt?”
Max starts shaking and he shakes his head.
Tom asks, wide-eyed, “Seamus Coogan’s dead?”
Max just nods. Izzy, Branna, Lorelei, Tom, and me look at one another and feel the cold wind of the near future. I was talking to Seamus Coogan only yesterday. Max drinks up the rest of the homebrew and carries on as if his sanity depends on telling us what saw, and maybe it does. “I—I tried to … but … it was all instant, like.” Max shuts his eyes, shakes his head, and sort of wipes the air with his hand. “Da pulled me off, shouting there was nothing we could do for him. We legged it round the back o’ the Fitzgeralds’ and hid in their garage. Just in time. The tanker in the square got hit and—you heard that, right?”
“They must’ve heard it up in Tipperary,” says Branna.
“Time went by,” says Max, “I dunno how long. We heard guns, saw a guy get shot on the Fitzgeralds’ drive … An hour? Dunno. Can’t’ve been, but suddenly the jeeps were driving off, up the mountain road to Finn MacCool’s seat, and … And then it was all quiet again. Birds singing, like. We all appeared from our hiding places … stunned, like, like … had that really happened? Here? In Kilcrannog?” Max’s eyes well up again. “Yes. There were the bodies and the wounded to prove it. Bernie Aitken tried to defend his panels with his rifle, and he got shot. He’s in a bad way. I think he’s going to die, Mam. The village square’s a—a—it’s—it’s … Don’t go and see it,” he tells Tom, Izzy, and Lorelei, “just don’t. Not till it’s been cleaned up and rained on. I—I—I wish to feck I’d not seen it. There’s twenty, thirty graves to dig, like. Several injured militiamen, too, who can’t walk, like. Some o’ the lads said we should just dump them in the sea, that’s what they’d do to us”—anger ignites in Max’s face, driving away his shock for a few seconds—“but Dr. Kumar’s doing what she can for them. They’ll probably die anyway. There’s a crater where the depot was and all the windows blasted out around the square. Josey Malone’s house has had the front ripped off it. Oh, and the pub’s a right feckin’ mess now.”
Dimly, I worry about Brendan; these pitched battles for dwindling reserves must be happening all over Europe, with only small variations in uniforms and scenery. I wonder where Hood and the bearded giant are now: dead, running, dying in Dr. Kumar’s clinic. Swallowing a huckleberry.
Branna asks softly, “What’s Da doing now, Max?”
“Helping Mary de Búrka direct the cleanup. Martin Walsh and a couple of others have cycled up to Ahakista to discuss roadblocks. It’s more urgent now, not less. Make a short Cordon of our own, maybe; from Durrus cross-country to Coomkeen, then down the road to Boolteenagh on the Bantry side. Sure until we can get it fenced and dug it’d just be a few of the lads with guns in tents, but there’s automatic weapons going begging, and Martin’s cousin’s at the Derrycahoon garrison. Was, anyway. Stability men’ll need a safe place for their families, too. Anyway, I ought to get back, with a couple o’ shovels.”
“No, Max,” says Branna. “You’re in shock. Lie down. There’ll be plenty of work tomorrow.”
“Mam,” says Max, “if we don’t get some sort of roadblocks in place there mightn’t be a tomorrow. There’s work to do.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” states Tom.
“No,” say Branna and Max together.
“I am so. I’m sixteen. Ma, you can handle the milking?”
Branna rubs her face. All the rules are changing.
? ? ?