The Bone Clocks (84 page)

“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.

•   •   •

L
ORELEI HELPS WITH
the milking while I feed the Knockroe chickens. Then we walk home along the shore, gathering a bag of sea spinach. Sandhoppers ping off my exposed shin, and oystercatchers pick their way between stones and bladderwrack, stabbing the mud for lugworms. A gray heron fishes off a rock twenty feet out and the sun emerges. The wind’s swinging around to the south, brushing up stragglier clouds, like sheep’s wool caught on barbed wire. We find a big bough of bleached driftwood that should keep the stove fed for a couple of days in winter. Below the cottage we find Rafiq fishing off the pier, a favorite sedative of his. We give him the edited gist of Max O’Daly’s story—he’ll hear it sooner or later anyway—as he helps us lug the driftwood up to the cottage. Mo is snoozing in Eilísh’s old chair, with Zimbra lying on her feet and a biography of Wittgenstein on her lap. Perhaps she’ll move into our granny flat now her own bungalow has no electricity at all. I had it built when I learned Aoife was pregnant so that she, Örvar, and the baby could have a bit of privacy when they visited, but over the years it’s become a storeroom.

Zimbra gets up when we walk in, Mo wakes, and Lorelei makes us a pot of green tea with leaves she fetches from Mo’s polytunnel. I begin by telling her about Seamus Coogan’s death, then the rest of Max’s report on the massacre. Mo listens without interruption. Then she sighs and rubs her eyes. “Martin Walsh is right, unfortunately. If we want a quality of life higher than that of the Middle Ages ten years from now, we need to act like soldiers. The barbarians won’t turn on each other twice.”

My clock says five. Rafiq stands up. “I’d like to catch another couple of fish before it gets dark. Is Mo staying for tea, Holly?”

“I hope so. We ate her out of house and home at lunch.”

Mo thinks of her unlit stove and the useless lightbulbs in her bungalow. “I’d be honored. Thank you. All three of you.”

When Rafiq’s left, I say, “I’ll go into town tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure how wise that’d be now,” says Mo.

“I need to speak with Dr. Kumar about insulin.”

Mo sips her tea. “How much do you have?”

“Six weeks’ worth.” Lorelei keeps her voice down. “One more insulin pump, and three packets of catheter nozzles.”

Mo asks, “How much does Dr. Kumar have?”

“That’s what I want to ask.” I scratch an insect bite on my hand. “Yesterday’s convoy brought nothing, and after today … I don’t think there’ll be anymore. We have water, maybe we’ll be okay for food and security if we can act like a socialist Utopia, but you can’t synthesize insulin without a well-equipped laboratory.”

Mo asks, “Has Rafiq raised the subject?”

“No, but he’s a bright kid. He knows.”

Through the side window, a screen of late afternoon sunlight is projected onto the wall. Shadows of birds flit across it.

Some shadows are sharp, some shadows are blurry.

I’ve seen them before in another time and place.

“Gran?” Lorelei’s waiting for my answer to a question.

“Sorry, love. I was just … What were you saying?”

T
HE RADIO
’
S STILL
dead. Mo asks Lorelei if she’s up to playing a tune on the fiddle after a day like that. My granddaughter chooses “She Moved Through the Fair.” I wash the sea spinach while Mo guts the fish. We’ll fry the puffball in butter at the last minute. If I was younger I’d be in town helping with the grisly business, but I wouldn’t be much use there at my age, digging graves for makeshift coffins. Father Brady’ll be busy. Probably he’s claiming the salvation of Kilcrannog was a case of divine intervention. Lorelei plays the ghostly refrain beautifully. She inherited her dad’s musical flair as well as his fiddle, and if she’d belonged to my or Aoife’s generation she might’ve thought about a musical career, but I’m afraid music will be one more nonsurvival pursuit that the Endarkenment snuffs out.

Rafiq makes us all jump as he barges open the door; something’s wrong. “Rafiq,” says Mo, “what on earth’s the matter?”

He’s panting for breath. My first thought is diabetes, but he’s pointing back down to the bay. “There!”

Lorelei stops playing. “Deep breaths, Raf—what is it?”

“A ship,” Rafiq gasps, “a boat, and men, and they’ve got guns, and were coming closer, and they spoke to me through a big cone thing. But I didn’t know what to say. ’Cause of—of what happened today.”

Mo, Lorelei, and me look at each other, confused.

“You’re not making a whole lot of sense,” I say. “Ship?”

“That!”
He points out at the bay. I can’t see, but Lorelei goes over, looks out, and says, “
Je
sus.” At her astonishment I hurry over, and Mo hobbles behind. At first I see only the bluish, grayish waters of the bay, but then see dots of yellow light, maybe three hundred meters out. “A patrol boat,” says Mo, at my side. “Can anyone see a flag on it?”

“No,” says Rafiq, “but they launched a littler boat and it moved dead fast, straight towards the pier. There’s men in it. When it was near one of the men spoke through this cone thing that made his voice louder, like this.” Rafiq mimes a megaphone.

“In English?” asks Mo, just as Lorelei asks, “What did he say?”

“Yeah,” replies Rafiq. “He asked, ‘Does Holly Sykes live here?’ ”

Mo and Lorelei look at me; I look at Rafiq. “Are you
sure
?”

Rafiq nods. “I thought I’d heard it wrong, but he said it again. I just sort of froze, and then,” Rafiq looks at Lorelei, “he asked if you live here. He knew your full name. Lorelei Örvarsdottir.”

Lorelei sort of clutches at herself and looks at me.

Mo asks, “Could you see if they were foreign?”

“No, they had combat goggles. But he didn’t sound very Irish.”

The patrol boat sits there. It’s big, with a tower and globes and big twin guns at each end. Can’t remember when I last saw a steel hull in the bay. “Might it be British?” suggests Mo.

I don’t know. “I heard the last six Royal Navy vessels were rusting in the Medway, waiting for fuel that never arrived. Anyway, don’t British ships always fly the Union Jack?”

“The Chinese or Russians would have the fuel,” says Lorelei.

“But what would the Chinese or Russians want with us?”

“More raiders,” Lorelei wonders, “after our solar panels?”

“Look at the size of the ship,” says Mo. “She must be displacing three, four thousand tons? Think of the diesel it cost to get here. This isn’t about swiping a few secondhand solar panels.”

“Can you see the launch?” I ask the kids. “The motorboat?”

After a moment, Lorelei says, “No sign of it.”