The Hibernia Strain (10 page)

From inside the yard all I can see is the cutting edge of contemporary design. The clean geometric lines of the garden lead my eye to a vulgarly placed hot tub, upsetting what is an otherwise pe
rfectly balanced garden design.

Most of the smaller surrounding farm buildings have
been converted also. Into what I’m not sure, but a glance in one window as we pass reveals well-furnished interiors and a pool table, instead of the pile of straw mixed with cow shite you’d expect to find in a typical farmyard shed. I better be nice to Matt if he gets back. If our old society manages to pull through he could be in the money.

With a new wave of twitchy energy starting to wash over me from the pills I feel somewhat better equipped to process what’s going on.

“So, what did you say your parents did again?”

I could tell half way through my question that her attention is elsewhere.

As if she didn’t even hear me, she bursts out with
, “Who do these people think they are? This is my parents’ house!”

I keep my mouth shut
and instead shrug my shoulders. She seems agitated and setting her off is the last thing I want to do.

As we slowly pull around the gable of the main house
, the extent of the renovations becomes clearer. Practically the entire gable wall of the house has been replaced with a two story pane of double glazing, stretching from a sizeable ground floor open plan living area to a large skylight. The whole place reeks of Celtic Tiger boom time excess.

My thoughts on the architecture are interrupted by a heavy thud
ded impact somewhere on the front of the car. I’m left looking over the hood like an idiot to see what hit us before we speed up sharply, and I hear Emma shouting in a panicked scream, “Fuck! Someone’s shooting at us!”

Shit!
She’s right. Before I know it, without thinking I’ve stretched back around to the rear seat, bundling Tom down to the ground.

“Stay down Tom! Stay down ‘til
I tell you to move!”

With one hand still ungracefully stretched around behind me, holding his head against the back of my seat, I swing around to see can I spot the shooter.

Either it was meant as some sort of warning, or they’re a really bad shot. The sensation of being shot at isn’t like in the movies; you can’t just shake off the fear, stand up and face your shooter like the untouchable action heroes I’ve seen so many times. The fear of a bullet shredding through my body at any given moment is a powerful one, so I’m not sure what to do other then stay down.

Having said that, although it seems like a small calibre rifle, I don’t think this c
ar door offers much protection. I place my face close to the window, trying to get a look up at the house towering above us.

My answer comes as I s
ee the guns muzzle flash from one of the first floor windows, right before a second shot smashes through the passenger window I’m looking out of. The bullet misses my head by centimetres, lodging itself in the fabric of my seat right between my legs.

I pull away from the window with a yelp of pain and grab my head with my left hand. The side of my face stings like a son of a bitch, it’s peppered with glass shrapnel and at least one or two pieces made it into my eye, punishing me with darts of pain whenever I try open
ing it.

It’s all happening so fast but despite the shards of fragmented glass that
have ripped into my left cheek and eye, I can’t help but think how much worse that could have been, as I check my crotch with my right hand.

The shattering glass
, coupled with my sudden movement and pain filled shouts, causes Emma to fumble the wheel and take out two ornamental bonsai trees. The last thing I feel are the shards of glass in my head being grinded into my skull as my head makes contact with the dash before my world goes dark with a flash of pink cherry blossoms.

13

The next thing I hear is
Emma’s voice, “Shawn, can you hear me, how do you feel?”

Good question, I feeling great actually.
I don’t have any pain and as well as that I have a distinctly positive mind-set. I’m a bit groggy and my memories of recent events are a bit fuzzy, I feel... drugged! 

As I finally open my one good eye, I’m surprised to see I’m in what looks like a teenage girls bedroom, covered in pink frills, stuffed animals and what appears to be every boy band poster from the early 00s. It all seems so surreal.

I also notice some new faces. Emma is standing to my left, with a bloody cloth in her hands, in front of a woman who I’d say is in her late fifties. She’s washing her hands in a bucket of water lightly coloured by blood, my blood.

It
would appear they did some work on me while I was out. I can see in my peripheral vision there’s at least one other person there but I can’t get a good look lying on my back like this, and I’m quite content to stay this way.

I don’t remember closing my eyes again but all of a sudden I’m pulled back to the real world with,
“Shawn! Are you ok?!?” 

Oh ya
, I forgot to answer her, and she’s sounding a bit less patient this time.

“Where are we?”
I ask in a low relaxed mumble, but before she can answer I add, in a more alarmed tone, “Where’s the boy, where’s Tom?”

I end up
knocking over and breaking several bottles or glasses in a pathetically uncoordinated attempt to sit up.

Emma leans in and puts her hand on mine saying, “Take it easy Shawn, he’s fine. He wouldn’t leave your side and he fell asleep laying next to you on the bed so we moved him to my parent’s bedroom. He seems to be doing a bit better but it’s hard to tell.”

I lie back down relieved.

“
You took a fairly hard knock in the crash, your seatbelt snapped; it must have been damaged in the earlier crash so you took the guts of a full impact. I used some equipment from my mother’s surgery to remove as much of the glass as I could and clean you up. I also gave you a shot of morphine for the pain. You’ve been out cold for an hour, how do you feel?”

I find it
hard to concentrate on what’s being said and I’m easily distracted by my own thoughts but I heard that last bit.

I lift my hand to inspect my face
.

“
My face feels wrong. I don’t think I can see out of my left eye.”

This realisation is enough to harsh my buzz and it
’s coming across in my voice.

“Calm down Shawn,
its ok. It’s a bandage. I patched up your face and it’s covering your left eye, that’s all, everything’s going to be fine.”

She’s talking to me like I’m a lost five year old, in
that slightly patronising tone doctors use when they’re trying to have good bedside manner. No doubt she picked it up from her mother, not that it bothers me. It’s not as if anything really bothers me at this moment in time. I feel like she’s talking to a building and I’m inside it looking out at her through a glazed window.

I’m happy enough to comfortably drift in and out of
consciousness for another while as the morphine runs its course. It feels like it’s been about forty five minutes but in reality how long it’s actually been I don’t know. Anytime I opened my eyes Emma was there sitting beside me, holding one of the older, more tattered teddy bears to her chest and looking out the window as if she expected Matt to pop over the horizon at any second.

I haven’t seen the others at all since I first woke up. They seem
to be keeping their distance, which is a good idea as they’d better have a bloody good explanation for why they were first trying to kill us, followed and by a sudden change of heart.

My head’s
feeling clearer now so it’s time for some answers. I shimmy myself into a seated position on the bed.

“Hey, thanks for cleaning me up and all
Emma, looks like you picked up some of your Mam’s doctoring skills. How are you?” I ask out of courtesy, as it’s fairly obvious she came away without so much as a scratch.

“Oh, it’s good to see you awake and making sense again. I’m fine except for a
cut on my leg.”

“Good to hear
.”

I turn and sit on the edge of the bed for a few seconds before attempting to stand up. I’m unsteady at first but once I stretch my legs and walk to the window I’m fine.

“
That’s some sight out there.”

“Yeah I know, this was my room before I moved out, I love looking out at the view of those mountains.”

I don’t see the
benefit in pointing out that I was actually talking about the sight of my once shiny jeep lodged half way up a large cherry blossom tree in the garden below us and not the stupid view, because right now I want information.

“
Look Emma, I’m obviously missing a large chunk of info regarding what happened and who those people are?”

She starts to recount what happened, ne
ver taking her eyes off the lane leading up to the house. After a fifteen minute explanation, I’ve a better idea of what’s going on.

The older
woman from earlier is Meg and the man with her was her husband Paul. They’re actually neighbours from a mile or two down the road, who Emma’s known all her life. That explains her familiarity with them.

She didn’t say what they’re doing here
though, and I’m thinking that’s because she’s not sure herself. She mentioned something about them usually looking after the house plants when her parents are away.

It seems she hasn’t really been talking to them much since we arrived. 
There are two others in the house as well, some relations of Megs who Emma doesn’t really know, probably the owners of the car parked out back.

One of them, whose name she thinks is Fred was the trigger happy prick who apparently panicked at the sight of
my pale face as we rounded the house, and thought it a good idea to shoot it off.

It seems the older woman spotted Tom in the back seat before I pushed
him into cover and she ran into the room knocking the gun from Fred’s grip before he could get a third shot off.

According to
Emma, the old woman was nearly hysterical as she ran out to see if we were ok after hitting the tree, weeping apologetic sobs as she opened the door to see Tom curled into a ball behind me, and my glass encrusted face embedded in the dash board.

After the rest came out, they dragged me
from the car and carried me upstairs to Emma’s old room while Emma raided her Mam’s medical safe.

Apart from
carrying me in and helping Emma take some of the glass from my skull; they’ve been keeping to themselves, as Emma tells it.

She said
she’s never seen Meg act cold and distant like this and speculates they’ve been through something bad in the last day or two.
Haven’t we all?

I turn to
Emma’s vanity mirror to inspect my damaged mug. The degradation of my general appearance since I last seen it is shocking. The bandages are covering my left eye and most of the left side of my face. Apart from a few small patches of blood soaking through to the outside layer they’re really well administered. I’m so pale, maybe I’ll have to cut that Fred some slack, I’d have shot at me too.

“Well I think it’s about time I go down and meet the gang, don’t you? Find out if they know any more about this mess than we do. I gotta check
in on little Tom first. Where’s your parents room?”

“It’s the fifth door on the right.”

I
t’s obvious she hasn’t much inclination at present to do much of anything except keep vigil out the window.

As I
make my way to her parents room, I’m struck by how much bigger this place is inside than it looks from the outside. I pass picture after picture of Emma’s parents in settings ranging from black tie events, to European holidays, to camping at some festival in the seventies by the looks of it. They seem to get around.

From where I am
, I can see down off the landing onto the open plan ground floor where Meg, Paul and a much younger guy, who must be this Fred character, are standing in a group.

I’m too far away to hear what’s been said but they’re having a he
ated discussion about something. Fred’s acting like he’s just heard something he doesn’t like from them and is passionately counter-arguing whatever his point is.

He’s the only one of them who doesn’t have his back to me and spots me crossing the landing in the distance. He stops mid sentence, watching me in silence, trying to look calm as I pass by.

The other two turn to look at what’s caught his attention, quickly turning back once they’ve seen it’s me. I don’t like what’s happening. Are we perceived as a threat of some kind? Do they think they’ll be thrown out now the house’s rightful owner is back in the picture? It’s probably best not to read too deeply into it right now, my head’s not on straight and I may simply be misreading the situation.