Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (80 page)

Seamus stood and cocked an eye out to the street, “Do these bastards not know when to call it a day?” he asked and, taking aim, fired out into the night. The answer to his question was a sustained barrage of bullets whizzing above his ear.

“Shit,” he said and sat down with a decided thump.

“Are ye hit?” Casey asked urgently, crawling across the paper-strewn floor to him.

“No, but the damn thing near took my ear off an’ I’ve sat on some little bugger’s compass, aagh, oh— Jayse—there I’ve got the damn thing out.”

Casey stood, scanned the scene outside, aimed above the head of the crowd and squeezed off a bullet. He crouched back down quickly, smelling the thick tang of cordite heavy in the air.

“We can’t keep this up much longer, there’s maybe five rounds apiece left an’ then we’re done for. Seamus?”

Seamus didn’t answer; he was leaning against the wall illuminated by a burst of fire from outside, the reflection of flame licking up his face like a gruesome, shifting deathmask.

“The bullet,” he whispered, “the one that missed me...” he pointed, words failing.

Casey’s eyes followed the direction of Seamus’ finger reluctantly, as if by not looking he could change what had happened.

In the strange, dancing light he saw Liam Miller, still unconscious, mouth slack. Casey blinked, no, not unconscious afterall. A neat round hole, black about the edges, sat where Liam’s throat had once been.

“Oh Christ,” he breathed, crawling across the floor between the rows of desks.

He’d seen dead men before, in prison it wasn’t a rare occurrence and so he recognized the form of it. The look of startlement, if death had come hard or fast, the rictus of terror for the ones who had met their end with violence, the peaceful aspect of those who’d gone willingly. But Liam merely seemed asleep, neither profoundly peaceful nor afraid of the departure he’d just taken. Casey took his hand; the skin was already cooling, stiffening with the absence of life. He knew what he would see if the light were stronger. The misted blue that began about the lips and spread slowly across the surface of the body, as if, as the ancients had believed, the soul was breathed out through the mouth at the end.

He passed his palm gently over the eyelids to be certain the eyes were closed. He then dipped the pad of his thumb in the dark stream of blood that chilled and congealed even now beneath Liam’s throat. He raised his thumb and tried to recall what he knew about Liam Miller. He’d only met him twice before today. He was an old republican, part of his father’s generation, one of the old guard who’d come out today to defend their neighborhoods and their honor.

“Seamus, do ye know anything about him?” Casey asked.

“What do ye mean?”

“What was special about him?”

Seamus shook his head, rubbing a thumb speculatively across his chin.

“He grew roses,” he said at last. “Loved ‘em, was the pride an’ joy of his life. Took first place in a flower show once with some hybrid he’d created himself. Was so damn happy about it he bought everyone at the pub a drink that night.”

Casey nodded. His thumb pressed into the cool forehead, slid down to the scarred bridge of the nose, rose and glided across the bony ridge above the eye sockets. “May ye grow roses in God’s garden for all eternity,” he whispered. He took Liam’s hands and folded them gently one over top the other and then, grabbing his pistol moved quickly back across the floor to his position by the window.

He fired off two more rounds over the heads of the frenzied mob, pausing to crank the barrel over each time. The mob outside was quieter now and in the distance there was a steady hum like the sound of a large, lumbering insect moving across dry ground. There was something disturbingly familiar about the noise and he tried to separate it out from the explosions and sharp cracks of gunfire that surrounded it. His ear was distracted however by a scuffle at the door behind him.

“State yer name an’ business,” he heard the old man guarding the door say gruffly.

“Casey are ye in there? It’s Dacy. I’ve just come from the Ardoyne.”

“Let him in,” Casey said tersely, his hands suddenly shaky around the gun. “What the hell do ye mean by leavin’ yer station?”

Dacy took a minute to breathe, his hands on his legs in an effort to steady himself. “They’re burnin’ out the Ardoyne, there’s nothin’ left to defend. We’re out of ammo an’ Sean took a hit in the arm, he was bleedin’ somethin’ awful. I got him to the Church an’ then I came here.”

“What do ye mean they’re burnin’ the Ardoyne out?” Dacy flinched visibly as Casey grabbed his arms and shook him.

“Mobs of Loyalists, pullin’ people out of their homes an’ then settin’ fire to the houses. They’re destroyin’ everything.”

“An’ the police?”

“Are lettin’ them do it. Sean said he even saw a few police in civilian overcoats millin’ around with the crowds. They’ve brought in tanks, fockin’ Shorlands, an’ they’ve got machine guns shootin’ right through the walls of houses. Was an old lady cryin’ in the street said they killed her grandson, only nine an’ layin’ in his bed, goddamn bullet went right through the wall an’ into his head.”

“Did ye go to my home?” Casey asked and Dacy looked into his face and saw an awful and terrible stillness in the man’s eyes.

“Aye. ‘Twas on fire Casey.”

“My wife?” Casey asked, his voice low and trembling.

Dacy wanted nothing more than to look away from the man, but found himself paralyzed by the dark unflinching eyes.

“I don’t know Casey; the fire was out of control I couldn’t get near to the door.”

“Was the door open?”

“No ‘twas closed. Casey if she’d been inside—” He hissed involuntarily as the hands on his arms clenched harder.

“Don’t ye say it Dacy, don’t ye goddamn say it.”

“Casey, I asked the neighbors an’ they saw no one come out or go in.”

The hands on his arms released and pulled back. Then Dacy felt the smooth heft of a gun placed into his hand.

“Ye’ll need the gun,” he said as Casey stood and walked toward the door, “it’s pure madness out there.”

Casey turned in the doorway, “I am goin’ to find my wife, an’ if I find her hurt or worse I shall find the bastards who did it an’ kill them with my bare hands an’ then,” his voice faltered for a moment and resumed in a softer tone, “an’ then I really don’t care much what happens to me. Either way I’ve no more need of the gun this night.” He nodded and moved out into the darkness beyond the door.

“D’ye think we should stop him?” Dacy asked Seamus.

“Wouldn’t do any good to try,” Seamus sighed, reaching in his pocket for his last three bullets, “either way he’ll have to see for himself.”

Dacy looked down at the gun in his hand, “Where’s the bullets for this thing?”

Seamus eyed him mildly in the flickering light, “Ye’ve only the one shot left.”

“One bullet?” Dacy said disbelievingly.

“Aye,” Seamus nodded, “best make it count, boy.”

The worst of the fighting, which had broken across Belfast like a wave, was over near morning. Here and there fires still raged, parked cars small infernos on the roadside, a great thick pall of smoke hanging over the city, cloaking it off from the sky.

Dawn filtered down over a scene of absolute devastation. Gutted houses, torched vehicles, entire streets laid to waste. The small enclosed communities gone, forever. A way of life for hundreds of years vanished in a puff of smoke. Lives, memories, moments, now hardly more than rubble in the streets.

Dawn drifted into morning and people began to pick their way through the ashes, sifting through the rubble for any bit of familiarity, something solid to rebuild their lives upon. An old photograph miraculously untouched, a necklace, a saucepan, anything that might serve as a reminder of their life before.

The Falls and the Ardoyne were the areas hardest hit. One hundred and fifty houses had burned down and people, homeless and set adrift on a sea of misfortune, wandered blankly through streets they’d known all their lives and saw nothing they could recognize. And some unfortunate few found their dead and carried them unseeing out into the gray morning light. Five Catholics and one Protestant had not survived the streets of Belfast that night.

Casey found his own home roofless, half collapsed but with the red door strangely unmarred and closed firmly. The brass knob was still hot to the touch when he put his hand around it. He stood against the door for a moment, the knob slowly turning in his hand, a quarter turn, a half-turn and he without the courage to face what lay inside. Three-quarters and he turned his face up to the sky, asking a God he no longer trusted to give him the strength to do what he must. A full turn and the door fell away into ashes.

Everything gone, kitchen table burnt to cinders, the tub half melted, its enamel stripped away. The wallpaper no more than curling wisps in the air, ashes of forgotten roses. Shards of pottery on the ground, splintering as he walked across them.

The staircase stood in a void, some steps entirely gone and he had a sudden vision of her walking up them ahead of him, a white nightgown billowing out around her and a glance over her shoulder, her eyes soft in the dim light, her hair a spill of furled black ribbon against the white of her nightgown. He wanted more than anything to follow her up those stairs. Two nights ago, an eternity now.

Some stairs held but others gave under his weight. There was a two-foot gap at the top before the floor resumed itself. Pat’s old room now nothing more than smoking blackened brick and a view of the ravaged street. He turned right, made his way across half-crumbled beams and boards to the door of their bedroom.

It was open, smoke still drifting across it in the quiet morning air.

The bed was intact, the sheets starkly white against the black smoldering interior of the room. And it was there that he found his dead. Three steps to cross the room, not caring now if the floor held. Three steps to look down upon a still figure, sheared by fire of all its distinguishing features. He reached out a trembling hand and the flesh felt like leather under his fingers, hard, yet it gave and fell away with a soft sigh down between bones that shone like polished ivory in the gray light.

Black and white, bone and flesh that flaked away at the slightest stir. The wrists held tightly together, the ankles as well, as if she’d sought shelter within her own frame at the end.

An arm under knees, a hand under neck. He lifted her, the heat of her body making him gasp and he thought for a moment that he could feel the silken sweep of her hair fall down across his arm. He felt oddly weightless now, as if he had no more substance than the smoke, as if all the world were suspended, holding its breath.

Down the stairs then, carefully, one foot after the next. He didn’t want to stumble, didn’t want to jar her in the least. It was the last gift he could give her, the one of dignity.

Out through the door, over the threshold, the same one she’d walked over so trustingly as a girl, as a lover, as a wife.

On the paving stones, his face stark against its bones in the strange smoky twilight of morning, stood Jamie.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, saw the bundle in Casey’s arms and closed it again.

Casey took a step, felt a terrible weakness take him in the legs just as a knife blade of pain caught him hard in the stomach.

He stumbled and sank to his knees, the sky above him blossoming a soft, warm red and knew with a hazy relief that he’d been shot. He passed his dead up into the arms of Jamie just before hitting the ground on his face.

The last thing he was aware of was the taste of ashes in his mouth.

“And so as you can see,” Pamela said from over the top of a currant scone, “the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“What did Casey say when he saw ye?” Pat asked from across the scrubbed oak table, sopping up the remains of his eggs with a bit of toast.

“He opened his eyes for all of two seconds, looked up at me, smiled and said ‘it’s good to see we both made it to the other side, darlin’’ though he seemed a little confused that he wasn’t in purgatory. And then he went right back to sleep.”

“Poor laddy’s still drugged up. I tell you it’s a miracle he’s with us this morning, if that bullet had been even another millimeter to the left...” Father Joe left the thought hanging in the air as he helped himself to a third of Maggie’s delectable scones.

“He might still be here,” Jamie put in dryly, “but he’d not be fathering any children.”

“Take some more tea, James,” Father Joe said, pouring himself a cup, “there’s brandy on the sideboard if you need extra fortification. And how,” he turned his genial countenance on Pamela, still in her nightgown and reeking of smoke, “is your head m’dear?”

“A bit sore, but considering the alternative I’m not complaining.”

“Indeed, that’s the spirit child,” Father Joe said. Everyone was silent for a moment, considering the alternative. It was a little too firmly imprinted on their collective consciousness just what the alternative was. The alternative was at present wrapped in a sheet and lying in an unused monk’s cell. Just who was the recipient of Pamela’s intended fate wasn’t yet quite clear. And if anyone knew, they weren’t telling. It had been the least of their worries in the early morning when first Jamie had shown up dragging a bleeding and incoherent Casey and then, only moments later, Pamela had appeared on the doorstep wrapped in a blanket, a large bump on her head with no idea of how she’d gotten there. And then Pat had run in after an absence of several hours, soot smeared and frantic, having been unable to locate either his brother or Pamela. In the hours since, everyone had had their hands full, for the church had been filled with milling anxious people, fleeing fire, guns and the wrath of angry mobs.