The Reaping of the Dingle Peninsula
A story conceived while walking the Dingle Way
Day 1: The Reaping Happens
Brielle, like everyone, never saw the reaping coming. It just happened. One day led into another and in the blink of an eye, everything changed.
She didn't know if it was fate that saved her or something she did in her past that somehow made her special. For whatever reason she was left behind. She was unfortunate to be in Tralee running her tech consulting firm, some 35 miles from Dingle and her family when every man, woman, boy and girl around her just up and vanished.
Declan, her husband, would have been tending to the flocks of sheep in their pasture, on the side of Ballysetergh Mountain, one of many of those verdant, green fields of lush grass that led to well-fed sheep.
Her kids, Alaina - 13 years old and Brody - 8 years old, would have or should have been in school.
That was a typical Tuesday for the shepard families of the Dingle Peninsula. Then everything changed.
So Brielle found herself treading her way around the side of the Slieve Mish mountains, trying to get home.
Imagine that any method that you had to communicate with your family was gone. No smartphone, no internet, no post office. Imagine the complete collapse of civilization. They say a pre-tech society needs ways to eat in order to live. For Brielle her tech world society was over, finished. There was no way to get a message to her family.
Day 2: Slieve Mish mountains
Brielle was stepping from stone to stone to avoid two inch deep water and muck. The hiking shoes that she took from an empty Tralee shop were proving a godsend on this muddy, muck-ridden, slop trail. She went slowly because to lose balance meant her foot or feet would sink into the water and mire and soak her socks. That would mean blisters and that would mean having to walk painfully for long distances or to stop and hold up. Unthinkable.
Then a combination of factors did her in.
The glacial valleys, carved out of the mountain range, funneled the down drafts into horizontal wind shears which came roaring out of the valley.
Good balance is important when you're jumping from rock to rock.
Just as Brielle took the leap to the next rock, the rock slipped and the windshear gusted.
If you stick your hand out of a car window doing 60 miles per hour, you know what hit her. So she went into the water, up to her ankles. The inside of her shoes were waterlogged, the socks were soaked and her feet were numbingly cold from the mountain water runoff. She was very much further from her family.
Day 3: Village of Camp
She pressed on, assessing the cost. Already a hotspot was forming on the back of the heel of the right foot and if it got worse, she could add days to the time it would take to get back home.
Nothing editable for food survived without the power system. Fresh foods were ok but not for long.
Every day out here left her hungrier.
As she descended out of the rocky Slieve Mish into the village of Camp, she hoped to see someone but kept her guard up for marauders. She was sticking to the Dingle Way trail to avoid street gangs in the villages and towns but wasn't even sure if anyone else had survived to form street gangs.
Camp seemed like Tralee. No one - nobody - no bodies.
The mom and pop store door was opened and unattended. She stepped in to get food, but saw how the rodents and more - mice, squirrels, bats and billions of insects had taken over. All she had to choose from was their leftovers.
So be it.
Day 4: River Fingles
Thanks to be anti plastic bag laws, she had had lots of trouble finding a bag to put her shoes in. The plastic would keep the shoes and socks dry as she forded the river. It was not that wide but it was fast. Remembering her trouble on the Slieve Mish, she didn't want to have to hold up again for dry footwear.
Looking at the flow of water rushing downstream, she thought of the hustle of her career that often pulled her from the family farm and her family. In a sense, as the river eroded the banks, her job had eroded the happiness in her life.
She couldn't have it all so she lost part of it and then thanks to the reaping - her fear was that there no family left for her to return to. As the water carried away the debris in the river, the reaping, like a burst dam, had wiped out her life.
The fear of being alone and all on her own drove her to return to Dingle and the ranch. She prayed to whatever deity or deities were out there that they would have let her family survive.
Day 5: Inch Beach
Descending the hills surrounding Inch Beach, Brielle stepped onto the desolate sand flats.
Inch Beach is a sand spit the reaches out to the north into the bay.
It has several claims to fame.
It's location captures wave action coming in from the Atlantic, leading to some of Ireland's best surfing.
And the fishing was great.
But not today. As she moved along the beach, Brielle sunk lower into despair as she saw no one at all. Here they should have been someone, anyone, but there was no one.
For the first time, she cursed herself for her choices.
She watched the waves crashing into the beach. They rose out in the distance where the slackening depth forced the wave water up, while the water in contact with the sand slowed down due to the friction, the water on top raced ahead, forming a cap and then tumbling down to create swirls and vortices and white caps of action and reaction.
Brielle, inside began to swirl and her outside began to tremble and she capsized forward onto the empty beach and she cried and cried and cried, leaving something of herself, her tears behind in the sand.
But for naught.
Because as she cried and her tears fell to the sand, a wave would come in and wash away the tears, swallowing them into the vast reaches of the Atlantic where her tears no more mattered than the heavy downpour of an ocean storm.
Day 6: Annascaul
Brielle was so damn tired now. All she had to draw on was the same drive that she brought to her career as a structural engineer. Detail, precision, OCD and all those things that get in the way of a marriage and motherhood.
But not one of those things mattered now. Torsional twist strain of non bendable, semi-transparent, solar heating support for window structures. Who even cares now?
All alone and 12 miles to go to Dingle. Not a single person. No one. All alone in her heart before the reaping. Literally alone now after the reaping.
The dreams all night long were the worst. Like many people as the night went on, the dreams went from plausible to more and more crazy.
Alaina and Brody went to her arms and they cried and Declan waited his turn because he knew he would have her to himself in the most intimate way possible. Holding and hugging and lying next to each other, listening to the sound of each other's breathing and feeling the beat of each other's hearts.
Alaina and Brody ran to Brielle and almost made it when they stopped and Declan ran to them and pulled them back and somehow the harder that Brielle tried to run to them, the more the ground under her turned into the mud and muck of the Slieve Mish mountain and slowed her down.
Alaina and Brody stood before her and then disappeared. Declan stood before her, cursed her and disappeared.
Each time Brielle woke with a start, sweating more each time, and yelling and screaming and crying and kicking and punching, but always for worse, the dreams got more crazy.
Day 7: Dingle
They say that a week is the most that a person can go without food. It's only a few days for water. Water was okay from the mountain streams but the portability of water in the villages was questionable with no one to run the municipal systems.
Only miles to go, but the question was to what? Family and love or more absence?
8 miles and Brielle wanted to quicken her step, but she had to watch her capability to press on. Uphill and downhill.
6 miles to go. Crossing farm fields and gates and ladders and the absolute oddity of no people but still all the sheep in the meadows and cattle in the pastures and even more odd, shepherding dogs still moving the herds even though they had no idea of where the final place was to be. Brielle felt like one of those animals, herded for no purpose, herded to no final pasture.
4 miles to go. Sit down and rest. This will be the final push. Either she would have her life back or she was the last and only person still alive in this new pristine, beautiful and quiet, natural world, not counting the lifeless human artifacts.
2 miles to go. Dingle was now visible. She saw the houses and steeple of St Mary's church and the ocean and bay in the background. Somewhere on the far side of town, she prayed her family was there. That for whatever reason, Declan and the children were spared as she was.
Through the town now. Heading up the one lane road, up the hill to the sheep farm.
Voices. Recognisable voices. One man, one girl and one boy. She stopped to say a prayer and rounded the bend in the road. There was the house.
She exhaled deeply to see the loves of her life. Declan looked up and saw her. He smiled, he pointed, the kids looked towards her and smiled.
One step closer.
No answers, no clues. Only one small act of salvation in the hell that was the reaping of the Dingle Peninsula.
