A Life for a Life

"Miceál, Jesus!' Diarmuid muttered, and Miceál finally pulled his eyes away from Smyth's body and looked at the older man.

"What?" he demanded. "You didn't think I'd do it, did you? You thought I was just saying that I would. Well, I fucking did! And I'm going to find the other bastard as well!"

"Miceál, wait," Diarmuid was still trying to come to terms with the fact that Miceál had actually just killed someone right in front of him. "Not yet. We have to go."

"Why?" Miceál asked, and then he seemed to pick up on something and he paused. "He didn't bring a gun. Why didn't he bring a gun?" Miceál muttered distractedly.

"That's what –"

"Come on. I think they're outside." Miceál suddenly realised that Smyth wouldn't have come in without backup, and whoever was coming would have heard the gunshots by now.

Miceál grabbed the keys that were sitting on the counter and he softly crept to the back door, quietly unlocking it and pulling it open.

"Come on," he whispered again and he and Diarmuid silently crept out into the concrete yard at the back of the house. Miceál closed the door and locked it behind him, as he did so he caught a last glimpse of Smyth's body lying on the floor, in a large pool of blood. He felt no remorse. The way he saw it, it was one down, one to go.

"We'll split up, all right?" Diarmuid whispered. "You get back to my house. I'm being serious, Miceál. No messing. Get straight back to my house."

"I will. But I'm not letting your other man go if I see him on the way."

A couple of minutes later saw Miceál keeping to the back alleys, peeking out before he crossed any roads, slowly but surely making his way back to Diarmuid's house. He knew he was going to have to move away, because there would be no doubt as to who had killed Smyth, but he didn't mind too much. He was doing what he had set out to do, and to be honest; he didn't really care much for being the outlet to all of his mother's anger. It was time to be about him. He's spent thirteen years running around for her, and what had she shown him for it?

Miceál was walking casually across a street when he heard tires on the road. He span round instinctively and his heart missed a beat as he saw that the vehicle was one of the familiar armoured cars the soldiers used to travel about as safely as possible in.

He didn't wait for an explanation – he turned and bolted down the nearest alleyway, just as he heard shouts and doors slamming and footsteps thundering after him.

Ducking down several random alleyways, he managed to loose most of the footsteps that were following him, but there was still one persistent pair after him.

He turned a corner and then stopped, facing back the way he had came, knowing that he was going to have to act first or be killed. He recognised the face instantly, and he didn't go for the kill – instead he aimed at the hand the man was holding the gun in, firing with deadly accurate aim, hitting him in a the wrist and causing him to drop the gun in agony. Miceál acted quickly, darting forward and kicking the gun far out of reach.

"Don't move!" he yelled, pointing the gun straight in the man's face, breathing heavily, trying to suppress some of the rage still flooding through him, just for a few more minutes. The man looked up, and Miceál knew that he recognised him, as well.

"So he was right about you, eh?"

"Who was right about me?"

"Smyth. He told me you were a rotten one. There was something about you, was what he said."

"He said that to me, as well." Miceál suddenly felt a grin spread across his face. "But that didn't save him, did it?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"He's dead!" Miceál said, and his voice raised several notes in triumph. "He's dead, and it was me who killed him! And you know why I killed him? Because he helped you bastards kill my father, that's why, and that's why I'm going to kill you as well!"

"Your father, eh?" the soldier asked, and there was hatred in his voice as well. "So you are, aren't you? You look like the bastard as well, so you do, just like him."

"And I'm proud of that. You say it like it's a bad thing."

"So you're proud of him, hey? You know what that scumbag did? You know that he's a murderer, do you?"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Miceál suddenly screamed, so loudly that a flock of birds from a tree somewhere nearby took flight in alarm, adding their cries to the noise. "DON'T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT HIM!"

"Ah, you know it's true, don't you! You know! Or why would you be getting so angry? You know what he was! He's not the loving daddy you pictured, is he?"

"I'M FUCKING WARNING YOU!"

"What are you going to do? Kill me? Be a murderer like your father? It won’t solve anything, Callaghan!"

"You call him a murderer when you ran round that corner ready to shoot me! You call me a murderer when you gunned down his best friend in front of him! You call him a murderer when you shot him twice in the back! You're a murderer, you piece of filth, you're just as bad as he is!"

"And you so think killing me will make it all better, hey? You think that'll bring them both back? That'll really help, won't it, killing me? Causing another woman to be widowed, more children left fatherless – that'll make everything so much better, won't it, Callaghan?"

"Well, welcome to our world, then! You fucking destroyed my family, you ripped us apart, you ruined our lives, and you still have your perfect family! You still can go home to them while we're grieving every fucking day, and so they can feel it now! They can see how it feels, and you've no one to blame but yourself!"

"Spare me! If your father hadn't got involved with all those scumbags he wouldn't have had to worry, would he? It was all his fault he was killed, Callaghan, all his fault! No matter what crap you told everyone at the funeral … yeah, boo hoo, a seemingly innocent three year old, weren't you? But I knew looking at you and I knew you were going to be a bastard just like him! So, surprise, here you are. But it isn't going to bring him back, is it? It was his own fault he left you, if he'd never got involved, and then you would still have him! But where is he now, Callaghan, where is he now?"

For a minute Miceál stood there, shaking with anger and hatred, feeling them so strongly that he thought he was going to be sick. And then he finally found his voice.

"He's not here, is he? Because you killed him! You killed him and his best friend! SO THIS ONE -!" Miceál was suddenly screaming again, and in the height of this new wave of rage he pulled the trigger, and the bullet hit the other man square in the stomach, causing him to slump to the floor, groaning. "IS FOR OISIN O'DONNELL, AND YOU KNOW WHAT?" Miceál ran to the injured man, hitting him hard across the face with the butt of the gun, this time sending him sprawling to the floor. He pointed the gun straight at the man's head, and though his whole body was trembling with hatred and rage, his hands were steady.

"You know what? This one, this one right here, this one is for my father!"

The second gunshot ripped through the already disturbed silence, and so did the running footsteps as Miceál ran back down the alley, knowing that he had mere seconds to get out of the vicinity before the other soldiers caught up with him. He was still blinded by rage, by hatred, by all of the other unpleasant emotions he could think off, but the red mist was starting to clear now, now he knew they were dead, and he's achieved the thing he had set out to do since he watched his father die at three years old.

He was nearly out of the staunchly Protestant areas now, and soon it would become a lot harder to track him down. The gunshots would have been heard in the Ardoyne area – no doubt everyone would be out on the street, trying to see what the commotion was about, and the police and soldiers wouldn't have a hope of getting through then. By the time they did, Miceál expected to be on his way to the border.

Miceál darted across the main road, and as he did so, he became aware that there were gunshots. He dived low to the floor and frantically scrambled behind a parked car, hearing footsteps running to him. His heart hammering in fear, he knew he was going to have to move – now!

He went for it, and for a brief few blissful seconds, he thought he was going to make it to the safety of the alleyway between a row of shops and some houses. And then, quite suddenly, there was the strangest feeling – as though someone had hurled a concrete block at him and it had hit him square on the chest, because he was suddenly aware of a strange impact there, and all the breath was knocked out of him, and suddenly he was on the floor with no idea how he had got there.

For another couple of blissful seconds, there was nothing. Nothing at all – no pain, no shock – just a dull numbness. And then, finally, after a moment's disbelief as he realised what had happened, the pain came, slowly, sickeningly, spreading from where he'd felt the impact in the first place. He let out a shuddering gasp, and then keeled over, and everything went dark.