Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [298]
People moved toward him from outside City Hall as he climbed from the cab. One was running—off-balance. Eileen, her sunburst smile wide and familiar. "Easy!" he cried, but too late. She crashed into him and hugged him tight, laughing, while he tried to maintain balance for both. Agony twisted and grated in the bone. "Easy. Jesus Christ. There's a piece of metal in my hip."
She jumped back as if scalded. "What happened?" And saw his face. Her smile faded. "What happened?"
"Mortar shell. It went off just in front of us. We were up on the cooling tower with the radio. It blasted the radio to bits, and it shredded the cop, uh, Wingate, his name was, and I was standing right between them, Eileen. Right between them. All I got was a blast of sand from the sandbags and this thing in my hip. Are you okay?"
"Oh, sure. And you're all right, aren't you? You can walk. You're safe. Thank God." Before Tim could interrupt she went on. "Tim, we won! We must have killed half of the cannibals, and the rest are still running. George Christopher chased them for fifty miles!"
"They'll never try us again," someone boasted, and Tim realized he was surrounded. The man who spoke was a stranger, an Indian, by his looks. He handed Tim a bottle. "Last Irish whiskey in the world," he said.
"Should save it for Irish coffee," someone laughed, "but there ain't no more coffee."
The bottle was nearly empty. Tim didn't drink. He shouted "There are wounded in the back! I need stretcher bearers!" He called again, "Stretcher bearers. And stretchers, come to that." Some of the merrymakers moved toward the hospital. Good.
Eileen was frowning, more in puzzlement than sadness. She kept looking at Tim to be sure he was still there, that he was all right. "We heard about the attack on the plant," she said. "But you beat them. None of our people hurt—"
"That was the first attack," Tim said. "They hit us again. This afternoon."
"This afternoon?" The Indian was incredulous. "But they were running. We chased them."
"They stopped running," Tim said.
Eileen put her mouth close to his ear. "Maureen will want to know about Johnny Baker."
"He's dead."
She looked at him, shocked.
Men came with stretchers. The wounded were in the back of the van, wrapped in cocoons of blankets. One was Jack Ross. The men carrying the stretchers stopped in surprise at seeing the others: Both were black. "Mayor Allen's police," Tim told them. He wanted to help carry, but he was lucky to carry himself. He found the stick Horrie Jackson's fishermen had given him and used it for a cane as he limped into the hospital.
Leonilla Malik directed them into a heated front room. It had a large office table set up as a surgery. They put the stretchers on the floor and she examined the men quickly and carefully. First Jack Ross; she used her stethoscope, frowned, moved the instrument, then lifted a hand and pressed hard on the thumbnail. It went white and stayed that way. Silently she pulled the blanket over his head and went to the next.
The policeman was conscious. "Can you understand me?" she asked.
"Yeah. Are you the Russian spacewoman?"
"Yes. How many times were you hit?"
"Six. Shrapnel. Guts are on fire," he said.
As she felt for the pulse, Tim limped out of the room. Eileen followed, hugging at his arm. "You've been hit! Stay here," she said.
"I'm not bleeding. I can come back. Somebody's got to tell George about his brother-in-law. And there's something else I have to do. We've got to have reinforcements. Fast."
He saw it in her face. Nobody here wanted that kind of news. They'd fought and won, and they didn't want to hear that there was more fighting to do. "We don't have a doctor at the plant," Tim said. "Nobody