Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [48]
They put the more seriously injured on stretchers and loaded them into the ambulances. Others staggered away, back toward the Brown Chapel.
Shel got a whiff of the tear gas, and his eyes began to water.
“Look out,” said a guy behind him. “Wind’s coming this way.”
The man stood a few feet away, shaking his head silently.
“Where are the victims going?” asked Shel.
“Probably Good Samaritan,” he said. “It’s the only hospital that’ll take them.”
HE went back to the Brown Chapel. The demonstrators stumbled in amid sobs and screams. Two of the ambulances were unloading. Volunteers helped victims into the parsonage and tried to calm hysterical children. As he watched, a victim was carried out of the building on a stretcher and placed in a waiting hearse. Moments later a second hearse joined the first. A man got into the driver’s seat. One of the stretcher carriers climbed in back and pulled the doors shut. A woman hurried around to talk to the driver. “Wait, James,” she said.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re filling up at Samaritan. Take them to Burwell. You know where that is?”
“Sure.”
“Go.”
Shel intercepted her on the way back inside. “How bad is it?”
“Bad,” she said. “They’re all maniacs.” She took a moment to control her voice. “Broken bones mostly. But the tear gas was the worst. They can’t get it out of their lungs.” Her eyes were ice-cold. “Those homemade clubs. They used garden hoses with nails. The sons of—” She started to cry, shook it off, and hurried back inside.
Shel followed her in and did what he could. He helped carry stretchers, took fresh bandages to the doctors, got water for people whose legs had been broken. After a while it became more than he could take, and he went outside. He sucked in air, tried to block off what he was seeing, watched a child carried screaming from the building. Then he went back in.
FINALLY, the worst of it seemed done. The more seriously injured patients had been hurried away. The others had returned to their homes or to whatever temporary shelters had been arranged. The Burwell Infirmary turned out to be a nursing home operated for forty years by Minnie B. Anderson. Prior to the day’s events, it had been jammed to overflowing, but they’d made room.
Shel had had enough. This was a day that would change him forever. He had not believed human nature, on a mass scale, capable of such depravity. Not that he wasn’t aware that it had happened. But reading about things like this, and experiencing them—l iving through it—It had been a long time since he’d cried.
There was no sign of Dave. Probably, when things got bad, he’d hit the trigger and jumped out of there. Gone home. He hoped so. He walked back toward Broad Street, looking for a place that was more or less empty. But there were people everywhere. Eventually, he decided the hell with it, turned onto Broad, saw two deputies approaching, walked into the entry of a clothing store—which was, since it was Sunday, closed—and hit the button. He didn’t think anyone had noticed.
Didn’t really care anymore.
HIS den had never looked, felt, safer.
He had just begun to relax when a nimbus formed. Thank God. Dave was okay. He drew a deep breath, but then held it. The figure inside was not Dave.
The light grew brighter, started to fade, and a puzzled, overweight little guy in a police sergeant’s uniform staggered out, grabbed hold of a chair arm, and looked around in a state of shock. He was holding the converter in his right hand. His eyes locked on Shel while his jaw dropped. “What the goddam hell happened?” he demanded. “Where am I?”
“It’s okay, Sergeant,” Shel said.
The cop was terrified. Where is this? What happened to the goddam jail? Then he took a second look at Shel. “I know you.”
“I don’t think so. We’ve never met.”
“You were out at the bridge. A little while ago.”
“Yes. But I didn’t see you.”
“Hell, you didn