Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century 5)

“Leave us,” she insisted. “Leave, and there’s nothing here for them to take!”

Maria still had a thousand questions, but someone on the other side of the incoming door had a gun. She had one, too, but she also had something heavy to carry. She ran where Sally’d pointed her, dodging dirty laundry, sidestepping puddles, and almost forgetting the smell that surrounded her.

Out the door she fled, into a narrow corridor without any windows—but there was a door at one end, so she raced for it and paused long enough to withdraw her Colt. She jammed the gun into the satchel so its handle was easily grabbable, and she opened the door.

On the other side she found stairs going up, but also leading down. To some kind of subbasement or cellar, she assumed. Only a fool would go down farther, and probably wind up trapped there. No, she’d go up and take her chances.

First floor.

She pressed her ear to the door with the large number “1” painted on it. She heard hollering on the other side. Hollering for her? Hollering at her? No, it didn’t sound like it. These were the shouts of doctors giving orders, and the sounds of wheeled gurneys squeaking hastily between the rows. Maria heard nurses answering the doctors, and asking for supplies; injured men moaning or vomiting, and explanations being cast back and forth across the turmoil. Was it truly loud enough that no one here had heard the gunshots below?

Maria took her chances with the door and opened it, revealing utter chaos: dozens of freshly arrived patients, rolled in on chairs or tables, being sorted and positioned and addressed with professional but imperfect haste.

“Oh, God,” she said into her mask, then pulled it off because she hadn’t realized until then that she still wore it. She dropped it on the floor and pushed her way forward, through the teeming crowd of the wounded and their caretakers, taking a gurney to the hip with such force that she cried out, bounced off it, and stumbled forward around an operating table that had been wheeled into place right beside it.

On the table was a man who was about to lose his leg; even a laywoman like herself could see that for a fact. A nurse held the man down as he writhed and cried, and a doctor struggled to put a molded glass mask over his face for ether, but the patient thrashed. Maria watched, fascinated, unable to tear herself away. The nurse lost her grip on the mangled leg and a jet of blood gushed several feet in the air, spraying Maria across the face.

She could hardly move for the horror of it, but she forced herself toward the rear of the room, where another door promised an exit, or so she hoped. She wiped at her face, tracking a streak of crimson across the back of her hand. Though she blinked and blinked, the vision in her right eye still swam with red. A bucket of clean rags in soapy water sat by the door, and although she remembered what Sally had said about every rag being sacred, she took one anyway. As she retreated, she wrung it out and wiped at her face, working the rag’s corner into her eye even though the soap stung.

Her sight cleared, and she swabbed her décolletage, fretting over a splotch or two on her scarf and another on her bodice. But she’d have to wash them later, there was no time to take a trip to the washroom now. Not when she heard—bang—another gunshot somewhere behind her.

It might’ve been anything, she told herself. Might’ve been some agitated, delirious soldier burning through ammunition, threatening the very people who would bring him back from the brink if he’d give them but a chance.

But she wasn’t prepared to wait around and find out.

As she reached the door that should take her into the main lobby, the stairwell door crashed open and another gunshot rang out.

The reaction was immediate and loud; nurses screamed, patients howled, every able-bodied person ducked for cover. One of the doctors drew a weapon of his own to fire back at the man in the doorway.

Maria only got a glimpse of him and all she could tell was that he was a white man in a long brown coat. He ducked back into the stairs, only to return fire … right into the room where all the wounded were waiting for help.

“Despicable!” she gasped, and reached for her Colt’s handle, but came to her senses before adding to the fray.

Besides, the doctor was returning fire with the skill and calm of a sharpshooter, and maybe he was one, or had been. This was a war hospital, after all, and surely most of the surgeons had seen the field at some point in their service. Maria said a prayer and wished him luck, concluding that the best way she could help defuse the situation would be to leave it behind and let the gunmen chase her to another place.

So she kept running, out the door and into the circular driveway, where four ambulances of military make were jumbled together, having just arrived from the front. Their rear doors hung open, bloody rags and clothing spilling out from within, as if the vehicles had been disemboweled. At least two of these mechanical carriages had been left with their engines still running, pumping black smoke from their exhaust pipes, their idling motors gurgling.

Maria had never driven an ambulance before.

But when she looked inside the nearest cab and scanned the controls, she recognized most of them. The machine wasn’t wholly different from the newfangled taxis she’d driven in Atlanta during one summer’s desperate effort to feed herself.

She came to a decision. She tossed the satchel onto the seat, seized her Colt, and jumped back onto the lawn in front of the house-turned-hospital … and fired her gun twice into the air. “Hey!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Hey, I’m out here! Follow me, boys—I’ve got what you want, so come and get it!”

Silence fell in the wake of her proclamation. For a moment, she didn’t know what to do. Try again? Wait a little longer? See what happened? But the decision was made for her. One of the hospital’s front windows broke as an elbow smashed through it and the barrel of a gun emerged in the hole.

Before the attempted assassin could squeeze off more than a shot, she dived back into the cab of the ambulance and shut the door, hunkering down as low as she could while still operating the controls. There was a clutch? Yes, a clutch. There, that pedal. And the diesel injector, yes. That pedal there. Where was the gearshift? She fumbled around until she found it on the side of the steering wheel—doing most of this by feel, since she couldn’t see much of anything. But she got the vehicle moving.

And immediately struck one of the other ambulances.

She didn’t hit it hard, but the impact knocked her head against the dash, and she swore like no lady ought to.

A bullet shattered the windscreen and she was showered with shards of glass, but she shook her head and brushed them away, then sat up just long enough to see where she was going—and to shove her foot onto the accelerator as soon as she spied an opening.

Over the grass the vehicle hopped, winging a low stone retaining wall as she skidded inexpertly over the driveway and then alongside a ditch, into which the ambulance leaned sharply, threatening to flip and fall. But she urged it up, up, and onto level ground. Now the shooters were far enough behind her that they couldn’t hit her except by the most outrageous accident. Or so she was fairly certain, because she could still hear the shots cracking behind her, but nothing striking home.

She guided the unwieldy craft onto the road and did her best to avoid any horse-drawn carriages, dogs, men or women on foot, wagons, or other motored devices; but it was hard to see with the windshield gone and the sharp, cold air flying into her face without mercy. Maria squinted against the wind and wished for goggles like the airship flyers used … but if wishes were fishes they’d all cast nets. So she drove on, paying so much attention to her technique that she’d gone a mile before putting any thought into where she was headed.

Was she still being followed? Hard to say.