That was what she was doing when Ron came up behind her. She jumped about a foot when he asked, "Missy? What's going on?".
"I have never been so glad to see anybody in my whole entire life," she answered. "I think I'm a damsel in distress. Or, at least, Pam is. Help me rescue her. There's something really weird going on this morning."
Ron felt distinctly relieved. He had felt very foolish all the way as he ran from Lothlorien into town after she had phoned him, with every footstep that slogged through the snow suspecting that he would be greeted with, "What do you think I am, anyway? Some kind of an incompetent ditz?"
They looked at the padlock, decided it was substantial, and reverted to Plan A, which involved crawling into the garage from the back. Except Ron decided that by this time there wasn't much point in pretending to be a raccoon. He simply grabbed a couple of the old boards and yanked them off by main force, stripping the rusty nails.
"Pam," Missy was saying. "Are you okay?"
Pam swung her feet to the floor and sat up. "I have a mouth full of acrylic fuzz that tastes like hair, that's how I am. What in hell was going on here?"
"I don't have any idea, but I think we ought to tell the police."
There weren't any police to be had. The dispatcher took the information when they phoned from Pam's apartment, but said that this was going to be very low priority. Probably somebody would get back to them tomorrow.
Chapter 46
"There are twenty-five or so men gathered in the parking lot at Leahy Medical Center," Gary Lambert said calmly to the police dispatcher, "with another group about the same size by the emergency entrance." The business manager was reluctant to sound alarmist. "They arrived about nine o'clock this morning and have been there for approximately three-quarters of an hour now, yelling anti-vaccination slogans and waving signs. Thus far, they have not interfered with traffic into and out of the building."
"If they have been there that long, why did you decide to call us now?"
"Because other people are joining them. The original group came together, had a leader, divided quietly, and appeared to be a disciplined protest. We don't enjoy that sort of thing, but we really have to put up with it. The regular police patrols swung by, took a look at the ones in the parking lot, and moved on. I assumed that this meant they shared my feeling that there was no immediate cause for alarm."
"What has changed?"
"Quite a few additional demonstrators are coming now. Not in a single group, but in smaller ones, three or four together. They are not waving prepared signs. They already outnumber the original party and they are still arriving. Instead of clustering in one or two places, in the parking lot and by the emergency entrance, they are scattering out here and there around the exterior of the building. A half dozen by the main entrance; eight by the pathway from the laundry to the service entrance; about the same number by the pathway from the bakery to the service entrance."
"I'll send a couple of cars that way."
"Warn the cars that something is starting to happen. Several of the smaller groups that were still out on Highway 250 are coming together now, behind the original demonstrators in the parking lot. They are reaching under their cloaks and bringing out signs that protest the practice of doing autopsies as a part of medical education. The slogans they are beginning to shout include 'sacrilege,' of course, and predictions that as a result of these, at the time of the Last Judgment, people will be rising from the dead maimed and incomplete, denied the glorified bodies promised in the resurrection."
The police dispatcher squawked.
"This isn't something caused by Grantville. It was a controversy that existed between the medical schools and the yahoos down-time, before we ever arrived. That's why so many autopsies were done on condemned criminals. And why medical students were practicing grave robbing two centuries after the 1630s. It's an emotional thing. Emotionally very highly charged."
Gary paused. "Very bad theology, of course, but very highly charged."
"What's the estimated total number of demonstrators at the moment?"
"Let me check." He looked up from the phone. "What's the count, Maria? All sides of the building?" Then he spoke into the headphone. "Forty-three more within the last ten minutes. With others still coming along the highway. They are attempting to block the first patrol car you dispatched from entering the parking lot. The total is over a hundred and fifty now, including the original fifty or so, but they are moving around enough that it's hard for our people to get an accurate count."
"I'll notify Chief Richards right away. We'll get a full unit out to you as soon as possible."
"I think you should indicate that this may become urgent. I now have reports that a few of the newest arrivals are apparently preparing to take signs out from under their cloaks."
Jacques-Pierre Dumais was seriously worried. This was to have been an orderly, planned demonstration. He had made that very clear to the hired demonstrators.
He had no idea who these other people were or why they had arrived.
Of course, there were always certain hazards when organizing this type of thing, given the sort of people one had to use. Even the two Huguenots Deneau had brought and assigned to assist him weren't the sharpest knives in anyone's drawer.
The miscalculation this time, although Dumais had no way of knowing it, was that two of the men contacted by Bryant Holloway early in his circuit of the towns of Thuringia were genuine anti-autopsy fanatics. When they had heard that there was to be a demonstration against the sacrilegious practices of the up-time hospital on a certain date, they had not only come to Grantville themselves, but had brought their friends.
Jacques-Pierre was cautious by nature. He found it prudent to withdraw from the scene. It was not as if his presence had been conspicuous to begin with. He had merely been standing among the rear of the first group in the parking lot. He crossed to the other side of Route 250 and stood back from the highway, near the corner of a building. Corners were good places to stand. In a pinch, a person could always go around the corner and emerge somewhere else.
From his location at the rear of the original group, he had been providing instructions to Friedrich Klick from Halle, who was playing the role of leader in the anti-vaccination demonstration. When Dumais disappeared without leaving any guidance as to what his puppet should do next, Klick began to panic. He had no knowledge about the additional men who were arriving, no contacts among them, and no way to get them organized. He slipped to the side of his group, walked backwards for several steps, and then ran. Several others of the original fifty or so followed him. Others surged forward to take their places.
By the time the Grantville police were fully in place around Leahy, there were an estimated two hundred fifty participants in the demonstration.
Two or three smaller bands had attempted to force their way into the building.
Inside, the staff was evacuating all patients into center rooms.
Outside, the police had taken ranks at all the entrances. The police dispatchers had contacted the fire department and advised them not to bring ill or injured people to the hospital. Traffic on Route 250 had been blocked in both directions. The trolley to and from Rudolstadt had to turn around several blocks to the east of the hospital and return from there.
Two hours after Gary Lambert's first call, the demonstration at the hospital had nearly the entire on-duty Grantville police force fully occupied. Not all of them. Jurgen Neubert and Marvin Tipton were down by the Y where the bridges came together, since someone had called in a disturbance in front of Cora's. One of those anti-Semitic ranters who'd been showing up in several nearby towns the last couple of weeks had finally made it to Grantville, it seemed.