When she reached them, losing a shoe in the mud but not stopping, not caring, they had set the cradle down. Finnick was kneeling by the Railroad man, the others gathering round. They looked down in silence. "Let me through," she said, pushing between Ben and Nose's broad backs. They gave way, and she saw what had happened.
The center, the waist of the shell, its widest point, had stayed on the cradle. The cradle-cant as Leo fell had caused it to pivot, its rounded nose swinging to the right. This now lay across the thin man, who lay face downward, motionless, on the wet grass. His left arm, shoulder, and upper chest were out of sight under it, and its weight pressed into the curve of his neck and cheek. Finnick had halfturned his head to the right, and had scooped out the soft sod so that he could breathe, shallowly, quickly. His face was old paper and his eyes were shut. She couldn't tell if he was conscious or not. She looked up at Turner. "We've got to get it off before we can help him."
He was staring at Leo, his face strange. The distant look was in his eyes again. Lord, not again, she thought. "Bo, Willie, we've got to get it off."
"Gimme a hand," Finnick muttered, putting his shoulder to the shell's bulk. The others stepped into place. "Now shove."
The weapon pivoted, hesitated, and settled back into place on the carrying-cradle. Her eyes widened at the sight of the arm. Visibly flattened, it had been pressed down into the soft soil, and the shoulder was oddly angled. Leo hadn't reacted when the weight came off it. He was out, perhaps in shock.
"That arm gonna go," she heard Willie whisper.
"That's not what worries me." She pointed to the shoulder, and then her finger moved downward. "It's his chest. And his heart. That was layin' right across his back."
She bent down to listen at his mouth. No trace of bubbling, no trace of blood. But that didn't mean it might not start when they tried to move him.
But they had to, and right now. Already the dawn was brighter, and the outlines of a large house were visible at the top of the sloping lawn.
"Come on, Johnny." It was Finnick. "We got to get movin'. We get caught out here by one them airships, we all gonna be dead."
Turner seemed to come back from somewhere, and shook his head. "Yeah… yeah. Take hold again, boys."
They bent again for handholds, eyes shifting now to the goal, the open maw of the truck, only ten more paces and then a dead lift four feet up.
"Hunh."
Behind them she felt for Leo's pulse. She was no nurse, but it felt weaker than it should be. She touched his arm and swallowed. It was becoming sodden with blood, and she could feel the pulpiness of crushed tissue beneath.
A tourniquet, that was the only thing she could think of. But even as she pulled his belt free from the muddy trousers, she was thinking, then what? Then where do we take him?
The only possible answer was, to Richmond with them. Locked in his mind were the names of the Railroad men there, and where they'd meet them, and the details of how they planned to transform the tremendous destructive power they'd come into possession of, into political leverage. And only he could drive the truck — in daylight, at least. She could drive, most CEs could after a fashion, but it was illegal. Police or patrollers would stop a black man or woman in a car on sight. She set the belt in place and tightened it until the slow ooze of blood slackened.
Turn him over? She decided to wait and see if he came to before doing anything more. She looked up just in time to see the last stage of the shell's journey.
United in an ecstasy of straining effort, their bodies trembling-rigid, Johnny Turner's men were lifting the shell straight up. Their hands, knotted on the cradle, moved so slowly as to seem almost stationary, as if they were arm-wrestling with gravity. Up. So slowly — past their knees, to their waists — a collective gasp, a shift, bending lower under it now — Turner himself with his broad back and shoulders under the base of it, its small black cavitied eye staring back at her — then up again, even more slowly, as the men cried out softly and cursed and its nose came level with the truck's bed —
They grunted and heaved together and slid the cradle a foot forward into the truck. That end supported, Willie and Ben, the two front men, could come around behind Turner and the others and heave it forward. It slid slowly into cover, the men grunting explosively, the mudlubricated wood of the cradle scraping on the metal bed. Foot by foot it disappeared into the truck like a strange reversal of birth. Then it was inside, safe, and the men stood back and some fell to their knees on the grass and were sick. Turner stretched himself and leaned against the truck, swaying, for a moment; then reached up and banged shut the doors and snapped shut the padlock that was there.
Leo moaned under her hands. She bent and stroked the wet forehead. "Hey, it's Vyry. Can you hear me?"
"Ahh…" He moaned. His eyes flicked open, unfocused. "Oh, damn."
"Can you move? How you feeling?"
"I can't feel my arm." His smooth pale forehead was dotted with sweat, and all trace of boyishness was gone.
"It don't look too pretty. I put a tourniquet on it, stop the bleeding." She looked toward the truck. "We got to go. Can you try to get up? I'll help."
"Uh, I'll try." He gathered himself and then struggled up. The arm dangled and he looked down at it with an odd blank disbelief. "It's broken. Shouldn't we set it?"
She thought it was beyond setting but didn't know how to say it. There was a steady dripping from the tips of the finger, and a dark stain spread on the mud.
"You all right?"
She tried to smile. "Yes, Leo. I'm just worried about you."
"Never mind." He tried to smile too. "It doesn't hurt yet. We got a man in Richmond will fix me up. But — " he looked up at the vehicle, the waiting men, " — how are we going to get there now? I can't steer, or shift."
"How is he?" said Turner, coming down to join them.
"I can't drive."
"I can. Drove a truck down the waterfront couple of times when the white boys took sick."
"Yes, but—"
"I know. Can't pass if they stop us." He scowled. "But we still got guns. Ain't hardly used them yet, either."
"That isn't the way through the Army, Turner. We got to go through quiet." Turner snorted. "Look," Leo continued. "We'll stay here today."
"Here?"
"Yes. But first we've got to get the boat out of sight. Can you sink it?"
"Not in here. Too shallow."
"Then can you get it under cover? So they can't see it from the air?"
"I saw a creek back there by the road. Trees over it…" He waved Finnick over. "Hey, Bo. Come on with me. Got to move the boat." They walked together toward the water, and Vyry, left behind with Leo, remembered something else.
"What about the white major?" she said, in a low voice.
"What about him?"
"Can't just leave him tied up there in the boat."
"It's that or kill him. I don't think Johnny would mind doing that, either. With his bare hands. That's the one who interrogated him, isn't it?"
"Yes. But he's not a — real bad type. Like some of them, the KKLs. I don't" — her eyes fell — "I don't want him killed."
The Railroad man's eyes searched her face. "I see. Well, we've got to keep Turner away from him, then. The others I can handle. Him… no. The best thing is just to leave him there."
"Get over here, you black bastards," he was shouting from the beach. "Lean into her. She's stuck fast."
They reassembled, heaved, and the patrol boat floated free in a roar of motors and a flurry of mud and water from astern. Finnick steered it toward a copse farther down the shore.
"You said, we'll stay here today?" Vyry asked him. She looked up the lawn. It was full daylight now and she could see that the house was large, not palatial, but far beyond what any CE could hope to own.