Ring of Fire III(5)

“What about the Pelican?” said Mary.

Everyone turned to look at her.

“Is it still here?” asked Willa uncertainly.

“And even if it is,” added Estelle, “would it carry all of us?”

Mary nodded vigorously. “It’d carry all of us—easy. And, uh, yeah. It’s still here.” She paused, seeming to avoid her aunt Willa’s gaze. “Well. At least, it was this morning.”

Fodor glared at her. “I told you to stay away from him!”

Even under the circumstances, as dire as they were, Rita couldn’t help but choke out a laugh. Fodor shifted the glare onto her.

“Give it up, Willa,” Rita said, shaking her head. “Trying to keep nineteen-year-old girls from chasing after boys has been a lost cause since the Stone Age.”

“He’s not a boy! He’s at least ten years older than she is.”

“He is not!” countered Mary hotly. “Stefano’s only twenty-six.”

“Seven years is still too much! Especially when he’s Latin.”

Maydene looked exasperated. “Is that ‘Latin’ as in Eye-talian, Willa? Like a lot of the population of Grantville? In fact, if I recall correctly, wasn’t your high school boyfriend Matt Difabri?”

“He was Italian-American,” Fodor said, defensively. “That Franchetti guy is Italian-Italian. It’s not the same thing.”

“Can we please concentrate on what’s important?” said Estelle. “Worry about Mary’s love life later. If that contraption can get us all out of here, I’m for using it.”

“Me too,” said Rita forcefully. “And there’s no time to lose. By now, Stefano is bound to be trying to get up in the air. We’ve got to catch him before he does.”

She gave the apartment a quick survey, to see if there was anything she wanted to take with her. The walkie-talkie radio, of course, which was also perched on the mantelpiece. Hopefully that would enable her to get in touch with Tom, since his unit had a radio also. Beyond that...

There was a fair number of personal items she’d hate to lose, but she sternly suppressed the urge to snatch them up. Besides the radio, there was really only one thing important.

“Mary, give me a hand,” she said, hurrying into the bedroom. Once there, she began emptying the chest of drawers against one of the walls. Her clothes got piled onto the bed, Tom’s got pitched unceremoniously onto the floor. No one, not even Maydene, was big enough to fit into her husband’s clothes.

As she did so, she pointed to a corner. There was an old suitcase there, that Tom had had with him when the Ring of Fire came and had held onto ever since. “Use the suitcase. Skip the underclothes but cram it full of whatever will help keep us warm.”

Maydene wouldn’t fit into Rita’s clothes, and she didn’t think Böcler probably would either. But there was no help for it.

Well...

Maydene stuck her head in. “Can I help?”

“Yes. Grab the blankets off the bed and roll them up. We’ll need them, I figure.”

Less than a minute later, the suitcase was packed and Utt had the blankets over her shoulder. Rita headed for the front door, stopped, and raced back into the bedroom. Tom kept a box of shotgun shells in the drawer of the little table next to the bed. She shoved it into the capacious pockets of the heavy jacket she’d put on and went back into the living room. After stuffing the walkie-talkie into one of her pockets and picking up the shotgun that she’d left leaning against the wall, she went into the corridor. As the rest of the party followed, she took the time to reload the weapon.

“Is anyone else armed?” she asked.

“Me,” said Estelle. Looking back, Rita saw that McIntire had pulled a revolver out from somewhere. The gun looked like a small cannon. Rita thought it was probably one of her husband Crawford’s guns. He had a big collection of them and was partial to heavy calibers, as she recalled.

The weapon looked too big for Estelle, but Rita knew there’d be no point in saying anything on the subject. Besides, even if the woman lost the revolver after firing it, her first shot would hit the target. McIntire was the sort of person who’d handle killing the same way she’d handled sewing up a wound. If it needs to be done, just do it.

* * *

Once they were out in the street, the sounds of fighting were much louder. They seemed to be concentrated toward the eastern side of the city. That was where Tom’s artillery unit had its barracks. The unit quartered next to them was a mercenary force, but it was under the command of Bruno von Eichelberg, a young man from a modest noble family in Brunswick whom Tom and Friedrich Engels had been on good terms with. Rita thought it was unlikely that Eichelberg’s unit had participated in whatever treachery was underway.