Angela Baker, on dispatch, was contacting those off-duty to come in.
Police spokesmen with bullhorns attempted to persuade the demonstrators to disperse. A call for the leader of the group produced Klick. He came around from behind a parked wagon at the edge of the lot and was quite willing to speak to the police, but it turned out that his main wish was that they should get him away from the site.
As he said, plainly, he had, after all, been hired to come and do this. As had everyone who had come with him. He would be quite willing to tell the Polizei everything he knew in return for the favor of being removed from the scene. More than willing to do it. Happy to do it.
When the rest of the anti-vaccination demonstrators saw him being placed in a police car, they moved toward that side of the parking lot. This allowed the anti-autopsy demonstrators to take up a more central position, directly in front of the main entrance.
A shoving, pushing, and shouting match developed at the side. No one seemed to be able to get the idea across that Klick was being evacuated at his own wish.
"It looks to me," Bill Magen said, "that a batch more of these guys are getting ready to pull out their signs and start waving them. They're twitching at their cloaks."
"Moving forward, too," the officer next to him answered. That was Karl Maurer, who was scowling fiercely. "I don't like this. It's a good hospital. When my son was so sick in the winter, coughing, they brought him here. The physicians cured him."
A man moved to the front. "We demand that you surrender to us the surgeon who violates the bodies of the dead!"
Many of the demonstrators reached under their cloaks.
"Those aren't signs!" Magen called. "Those are guns."
Ralph Onofrio, the senior man on duty, moved forward to try to calm the situation.
The more aggressive autopsy protesters began to move forward from the perimeter, pushing the earlier anti-vaccination demonstrators who had not moved to the side already toward the hospital. One man lost his balance and fell forward. Several, trying to escape the readied guns to their rear, ran over him as they were pushed in the direction of the hospital entrance.
The smaller groups by the bakery and laundry moved toward the main entrance, pulling weapons as they came.
Then the whole crowd moved forward a few steps, several of the demonstrators readying their guns. Within five minutes, the demonstration had become an armed confrontation.
Onofrio was still calling orders when Maurer, the policeman whose croupy child had been treated at the hospital, fired. Most of the other down-time policemen, without waiting for orders, followed suit.
The Grantville police had notably more firepower than the demonstrators, not to mention better body armor. Still, it was not exactly a massacre. There were many more armed demonstrators than policemen and they did not hesitate to shoot back.
A significant number of the unarmed anti-vaccination demonstrators were caught between the two armed groups.
It lasted quite a while. Several of the armed demonstrators had remained around the edges of the parking lot. They sheltered behind vehicles, fences, landscaping, just as they would have done in their home villages if fighting a delaying action against a marauding mercenary band.
The firing continued for quite some time as the police attempted to disengage enough of their people ringing the building to get behind the scattered shooters.
As long as the shooting continued, it was impossible for anyone to try to deal with those who had fallen dead or wounded outside the building.
Several of the panicked, unarmed original hired anti-vaccination demonstrators, caught between the two sources of fire, managed to break through the police line, seeking refuge in the hospital's main lobby, which started a second sphere of action as the hospital staff attempted to prevent them from pushing farther into the building.
"Oh God, Marvin," Jürgen Neubert cried out to his partner, who was standing on the sidewalk by Cora's. "He's dead. It came in over the car radio. Ralph's dead. Angela, Angela, what is happening?"
"The demonstration. The one at the hospital. There were other groups, off to the side. Press is on his way over there. Marvin, I've got to tell you. We fired the first shot. Bill Magen is dead, too. I know that for sure."
Marvin Tipton grabbed the hand-held.
"Who fired?"
"Maurer. It was Karl Maurer who shot first. It's all so confused, still."
"Hang in there, Angela. We're heading over."
"What do you have, Franz?" Jürgen asked.
"Three more of yours, here. Besides Officer Onofrio. Maurer. And both of the Hansen. Shruer and Schultz. The two ex-mercenaries. The ones who were always together. There are several more wounded policemen. They have taken them inside the hospital, Erika Fleischer said. She is okay. Not hurt."