Eventually Doctor O’Shea came in and told Joseph he was healthy enough to travel. An orderly brought a tray of food and juice, which Joseph devoured.
A short while later another orderly came in with a set of neatly folded clothes for Joseph to wear -- white undergarments and socks; dark blue trousers; light blue shirt; boots, a warm jacket; a pair of gloves; and a knit hat.
Shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon, the four fugitive slaves, all now warmly dressed, were gathered by a young white man in a dark brown uniform with a gold star on his right breast.
“I’m Deputy Walt Bradley of the Indian Stream Sheriff’s Office. I’ll be taking you to Fort Evergreen, where you will begin the final leg of your journey.” He ushered them out the door and into a vehicle he called a passenger van. Once everyone was loaded up, the van headed up River Road, out of town.
* * *
Joseph stood with the other escaped slaves in front of a thing that looked like an overgrown insect. He’d never seen anything like it, but that had been happening a lot lately. The Deputy instructed them to get inside the strange thing and sit down in in the seats provided. The Deputy and another man he addressed as Chief then helped them attach some straps around their bodies, firmly securing them to the seats. There were six seats in the back of the thing and two up front, where two men were fiddling with a bewildering array of more stuff Joseph had never seen before.
When all the former slaves and the Deputy were buckled in, Chief got out and stood to the side of the thing, holding a red cylinder about two feet long. He made a swirling motion with his right hand. Joseph heard a whining sound from behind him, then the things he thought of as the insect’s wings began to turn above him like a windmill tilted on its side. Once they were going so fast Joseph couldn’t see them anymore, Chief got back in and buckled his own straps, before giving the thumbs up sign to one of the men in front.
A moment later, Joseph felt himself rising into the air. They were flying like birds. Rather than being scared, Joseph was exhilarated. Now he was truly free.
Way too soon the thing landed on a ship somewhere in the ocean. The Deputy and Chief helped Joseph out of his seat and he descended onto the deck of the boat.
“Welcome to the Indian Stream Republic Ship Justice!” A man dressed as a sailor took Joseph by the arm and guided him down a set of stairs leading into the interior of the ship.
He touched the hull as he went and was amazed to feel metal. He wondered how a metal ship could float.
The ship set sail almost as soon as the thing that had carried him to it left, flying off into the night sky.
Joseph was fascinated by ISRS Justice. He had been to sea only once before, aboard the slave ship that had taken him from Dahomey to Charleston. Chained up in the hold for the entire voyage, he had never seen the open ocean. Now he spent as much time on deck as he could, watching the ship’s crew as they went about their business.
Puzzled by a sign he couldn’t understand, he stopped a passing officer.
“Pardon me sir, but what does Rotor Wash Area mean?”
“It means this area is subject to very high winds during helicopter operations, and you could get blown overboard. It was a helicopter that brought you out here… Wait, can you read?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Joseph replied, “Yes sir. I didn’t tell anyone before because it was forbidden for anyone to teach slaves to read and write. I was taught by the sister of the plantation’s owner. He was furious when he found out and had me whipped. I ran as soon as I was healthy enough.”
“What’s your name?” the officer asked.
“Joseph Smith, sir.”
“Well Joseph, former slaves that can read and write are sometimes offered the opportunity to stay in the Republic rather than immigrate to Liberia. We could bring you back with us on our return voyage. Would you like to do that?”
Joseph recalled the bright and shiny hospital, and in particular Zahra, the pretty X-ray lady. “Yes, sir, I surely would.” When the other slaves disembarked in Liberia, Joseph remained aboard.
21 - ANNA
Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, USA, Friday, February 3, 1854
Anna gingerly swung her feet off the bed and waited for the pain to come. For the first time in two weeks, her back didn’t wail in protest. So far, so good. Standing didn’t bring any pain either, so she took a tentative step. A little twinge, but she could manage. After taking the steps one at a time downstairs, she started cooking breakfast.
“Good morning Paul,” she said when he walked in the door after completing his early morning chores. “I’m making pancakes.”
“You’re up. Are you feeling better?” he asked. Twenty year old Paul looked much more like Anna than Mike. Tall and blond, with ice blue eyes, he resembled her paternal grandfather.
“Definitely. Made it all the way down the stairs with barely a curse.” She grinned at him, and flipped one of the pancakes. “I’ve been sitting in bed too long. Got a lot of things to do today.”
“Like what?”
“The Uzi misfired again on my last trip south. I’m going to tear it down and check it carefully, but I think the ammo is just too old. There’s enough power left to fire a bullet, but not enough recoil to load the next round. The range has probably gone to Hölle as well.”
“Where did you get that thing, anyway? It’s like something invented by that French novelist, Jules Verne.”
“I’ve told you before, your father made it, before you and Jake were born. And don’t forget, you’re never to tell anyone about it.”
“I remember. But we could make a lot of money selling the design to the Army, I bet.”
“And someone from the Republic of Indian Stream would be knocking on our door the next day.”
“Why are you so afraid of them?”
“Because of something that happened a long time ago. You should be afraid of them too. Besides, we have plenty of money. Now eat and get on with your chores.”
* * *
As she expected, the Uzi appeared to be in perfect working order. Which meant the ammo was the problem, and not one easily fixed. Do I dare activate a portal to retrieve some from a temporal artifact of the future? Or from the day I first arrived in Mercersburg with fourteen fifty-round boxes?
Without doubt, they had suitable ammo up in the Republic, but she didn’t dare try to steal any there. The Republic certainly hadn’t made any secret of their military capabilities, but they had jealously guarded their military tech, if not their medical tech. St. Patrick’s Hospital had become the premier teaching hospital in the world, and Back Lake Enterprises did a brisk business in pharmaceuticals and medical instruments. Could I invent some reason for going to St. Patrick’s, then sneak off with some ammo? And a large bottle of Vicoprofen, another part of her brain interjected.
It was out of the question. Without the Uzi, her trips south would become more dangerous, but she still had the Glock, which seemed to be working fine. And she still had her Stasi and KGB training to rely on. When the electric generator died, she’d figured out how to power the sewing machine and recharge batteries using a waterwheel-driven, homemade generator. She would figure out the ammo problem, as well.
* * *
Paul burst into the kitchen later that day bearing a letter from Jake, as well as the latest edition of the Gettysburg Times. His fiancé, Miriam Johnson, followed him in the door.
“Jake’s left the Army!” Paul was waving the letter as he read aloud.
“Guten Morgen, Miriam,” Anna said, ignoring Paul’s news for the moment. “How is your mother?”
“Very well, ma’am. She sends you her best wishes.” Miriam was a sweet girl, a year older than Paul, but much less worldly. Brown hair, brown eyes, and a round face sat atop a trim body.
“He says that life at Fort Leavenworth was unbelievably boring, and that he’s going to seek his fortune and a wife in the Wild West.”
“He might find his fortune, but the only women out there
are prostitutes and Indian squaws,” Miriam said.
“Horace Greely says, Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country. Maybe we should all go west too.”
“Nonsense,” Anna said. “I like it fine right here, and I’m sure Miriam’s mother doesn’t want you taking her west, either. Anything interesting in the newspaper?”
“Don’t know, I haven’t read it yet.” Paul handed the paper over to his mother. There was indeed something interesting. Above the fold on page one was an account of the latest maneuvering of Napoleon the Third in Europe, which Anna knew would soon lead to the Crimean War. She flipped the paper over and was stunned to see a drawing of two men hanging from a tree. The caption read Two Fredericksburg Men Lynched for Aiding Escaped Slaves. She quickly read the accompanying article and was dismayed to learn she knew both men; they were part of the Underground Railroad in Virginia. Anna wondered if they’d given up any names, especially hers, before they died.
She didn’t have to wonder long.
“Mom, there’s four horsemen coming up the lane.” Paul was peering out the window.
“You take the Uzi and watch at the window.” Anna’s training kicked in immediately. “I’ll take the Glock. Remember, you might have to lock and load each round individually.
“Miriam, go in the back room and stay there.”
“What’s going on?” The girl looked frightened.
“Just do as I ask, Bitte. Beeil dich!” Hurry up.
Anna stuck her right hand into her dress pocket and grasped the Glock. With her left hand she smoothed the apron down so it concealed the pocketed hand. She opened the door as the riders arrived.
“Anna Carlton?” the tallest of the riders asked.
“Yes. How may I help you gentlemen?”
“I’m the Sheriff of Stafford County, Virginia. I have a warrant for your arrest on the charge of helping to smuggle slaves out of Virginia.” The Sheriff and one of his companions dismounted, but didn’t step up on the porch.
“Well it’s a good thing we’re in Pennsylvania,” she said tartly. Her hand tightened on the Glock, and she flipped the safety off. “You’ve no jurisdiction here.”
“We have a witness that says you violated the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. That’s a federal charge.”
“In which case you’ll have to bring your case to the local federal magistrate for an extradition hearing,” she said evenly. “But that might be hard since I think you’ve hung your so-called witness.”
“Enough of this horseshit,” his companion said. He started to climb the steps with the clear intention of grabbing her. Anna shot him in the stomach, blowing a hole through her dress and the apron.
The Sheriff started to draw his flintlock from his belt, but Anna was quicker. She shot him in the chest before he could pull his weapon free. A heartbeat later Paul shot one of the two remaining horsemen. The fourth man managed to fire a shot that shattered the window above Paul’s head, but Anna shot him before he could reload or flee.
With all four men down and likely dying, she turned to make sure Paul was okay. She heard him scream from inside the house. Anna rushed inside, where he was crouched over Miriam. The girl was lying on the floor, blood pooling around her.
“Scheisse. Where’s she hit?”
“In the right side, just below the ribs.” Paul was applying pressure to the wound.
“Keep pressure on it.” Anna grabbed the medical kit from its place on the kitchen shelf. She searched for the quick-clotting, kaolin-infused Combat Gauze, but didn’t find any. She had used it all, apparently.
Anna let out a stream of German cuss words. Then she made a decision. Damn the Republic. Unbuttoning the top button of her dress, she reached inside her collar and pulled on the lanyard that had been her constant companion for twenty years. The lanyard came free of her neckline and fell down across her bosom, the portal generator dangling at the end of it.
“I’ll be right back. Keep pressure on the wound.”
“Where are you going?” Paul pleaded. “She needs help!”
“I’m getting help.” She rushed out the door, paused to make sure the four interlopers were dead, and ran down to the river’s edge. Once there, she stepped into the water and used the generator to open a portal to a temporal artifact of exactly five a.m. on Saturday, August 2nd, 1834, the time she had first arrived in Mercersburg with a boatload of supplies. The edge of the portal hissed, and steam rose from the point where it entered the water.
Heedless, she waded through the portal into the artifact. The boat was tied to a tree, just as she’d left it. She used the knife she always carried to slice the rope, then pulled the boat back through the portal behind her before tying it to another tree and deactivating the portal. She grabbed the fresh medical kit from the boat and sprinted back up to the house.
Maybe ten minutes had passed since the gunfight, and despite Paul’s efforts, the pool of blood around Miriam was noticeably larger. She had lost consciousness. Anna dropped to her knees beside the girl and opened the medical kit. She pulled out the Combat Gauze and a pair of surgical scissors.
“Let me get in and cut her dress away. Gut. Now when I say so, pull your hands away so I can apply the gauze.” The gauze stopped the bleeding almost immediately. When Anna lifted it to examine the wound, there was a jagged three-inch-long, half-inch-wide furrow just below Miriam’s ribcage.
“Paul, look and see if you can find the bullet. I think it went right through her… at least I hope it did.”
“Yep, it hit the doorjamb behind her. Is she going to be okay?”
“I think so, but she’ll need some of your blood.” Anna had blood-typed both Jake and Paul as children and surreptitiously tested Miriam when Paul had proposed. They were all O-positive. Without any anti-D immunoglobulin injections available to prevent harm to a baby from rhesus incompatibility, she’d wanted to be sure Paul married an Rh-positive mate.
“Whatever she needs,” he murmured. Anna gave Miriam a shot of morphine. A sensation of longing as she inserted the needle made her wary. She got down to the business of transfusing two pints of blood from Paul to Miriam.
Two hours later she decided that Miriam was stable. She left Paul in charge while she went out to clean up the mess. Four more bodies. That made nine men she’d killed directly, in addition to the hundreds who’d died of the temporal shock she’d created when she saved Jake.
Dragging the bodies down to the water made her back hurt. Her lumbar spine protested again as she pulled her old boat from its hiding place. She moaned in pain as she lifted each of the bodies into the old boat. Then she reopened the portal and pushed the old boat with its grisly cargo though, and closed the portal. She’d have Paul come down later and carry the remaining supplies up to the house. He’d have to deal with the horses as well.
Right now the only thing she could carry were the fresh Uzi and Glock, along with a few clips of ammo, which she wanted just in case there were more men coming from Stafford County. Or from the Republic, if using the portal generator had exposed her.
Her back muscles screamed as she limped up the path to the house. No matter; there was a supply of Vicoprofen in the fresh medical kit.
* * *
Anna was examining Miriam’s wound when the girl’s father showed up later that night looking for her. Paul was gone, off trading the Stafford County posse’s mounts for two good draft horses across the border in Maryland.
“How are you feeling?” Anna asked.
“Like the house is spinning,” Miriam replied.
Mr. Johnson burst through the front door without knocking, then stopped short when he saw the bloody bandages Anna was peeling away from Miriam’s side.
“What in God’s name happened?” His anger melted into alarm. “Is she okay?” .
“I’m okay Daddy,” Miriam answered. “Just a scrape.”
Mr. Johnson bent down to look more closely at the wound in his daughter’s side. “It doesn’t look like a scrape to me. It looks lik
e you got shot.” The man was aware of Anna’s underground activities, but had probably never imagined they would lead to his daughter’s near death.
“We had some unwelcome visitors,” Anna said. “Miriam got hit by a wild round intended for Paul. But she’ll be okay, if a little uncomfortable for a few days.”
“She could have been killed!”
“Yes, but she wasn’t. Which is more than I can say for the other guys.”
“You killed them? How many?”
“Ja. Four of them. They planned to arrest me for helping slaves escape from Virginia. I don’t deny the charge, but I have no intention of going to prison. Or worse. You saw yesterday’s paper?”
“I did. But what are you going to do now? They’ll come looking for the missing men.”
“I know. Paul and I will have to go. No later than tomorrow.”
“Paul can’t leave me,” Miriam wailed.
“Entschuldigung. I’m sorry, but we’ve no choice.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” Miriam declared. “We can get married now, instead of waiting until the spring.”
* * *
Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, USA, Saturday, February 4, 1854
Paul and Miriam were married the next morning by Reverend Penn in his simple church. Mrs. Johnson cried throughout the ceremony.
Afterward Anna gathered the newlyweds, the Johnson’s, and Reverend Penn at her house.
“Where are you going?” Mrs. Johnson asked once they were all seated.
“West. Jake is somewhere in the Kansas Territory. We’ll try to join him. When we get settled I’ll have Miriam send you a letter, so you know where we are. I’ll ask you the favor of forwarding any mail that comes from Jake. We’ll be using the name Roberts. I’ve already spoken to the postmaster and he’s agreed to deliver to you anything addressed to me or Paul from Jake.”
“Aren’t you afraid the postmaster will turn you in?” Mr. Johnson asked.
“He’s part of the Underground Railroad,” Reverend Penn said. “He’ll keep their secret.”
The Legend of Indian Stream Page 12
