SCENE SEVEN Main ward, Baltimore State Asylum that evening.
Sean Oriel Liam Hoynes was among the first of the younger team members awake after he didn't know how long, following the spread of gas through the main ward. His head ached fiercely, his eyes burned as if they'd gotten too close to a fire, and his throat felt as if someone had weeded there, with a rusty, dull rake. But looking around him, the tall, black haired Irish immigrant wondered at first if he was still tangled in nightmares from the late War! Men lay sprawled out, curled up, piled against each other, or prostrate all around him, as if on a very strange sort of walled-in battlefield once the guns stopped barking and clattering, the cannons stopped roaring and the screams died away.
"Chris?" Ori tried calling out for his own young partner, and scowled when he could barely produce a whisper.
"Don't yell!" Sandy haired, wide grey eyed Gloucesterman Chris McIntire called back, sitting up, a few feet away. "My head's trying hard enough to split on its own, and doesn't need any more help! What'd they gas us with, anyway?"
"Something… a lot like that tearing gas Artemus …worked up a few years ago, I'd guess. But this was a whole lot harsher!" Tall, strawberry blond, Mairtin Macquillan, Mac's son, answered in between coughs. Then he stood up, stretching his long legs, another two yards across the room. "Artemus told… me if you don't get the …mixture right that stuff will just about suffocate you!"
"And it just about did!" Thad Kuenle, Jim's cousin, a greying redhead originally from Knoxville rasped in his turn, walking slowly over to join his allies. Then he gestured to more of the young agents still "fallen' to the gas. "Mi's still out of it, and so are Tierney, Travis, Terry and Rand!"
"And so are more than two thirds of the patients in the main ward. And I'm not sure some of them can recover from this." Dark eyed, dark haired rangy Cincinnati native, Mickey Spencer, another young physician-agent on the 'second string' as Ori called them, added, as he stood up and looked around."But I think Rob and Seanny are alright, we each had one of those miniature breathing masks Artie's been working on for just such occasions."
"Yeah, I'm fine, and so's Rob. But we've got some real trouble, fellows." Stocky, blond Sean Phillipsen agreed, walking into the main ward from the lift alongside tall, dark haired, bright eyed Rob Harper, Frank's younger son, currently a Resident at Maryland State University Hospital.
"We already had real trouble." Ori noted, standing up, despite the banging in his head and the way the whole ward tried reeling around him. "What's been added?"
"Artemus, Jemison and Miguel are all up in the infirmary, that's where Sean and I just came from. And they're all three still unconscious, and showing every sign of being dosed with something besides the gassing we all got. Artie had a breathing mask too, and he'd given one to Miguel. But it did them no good. That was what first caught my attention to them being dosed." Rob answered, frowning, his shoulders wearily slumping. "And …Jim's missing, again."
"Great G-d!" Ori exclaimed. "All right, boyyos, we can't have this! But you already know that. For one thing, Artie will line the lot of us up against that wall right there and open up with a firing squad, if we've somehow lost his partner! For another, and worse, the Man… the President's due to come here within the week, just to see Jim! And President Grant won't like it one tiny bit if we don't have his protégé here for him to see!"
The group of young agents began arguing, and that went on for several minutes as more and more of their number came around, either aching, dizzy, or sick from the gas.
"Everyone calm down!" Mairtin called out. "We can't go off half-cocked here, no matter how bad it looks. And it looks awfully bad! Sean Oriel, I expect you're in charge, being senior amongst us. And that's fine with me. But we have to get moving, comb the complex, and then move out from there. Mickey, Seanny, Rob, you weren't knocked out, not by the gas, anyway. Did you see anyone carting Artemus, James or the doctors out of the ward?"
"Wish I had, Mairty, but I got a pretty good clonk on the noggin from one of those scurvy guards." young Sean Phillipsen answered ruefully. "When I came around, Rob had carted me up to the infirmary and was trying to get me awake."
"Rob and I got Artemus up in the lift, between us." Mickey added. "That was right after Rob carried Miguel up, and I shifted Jem. And then we started taking the patients who seemed worst off from the gas. I suppose I should have noticed right away that James wasn't with the others. I thought maybe someone had taken him up to the acute ward. What a boneheaded mistake that was!"
"Hold on, Mick." Ori told the tall, dark Ohioan, crossing to him and putting one long hand on his shoulder. "We're all at fault here. And Mairty's right, we can't waste any time casting blame. Speaking of which, of time, I mean, how long do you figure we were knocked out? How much time have those bastards had to get Jim away, if that's what they've done?"
"If that's what they've done? Why else would they gas us and drug the others?" Rand Alexander, a protégé of Jemmy's demanded, getting to his feet and glaring at the older, taller agents.
"Well, if I had to guess, Rand, it might have been so we'd waste even more time quarreling and sniping right now, instead of searching for Jim and trying to help our friends." Chris answered. "So maybe we should stop doing what they want and start disobliging them some."
"I agree with Ori, and with Chris, and with Mairtin, so you all know how uncomfortable that makes me." Rob offered. "But to answer Ori's main question: It's only been two and a quarter hours since the guards came in here with those gas canisters on their rifles. I know it probably seems a lot longer, fellows. But that's part of the disorientation the gas causes. When you can't breathe right it does funny things to your senses. So, whoever did this to all of us has only had that much time to get away from here. And I'm not convinced that taking Jim out of here fits with everything else the bastards that run this place have done, so far."
"All right." Ori nodded. "Gentlemen, we have a lot of work to do and we've lost two and a half hours at this point. Mairty's right, I have to take charge of this … disaster, until Artemus comes around or one of the other senior agents comes up from the District. That's where Thomas and Frank, Jacques and Jeremy are right now, still trying to talk the President out of this trip north he's got his mind set on. And I wish them good luck with that!
And I think Rob's got a very good point. The sobs we've been fighting off, and working against, including the ones we're still trying to identify as part of all this brouhaha, have nothing to gain by taking Jim away from here, now. They're losing the whole complex to that tax auction in less than a fortnight. And that means they're losing control of all the men held here, our friend, Jim West included. They don't have time now to set up another dumping ground somewhere else and surely, they must know… "
"They've gotta know the Man's comin' here!" Travis Madsen called out, pushing himself to his feet in the corner. Shaking his thick blond hair out of his heavy lidded, wide grey eyes, the wiry young Norfolk native strode to the middle of the group. "That's why they won't take ol' Torry anywhere away from this pesthole, not before the President's visit! They'd lose their best chance in a month of Sundays, if they done that. They want another go at the Man!"
"By G-d, Trav, I think you're right!" Rand nodded, excitable as ever.
"And so do I." Ori said. "Now, here's what we do. Mairtin, you head up to Doctor de Cervantes' desk in the infirmary and wire your Pop. He's got to make the President see this place is too bloody dangerous, despite all his good intentions in coming. And Mac's one of the few people who might get the Man to actually listen. And Mac listens to you."
"Thaddeus, Chris, Seanny, and Travis, you start searching this part of the complex first and then branch out. Thad, you have seniority amongst that bunch of rowdies so you take charge. No arguments from the rest of you, you get that? We don't have time! As the rest of us get up to par again, we'll join in. That's all except for Mickey and Rob, clearly you're most needed up in the infirmary, and not just by our fellows. Rand, you go up and help Jem to come around, we need him and Artie and Miguel up and around as soon as possible. I'll help you, Rob, and Mickey take Terry and Mi upstairs, since they're still not completely awake."
"And as for this searching. Be careful and be thorough. Question every guard and so called medic you can find and then when they won't answer, just go on searching. Remember some of these buildings have attics and some have cellars, and some are already falling apart. Technically the Service has no jurisdiction here. But with a known threat to the President emerging again, we have a mandate to follow. Now these bastards have upped the ante again, seeing as how Mickey says they could have killed half the men in this complex with that damn gas! So we've got a far more dangerous situation on our hands than it already was."
"And that means my idea for starting that row earlier on was a really bad one! Oh and one more thing: You're all Federal agents, me fine boyyos, not constables, not sheriffs, not marshals, and you can't act like them or like rowdies, not in this state of affairs. So, you find Jim, and you tell whoever's got him they're jeopardizing the safety and well being of a Federal agent. And that is a Federal crime, which earns them hard time in a Federal pen, not some county or state prison! Everyone's clear on that, right? Alright me fine boyyos now, move out!"
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW