A cheer went up behind the Confederate line as the walker went blazing through it. Everyone got out of the way. Hats were thrown up and salutes were fired off.
Back in the woods, somewhere on the southern line, an explosion sent up a fireball so much bigger than the tree line that, even though it mustve been a mile away, Mercy could see it, and imagine she felt the heat of it.
Jensen said, You got here on that dirigible, the one that went down?
Thats right, she told him. And it just went up in flames, didnt it?
Yup. Hydrogenll do that.
What about that thing? The Hellbender ?
What about it? he asked.
What does it run on? Not hydrogen?
He shook his head and then ducked under a tent flap, indicating that she should do likewise. Hell no. Texas done developed it, so it runs on processed petroleum. Cant you smell it?
I can smell something .
Diesel . Thats what they call it, and thats why our Hellbender s gonna take down their . . . whatever they call theirs. Theirs just run on steam. They move all right, but they run so hot, they cant keep pace with ours, not for very long. Not without cooking the men who ride inside em. He paused his exposition to salute a uniformed fellow in the tents corner. Then he said, Chase, to acknowledge a second man who was sitting on a camp stool beside a cot. Maam, this is George Chase-hes been looking after the colonel. And there, thats Colonel Thaddeus Durant. You can see hes not doing so good.
I can see that, she said, and went immediately to the colonels side. She dragged a second camp stool to the cots edge and tugged a lantern out of George Chases hand.
He gave clear consideration to mounting a protest, but Jensen shushed him by saying, Shes a nurse from the Robertson joint, George. Dropped right out of the sky, she did. Give her some breathing room.
George scooted his stool back and said, I dont know what to do. I fix machines; I dont know how to fix things like this!
She swung the lantern over the pulp of the colonels face, neck, shoulder, and ribs, and guessed that hed taken a close proximal blast of grapeshot, or something messier. Peeling back the blanket theyd thrown across him, she followed the damage like it was a trail marked out on a map. The blanket stuck to him where the makeshift bandages had bled clean through. Everything was beginning to dry to a sticky, wet paste of cotton, wool, and shredded flesh.
Gentlemen, Im not entirely sure what to tell you-
Tell us you can save him! George Chase begged.
She wouldnt tell them that. Instead she said, I need all the clean rags you can get your hands on, and your doctors medical bag if you can scare it up for me. Then Im going to need a big pot of clean water, and if you find some thats good and hot, so much the better.
Yes maam. George saluted her out of habit or relief on his way out of the tent, thrilled to have been given a task.
The uniformed officer fretted in place, looming beside Jensen. He said,
Theres nothing to be done for him, is there?
She said, Maybe if I clean him up, Ill get an idea of how bad it is. But she meant, No.
Hes going to die, isnt he?
Jensen clapped the other man in the side and said, Dont you put it like that! Dont talk about him like that, hes right here and he can hear you. Hes going to be all right. Just damn fine, is how hes going to be.
Mercy very seriously doubted that the colonel could hear anything, much less any studied critique of his likely survival. But when the requested items arrived, she dived into exploratory cleansing, peeling away the layers of clotted fabric and gore as gently as possible to get at the meat underneath. She soaked the rags and dabbed them against the colonels filthy skin, and he moaned.
It startled her. Shed honestly thought he was too far gone for pain or response.
Inside the doctors bag, she found some ether in a bottle, as well as needles and thread, some poorly marked vials, tweezers, scissors, syringes, and other things of varying usefulness, including another fat roll of bandages. She whipped these out and unrolled them, saying, The first thing is, youve got to stop his bleeding. The rest of this . . . goddamn, boys. Theres not enough skin to stitch through here, or here- She indicated the massive patches where his flesh had been blasted away. You need to get him out of this field. Ship him up to Robertson, if you think you can get him that far. But right here, right now . . .
She did not say that she did not think hed ever survive long enough to make it to the nearest hospital, or that any further effort was damn near futile. She couldnt say it. She couldnt do that to them.
Instead she sighed, shook her head, and said, Mr. Chase, Im going to need you to hold this lantern for me. Hold it up so I can see.
She retrieved the dead doctors tweezers.
What are you going to do?
The poor bastards got so much scrap and shot in him, its probably added ten pounds. Im going to pick out what I can, before he wakes up and objects. I need you to help me out with this water.