“Help from outlying towns—” Henry broke off, said it more loudly because the doctor had cupped his car, “Help from outside will be coming in by morning.”
The doctor just nodded and turned away, looking at the patient-covered earth for the next one.
Because of the red headlights and the siren, they got across on Decatur and came back north to the Country Club, where the brief meeting was to be held. The clubhouse had no windows but it did have electric lights, which astonished Henry until he recalled that he had voted—
years before, when he’d still had his membership—to put in a power plant simply to show a little spunk to the electric company. Ambulances were feeding people into the club. It was a better place than the shore of Crystal Lake.
They went into the main room, which seemed a bright glare after a night of emergency illumination. A few dozen of the scattered easy chairs had been pulled together and faced in one direction. Sighing, not removing his overcoat, because it was cold there, Henry dropped into a chair. Lacey took a seat beside him. Perhaps fifty men were there already. They, like Henry, were just sitting, sitting low in the upholstered chairs, saying nothing.
The CD chief, McVeigh, came down an aisle left between the chairs. He was followed by two women who wore CD brassards. They pulled up a big library table, helped by the men in the front row. Then McVeigh faced the sector leaders and their delegates:
“We’ve had to pull out of headquarters,” he said. “Fire storm making it too difficult to save the place.” His face grimaced as if of its own accord: “What was left of it, I mean to say. Here’s why I asked you to come over or send a delegate. We’ve got it bad, but River City’s far worse. The bulk of their fire-fighting apparatus lost. Most doctors dead or casualties. Short—almost out entirely—of every class of personnel. The whole city panicked. Nobody’s coming down from Kansas City or up from Omaha; nobody who’ll do any good, that is. Hundreds of unchecked fires over there, besides their half of the main show. Thousands—tens of thousands of people—still in the city. We don’t have to worry, for the moment, about the bulk of them. Because mostly they swarmed out of town. Point is, what can the Green Prairie outfit do to help—if anything?”
Not a man in the room spoke.
McVeigh nodded. “I know how you feel. I do myself. But what are we dealing with?
Certainly not local pride. Simply human numbers. If you can save ten here, you let one go there.