by Diane Rios
A missile flew past her head, and Chloe ducked. She tried to push the gurneys out of the way of the fighting, but there were too many. Chloe ran to the open west door and looked out. She could see the boat down at the dock. Two white coats stood on its deck, looking up at the hospital. They were waiting for the patients.
Maybe they already have patients onboard. What if my mother is already on the ship?
Chloe ducked behind the wooden chute leading from the hospital down to the dock. Scanning the path, she could see a way to get to the boat undetected if she hid under the wooden supports of the chute. Gathering her courage, she slid underneath the wooden contraption, and quickly began her descent.
A huge BOOM! shook the earth, and Chloe shrieked. The white coats on the dock yelled and pointed up at the hospital. A gas canister had exploded and had set the corner of the building on fire. People screamed and ran away from the door, some spilling out onto the path to the dock.
Chloe began running. She leapt down the hill under the chute and stumbled, scraping her knee badly. She made it to the edge of the little dock and hid behind a pile of barrels. Another huge BOOM! punched the air and she heard breaking glass as a large window blew out from the hospital above. The two guards moved forward for a better look at what was happening. Now was her chance.
Chloe moved swiftly onto the boat and toward the door leading down to the hold. She turned back once to glance up at the hospital and saw the fight had only intensified. She had very little time. The guards could decide to cast off and drive the boat away any minute.
Chloe looked fearfully into the dark hold. It was pitch black and ice cold. She couldn’t see a thing, and her heart hammered so loudly she thought surely the guards would hear it, even over the noise of the battle. But she must go into that cold, dark place; there was no other option. Chloe gathered her courage and entered the hold, dreadfully afraid of what she would find there.
She stood at the bottom of the stairs, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Though she was momentarily blinded, her ears still worked perfectly, and she could hear steady breathing. A few more seconds and Chloe could make out two rows of bunks lining the hull of the ship. In each one lay a person. She heard soft moans coming from some of them, as the gas began to wear off.
“Mother?” Chloe called out softly, barely daring to hope. “Mother? Eleanor Ashton . . . Are you here? It’s me, Chloe!”
“Chloe?” said a man’s voice.
Chloe turned in confusion. Who could that be?
“Chloe . . . Ashton?” said the voice.
Chloe recognized the voice. She had only heard it once before, but she knew now who it was. It was Avery Hart, Celeste’s brother!
“Oh! Mr. Hart!” said Chloe eagerly, running to his side.
Avery Hart lay in his narrow bunk, weak and pale. His face was lean and stubbled, and his worried eyes softened with relief as the girl approached and shyly took his outstretched hand. Chloe had the strange feeling that comes when you grasp hands with someone you’ve hardly met, but that you feel you already know very well.
“It’s very good to see you, young lady!” said Avery smiling weakly.
“And you, Mr. Hart!” said Chloe sincerely. “Celeste has told me so much about you.”
“Celeste?” Avery gasped, his pale face brightening. “Have you seen her? Is my sister all right?”
“She’s fine!” cried Chloe. “And she will be overjoyed that I have found you!”
Chloe clasped Avery’s hand again, thinking of Celeste’s happiness when she heard the news. But they weren’t safe yet. Both felt a rumble beneath them as the little boat’s engines throbbed louder.
“I must find my mother!” Chloe looked around anxiously at the dark hold full of people. “Have you seen her?”
“I haven’t seen anyone, I’m sorry to say, Chloe,” said Avery. “I just woke up the minute I heard your voice. But I will help you look.”
Avery tried to sit up but was far too weak and fell back on his bunk with a groan.
Chloe put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, and bade him stay where he was for the moment.
“Mother?” she called out again softly. There was no answer.
A bump from above made Chloe flinch, and she cowered in the dark, wondering if someone would enter the hold. Just then another big bump came from directly over her head, followed by a terrible racket as someone fell down the steps, landing in a heap at the bottom. Chloe leapt backward and tried to hide. To her absolute horror, she saw Uncle Blake get clumsily to his feet. He immediately saw Chloe.
“Stop, girl!” Blake lurched toward her. He looked worse than ever. A red stripe of blood was splashed across his drunken face, and his clothes were torn beyond all recognition, and he was having trouble standing. Chloe moved backward, her heart pounding. Would he never go away?
Suddenly, she had had enough. She had come too far to give in to her uncle now. Chloe’s fear melted away, replaced by a glowing, righteous anger. She was not the same girl she had been when he took her from home and sold her to the vagabonds! She was much stronger now, and Chloe realized that Uncle Blake was no match for her.
The girl faced him squarely, put her hands on her hips, and said as forcefully as she could, “No! You stop!”
Doing this made Chloe feel ten feet tall and far more powerful than her sniveling, whining, pathetic uncle. She blasted him again. “You tell me where Mother is, Uncle—right now!”
Blake flinched, suddenly seeming very afraid of this angry girl. As the boat rocked, he felt sick to his stomach, and before he knew it, he began to cry. “I don’t know, I tell you! And how could I know? I’ve been terribly mistreated! I’ve wrecked my car, I’ve been chased by monstrous bears, I’ve been kicked by that horrible old woman’s pointy shoe, and now I’ve fallen down the stairs! I’m bruised and I’m scraped and now you’re screaming at me—well it’s just too much!”
Chloe let him sob for a few minutes, and then she said simply, “You’re disgusting. I’m glad all that happened to you, Uncle—it’s the very least you deserve! Now tell me—what have they done with Lady Ashton? Where is my mother?”
Blake whimpered, looking very sorry for himself, “I don’t know! I have no idea where your mother is!”
“I’m here.”
A weak voice spoke from a corner of the ship. A woman’s voice.
“Mother?” Chloe started violently, and whipped her head around, looking for the speaker in the dark.
“Clothilde?” said her mother from her corner of the ship.
Chloe ran to the cot which held her mother lying pale and wan, but moving, speaking!
“My dear, my dear! My darling child!”
Chloe wrapped herself in Lady Ashton’s weak embrace. They both cried. It was a miracle—in the shadowed corner of the ship’s hull, Chloe had found her mother. Thin and white as the sheet that covered her, Lady Ashton hugged her daughter as tightly as she could. After that first, fierce embrace, Chloe pulled away a little so as not to crush her.
“Are you all right, mother?” she asked anxiously.
“I will be, I think,” said Lady Ashton, her eyes bright and soft as she looked at her daughter. “Are you all right, my darling?”
“Oh yes, mother! I’m fine!”
They both laughed at the word fine. They had never been less fine in their lives!
“Watch out! He’s getting away!” Avery called to them from his own bunk. Uncle Blake was crawling up the stairs.
“Wait here!” said Chloe to her mother and dashed after him.
Coming out of the hold, she saw her uncle’s muddy coattails disappearing over the rail of the ship, and the two guards still standing on the dock, watching the hospital. A horrible, orange glow lit the sky behind it, and black smoke billowed up into the night sky. The silhouettes of white coats, animals, and village folk could be seen running from the building.
Uncle Blake ran up to the two guards and grabbed onto one of their sleeves, yelling something and
pointing toward the hold. The two guards looked back, but Chloe hid in the shadows. Uncle Blake gestured again, and the guard impatiently shook him off. They had more important things to worry about.
BOOM! A ball of orange fire went up into the sky, followed by another and another. The gas canisters, consumed by the spreading fire, were exploding like bombs. The hospital workers ran down the path to the ship, abandoning the gurneys full of patients. They yelled to the guards to cast off and get ready to sail. The guards bent quickly to unwind the ropes holding the ship.
Chloe knew she had to do something. In just a few seconds those doctors would be on the ship, and they would be sailing out to sea. She would not be able to save her mother and Avery. She had not come all this way and found them both alive—just to be stopped now.
Desperate, Chloe put two fingers to her mouth and whistled. She made the animal’s call as best she could. Long, long, long, slooooooooow. Long, long, long, sloooooooow. She didn’t know if anyone would hear it, but it was possible—one of the animals, or perhaps even Brisco, or Shakespeare. He would certainly recognize Chloe’s call. Chloe kept calling, as loudly as she could.
The fleeing white coats from the hospital reached the dock and clattered down its length to the boat. They climbed aboard, and Chloe was forced to stop whistling, and duck down again, but not before one of the white coats spotted her, and ran to her hiding place, pulling her roughly out by her arm.
“Let me go!” screamed Chloe, struggling.
The boat’s motor chugged to life, and it began to pull away from the dock, making them lurch to the side. Chloe kicked and tried to break out of the white coat’s arms, but he held her arms fast.
“Get this tub out of here!” the guard yelled.
The ship rocked to the side again, and the engine throbbed and whined as it tried to pull away from the dock. Another BOOM! lit up the sky and sent flames into the air. The explosion was followed by a roar of voices. The people had taken over the hospital and now they were running down to the dock. Villagers running with torches, their faces scratched and bleeding, and all the animals that could still fight raced toward the little boat.
The white coats looked at each other, fear on every face. It was over, they were outnumbered. The engine whined and belched black smoke in its effort to pull away.
Chloe struggled hard against the white coat’s arms. She succeeded in giving him a sharp jab in the ribs, making him grunt and curse.
“UNHAND THAT CHILD!”
Chloe looked up in shock. She knew that voice!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
IT WAS MR. MASON! THE OLD BUTLER WAS leading the charge to the dock, looking wilder than he ever had in his life. In his shirtsleeves, torn and dirty with his thin white hair standing straight up, Mr. Mason was almost unrecognizable as he led the entire staff of Ashton House down the hill.
“Let her go!” the old butler shouted, and surprising everyone, he magnificently jumped the few feet of water between the boat and the dock, neatly landing on the deck of the struggling ship.
The white coat holding Chloe was caught completely off guard by this crazy old man, and staggered back, dropping the girl’s arm in order to fend off the old butler.
The other servants from Ashton House followed Mr. Mason onto the dock. They were all there—Mrs. Eames, Britta, Mr. Darby the gardener, and a small platoon of maids and footmen from Ashton House, all trying to board the boat to save their Chloe.
Mr. Darby bravely followed Mr. Mason’s example and made the leap onto the deck where he lost no time in flinging the ropes to the others. Several footmen caught the rope and lashed it to the dock.
The boat strained against the rope, but the rope held, and the engine began to whine horribly over the grinding gears. A loud pop and a hiss emanated from the engine room, followed by a great cloud of black smoke. The engine was dead.
With a cheer, the servants from Ashton House and the townspeople who joined them swarmed on board. The white coats tried to run, but there was nowhere to go, and they were soon in a fight for their lives.
Mrs. Eames, red-faced from her run down the hill, was angry as a wet hen. She proved to be a formidable adversary with her rolling pin, and Mr. Mason was no slouch either. Unbeknownst to most, he had been a lightweight boxer in his youth. To tell the truth, he hadn’t felt this spry in years, and the old butler threw up his dukes to confront the guard that had held Chloe. The guard moved forward to finish off this tiresome old man, but before either of them could do anything, Mrs. Eames, a whirling dervish of destruction, cracked the guard on the head with her pin, knocking him out cold.
“Sorry, Mr. Mason!” she said, spinning off. “Couldn’t help it!”
“Look out!” Chloe cried out to the butler.
Mr. Mason spun around to face Uncle Blake, who stood leering menacingly in front of him. Uncle Blake laughed out loud at the sight of the skinny old man with his hair on end, circling with his puny dukes up. He hated Mr. Mason, had hated him the first day he arrived at Ashton House, hated the way the old man looked at him, spoke to him, and treated him like some unwelcome, unworthy person to be only tolerated. He would enjoy beating him.
Blake snarled at Mr. Mason, and moved toward him, intending to throw him to the ground. Blake never got closer than two feet from the old butler. In a move too fast for the eye to see, the old man shot out one of his “puny dukes,” popping Uncle Blake right in the nose. Blood spurted out in a geyser, and Uncle Blake dropped like a stone to the ground. He was done.
The battle above at the hospital raged on. The fire had taken hold of the roof, and it was an apocalyptic scene of redand-orange flames, punctuated by explosions from the gas canisters.
Suddenly, a great whirring sound rose up behind the hospital, and a great wind blew down on the flames, and the fighting. A powerful jet of water came out of the sky, drenching the fire, and knocking over the people below. As everyone looked up to see what it was, Chloe laughed out loud in delight.
It was Brisco, riding in a wooden flying machine he had built out of hospital parts! The ingenious machine swooped in and around the flames of the roof, and Brisco managed to hold a hose shooting a great deal of water at the flames while he flew it. With a huge grin on his face, Brisco flew the machine all around the battle, putting out the flames and apparently deriving great glee from blasting the remaining white coats with his hose. Within minutes the remaining hospital workers were overwhelmed, and completely subdued.
The servants from Ashton House and the people of Fairfax took over the ship, and went through the hold, finding lost loved ones, and helping the wounded back on land.
Chloe ran forward to be embraced by her dear old friends from Ashton House. She hugged Mr. Mason fiercely, and they both had tears in their eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Mason!” cried Chloe. “How I’ve missed you!”
Mr. Mason wiped his eyes with a huge white handkerchief he pulled from his vest pocket. He was so overcome he couldn’t say a word and just blew his nose loudly in reply. Everyone laughed, and Mrs. Eames wrapped Chloe in such a tight hug she could hardly breathe. Britta crowded around, and Thomas the stable boy, and all her old friends and companions from home. They were family to Chloe—she had known them all since the day she was born.
Celeste was there, too. She stood shyly by as the old friends were reunited, and Brisco stood next to her, his shoulder touching hers. Clearly smitten, the carpenter watched Celeste closely as she told her part of the story. It was she who had gone to Ashton House to get the servants’ help, upon Chloe’s suggestion. It had been a dangerous trip—there were still many ambulances patrolling the road. Once there, it had been no trouble at all convincing the servants to come to her aid. The entire staff at Ashton House had cheered when they heard the plan, and nothing could stop them from arming themselves with shovels, rakes, gardening tools—anything and everything they could find—and coming with her to help Lady Ashton and Chloe.
Shakespeare had been waiting for them on the road.
The rat had quickly led them to the hospital, as planned. Once there they had not been able to find the child until Shakespeare heard Chloe’s call from the dock. He had led the servants to the ship, and Mr. Mason had taken over from there.
Shakespeare was delighted to be back with his best friend and jumped onto Chloe’s shoulder to nuzzle her cheek affectionately.
After that it was all over in a matter of minutes. Mr. Mason and some of the men from the village gathered all the white coats onboard the ship and tied them to the mast.
Chloe grabbed Celeste’s hand and squeezed it.
“Let’s go get Avery,” she said, smiling.
“Avery?” gasped Celeste, her eyes disbelieving. “He’s . . .”
“He’s here!” said Chloe joyfully, and pulled Celeste toward the door of the hold.
The two women descended the steps. Avery spotted his sister immediately.
“Celeste!” he cried out from his bunk.
With a joyful sob Celeste ran forward to embrace her brother. Chloe went quickly to her mother, and the other patients lying in their bunks broke out in weak cheers of relief.
They were saved!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE EFFICIENT SERVANTS OF ASHTON HALL quickly organized rescue operations, helping all the patients out of their bunks and onto the deck.
Warm blankets were handed around, and a wagon was sent for, to carry the patients back up the hill. There were tearful reunions as old friends recognized each other, and loved ones were found.
Chloe could not stop hugging her mother. “I was so afraid for you, mother,” she said, pressing her cheek against Lady Ashton’s. “Tell me, what happened that night you disappeared? Mr. Mason said you were taken away. Was it in an ambulance?”
“Yes, darling,” said Lady Ashton sadly, smoothing her daughter’s hair from her face. “I hadn’t been feeling particularly well that day. I hadn’t been feeling well for a lot of days my dear, since your father died . . .” Lady Ashton’s voice trailed off.