Winter Duty (44 page)

Valentine watched Boelnitz, an earpiece for the radio in one ear, writing furiously and transcribing the Grog’s words.

“Who’s writing this passage? Pencil Boelnitz or Cooper Llewellyn?” Valentine asked.

“I don’t know, Major. All I can do is try to be accurate about what I’m hearing.”

“I hope you’re getting it right, sir. That’s the hulking, hairy-handed killer I know,” Valentine said.

Boelnitz drew away, pencil trembling. Valentine realized he was snarling.

They were getting closer to the Ohio now. The land became less hilly and was filled with more old farms. Someone sprayed the column with gunfire as they passed. It caused no casualties, but Valentine wondered if the person shot because he or she suspected they were from the Northwest Ordnance, or if they shot because they suspected they were Southern Command.

Out of the hills, the drifts grew less and less and finally disappeared entirely. The snow hadn’t been as heavy in this part of Kentucky. Valentine put Rover back at the head of the column, but the ice patches were still treacherous.

“Major, Doc says we should pull over,” Habanero said, acknowledging a signal. Valentine had taken his headset off so he could think about Ahn-Kha.

“Why?” But Valentine could guess.

“He wants you to look at Rockaway.”

Valentine didn’t want to stop for anything. “He’s symptomatic?”

“Doc just wants to pull over.”

Valentine signaled for a stop. Everyone took the opportunity to get out and hit the honeybuckets.

Valentine went to the Boneyard. The nurse silently opened the rear hatch. A red-eyed Mrs. O’Coombe nodded to him, her Bible stuck in her lap, a finger marking her place.

“Well, Doc?” Valentine asked.

He shook his head. “He’s symptomatic. Starting to shake.”

“You have him sedated?”

“Yes,” the nurse said.

“What’s the usual medical procedure for ravies?” Valentine said.

Doc sighed. “Ninety percent of the time, they’re quietly eutha nized. Some are kept around to try various kinds of experimental medications. They don’t feel pain, from what we can tell by brain-wave function and glandular response. Oh, and early cases are important for study to develop a vaccine. That’s where the booster shots come from. Too bad he missed this last series, issue date October. We should have thought to bring some.”

“I want you to end this, Mister Valentine,” Mrs. O’Coombe said.

“End this?” Valentine asked.

“I can’t watch him suffer.”

“He’s not suffering, is he, Doc?”

Doc agreed, “Not while the sedatives hold out. Even when they wear off, provided we can keep him in the bed, I’m not sure suffering is the right word for what he’ll be going through.”

Valentine wondered how much of the patriotic, Bible-reading charity act of Mrs. O’Coombe was real. With Keve Rockaway/ O’Coombe dead, she’d own the vast ranch her husband had built.

“Any decision about your son’s health I’ll leave to the Doc.”

Doc said, “I work for her ladyship, I’ll remind you, Valentine.”

“A rich woman outranks the Hippocratic oath?” Valentine asked.

“Major,” Doc said. “Please. I’m in no hurry. I’m just wondering if I’ll still have a job if I ever make it back to the Hooked O-C.”

“Do what you can, Doc,” Valentine said. “Anything else?”

“One more thing, Major,” Doc said. He took out a little powder blue case. “In my younger days, before I settled down to bring babies into the world and plaster broken bones and dig bullets out, I was a researcher.

“This is a perfectly ordinary piece of medical technology from fifty years back. Nowadays I use it for interesting butterfly pupae and leaves. It instantly freezes and preserves, like liquid nitrogen without all the fuss and bother.

“I’ve been taking samples of Keve’s blood as the disease progressed to see how his body’s fighting it, and to see just how the ravies virus is attacking and changing him. It could be useful to Southern Command in developing a serum for a vaccination.” He handed the case to Valentine.

“I’ll get it back across the Mississippi as soon as I can,” Valentine said.

Mrs. O’Coombe caressed her son’s head.

“Keep an eye on her, Doc,” Valentine said.

“Understood.” Doc lowered his voice. “In all honesty, Major, she does love her son. She loved all her sons. Deep down, I think she was really trying to get him back home, but make it his idea.”

Valentine stepped out of Boneyard. “Hey, Major,” he heard one of the Wolves call. “There’s a plane flying around north of here a few miles. Two-engine job. Looks kind of like it’s circling.”

Valentine wondered if the plane was part of Jack in the Box’s operation. How did he fit in with the divine judgment of war, famine, disease, and death to Kentucky?

Which reminded him. He called Frat over. “Frat, how are you on a motorcycle?”

“Decent, sir. I used one to get around in Kansas.”

“I want you to courier something important back to Fort Seng for us. And, if necessary, get it all the way back to the Mississippi—but that’ll be for Colonel Lambert to decide.”

“I don’t want to leave you in the middle of this mess,” Frat said.

“You’ll do as I ask, Lieutenant. If you want to be addressed as captain in a week, that is.”

“Captain!” Frat grinned.

“A platoon of Wolves this far outside Southern Command is supposed to have a captain in charge. I hope you’ll be it.”

“Not as easy as it sounds. But we should get a sample back to Southern Command as soon as possible.”

They gave Stuck’s big motorcycle to Frat. Frat grabbed his rifle and his bag and very carefully put Doc’s sample freezer in a hard case. Doc added a final blood sample and a note before packing it on the bike.

Valentine shook Frat’s hand, and the young man tied a scarf around his face. “I’ll get it through, sir.”

Valentine wondered just where that Ordnance armored column was. Their own vehicles would be simple target practice for a real—

“Frat, even if we don’t get through, these blood samples need to. They’re more important to Southern Command than everything in this convoy.”

“Understood, sir.”

He watched the youth rumble off, trying not to think of his own misadventures as a courier. Maybe somewhere on the road Frat would meet another capable young teen, the way Valentine had long ago met Frat. Part of being in service was helping train talented young people to take your place.

By the time Frat had left, the plane had taken off too, flying back to the north—probably across the Ohio in just a few minutes.

Valentine tried to raise Fort Seng to inform Lambert that Frat was on the way, but he couldn’t make contact. With one more thing to worry about, Valentine returned to Rover and put the convoy in motion again.

“See if you can find a road turning north,” he told Habanero. “I’d like to see what that plane is up to.”

“Looks like a flea market that broke up quick,” Duvalier said.

Valentine wouldn’t forget the sight of the body field as long as he lived.

Even as an old man he’d remember details, be able to traverse the gentle slopes dotted with briar thickets, stepping from body to body.

You had to choose route and footing if you didn’t want to step on some child.

Judging from the injuries and old bloodstains on the bodies, these were ravies victims. Some had torn or missing clothes, and all had the haggard, thin-skinned look of someone in the grip of the raving madness.

“What killed them, Doc?” Valentine asked.

“My guess is some kind of nerve agent. That accounts for some of the grotesque posing. Whatever it was, it happened quickly.” He knelt to look at a body. “Notice anything funny about these?” Doc asked.

“There’s nothing funny in this field,” Duvalier said.

“Strange, then. Look at the ravies,” Doc said.

Valentine had a tough time looking close. This was like peeping into a Nazi gas chamber. Though he felt a bit of a hypocrite; he would have turned the Bushmaster’s cannon on them if they’d been attacking his vehicles.

“I don’t—” Duvalier said.

“The hair,” Doc said. “Ears, chins, eyebrows, arm hair. Worse on the men than the women, but everyone but the kids are showing very rapid body hair growth. A side effect of this strain of ravies, perhaps?”

Valentine let the doctor keep chattering. Valentine wondered where the pilot of the little twin-engined plane was now.
Enjoying a cup of coffee at an airstrip, while his plane is being refueled?

“I don’t think they really knew what was happening,” Doc said. “Ravies does cloud the mind a bit.”

“Wolves found something interesting, sir,” Chieftain reported, looking at a deerskin-clad arm waving them over.

The vehicle tracks were easy to find and, sadly, easier to follow. They stood at the center of the field, in an empty space like a little doughnut hole surrounded by bodies.

“Okay, they drove in, or the ravies found them here,” Doc said. “Then when the ravies were good and tight around the vehicle, those inside slaughtered them all in a matter of minutes.”

“This one was still twitching,” Valentine said, looking at a victim who’d left gouges in the turf. “I think he tried to crawl toward the truck.”

Chieftain said, “Maybe it was a field bakery van or a chuck wagon. Food, you think? Baskets of fresh bread hanging off it? They look hungry.”

“Ravies does that,” Doc said. “You get ravenous. It’s a hard virus on the system. The body’s usual defense mechanisms—fatigue, nausea—that discourage activity during hunger are overridden.”

Valentine wondered what could attract such throngs of ravies, yet keep them from tearing whatever made those tracks to bits. His own column would probably have need of such a gimmick before they returned to Fort Seng.

Maybe it was the sun in their eyes as they drove west. Maybe it was error caused by driver fatigue. Maybe it was the speed. Valentine was anxious to move fast—there was less snow on the ground, and they had a chance to be back at Fort Seng that night.

They dipped as they passed under a railroad bridge, much overgrown, and suddenly there were ravies on either side of them and the headlights of a big armored car before them.

It wasn’t an equal contest. Rover folded against the old Brinks truck like a cardboard box hitting a steamroller.

When the stars began to fade from Valentine’s eyes, he heard angelic strings playing. For a moment, he couldn’t decide if he was hallucinating or ascending to a very unoriginal, badly lit, bare-bones heaven.

Valentine looked out the spiderwebbed window and saw tattered ravies all around, cocking their heads, milling, either working themselves up to an attack or calming down after one.

Then he saw the big armored car, and it all came back to him.