Winter Duty (46 page)

“I’m worried about those bites,” she said. “First sign of trembling, you go into handcuffs.”

Valentine wondered if the bites were taking their toll. He was so very tired. But he had to see this through before he succumbed to either exhaustion or the disease.

They passed through the beltline of the city and drove among the Woolies like wary naturalists intruding on a family of gorillas. They thronged thicker and thicker around the armored car.

Suspicious, bloodshot eyes glared at them. Nostrils flared as the Woolies took in their scent.

“A little more soothing music,” Valentine said.

Ma fiddled with her thumb, rolling it back and forth across the ancient, electrical-taped device. Harsh, synthesized music blared.

The Woolies startled.

The music hushed, stopped. A big Woolie, his mouth ringed by a brown smear of dried blood like a child’s misadventure with lipstick, lurched toward the speaker, head cocked.

Ma said something under her breath—Valentine had no attention to spare for anyone but the big Woolie—and a soothing cello backed by violins started up.

The speakers ratcheted up, filling the main street with noise.

More Woolies emerged from alleys and doorways, some dragging dead dogs or more gruesome bits of fodder.

“They like that,” Duvalier said, peering out a firing slot.

“Just like the Pied Piper,” Valentine said. “Now to teach Hamelin a lesson.”

Soon his followers filled two lanes and the verge to either side of the highway leading out of Owensboro and to the east.

They found a slight hill from which they could see the bridge and watch the fireworks. Valentine signaled Ma to stop the soothing music.

Valentine’s trio of iron throats opened up. Guinevere, Igraine, and Morganna began to sing, and their notes fell upon the highway in brilliant flash and thunder.

The ravies ran toward the bridge.

“There go the Woolies!” one of the artillery observers reported over the radio. The Wolf’s moniker had spread quickly.

The forces of the Northwest Ordnance had removed their barricades and some of the fencing to allow the invasion force to rumble across the bridge, its formation undisturbed. The Woolies found no resistance to their rush.

Panic struck the soldiers of Ohio’s elite force. Immunization or no, an inoculation wasn’t proof against one’s injection arm being yanked out of its socket.

Valentine, having seen the destruction visited on Kentucky, rejoiced at like medicine being distributed among the “relief” forces parked in a long file along the highway.

He heard the drone of an engine. A plane hove into view.

“Bee!” Valentine said. He formed his hands into wings and had them crash.

Bee grinned from among her bandages, licked a bullet, and slid it into her big Grog gun. She put the gun to her shoulder and raised the barrel to the sky, as though it were a flag. The barrel began to descend as smoothly as a fine watch hand, lining up with the approaching plane, which had turned to pass directly over the bridge so that its flight path matched the north-south span.

It was a two-engine plane. She’d have to be quick to take out both as it passed over the bridge.

The plane dove, seeming to head straight for them. It hadn’t started sprinkling its nerve agent yet, not wanting to lay it on their own forces.

Bee brought the gun barrel down, down, down, humming to herself. She fired.

The plane didn’t so much as wobble. It continued its pass, remorseless. Valentine waited for the fine spray of nerve agent that would lock up heart and limb—

The plane shot over their heads, wingtips still, level as a board, engines roaring and flaps down, following a perfect five-degree decline to hit and skip and cartwheel into the woods of Kentucky.

Valentine heard firing from the other side of the bridge. A gasoline explosion lit up the low winter clouds.

Valentine tried to tell himself that he was killing two birds with one stone, not slaughtering civilians to confuse a military offensive.

“I know what the editorial in the
Clarion
would be,” Boelnitz said. “
Southern Command Uses Bioweapons in Indiana Massacre
.”

Valentine was inclined to agree: both that they’d use the headline and that the headline was true. But you had to give the enemy whatever flavor of hell they gave you. “Of course, you could add some picturesque color thanks to your firsthand experiences.”

“Hell with them,” Boelnitz said. “You know, the publisher used to tell me, ‘It’s always more complicated than a headline.’ That’s only so much bovine scat one can tolerate. Our headline here is pretty easy. ‘Victory.’ They should have offered, instead of threatened.”

“I hope we can remember that,” Valentine said. “You know, Llwellyn or Boelnitz or whatever you want to call yourself, Kentucky could use a newspaper. It’s one of the building blocks of a civilization. What do you say? Want to bring the first amendment back to Kentucky?”

Boelnitz smiled. “I have a feeling that as long as you’re here, there’ll be no end of stories.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Valentine never suffered even a quiver from the ravies bites.

Had the iodine and antibiotics worked? He didn’t know. It hadn’t done Keve Rockaway any good. When last Valentine heard, Rockaway was an invalid on the huge ranch straddling the Texas- Oklahoma border country. His mother had retired from public life to nurse him, and the real leader of the ranch was the new ex-Bear named Chieftain. Mrs. O’Coombe had arranged for three hundred head of first-class beef cattle to be brought to Kentucky in exchange for a few legworms and men with the experience to breed them. According to her, the ranch encompassed a good deal of wasteland that might support legworms.

She even spoke of establishing a horse farm or two nearby. Southern Command always needed fresh horseflesh.

But that was trivia. Valentine wondered how Southern Command had managed to have an effective vaccine to a strain of ravies that had never been deployed. Or perhaps it was just a very, very happy accident that Southern Command’s latest vaccine was also proof against the Kurians’ newest weapon.

So many questions that needed answering.

“I do have one piece of good news,” Lambert said one morning at a meeting with Valentine. “We’re in radio contact with the Bulletproof through the Army of Kentucky. They said a certain oversized yellow Grog of old acquaintance staggered into their camp pulling a cart full of kids. He had pink ribbons tied to his ears and a teddy bear riding between his ears.”

It was the best news Valentine had heard since Narcisse’s reply to the letter he’d had Mantilla deliver. She and Blake would await his instructions about joining him in Kentucky, once he arranged with a river rat for properly discreet transport. “Ahn-Kha is alive?”

“A little chewed up, they said. Their chief promised to send him here just as soon as a worm can be saddled this spring.”

Valentine wondered if he was dreaming. If he did see Ahn-Kha again, he’d send him right back to his people. The Golden Ones had been driven out of Omaha and needed a leader of Ahn-Kha’s caliber.

Lambert decided to celebrate the victory with a grand review of her battalion. It couldn’t be said that they’d fought a battle, but they’d performed effectively in the field, keeping the ravies off while they protected Owensboro’s civilian population.

Valentine recovered fast, as he always did, and managed to stand through the whole review.

They formed the men up, four companies strong plus an almost equal number of auxiliaries in an oversized “support pool.”

The Southern Command “remainders” stood in a quiet group off to one side, watching the ex-Quislings in their polished boots and fresh uniforms.

“Our new regimental flag, my friends,” Valentine said, pointing to a banner flying overhead. Even though they were a smallish regiment.

The flag couldn’t be said to be fancy. Valentine had worked out the design with Ediyak, now in charge of the headquarters platoon.

He’d loosely based it on an old Free French flag. It was red and blue, with a big white five-pointed star dividing it at the center and large enough to touch the edges of the banner with its top point and bottom two feet. A little black pyramid with a Roman numeral I in silver filled the bottom-center between the two legs of the star.

With the flag flying, Lambert began the speech Valentine had written, largely cribbed from a military history book he’d swiped from Southern Command’s service libraries.

“Legion soldier, you are a volunteer, serving the Cause of freedom with honor and teamwork.

“Each legion soldier is your brother in arms, whatever his origin, his past, or his creed. You show to him the same respect that binds the members of the same family bloodline.

“You respect the traditions of these United States. Discipline and training are your strengths. Courage and truth are the virtues that will one day make you admired among your peers and in the history books.

“You are proud of your place in the legion. You are always orderly, clean, and ready. Your behavior will never give anyone reason to reproach you. Your person, your quarters, and your base are always clean and ready for any inspection or visitor.

“You are an elite soldier. You consider your weapon as your most precious possession. You constantly maintain your physical fitness, level of training, and readiness for action.

“Your mission is sacred. It is carried out until the end, in respect of the Constitution, the customs of war, and law of civil organization, if need be, at the risk of your own life in defense of these ideals.

“In combat you act without passion or hatred. You respect surrendered enemies. You never surrender your dead, your wounded, or your weapons.

“You consider all of the above your oath and will carry it out until released by your superiors or through death.”

Ediyak modeled the new uniform. The cut was similar to his old shit detail company’s utility-worker uniforms, right down to the tool vest, the padded knees and elbows (a simple fold of the fleece made for light and comfortable cushioning), and the pen holders on the shoulder. The outer shell was a thick nylon-blend canvas of Evansville tenting, the inner the soft fleece so generously supplied by Southern Command. The color was a rather uninspiring, but usefully muted, rifle green. She’d daubed hers with gray and brown and black into a camouflage pattern.

Valentine tried to read their faces. Were the men standing a little taller? He could tell Lambert’s speech, the new flag, and the new uniform had their interest and attention.