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Sergeants on up, have your pistols out with Quickwood magazines in."
Valentine trotted to the other side of the tracks, passed the word to the troops in the opposite of the cut. As he was about to climb into the caboose, Valentine heard something skip and bounce through the dirt toward the fortification.
"Grenade," he shouted, embracing gravel like it was his mother.
It blew on the far side of the breastwork. The men began to shoot back, placing careful single shots. The machine guns from the caboose opened up and drew fire in return.
Did the Reapers know they were chasing nothing but sheep and goats yet?
More whistles, and the Quislings came forward at a rush, bright flowers of shotgun blasts cutting through the brush as the assault began.
He fired another flare and saw them coming, heads bobbing as they advanced, the foremost less than twenty yards away, covering each other with bursts of fire that pinged off the caboose or thwacked into the bed-frame breastworks. If they could be turned now . . .
"Fire at will!" Valentine shouted.
Gunfire roared into the night. Grenades bloomed and died, each one exploding more softly as the ears became overwhelmed by the noise. Valentine saw figures falling or diving for cover.
A Reaper ran toward them straight up the rail line, a satchel held in each hand. The Kurian animating the Reapers must have been either desperate or determined to overwhelm them in an all-or-nothing gambit. Bee fired and missed, and then tore up its robes with her second barrel. Valentine didn't need to wonder what was in the satchels, or see the digital seconds ticking down. God, his pistol was out there somewhere-
A sergeant, Troust-though the men nicknamed him Surf, as he combed his thick blonde hair into a wave on his forehead-appeared beside Valentine and rested his 9mm on a step of the caboose, firing steadily, aiming with each shot. Valentine duly noted his coolness as though already composing the report.
The Reaper stiffened, leaning oddly, and started a throw, but the blood drinker's fingers refused to release. The momentum of the satchel toppled it, and Valentine saw the astonishment in its eyes.
Valentine saw heads rise as the Quisling soldiers scrambled out of the way of what was coming.
"Down!"
Valentine covered his ears and felt the weight of Troust come down on the back of his head. The satchel charges went off in twin booms that must have echoed in Georgia, and Valentine felt the world momentarily give way.
Surf let him up, the weird underwatery feel of the explosions' concussion sapping his strength and wits. A Quisling in a torn green uniform was at the barricade, staggering as he tried to climb over, and suddenly Valentine's backup pistol was in his hand and he shot, realizing as the bullets hit that he was killing a man trying to surrender.
More bursts of fire came from the darkness down the track. The gunfire seemed wrong.
Those titanic blasts should have been an operatic blast at the climax of the fight, not punctuation in the middle of a long, deadly symphony. His flare hung on a tree downslope, sputtering as its light died.
More whistles, low and muted to his outraged ears. Valentine saw wounded men being carried back.
Had to do something to break up the attack.
"Empty the caboose," he told Troust. "Fall back to the rock pile as soon as the cars start moving."
Valentine crept along the tracks, sheltering from the wild high bullets in the wheels, Bee trailing him like a gigantic dog. He opened each boxcar door about halfway. A goat jumped out. The other livestock looked stupidly at him, jumping and quivering at each shot.
He climbed into the engineer's cab, told the soldier there to start the train backward, and hurried to the back door.
He found Crow still posted, moving the barrel of his rifle at every sound.
"I want you to uncouple as soon as the cars have a little momentum."
"While the cars are moving?" Crow asked.
"Yes."
The cars bumped into motion, their squeals curiously innocent after the noise of combat.
Valentine gauged the train's speed.
"Now, Crow. Release!" Valentine shouted down from the engine.
