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They answered with a shot. The bullet whizzed by close enough for Valentine to hear it with his right ear and not his left. He was either lucky or the sniper was a bad shot. He forced himself to remain erect.
"Who shot?" a voice yelled from the darkness. "Tell that dumbshit to cut it out. He's got a white flag."
"Killing me won't give you another day of water and power in there," Valentine shouted, advancing toward the barricade. "It'll just start the fighting again. Don't see that's gotten you much so far, and there's artillery being set up across the river. How many shells is it going to take to collapse that big roof?"
Valentine wondered if there'd be an instant's realization of his folly if the marksman decided to put the next one between his eyes. Would that be better than having part of his face torn off, or a bullet through the neck?
The street hit him in the back hard and Valentine felt an ache in his chest. He never heard the shot.
Valentine felt busted ribs, burned a finger in the hot bullet embedded in the woven Reaper cloth on his vest.
It felt like someone had performed exploratory surgery with a jackhammer on his chest.
Valentine felt content to lay in the street for a moment, holding up the white flag like a dead man with a lily. He let his Wolf hearing play along the other side of the barricade.
"Quit firing. I'll shoot the next man who fires."
"That's treason talk, Vole," another answered. "Kill-or-die order, remember?"
"The man who gave that order quit on us two days ago, you've noticed."
Valentine rolled to his feet.
"I'm trying to save lives, here," he called. He tasted blood.
The next shot went between his legs, but he made it to the cover of the bus barricading the main entrance. Barbed wire hung off it like bunting.
"I'm right here if anyone wants to chat." It hurt like fire to shout. "Does that kill-or-die order apply to your kids? Maybe we can get them out of there, at least."
A bullet punched through the far side of the bus. Valentine slid to put the engine block between himself and the sniper.
The bus window above him broke and fell in stands. Luckily it was safety stuff. Valentine heard more shooting, a deeper blast of a shotgun.
"We got the gunman, Terry," Valentine heard.
Valentine looked through the rear doors of the bus. Someone had cut a hole in the other side, offering egress through the barricade. He lurched in, marked a claymore mine sitting under the driver's seat, and decided that maybe entering the bus wasn't such a good idea after all.
He sat on the bus's entry step.
"I'm still ready to talk."
"We're sending a party out to talk under a white flag."
Valentine looked at the advertisements running along the roof edge of the bus. Church fertility treatments, infant formula, exhortations to join the Youth Vanguard, warnings against black market deals ("Profit to the enemy, Poverty for your friends"), and invites for the sick and halt to enjoy a refreshing sojourn to the Carolinas and the "best medical care east of the Mississippi." A photo of a smiling silver-haired couple in beach wear lounging in chaises under an umbrella, he with a cast on his leg, her with a cannula and IV? hanging from a mount shaped like a flamingo, had a buxom nurse serving what looked like tropical drinks.
Visitors to Evansville were invited to see the Eternal Flame at Affirmation Park and add their names to the Wall of Hope for a small NUC donation.
The Kurian Order in microcosm.
Valentine heard movement from the other side of the bus. A trio of men, two in law-enforcement blue and one with a clean coat thrown over dirty collar and tie, entered one at a time. A cop went forward, yanked a wire from the mine, removed the detonator with a pocket screwdriver, and tucked the inert explosive under his arm. He had a huge nose that made his eyes look small and swinish in comparison. Valentine noticed numerous breaks in the greasy proboscis, a beak of scar tissue and whiskey veins.
"What do you have in mind, Rebel Rick?" the other cop said.
"Name's Valentine, major, Southern Command." Valentine said, learning to breathe with half his chest. He'd heal from this. He always healed, but always came back only to 90 percent.
He wondered how many 10 percents he'd lost over the years.
"Cloth from a robe. That's why he's still alive," the man with the tie muttered to the other cop.
