AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Valentine had encountered the disease on his first independent command in the Kurian Zone.
Ravies was a disease of multiple strains, first used in 2022 to help break down the old order, and used here and there since whenever the Kurians needed to stir up a little chaos. On his trip into Louisiana as junior lieutenant of Zulu Company in the Wolves, the Kurians reacted by gathering up some of the indigenous swamp folk and infecting them with the latest strain.
Valentine took them down with four quick shots. Red carnations blossomed on their chests and they staggered in confusion before crashing to the ground, dead.
As a member of Southern Command, he'd been inoculated against the disease, but you never knew how current your booster was. Valentine had a theory that they were sometimes injected with nothing but some colored saline solution to give them confidence before going into the Kurian Zone, so they wouldn't panic if faced with the disease, spread by bite and gouge and gush of arterial blood.
It didn't take a special shot to the brain or anything like that to kill a ravies sufferer, as some people thought-though if you wanted to live to go home and kiss your sweetheart again, you made damn sure you put some lead into center mass, for a ravies sufferer felt no pain. Indeed, he or she felt nothing but a desire to rend and tear.
Valentine realized Duvalier's scream had been answered, in a muffled and echoed manner, from farther up the street in town.
Hopefully those who shrieked the responsorial were confused by the muffling effects of the snow as to where exactly Valentine's column was.
Valentine fiddled with his Type Three, took out the bayonet, and fixed it at the front of the rifle. He worked the slide in the hilt, extending the blade to its full length.
He pounded on Habanero's window. "Alert everyone: There's ravies in this town and God knows where else," Valentine said. "Get Rover and the Chuckwagon inside. We can block the main door with the Boneyard and stuff the Bushmaster in the truck entryway. Toss me a flashlight."
Valentine took a green plastic tube handed to him and clicked on the prism of long-lasting LED light. A beam one-tenth as powerful as Rover's, but much more flexible, played around the inside of the grain mill. Nothing else was drawn out of the shadows by the bouncing light, so Valentine satisfied himself that the grain elevator was empty of everything but corpses.
For now.
Judging from the smell, the locals used part of the old grain tower as a smokehouse.
Grain mills always reminded Valentine a little of churches. They had the same shadowy, steeplelike towers, tiny staircases up to balconies and antechambers, and of course the important platform at one end. In mills, that was where grain could be ground into feed or flour.
With blood and pieces of Thursday scattered on the floor, the phrase "dark Satanic Mills" from Blake's Jerusalem floated through Valentine's mind. Valentine pulled the corpses out of the path of the vehicles and waved the Rover in.
Thursday had done them one favor before his untimely death. He had guided them to a well-built structure. Limestone gave decent insulation, and it was as strong or stronger than brick.
Mrs. O'Coombe jumped out of Rover. "Mister Valentine. If there is the ravies virus in town, shouldn't we drive on-"
"If the weather were clear, that would be my choice," Valentine said.
Habanero nodded from the window. "He's right; we're lucky to have gotten this far."
Frat and his Wolves needed something to do. Valentine sent them up a short set of steps and into the mill's office to look for messages from the town's inhabitants.
"No noise," Valentine said.
"Put Rover over there," Valentine told the wagon master, indicating a corner by the old loader equipment. "Get Chuckwagon in here."
"The medical wagon is more valuable," Mrs. O'Coombe said.
"Right now the fuel in Chuckwagon's trailer is the most important thing," Valentine said. "And we can all get a hot meal. We can refuel Rover, Chuckwagon, and Bushmaster, and then put Chuckwagon outside and bring Boneyard in."
Mrs. O'Coombe blinked. "Very well. You are thoughtful under stress, Mister Valentine. I admire that. But I still think we should hurry on, weather or no weather."
"You could make yourself useful by refueling Rover," Valentine said to Mrs. O'Coombe, urgency consuming his usual polite phrasing with the great lady.
"Snow's killing the sound," Stuck said, entering the mill. He had a skullcap of snow already. "Ravies are drawn to motion and sound. They won't see us or hear us even if the town's full of them. As long as there's no shooting."
Habanero spoke into his comm link. Valentine heard the Chuckwagon backing outside.
Bee, who was riding in the Chuckwagon to give her two-ax-handle-wide frame elbow room, hopped out and trotted to Valentine's side, sniffing the blood in the air.
"Easy now, Bee. It's okay," Valentine said. How much she got from syntax and how much from tone he didn't know, but she went to work arranging the bodies neatly head to toe. She put Thursday one way and the ravies victims Valentine had shot the other.
Stuck was at the gate entrance, a big gun in a sling across his chest. Valentine had to look twice, but he recognized it as an automatic shotgun. He wondered where Stuck had acquired it and where it had stayed hidden in their travels-the weapon in his arms was easily worth its weight in solid silver. It was one of the few weapons that didn't require a tripod and that could kill a Reaper with a single burst of fire.
