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Duvalier dropped from above, landing on Stuck's shoulders, and wrapped her legs around his back. She put her sword stick across his throat.
"Okay, okay," Stuck said. "Get 'er off!"
"Close the door, somebody," Valentine gasped as they untangled themselves.
Mrs. O'Coombe worked the lever and the door rattled down at last.
A pair of hands thrust themselves under the gate. Mrs. O'Coombe pushed the pawl back in, held it there.
Metal bent at the bottom of the gate as though a forklift were being used to pull it up instead of a pair of hands. The bottom of the gate groaned and began to bend.
Duvalier's sword flashed and sparked as it ran along the gate bottom, leaving severed fingertips lying about like dropped peanuts.
"The pawl, ma'am," Valentine shouted. Rockaway reached for it. Mrs. O'Coombe broke out of her reverie and extracted it.
Valentine stomped the handle hard. The door slammed shut.
"You better?" he asked Stuck.
The ex-Bear nodded.
"I'd forgotten how much I enjoy noise and danger," Mrs. O'Coombe said to no one in particular. "Very little, to be precise."
"You wouldn't have really shot me, would you?" Boelnitz said, picking himself up.
Stuck took a deep breath. "Maybe not me, but the Bear sure as hell was about to."
Boelnitz looked at Valentine. "Thank you. I owe you."
"Valentine, what the hell was that?" Stuck said, pointing at the fingers on the ground.
Valentine ignored him, tore open his own tiny first-aid kit, opened the little three-ounce flask of iodine, and poured and dabbed it into Rockaway's bites and scratches.
"Doc says they're nervous in Boneyard," Habanero reported as Valentine's heartbeat began to return to normal. "It's not exactly an armored car."
"Get Doc in here at once," Mrs. O'Coombe said. "My son's been bitten."
"I'm not opening the door until things quiet down out there," Valentine said. "This is the best we can do."
"What the hell was that?" Stuck continued, shaking his head. "Have you ever seen a ravies case like that?"
"They were . . . like Bears," Duvalier said. "I've never seen anyone bend steel like that, except a Bear."
"Maybe it wasn't human. Maybe they've got a more human-looking Reaper," Valentine said, looking at the fingers.
"A Reaper would have just torn through it," Duvalier said. "Trying to lift it is a dumb way to get in. Reapers are smarter than that."
"Everyone needs to eat as much garlic as possible," Ma said from the Chuckwagon as she sorted through her stock. "I'll make a poultice for Keve."
"That's an old wives' tale," Stuck said.
"Well, I got to be an old wife by following old wives' tales, so you'll eat your garlic."
Valentine had heard dozens of folk remedies supposed to ward off ravies. Eating asparagus was one of the stranger ones.
Getting iodine into a ravies bite right away was the only one the Miskatonic people said worked. Iodine and a quick broad-spectrum antibiotic within a few minutes. The latter was a good deal less easy to come by in the Kurian Zone.
Instead of reminiscing, he should be refueling Rover and getting the Boneyard in, and then they could take care of Bushmaster. Everyone should get a hot meal and catch some rest too, and he'd better see how the Wolves were doing battening down the office in front.
