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Valentine shook Frat's hand, and the young man tied a scarf around his face. "I'll get it through, sir."
Valentine wondered just where that Ordnance armored column was. Their own vehicles would be simple target practice for a real-
"Frat, even if we don't get through, these blood samples need to. They're more important to Southern Command than everything in this convoy."
"Understood, sir."
He watched the youth rumble off, trying not to think of his own misadventures as a courier. Maybe somewhere on the road Frat would meet another capable young teen, the way Valentine had long ago met Frat. Part of being in service was helping train talented young people to take your place.
By the time Frat had left, the plane had taken off too, flying back to the north-probably across the Ohio in just a few minutes.
Valentine tried to raise Fort Seng to inform Lambert that Frat was on the way, but he couldn't make contact. With one more thing to worry about, Valentine returned to Rover and put the convoy in motion again.
"See if you can find a road turning north," he told Habanero. "I'd like to see what that plane is up to."
"Looks like a flea market that broke up quick," Duvalier said.
Valentine wouldn't forget the sight of the body field as long as he lived.
Even as an old man he'd remember details, be able to traverse the gentle slopes dotted with briar thickets, stepping from body to body.
You had to choose route and footing if you didn't want to step on some child.
Judging from the injuries and old bloodstains on the bodies, these were ravies victims. Some had torn or missing clothes, and all had the haggard, thin-skinned look of someone in the grip of the raving madness.
"What killed them, Doc?" Valentine asked.
"My guess is some kind of nerve agent. That accounts for some of the grotesque posing. Whatever it was, it happened quickly." He knelt to look at a body. "Notice anything funny about these?" Doc asked.
"There's nothing funny in this field," Duvalier said.
"Strange, then. Look at the ravies," Doc said.
Valentine had a tough time looking close. This was like peeping into a Nazi gas chamber. Though he felt a bit of a hypocrite; he would have turned the Bushmaster's cannon on them if they'd been attacking his vehicles.
"I don't-" Duvalier said.
"The hair," Doc said. "Ears, chins, eyebrows, arm hair. Worse on the men than the women, but everyone but the kids are showing very rapid body hair growth. A side effect of this strain of ravies, perhaps?"
Valentine let the doctor keep chattering. Valentine wondered where the pilot of the little twin-engined plane was now. Enjoying a cup of coffee at an airstrip, while his plane is being refueled?
"I don't think they really knew what was happening," Doc said. "Ravies does cloud the mind a bit."
"Wolves found something interesting, sir," Chieftain reported, looking at a deerskin-clad arm waving them over.
The vehicle tracks were easy to find and, sadly, easier to follow. They stood at the center of the field, in an empty space like a little doughnut hole surrounded by bodies.
"Okay, they drove in, or the ravies found them here," Doc said. "Then when the ravies were good and tight around the vehicle, those inside slaughtered them all in a matter of minutes."
"This one was still twitching," Valentine said, looking at a victim who'd left gouges in the turf. "I think he tried to crawl toward the truck."
Chieftain said, "Maybe it was a field bakery van or a chuck wagon. Food, you think? Baskets of fresh bread hanging off it? They look hungry."
"Ravies does that," Doc said. "You get ravenous. It's a hard virus on the system. The body's usual defense mechanisms-fatigue, nausea-that discourage activity during hunger are overridden."
Valentine wondered what could attract such throngs of ravies, yet keep them from tearing whatever made those tracks to bits. His own column would probably have need of such a gimmick before they returned to Fort Seng.
Nine circles filled in . . .
