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"Leave them, leave them!" Mrs. O'Coombe shouted to the Boneyard's driver. "Get me out of here!"
Silvertip extracted himself from Bushmaster's cupola. But he'd left an arm behind, crushed against the autocannon. He tottered a few steps toward the tattered crowd beating at the driver's front window, studded leather fist raised, and toppled face forward into the snow.
Valentine set down Brother Mark between the two big trucks.
He brought down three approaching ravies, clicked on empty, and changed magazines.
But there was still fighting around Bushmaster.
Longshot climbed out one of the side doors, now a top hatch on the prostrate APC. Her bike was strapped there. All she had to do was untie it and right it. Valentine watched, astonished, as she gunned the engine, laid a streak of rubber with the back tire as the front stayed braked. She released and shot along the armored side of the Bushmaster, flew off its front, and knocked a ravie down as she landed. Sending up a rooster tail of snow, she tore off east.
"That coward," Mrs. O'Coombe sputtered. "There were wounded in there."
A figure tottered out from around the back of Bushmaster, looking like a doomed beetle covered by biting army ants. Bee staggered under the weight of a dozen men, women, and children. She shrugged one off.
All Valentine had left for the Type Three was Quickwood bullets. He loaded and used them, sighting carefully and picking two off of Bee.
Bee writhed, throwing off a few, breaking another with a punch, crushing a head, removing an arm.
But there were too many, clawing and biting.
Bee dropped under the weight.
Valentine saw her agonized face through the mass of legs.
Valentine lined up his Type Three, ready to put a bullet in her head. Bee opened her mouth-
To bite an ankle.
Valentine only hoped he could end with such courage.
With the bayonet, mes enfants. It's nothing but shot, Valentine thought, quoting one of the heroes of the Legion he'd read of thanks to the headquarters library.
Valentine had never used a rifle bayonet for anything but opening cans since training. But he extended the one on the Type Three.
Valentine charged, yelling, his vision going red in fury and despair.
The ravies bared their teeth.
Valentine threw himself into them, lunging and wrenching and clubbing. A hand like a steel claw grabbed his arm, and he responded by giving way to the pull, throwing himself into the opponent. He clubbed the butt of his gun into the ravie's face again and again.
Another lunge and he lifted a young man off Bee like a kebab on his bayonet skewer.
He noticed Duvalier next to him, slashing like mad, killing anything that approached her like a bug zapper firing cold steel bolts.
He got Bee's arm around his shoulder and dragged her up. She managed to rise.
A storm of gunfire cut down the ravies in his way back to the V between Boneyard and Chuckwagon. Stuck stood atop the Bushmaster, firing his assault shotgun. Chieftain stood at his back, removing fingers and hands from ravies trying to climb atop the wreck.
Valentine realized he was bleeding but he felt no pain, fighting madness coursing through his nervous system.
He stumbled into the Boneyard, almost carrying Bee, rifle dangling by its sling and .45 pistol in his hand now.
"Graawg," Bee said, tears in her good eye, the other socket a gory pulp, pointing to bloody divots in her shoulder.
"Doc, you got a shot or something you can give her?" Valentine asked.
"I'll fix her up."
