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Valentine waved Stuck over.
"No, wounded inside!" he shouted, gesturing at the Bushmaster beneath him.
He emptied the shotgun into the remaining ravies all around.
Pkew!
A red blossom appeared in Stuck's shoulder, and he toppled off the APC.
Valentine looked back at the musical armored car. A rifle barrel projected from a rivet-trimmed slot in the front passenger-side window.
He could see the grinning faces of the driver and gunner behind their armored glass.
"Chieftain, take out those fuckers!" Valentine shouted.
The Bear nodded and disappeared.
Stuck, despite the rifle wound, was still swinging. He had a knife in each hand and used them like meathooks, plunging the blades in and pulling his opponents off their feet.
"You want a piece of me? There's plenty left, you assholes! Reapers and Grogs left enough for yas!"
Stuck led the remaining ravies down the road, shouting and gesticulating even as his steps grew more and more erratic.
While Stuck attracted ravie attention, Chieftain was dragging something away from the Bushmaster. Valentine realized it was the 20mm cannon. The big Bear, hair bristling up like a cockatiel's, righted it, braced it with his legs, and pointed it at the armored car.
Valentine looked at the armored car. The faces in the cabin weren't smiling anymore.
Krack! Krack! Krack! Krack! Krack!
The thick glass of the armored car had five holes with little auras of cracks all around, and blood splattered about on the inside.
And still the music played on.
Valentine-covered in quick-and-dirty bandages and iodine, injected with Mrs. O'Coombe's expensive Boneyard antibiotics, and feeling like he'd been taken apart and put together by a drunk tinker-investigated the musical armored car.
The back door was unlocked. After the cannon fire had killed the men in the cab, whoever was back there ran off into the growing dark.
There were a lot of dials and switches and electronic equipment, a screen and a controller for a camera at the back, and a blinking little box that one of the Wolves told him held all the music the system played in digital form.
Most of the music was soothing light classical, according to the computer-literate Wolf. "I guess they were attracting those Woolies by playing calming music," the Wolf said, giving this strain of ravies a name that was soon in wide use both officially and unofficially.
"It must soothe them," Doc said.
"And attract them at the same time. Must have been what they used to gather them . . . so the plane could spray them. That's how they killed them off," Valentine said, words finally catching up to his guesswork.
They fiddled until they had music playing and put some gentle Mozart up. A few ravies, wandering back from their final encounter with Stuck, shuffled up to the truck to listen.
Valentine gave orders that they weren't to be harmed. More important, they weren't to be disturbed by any aggravating noise.
They were prevented from engaging in further speculation by the arrival of a company from the Fort Seng battalion.
They were on bikes, Captain Nilay Patel wobbling unevenly at their head.
"The cavalry's a little late to the rescue," Valentine said with an effort. He had at least three bloody ravies bites, bound up in stinging iodine.
"The cavalry is having a hard time biking on melting ice," Patel said. "It's Colonel Lambert's idea, sir. We were leading a party of civilians out of Owensboro with the full battalion in field gear. There's a whole Northwest Ordnance column of trucks and motorcycle infantry and light armor getting set to cross the bridge where you got that Kurian."
"And you were heading toward them or away?"
