These weren't "wild" Reapers, sometimes sent into the Free Territory to brutalize and maul, little dandelion seeds of chaos drifting where instinct took them. These Reapers had gone through Nancy's quickly and methodically, trying to cram as much death into a given number of minutes as possible.
Which probably meant they had a long trip back. Perhaps as far as Tulsa?
Valentine's cat-sharp eyes picked out motion at the outbuildings. A Reaper, moving south, hopping from rooftop to rooftop as it tried to sense if any beings hid within.
He pulled back the hammer on his gun, then dropped it and the pickax on the ground. He sank so his knees hid them.
"Why?" he bawled. Not much acting required for this. He searched the low spring clouds. "Why us?" He covered his eyes, decided not to sob - there was such a thing as overdoing it.
The Reaper didn't even bother to cut back so it could approach him from behind. It approached a little off kilter, shifting this way and that, reaching too far with its lower limbs stepping toward ten and two rather than straight ahead.
Valentine smelled the cordite on it. He hoped this particular one had killed the girl. Dots of blood decorated its face, a sticky pox. Old Father Wolf was proved right again: Enough hate and you felt no fear, just nervous anticipation.
It planted itself in front of him.
"some prayers are answered", it said, sibilants sliding out of its mouth like a snake's. "look up and see".
Valentine knew better than to meet its eyes. He waited for the knees to bend and rolled sideways, shoved the gun almost into the folds of its robe, and fired.
Bullets wouldn't kill it, but the kinetic energy could sometimes stagger Reapers. Even with the powerful handgun cartridges slamming into it, it still reacted aggressively, swung at his head with a scooping motion that would have sent his skull spinning like a field goal kick.
Except Valentine was already behind it.
He buried the pick end of his hand ax into its upper back, where the nerve trunks gathered on their way to the armored brain case. He got lung instead, heard a sucking sound as flesh closed around the point.
It spun, jerking the handle of his pick out of his hands, and both opponents lurched off-balance. Its elbows clicked backward and its arms reversed themselves in a ghastly fashion as it sought the pick.
Valentine restored his equilibrium first, dropped, and sighted under the jawline. He put his remaining bullets into the underside of its chin.
The Reaper went mad, tore the pick free, and took off running, a blind flight with its hand held in front of it and the other holding its jaw on.
Valentine reloaded, retrieved his pickax, and trotted after it. It dived into the culvert beside the road and began to slither south at a pace he could just keep up with if he ran.
The Kurian clearly wanted his puppet back, even with a string or two cut. Had it been willing to sacrifice its avatar, it could have chased him down and killed him, hunting by heartbeat if nothing else. He paused in a tomato garden and calmed himself, tried to sense the emanations from the Reapers, caught a flicker off in the direction of the settlement garbage heap.
Valentine picked out a line of trees and used them as cover for an approach,
hoping there wasn't a sniper or two guarding the gathering. He heard engines and movement, and risked a run.
He broke for the top of the low hill that kept the dump's sight and smell away from Nancy's, got up just in time to see a truck pulling a horse trailer, turning onto a brush-choked access road. A cut-down Humvee with a toothy brush cutter on the front and a winged Southern Command battle star painted on its side led it down the road.
You could pack a lot of Reapers in that trailer. An unpleasant surprise for the soldier who opened the door to check inside.
The vehicles, driving without lights - if they still worked - disappeared.
A roadblock would be helpful somewhere down that overgrown alley, but the false-flagged Hummer could just pull a disabled...
A blatting broke out from the garbage heap and Valentine saw a man in cammies with a scoped rifle slung across the handlebars of a dirt bike take off after the vehicles up the road. A cold wave passed over Valentine. Probably the sniper, tired and anxious after the operation and listening to the sounds of his buddies driving off, hadn't been searching the hill line or the trees in the direction of Nancy's through his night sight.
Had anyone in Nancy's called for help as the Reapers attacked?
* * *
They arrived within a couple of hours, a thin string of cavalry on horseback, followed by more troops on mountain bikes, riding in a pair of lines on either side of the road. He watched them the way a rancher might watch a cattle drive - making guesses as to health, morale, and training from everything from the condition of their bootheels to how they shaved their sideburns. Someone in Southern Command knew his business. Valentine guessed this to be a garrison from one of the supply depots supporting operations west of Tulsa.
He sent Jules over to tell the captain in charge. They could radio to scouts around Tulsa. Even if the vehicles couldn't be intercepted, the scouts might be able to track them to whatever hidey-hole they sought.
The woman possessed an agile enough mind, and he could forgive a panic attack with a Reaper scratching at the door.