"I wonder how long we'll be snowed in here," Duvalier said from the bench she had to herself at the very back of Rover. "Charmingly dead."
"What's that?" Habanero said suddenly into his mike.
Valentine plugged his own headset in, uneasy. "What happened?" Mrs. O'Coombe said.
"Ma in Chuckwagon says she just hit a person."
"Good God," Mrs. O'Coombe said.
Valentine's earphone crackled: "-maybe it was just a big dog. But he came leaping, trying to get on the back of Bushmaster, and slipped. Under my wheels before I knew it. We bumped over him."
"We should stop," Mrs. O'Coombe said.
"What kind of fool runs into a line of trucks in this weather?" Thursday said, his face unholy in the dim light of the console.
"Must have been a dog," Habanero said. "Shadows are weird with all the reflections."
"Here's the mill," Thursday said. "I'll get it open for you, and then I'll check in with our sheriff and let him know you've arrived. As long as that wasn't him Ma ran over."
He laughed at his own joke, but no one else did.
The mill looked like a staggered tower, in levels going back from the street rising to a sloped roof on the top floor like an old ski jump.
"Always thought this building would be great to live in if you could gut and rebuild like they used to. Left just here, Habby," Thursday said. "Don't think you can get more than the first two vehicles parked inside. The loading dock's only made for one truck, really. There's plenty of space around the side with the train tracks."
Habanero turned on Rover's lights. A metal gate broke the pattern in the stone sides of the mill. Thursday climbed out and met his dancing shadow at a crank handle.
Turning the handle, he raised what had probably once been an electric door.
Thursday lost his footing. Mrs. O'Coombe took a sudden breath at his fall.
Or not a fall. Thursday disappeared under the half-raised gate with a scream.
"What the hell!" Habanero said.
"Wagon master, get ready to reverse and get out of here," Valentine said.
Habanero began to speak into his microphone.
Valentine grabbed his rifle out of its seat-back clip and stepped outside.
"Valen-" Duvalier began, but he slammed the door.
He ducked down, looking into the dark of the old grain elevator. Rover's lights cast beams through that were cut off by the half-closed door. A pair of hands, Thursday's, were reaching out of the darkness and clawing in an effort to crawl back to Rover-but something was holding him back.
And hurting him. Thursday was screaming like a man being slowly dismembered.
Valentine wished he had a light clipped to the barrel of the gun. He looked around at the column but could see nothing but the whirling flakes and the columns lights.
The Type Three pointed from his hip at the gate, he went to the crank for the door gate. He extended his arm and gripped the freezing-cold metal. Tendons tight, he managed to turn the wheel with one hand while he kept the barrel of his rifle pointed at the growing gap between tracked door and ground.
Thursday's hands were twitching spasmodically now, and as more and more light bled into the mill, the rest of him was revealed.
A piercing shriek in his ear. Ali was out of the car, a pistol in hand and a sword stick under her arm. Valentine had never heard her shriek like that-the noise must be coming from another.
Ragged two-legged forms appeared in the white bath of the headlights. Gore-smeared mouths testified to a recent, messy feast.
Ravies!