With the Chuckwagon parked, its trailer well inside, Valentine had Habanero tell the driver of the Bushmaster to back up the APC through the gate and into truck dock. It would fill it, perhaps not as tight as the Dutch boy's finger in the proverbial dike, but close.
Backing up the Bushmaster was no easy matter-the driver didn't have the usual rearview mirrors. Rockaway was at the top forward hatch, passing instructions to the driver.
Figures flashed out of the darkness, barefoot in the snow.
"Get inside, get inside, get inside!" Valentine shouted to Stuck. "Habanero, Bushmaster needs to clear the gate and get in the loading dock. Have Boneyard pull forward and wait, buttoned up tight."
Valentine heard a scream. Rockaway lit up the night with his pistol, firing at the ravies running for the Bushmaster.
Another charged out of the snow on his blind side. Valentine swung to aim, but the ravie jumped right out of his sights and landed on Rockaway, biting and pulling.
"Keve," Mrs. O'Coombe screamed from the doorway.
Rockaway emptied his gun blind and over his shoulder into the thing biting him.
Chaos. Everyone shouted at once, mostly to get the gate down.
"How the hell do you shut this door?" Stuck hollered.
"Inside!" Valentine yelled to Stuck. He was fumbling around with the wheel Thursday had used to raise the gate.
The Bushmaster rumbled through the gate.
A flash of brown and Duvalier was up on the gate rails. Duvalier had leaped nine feet in the air and now hung from a manual handle, trying to bring it down with her slight weight.
Valentine finally thought to look on the side of the wall opposite the crank and saw a pawl in the teeth of a wheel. There was a simple lever to remove it.
The compressed thunder that was the fire of the automatic shotgun licked out into the night, turning snowfall orange.
"Cease fire," Valentine shouted. If the Bushmaster opened up with its cannon, it would draw every ravie for a mile. "You'll just attract more. Habanero, tell the people in Boneyard and Bushmaster to turn off lights and engines-don't fire. Don't fire!"
Habanero repeated the orders.
The smaller door on the back of the Bushmaster opened, and Boelnitz jumped out, pulling a bloody-shirted Rockaway out, and the two ran for the mill.
Panicky fool! The fear of ravies caused just as much damage as the sufferers.
A shirtless figure tore out of the darkness. It didn't so much as tackle Boelnitz as run over him. It pulled up, as though shocked he'd gone down so easily.
Rockaway fell on his own.
Stuck took a quick step from the door crank and swung with his rifle butt, cracking the ravie across the back of the neck. It turned on him, swinging an arm that sprawled Stuck.
Valentine aimed the Type Three and put two into the ravie's back. It went down on its knees. Boelnitz, stunned, crawled toward the door and the safety of the mill's interior, lit by the headlights of Rover and Chuckwagon. Stuck picked Rockaway up by his belt and almost threw him through the door like a bowler trying for a strike.
"The hell's the matter with you?" Stuck said, kicking Boelnitz toward the mill. "Why didn't you stay in the APC?"
Valentine let loose the lever on the pawl, and the door, still with Duvalier hanging on it as she tried to force it with her leg, descended. Valentine stopped it high enough so a man could still enter at a crouch.
Stuck rolled in and sighted his gun to cover Bushmaster.
Valentine dragged Boelnitz in.
"Dumbshit didn't shut the door on Bushmaster," Stuck said, swinging the barrel of the auto-shotgun and pressing it to the thick, soft hair on Boelnitz's head.
Mrs. O'Coombe hugged her bloody son. "My God, my God . . . ," she kept repeating.
Valentine kicked up the gun barrel, and Stuck head-butted him in the gut.