Boneyard's driver put his gun to his shoulder and fired at the speaker atop the armored car.
Which showed initiative but not very good judgment.
A pair of teenage ravies came running, as though the spitting assault rifle was an ice cream truck's musical bell.
Bushmaster bumped off road and gave them covering fire, Silvertip at the turret ring with the 20mm cannon.
Like sand running out of an hourglass, more and more ravies sprang into violent motion, running toward the vehicles.
Nothing to do about it now.
Valentine went around behind Rover, set his rifle on the rear bumper, and began to fire into the ravies. Machine guns and cannon tore into them.
Regular troops would have scattered or taken cover on the ground. Not these men, women, and children. Most of them went for the Bushmaster: It was the biggest and-
"Chuckwagon," Duvalier shouted in Valentine's ear, pointing.
A mass of ravies hit Bushmaster like an incoming tsunami. They tipped it, perhaps by accident, in their fury to get at the noisy guns.
Valentine pulled Brother Mark out of Rover and threw him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. A ravie with a mustache gone mad sprang around the corner.
"Uungh!" Duvalier grunted as she opened the ravie from rib to hip point with her sword. She spun and took a child's head off behind her.
Chuckwagon pulled up next to Boneyard, forming a V by having the front bumpers just meet.
"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.