Ma fiddled with her thumb, rolling it back and forth across the ancient, electrical-taped device. Harsh, synthesized music blared.
The Woolies startled.
The music hushed, stopped. A big Woolie, his mouth ringed by a brown smear of dried blood like a child's misadventure with lipstick, lurched toward the speaker, head cocked.
Ma said something under her breath-Valentine had no attention to spare for anyone but the big Woolie-and a soothing cello backed by violins started up.
The speakers ratcheted up, filling the main street with noise.
More Woolies emerged from alleys and doorways, some dragging dead dogs or more gruesome bits of fodder.
"They like that," Duvalier said, peering out a firing slot.
"Just like the Pied Piper," Valentine said. "Now to teach Hamelin a lesson."
Soon his followers filled two lanes and the verge to either side of the highway leading out of Owensboro and to the east.
They found a slight hill from which they could see the bridge and watch the fireworks. Valentine signaled Ma to stop the soothing music.
Valentine's trio of iron throats opened up. Guinevere, Igraine, and Morganna began to sing, and their notes fell upon the highway in brilliant flash and thunder.
The ravies ran toward the bridge.
"There go the Woolies!" one of the artillery observers reported over the radio. The Wolf's moniker had spread quickly.
The forces of the Northwest Ordnance had removed their barricades and some of the fencing to allow the invasion force to rumble across the bridge, its formation undisturbed. The Woolies found no resistance to their rush.
Panic struck the soldiers of Ohio's elite force. Immunization or no, an inoculation wasn't proof against one's injection arm being yanked out of its socket.
Valentine, having seen the destruction visited on Kentucky, rejoiced at like medicine being distributed among the "relief" forces parked in a long file along the highway.
He heard the drone of an engine. A plane hove into view.
"Bee!" Valentine said. He formed his hands into wings and had them crash.
Bee grinned from among her bandages, licked a bullet, and slid it into her big Grog gun. She put the gun to her shoulder and raised the barrel to the sky, as though it were a flag. The barrel began to descend as smoothly as a fine watch hand, lining up with the approaching plane, which had turned to pass directly over the bridge so that its flight path matched the north-south span.
It was a two-engine plane. She'd have to be quick to take out both as it passed over the bridge.
The plane dove, seeming to head straight for them. It hadn't started sprinkling its nerve agent yet, not wanting to lay it on their own forces.
Bee brought the gun barrel down, down, down, humming to herself. She fired.
The plane didn't so much as wobble. It continued its pass, remorseless. Valentine waited for the fine spray of nerve agent that would lock up heart and limb-
The plane shot over their heads, wingtips still, level as a board, engines roaring and flaps down, following a perfect five-degree decline to hit and skip and cartwheel into the woods of Kentucky.
Valentine heard firing from the other side of the bridge. A gasoline explosion lit up the low winter clouds.
Valentine tried to tell himself that he was killing two birds with one stone, not slaughtering civilians to confuse a military offensive.
"I know what the editorial in the Clarion would be," Boelnitz said. "Southern Command Uses Bioweapons in Indiana Massacre."
Valentine was inclined to agree: both that they'd use the headline and that the headline was true. But you had to give the enemy whatever flavor of hell they gave you. "Of course, you could add some picturesque color thanks to your firsthand experiences."
"Hell with them," Boelnitz said. "You know, the publisher used to tell me, 'It's always more complicated than a headline.' That's only so much bovine scat one can tolerate. Our headline here is pretty easy. 'Victory.' They should have offered, instead of threatened."
"I hope we can remember that," Valentine said. "You know, Llwellyn or Boelnitz or whatever you want to call yourself, Kentucky could use a newspaper. It's one of the building blocks of a civilization. What do you say? Want to bring the first amendment back to Kentucky?"