There was nodding at that, and even a shrug of acknowledgment from Chief Liebs.
“There’s also the moral question,” said Evan, and all eyes turned to the priest at the end of the table.
Xavier gave them a small smile and gestured back at the writer-turned-helicopter-pilot. “You brought it up, Evan. Morality isn’t only for the clergy. You’re just as qualified to speak on the matter.”
The young man frowned at that but then looked at the group. “We’ve all pretty much agreed that this thing is global, and we’ve seen life erased right in front of us. I couldn’t even guess at what the ratio of living to dead might be now. A hundred thousand to one? More, probably? How can we see that, see what’s become of us as a species, and not try to protect our own? By that I mean the living.”
The others listened, and Maya watched his face closely.
“We know the dead mean us nothing but harm, and they can’t be reasoned with in any way. This,” Evan said, making a gesture to include everyone in the room, “doesn’t happen with them. There’s no reasonable discussions, no questions about right and wrong. To them, a gathering like this isn’t a rational debate where ideas are heard and respected, it’s a buffet.” He placed a palm on his chest. “We’re the only ones who do that, living people. We have to save that whenever we can, seek it out and protect it.”
Smiles greeted him around the table. Xavier said, “I sure hope you’re still writing, Evan. You should write that down.”
The young man blushed, and Maya hugged him.
“I feel much as Evan does,” said Xavier. “He’s more articulate than I am, and the only thing missing from his speech was a soundtrack.” There was more laughter. “But I think he said it very well. If we’re not going to try to shelter what life remains out there, but simply hide here and keep from dying, then what’s the point? No one in this room is a selfish person.”
Although there were plenty of seats at the conference table, Calvin had chosen to sit on a chair against the wall. He hadn’t spoken until now, and when he did, his voice was as dry and hollow as a prairie wind blowing through an abandoned house. “Keeping our loved ones alive isn’t being selfish. People died to get us this far. Let’s not forget what they sacrificed so we could be safe.”
Maya felt her heart break as she watched the words on her father’s lips, and she squeezed Evan’s hand.
“You’re right, Cal,” Xavier said, wanting to go to the man, but instead he remained seated. “And there will be others out there deserving of that safety. Everyone here has put themselves at risk for others. Some have sacrificed all,” he said, looking directly at Calvin. “Now those strangers you fought to save are your family.”
They were quiet for a while, and then Chief Liebs spoke up. “I don’t disagree with anything that’s been said here, and I don’t think anyone is being naïve about the potential dangers. But what if it turns out that strangers we welcome in mean to do us harm?”
Xavier spoke in a flat voice that brought a chill to the room. “Then we destroy them.”
• • •
Is that what we’ll need to do now? Xavier thought, standing on the superstructure’s catwalk and watching the boat come in. Friend or foe?
Stone returned with the bullhorn and handed it to the chief. Liebs looked at the priest. “Like we decided?”
Xavier nodded.
The chief waited until the tiny boat motored in closer, watching it slow. “That’s close enough,” he called, and the launch came to a drifting stop. He counted ten people inside, with no space for anyone to hide. “Where did you come from? How are you armed?”
The pilot of the launch looked up at the high superstructure and made a cutting motion across his neck, then extended his arms in an exaggerated shrug.
“They can’t communicate back at this distance,” said Xavier.
Liebs triggered the bullhorn again. “Move to the stern. Tie off at the swimmer’s platform but do not get out of your boat. We’ll come down to meet you. We’ll want to see your hands when we arrive. No weapons, understand?”
The pilot nodded and gave a thumbs-up, then steered the little boat toward the rear of the aircraft carrier.
“Let’s get into position,” said Xavier.
• • •
Stone and Mercy, the hippie woman who not only had survived alongside Calvin during the capture of the carrier but had turned into an efficient killer, took their places on the ship’s fantail. Here, on the vast deck that was exposed to the sea through a wide, rectangular opening, a place where jet engines had once been tested, they were able to aim their rifles down in an unobstructed view of anything approaching the swimmer’s platform at the waterline below. If these new arrivals showed aggression, Mercy and Stone would fill their little boat with automatic fire. Using the handheld Hydra radios, they reported that the small Coast Guard launch was tied up alongside the thirty-two-foot Bayliner and police patrol boat still tethered there since the assault. Everyone was showing their hands, they reported, and none were holding weapons.
From within, Xavier opened the hatch to the swimmer’s platform, the door through which their assault teams had first entered the carrier months ago. Chief Liebs, wearing body armor and aiming an M14 rifle, stepped slowly out onto the platform. Calvin moved out next, also in armor and pointing his Canadian assault rifle. Xavier joined them, leaving two armed hippies in the compartment to his rear.
The priest eyed the group in the boat. They were a wet, bedraggled bunch: six bearded men, three women with tangled hair, and a toddler sitting on one of the women’s knees, crying. They all looked thin and were clearly malnourished. The launch pilot was the only one standing. He was short and broad, and it looked as if he had shaved his head with a knife blade instead of a razor. He wore a ratty blue turtleneck sweater.
“Who are you people?” Xavier asked.
The launch pilot spoke. “Former Coast Guard, mostly, with a few civilians we rescued.”
“Where did you come from?”
The man gestured to the northwest. “We were on a cutter. The supplies ran out and there was a mutiny; the ship went down. We managed to get away in this.”
Xavier stared at the man, who suddenly seemed surprised. “Oh, no . . . we didn’t mutiny,” the man said. “We supported the captain, but there were more of them. The ship went down just off the mouth of the bay.”
“And your captain?” the priest asked.
“Murdered. We came into the bay looking for a safe place to beach.” The launch pilot shook his head. “But the dead are everywhere, and there’s no place to land. Then we saw this thing, saw your helicopter.” His shoulders fell. “Please, we don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Chief Liebs and Calvin said nothing, and Xavier kept looking at the launch pilot. “Are you armed?”
The man nodded. “We have a rifle, two handguns, and a few knives. It’s all on the deck of the boat, and no one is going to touch them.”
The priest took a deep breath. If he went forward now, he’d be putting their plans to the ultimate test. He didn’t care much to hear about a violent mutiny, especially not knowing on which side these people had actually been. But then would someone with harmful intentions even mention something like that? Wouldn’t a simpler lie suffice and not put prospective new hosts on their guard? The story had a ring of truth, but how loud was that ring? If Xavier turned them away, what sort of man would he be? He looked at the crying child, his mother hugging him close.
“If you come aboard,” Xavier said, “you’ll all do exactly as you’re told, and answer all our questions. That’s the price just to get in. Staying will mean additional agreements.”
“We will,” said the launch pilot.
“Everyone will be strip-searched, one at a time, as you enter. Your weapons and all your bags and possessions will be confiscated for now.”
“We understand,” the man said. “We don’t want trouble.”
Xavier said something to Liebs, who stepped back through the hatch. Calvin remained on the platform, rifle aimed at the boat’s occupants. The priest pointed to the launch pilot. “You first.”
The man climbed onto the platform and approached slowly, arms still raised. Then he cautiously extended a hand. “Thank you.”
Xavier hesitated, then shook it. “What’s your name?”
The man gave him a smile. “Charlie.”
TWELVE
When the Seahawk reached El Cerrito, Evan turned slightly northwest and began following the water’s edge of South Richmond, dropping to two thousand feet and slowing to one hundred miles per hour. Gourd had gotten the weather radar working and reported a rain system heading in from the west. He said he saw no lightning strikes. Evan had flown in rain before, but only with Vladimir in the co-pilot seat. He might have to cut this trip short. Still, the front was a ways off, and he still had some flight time before it arrived.
At this altitude and speed, they both had a good look at what was below them. Most of Richmond had burned, and that was no surprise. The tank farms at its western edge had ruptured during an earthquake last fall, and with no one to control the outbreak of fire, the blaze set off row after row of fuel tanks. Winds from the Pacific pushed the conflagration east, where it devoured the industrial areas and rail yards before moving on to consume Richmond itself. Below and to the north, the city appeared as a blackened grid.
The Navy bird passed over Marina Bay, a place of charred docks, gutted multimillion-dollar homes, and no boats of any kind. Anything that once floated there had either sailed away or been scuttled by fire. The chopper crossed a stretch of water and then overflew a large peninsula neighborhood that the super-rich once called home, their mansions now enormous shells surrounded by charcoal lawns and burned trees.
“You ready?” Gourd asked over the helmet intercom.
“Ready for what?”
The co-pilot laughed. “To be a daddy, dumbass.”
“I’m nervous,” Evan said. “Diapers and formula aren’t standard issue on aircraft carriers.”
“Those are just logistics,” Gourd said. “Maya can feed it, and any piece of cloth can be cut and folded into a diaper. People were having babies long before Huggies came along.”
“I guess.”
“You’re still nervous, though,” Gourd said. “I get it. I’d be scared shitless.”
Evan thought about it. “I’m not worried about Maya; I know she’ll be a great mom. And I’m not worried that the baby will be born with . . .” He trailed off.
“Be born deaf?” Gourd adjusted a knob on the weather radar. “And if it is, that’ll be okay too.”
“I know,” said Evan. “That’s not it. It’s this world. What kind of life will it have?”
They were both quiet for a while as a dead community slid past beneath them, and Evan banked northwest again, still following the coastline. Finally Gourd spoke. “There’s got to be pregnant women who survived out there.” His voice was subdued. “Not many of them will have what we have. How hard would it be having a kid in that?” He waved at the windscreen. “What kind of life will that be, and for how long?”
“I’m not whining,” Evan said, but still he felt ashamed. His son or daughter was going to be born in safety, under medical care, with both parents still living. It would be a better life than probably any child out there, he decided, and the thought was both sobering and sad.
“I know you’re not,” said Gourd. “I wasn’t saying that. I feel guilty sometimes, thinking if I could trade places with some mother or family out there, let them live on the ship . . . I think the reason I took Vlad’s offer to learn how to fly was so that maybe someday I could put my bird down somewhere and actually rescue someone, you know?”
Evan didn’t know if that made him feel better or worse, but he was leaning toward the latter. Gourd knew him pretty well, and said, “Your only mission is to protect that family of yours, buddy. You put your ass on the line to make a safe place for them, along with a lot of other people. Don’t be anything but happy about that.” He slapped his friend’s knee across the cockpit. “You’re going to be a good daddy.”
Better than mine, Evan thought, remembering the fights between him and his father in the years following his mother’s death. Dad called him a loser who didn’t want to work. Evan shouted that he didn’t want a pointless, nine-to-five grind like his old man, wasting his life. Dad called him a bum. Evan said his father might as well have already been dead for how worthless his life had become. All words that could never be taken back, and the last words spoken between them had been in anger.
Will I be a better father? he wondered. Was Dad that much of a shit? The man had lost his wife of twenty-five years and was left with a son he didn’t understand, and who wouldn’t try to understand him. Evan once told Father Xavier that the end of the world had clarified things and put them into perspective. Now he realized it had clarified something else: regret. He would never have the chance to talk to his dad again, to say he was sorry for the things he’d said and done. If he truly was to be a good father, he would have to ensure that neither he nor his child left this world having regrets about the other, and there could be no unspoken words. Evan decided that if nothing else, that was a worthy task for a man.
The shattered, circular remains of petrochemical tanks swept past, and where rail lines wove through the industrial area, entire freight trains had been welded to the tracks by the intensity of the heat. Evan thought about the temperature required to do that and thought surely even the dead couldn’t have survived those flames.
“So, Uncle Gourd,” Evan said, brightening his tone, “are you ready to change shitty diapers?”
Gourd laughed. “Hell yes! Bring ’em on!”
“Oh, you’re so full of shit.”
“No, man,” said Gourd, “I’m all in. For you and Maya? Anything. Babies bring joy, my friend.”
“Wow,” said Evan, “that is some seriously girly talk for a chopper pilot.”
Gourd laughed again. “You know I’m still a flower child at heart, right?”
The Seahawk flew over the eastern end of the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge. It, like the highway that approached it, was snarled with motionless vehicles, a silent, dead river of metal that looked out of place against the beauty of the late-afternoon sun on the water.
“Hello,” Evan said softly, slowing the bird.
“What do you have?” Gourd asked, his voice professional again.
“Port side, out where the bridge starts to rise in elevation so ships can get under it.” He stayed over water and descended to five hundred feet, bringing the Navy bird into a hover and rotating left so the cockpit was facing what he had seen.
“What is that, a cargo ship?” Gourd asked, unzipping a breast pocket and pulling out a small pair of binoculars.
They were at least a half mile away. “I don’t know,” said Evan, “but it wasn’t there when we flew up here last week.”
“Maybe it broke loose of its mooring somewhere and drifted up against the bridge supports?” his co-pilot offered.
“Maybe,” Evan said, but he didn’t think so. The vessel was clearly not touching any of the supports. He worked to hold the Seahawk in a hover while maintaining altitude, the effort reminding him yet again that he was a long way from being a skilled pilot.
Through his binoculars, Gourd saw a ship sitting motionless, very close to the bridge, its bow pointed away from them so that the vessel rested perpendicular to the span. It also just happened to be positioned so that the wide strip of shadow cast by the bridge lay right down the length of the vessel. If they had been going any faster, they might have missed it. Gourd didn’t believe the shadow concealment was an accident. It was even harder to see because someone had painted the sh
ip black; not a professional job, but thorough enough to cover most of the hull and superstructure. Patches of white poked through in only a few places.
Gourd focused, seeing some movement on deck, and not the slow, stiff-legged gait he had come to expect from the dead. The ship had a sleek look to it, and that was definitely a helicopter deck toward its stern, butted up against a pair of hangar bays.
“That’s not a cargo ship,” Gourd said. “It looks milit—”
Evan caught movement. Something on the deck above the ship’s helicopter bays swiveled, something tall and mechanical, something with a barrel. “Oh, shit,” Evan breathed, throwing the chopper hard to the right. A string of red, glowing shapes reached out from the ship, and a second later Evan’s bird was filled with a deep rattling and the sounds of tearing metal as rounds tore through the troop compartment and shredded the tail. The aircraft shuddered, still turning away, and Evan applied full power. Warning buzzers and flashing lights filled the cockpit as more tracers blurred past the windscreen, several thudding into the turbines overhead. There was a squealing sound, a boom, and smoke poured into the cockpit. The bird staggered in the air, now pointed and moving east, starting its fall.
“Mayday, mayday,” Evan called on the Nimitz frequency. “Navy zero-two is going down, mayday, mayday.”
The Seahawk spun, both turbines torn apart, the bird’s plunge slowed only because of the blades still spinning with their own momentum, what Vladimir had called autorotation. The aircraft was going down at a steep angle nonetheless, crossing the shoreline now and headed inland, the ground rushing up fast.
“Navy zero-two, Mayday, Mayd—”
The Seahawk vanished into the burned ruins of Richmond.
• • •
Patrick Katcher sat in the communication center behind Nimitz’s bridge. His eyes widened as he heard the tense transmissions, and then he saw the blip on his radar scope that was Navy zero-two blink off the screen.
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