Apocalypse of the Dead. Joe Mckinney

again, thought Barnes.

      “Uh, Quarter Four-One, I didn’t copy. You said to give ’em Mona?”

      “Roger.”

      “Mama Bear, did you copy they got three shrimp boats in the water?”

      “Roger your three shrimp boats, Quarter Four-One. Echo Four-Three and Delta One-Six will fall in behind in case you need assistance. Now give ’em Mona.”

      Give ’em Mona was the strategy most commonly employed by Quarantine Authority personnel when they spotted uncles trying to breach the wall. The expression came from the amplified zombie moans the Quarantine Authority personnel played over their PA systems. The moans carried for tremendous distances, attracting any zombies that might be in the area. Usually, the moans were enough to send the uncles into hiding.

      But this isn’t a bunch of uncles throwing rocks at troops up on the wall, Barnes thought. Those people are a viable threat. They have boats. They have boats in the water, for Christ’s sake. You guys are underestimating the situation.

      Barnes reached forward to the control panel in front of the passenger seat and flipped the PA system power switch. Instantly, the air filled with a low, mournful moan that Barnes could feel in his chest and his gut.

      He hated hearing that noise. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to block out the images of bodies festooned in the branches of fallen pecan trees, of people screaming for help in flooded attics, of his brother Jack getting pulled under the water by a nest of zombies they’d wandered into when they were less than two miles from safety. But it was no use. Sometimes the images were too powerful, too vivid, and when he opened his eyes, he had tears running down his face.

      Barnes didn’t even hear the first shots. He heard a loud plunking sound, like a rock dropping into water next to his ear, and when he looked over his shoulder, he saw a bullet hole in the fuselage.

      Missed my head by six inches, he realized.

      He heard another sound below him. Glancing down, he saw what appeared to be a faint laser beam between his shins. The bullet had pierced the lower section of the fuselage and entered the supports right below his seat. He had daylight pouring through the bullet hole.

      “Quarter Four-One, they got a shooter on the ground!” Barnes heard the panic in his voice but couldn’t fight it.

      “Take it easy,” Mama Bear answered.

      More shots from below. Barnes could see the man doing the shooting, the bursts of white-orange light erupting from the muzzle of what appeared to be an AK-47.

      “I’m hit,” Barnes said.

      Instinctively, he pulled back on the stick and started to climb. He couldn’t see the Coast Guard Jayhawk that had moved into position above and behind him, but he heard the pilot’s angry shouts as he turned his aircraft to one side, narrowly avoiding the collision.

      “Goddamn it, watch yourself, Quarter Four-One!” the pilot said.

      Barnes’s Adam’s apple pumped up and down in his throat as he fought to get himself back under control. He scanned the airspace around him, then made a quick instrument check. Everything appeared to be holding steady.

      Out of the corner of his eye, Barnes saw the Coast Guard Jayhawk rotate into position over the uncles below. Barnes could see several uncles shooting now, while farther off, people were jumping into the water and trying to climb aboard the shrimp boats.

      “Kill that Mona, Quarter Four-One,” shouted one of the H-Boy pilots.

      “Roger,” Barnes answered.

      He leaned forward and killed the PA switch. But as he did, he saw a flash of movement that grabbed his attention. A man was kneeling in the shadows between a wrecked fishing boat and what appeared to be the rusted-out pilothouse from a tugboat. He had a long, skinny metal tube over his shoulder and he appeared to be zeroing in on the Jayhawk to Barnes’s right.

      Barnes recognized it as an RPG and thought, Where in the hell did the uncles get an RPG? That’s impossible. Isn’t it?

      Barnes glanced to his right and saw that the Jayhawk had rotated away from the shooters so that its gun crews could bring their 7.62-mm machine guns to bear on the targets.

      “That guy’s got an RPG,” Barnes heard himself say. “Heads-up, Delta One-Six. That guy’s got an RPG. Clear out. Repeat, clear out!”

      “Where?” the other pilot asked. “Where? What’s he standing next to?”

      “Right there!” Barnes shouted futilely. He was pointing at the man, unable to find the words to describe his position amid all the rubble. It all looked the same.

      “Where, damn it?”

      But by then the man had fired. Barnes watched in horror as the rocket snaked up from the ground and slammed into the back of the Jayhawk, just forward of the rear rotor. The Jayhawk shuddered, like a man carrying a heavy pack that had shifted suddenly, and then the helicopter started spewing thick black smoke.

      “Delta One-Six, I’m hit!”

      “Fucker has an RPG!” shouted the other H-Boy pilot. He was moving his Jayhawk higher and orbiting counterclockwise to put his gun crews in position.

      “Delta One-Six, she’s not responding.”

      “Come on, Coleman,” said the other Jayhawk pilot. “Pull your PCLs off-line.”

      “I’m losing it!”

      Delta One-Six made two full rotations, wrapping itself in a black haze as it drifted toward a partially capsized super-freighter. As Barnes watched, the Jayhawk clipped the very top of the superstructure and hitched forward toward the ground in a dive. One of its gunners was holding onto his machine gun with one hand, the rest of him hanging out the door like a windsock in a stiff breeze. The pilot tried to level off the aircraft right before they hit, but only managed to snap the helicopter’s spine on impact.

      A moment later, a thin plume of black smoke rose up from the wreck.

      Then the radio exploded with activity. “He’s down, Echo Four-Three. Delta One-Six is down.”

      “Get him some help over there. You got one moving!”

      It was true. Barnes saw the pilot stumble out of the cockpit, his white helmet smoking. The man threw his helmet off and he fell into the water. When he bobbed back up to the surface he was holding a pistol in his hand.

      “Oh, shit, Echo Four-Three, we got problems. I got infected moving into the area.”

      “What direction?” asked Mama Bear.

      “From the ten. I got a visual on thirteen of them.”

      “Uh, Mama Bear,” said Faulks. “Ya’ll got a whole lot more than that. I got a visual on about forty or fifty over here at your two o’clock.”

      “You want me to go down and extract your man?” Barnes asked.

      “Negative, Quarter Four-One,” Mama Bear said. “Echo Three-Four, give me your status.”

      “One second,” said the pilot. “We’re about to smoke out this RPG.”

      A moment later, a steady stream of tracer rounds erupted from the Jayhawk’s gunners, slamming into the little pocket of debris beneath the tugboat’s pilothouse.

      The shooting went on until the pilothouse collapsed.

      “Echo Three-Four, RPG neutralized.”

      “Your boy’s in deep shit over here, guys,” said Faulks.

      Barnes rotated so he could see the downed pilot. The man was standing in the middle of a ring of zombies. The way he was standing, it was obvious he’d broken one of his legs, but the man fought bravely, placing his shots carefully, not rushing them.

      “You guys gonna help him?”