Crossbones by John L. Campbell

waterfront industrial areas and fuel tank farms, charring entire square miles of urban area. Oakland looked black, and the occasional gust of wind would kick up clouds of ash that drifted across the city like little coal-colored sandstorms.Xavier knew the fires would have done little to impair the dead. They would still be shuffling the avenues, charred and blackened, endlessly searching for the living.
    Alameda was closest in view, and the dead there could be seen with the naked eye, at least a hundred thousand of them packing the expanse of airfields at the old naval air station. The priest didn’t know what had drawn them there, why they stayed and didn’t just wander away, but there they remained. From a mile out, the abandoned airfield resembled an open-air concert for a major rock band, a sea of heads and shifting bodies.
    Xavier had completed two full circuits of the four-and-a-half-acre flight deck when he heard the hydraulic whine of an aircraft elevator rising from the hangar deck. He looked over to see one of
Nimitz
’s Seahawk helicopters come into view from below, and as soon as the elevator stopped, a low, flat tow vehicle driven by a bearded man pulled it out onto the flight deck. A pair of figures, one a woman in blue coveralls with her dark hair whipping in the breeze, the other a man in a green flight suit, followed the aircraft off the elevator. Xavier threw them a wave and kept running.
    As he passed the towering crane and the garage door that boasted the
World’s Smallest Fire Truck
, he saw a figure step from the wide hatch at the base of the superstructure. The other man looked around, saw him, and waved him over.
    Xavier slowed to a brisk walk, puffing and rolling his arms as he started his cooldown. Time to put his administrator’s hat back on.

FIVE
    Evan and Maya walked across the deck holding hands, following after the haze-gray helicopter marked with
NAVY
and the number
2
on the tail, to where it had been towed. Evan was of average build, and his once-collar-length black hair was now neatly trimmed in a military style. In his midtwenties, he wore a flight suit with the legs bloused into boots, a survival vest, and the Sig Sauer Calvin had given him snugged into a shoulder holster under his flight jacket. Maya, just twenty, wore blue coveralls that didn’t do justice to her slim figure, though she swore she was developing a pot belly. Doc Escobedo assured her she was only now entering her second trimester and wouldn’t be showing for a while. A small, .380 automatic handgun was tucked in a pocket of her coveralls.
    The bearded hippie unhooked his little tow vehicle from the helicopter’s nose, gave Evan a thumbs-up, and motored back to the elevator. Maya moved close to the aircraft in order to get out of the wind, pulling Evan’s hand as she brushed blowing hair from her face.
    â€œTwo hours, right?” she signed. Maya had been deaf and mute since birth.
    Evan made sure he was facing her so she could read his lips. Hissigning was improving every day under her tutelage, but he still made mistakes, and so he spoke whatever he signed. “Two hours, maybe less. Up around San Pablo Bay, then back down.”
    She nodded. “Where’s Gourd?”
    â€œHe knows we’re flying.” Evan checked his watch. “He’ll be here; you know Gourd.” She smiled, and a look into her sapphire eyes made Evan’s heart flip, as it always did. He placed his hands on her belly. “I love you.”
    She grabbed one of his hands and pulled it up to her breast. “And I
want
you. Being pregnant makes me horny.”
    Evan gasped in pretended shock. “What would Calvin think?”
    â€œMy dad knows how this baby got in here.” She grinned and kissed him as Evan wrapped her up in his arms. When they parted she said, “You be careful.”
    He winked. “Always.”
    Another man in a flight suit trotted across the deck