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Nothing.
“We’re good,” he said into his mike, and he had to repeat it over the constant crackle of interference. Some of the guys said the communications team was operating jammers in the area. Collins could believe it. He’d tried to call home to check on his parents, who lived in Pittsburgh, but there was no signal on his cell. That had been a couple of hours ago. So, jammers? Sure, he could buy that. “Let’s go check out the other field,” he yelled into the mike. “Looks like a pear grove. Come in low on the west side and we’ll see if there’s anything under the trees.”
“Roger that,” confirmed the pilot, his voice fuzzy and distorted.
The Black Hawk lifted away from the waving corn and began a shallow climbing circle. They were working with nineteen other helos, quartering and searching the vast farmlands that filled this corner of the county. It was a crazy job and Rollins, like everyone else, knew that it was pretty damn close to a fool’s errand. There were three hundred farms here, ranging from little postage-stamp herb gardens to the fruit and vegetable groves that stretched for miles. There were fifty teams in various ground vehicles and a couple of hundred two-man patrols. And with all of that it seemed like an absurdly impossible task to Rollins.
Even so, there was plenty of radio chatter from the ground and the other Black Hawks saying that they were finding spots to clean out. Infected trapped inside locked cars. A whole bunch of them trapped inside the Weis supermarket after downed trees knocked out the power. Some strays wandering through fields.
Like that.
The infection was out there, and the Q-zone seemed to be holding, but Rollins had his doubts.
His buddy Dave, who was a lot more Catholic than Rollins was, had confided to him that he was really scared by all this. Religious scared, not just regular scared. Dave couldn’t understand why God allowed something like this. The dead to rise.
Rollins told him, “This ain’t God, man, it’s science. This is weird science shit.”
“It’s the dead rising, man…”
“Nah. Just sick people acting dead. Like in that old movie, the one in London—Twenty-eight Days Later. It’s only a disease.”
“No, man,” said Dave, lapsing into a confidential whisper, “I think this is what they talked about in the Book of Revelation. The End Times.”
Rollins started to grin at that, but the look on Dave’s face killed that expression before it was born.
“C’mon man,” Rollins said mildly, “it’s just like that anthrax thing. It’s a disease and that’s all it is. Don’t mess your head up by thinking bad thoughts.”
But Dave wasn’t convinced and Rollins didn’t at all like the look in Dave’s eyes. No, sir, he did not like that look at all. Kind of wild. Maybe a little crazy.
He wondered how Dave was getting along. He was out working a checkpoint with their drinking buddy Tito Rodriguez. Out on the Q-zone line.
The pilot came out of his turn and slowed as he dropped down almost to the level of the road. The rotor wash blew into the field and raised the skirts on the pear trees. Muddy water swirled upward, but Rollins had a clear-enough view under the front four or five rows. He saw slender tree trunks and between those …
“Shit,” he said suddenly. “Got one.”
There was a man there. Dressed in farmer’s clothes that hung in torn rags from his burly shoulders. His eyes and mouth were black, and as the helo edged sideways toward him, the man snarled and reached for a man crouched in the open doorway.
Rollins took a small breath, let it out wrapped around a small prayer to Mary, and pulled the trigger. The captain said to go for a headshot, but that didn’t much matter when you fired a minigun. The heavy-caliber bullets tore the infected apart, splattering him to the wind. The parts that fell no longer seemed to belong to something that had once been human, and the rain pressed the red detritus down into the mud.
“Got the sumbitch,” said the pilot, sounding happy about it.
The feelings within Rollins were far less certain.
“Anything else?” asked the pilot.
“No,” said Rollins, though he wasn’t as sure as he sounded.
The helicopter drifted along the farm road, blowing back the boughs of the trees, tearing half-grown pears from the branches, looking for more things to kill.
As it flew, Rollins remembered the look in Dave’s eyes when he said th
at he thought this was maybe the End Times. Rollins mouthed the words of the prayer to Mary.
Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Hoping that he was just being ridiculous.
Hoping.
