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there were also “issues” with hovering close to the ground. But they just were still that short on personnel.
    “Tail?”
    “Tail’s up, Wolf,” Anna “Wands” Holmes said. The British once-child-star of the Wizard Wars movies had been picked up on St. Barts where she’d been participating in the reality show Celebrity Survivor: St. Barts . She’d decided immediately that she was firing her agent as soon as she got done with the truly inane show. It wasn’t like she’d needed the coverage, unlike the rest of the celebutantes and “famous for being famous” women on the show.
    Then it had turned to Celebrity Survivor: Zombie Apocalypse Shit Just Got Real and dear, sweet, thoughtful Anna had turned out to be the only one in the storage compartment with the guts to strangle the members who’d “turned.”
    After which, she found it much easier to hang out with people who understood what it meant to take a human life: notably Sophia and her even more violent sister, Faith.
    “Engineer,” Sophia said.
    “FE is Set and Checked,” EZ replied, mild disapproval in his tone. He sat in his seat and had his plastic sleeved checklist open in his hands. A quick look around the cabin to the three crewmembers reminded them that checklists had proper responses, and they were to be used appropriately. “Starting Engines Checklist when you’re ready, Pilot.”
    They’d briefly considered changing EZ’s callsign to “Moshe” after the one-eyed Israeli general Moshe Dayan. EZ had been medically retired after a “green on blue” incident in Afghanistan where the Afghan interpreter on his aircraft had “accidentally” shot him in the back of the head, blowing out his right eye.
    While having a flight engineer with two working eyeballs would have been great, in a zombie apocalypse, having a trained flight engineer was something to cry happy tears over. However many eyes he might have. And sitting in the seat didn’t require the same binocular vision that manning a weapon did. He mostly had to keep an eye on the instruments and run checklists, which he did just fine with one.
    “We appear to be up,” Sophia said, holding up two hands with crossed fingers.
    It was only after she’d started training on one of the most complex, largest, and most difficult to fly helicopters in the world that anyone had mentioned it also had the record for most accidents per hour of flight.
    “God spare us this day from wayward mechanics,” Captain Wilkes said, bowing his head and clasping his hands. “As well as the vagaries of airflow dynamics. Amen.”
    “Amen,” Sophia said as the captain hit the start button.
    “Go with checklist,” Wilkes said. EZ stepped him through the start sequence, and as Wilkes hit the ignition button, the three massive turbines whined to life. “So far so good,” the captain said. “Thank you, God.”
    * * *
    “Gunner First Class Olga Zelenova, sir,” Olga shouted over the beat of the rotor wash. She threw a half salute to the tip of her smoked helmet visor as her feet touched down. “U.S. Navy at your service!”
    “We thought you were just going to pass us by, there, Gunner,” the Navy lieutenant commander waiting for her said. He stood back and made no move to grab the cable as she unclipped from her harness. As soon as she was unclipped, Yu began to retract the cable in order to clear the line.
    “We were headed up to anchorage, sir,” Olga shouted. The group on the roof looked to be about half Navy and half civilian. A couple of the women were carrying newborns, and most of the rest were pregnant. “We’ll send up the people in the basket, first. Then those who can use the harness.”
    “Roger,” the lieutenant commander said.
    When the basket was down, he helped get one of the pregnant women into it and strap her down.
    “You seem familiar with this, sir,” Olga said, giving the three tugs on the cable that signaled Yu to begin hoisting the basket up.
    “I’ve been in the Navy