Vacation

Above my pay grade, Jack thought. They just need people like me, and Rodriguez, and Thompson, to make sure the Can Heads stay away.

And every day, every night, that got harder and harder.

*   *   *

His eyes had shut sometime in the middle of the night.

Cops weren’t supposed to sleep; this wasn’t like the Fire Department. They still maintained that code of “on duty—to serve and protect.”

That meant awake.

Still, it was quiet and he had slept.

The phone on his desk rang, shrill in the middle of the night. Cell service had largely disappeared save for the few satellites services and those that could afford them. Landlines had also grown increasingly undependable— cables cut, telephone poles down. When lines in the supposedly safe areas got damaged, no team would go out to work on them, at least when it was dark.

The desk phone gave out a sharp trilling noise. He saw the time.

2:12 A.M. Christie.

“Hey,” she said.

“Up late again?” he said.

“Just checking on you.”

Jack laughed. “You know if I had a nice warm bed to sleep in, that’s what I’d be doing instead of—”

“It’s so quiet here. Hate it when you do nights.”

“Only a few more days. You should sleep.” A pause. “I would.”

“Yes.”

Jack’s tone did little to take the edge off Christie’s voice. She worried. But more than that, she kept at him about their need to get away from this, to leave the city.

The chats often turned into arguments. Their relationship another casualty of this new world.

Get away? Another job? Go where? Do what?

Supposedly there were opportunities if you traveled deep enough into the country. Factories where things still got made, plants where they struggled to process and stretch the thin food resources.

Jack had resigned himself to this life.

The money wasn’t bad. Sooner or later, he might get posted to Manhattan, a desk job. Just had to hang the hell in there.

But Christie didn’t buy any of it.

“Quiet tonight?” she asked.

“So far. Fingers crossed.”

A longer pause this time. “Okay. Be safe.”

“Always do the best I can. Now you—”

A little laugh from his wife. “I’m going, I’m going.” She took a breath. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Jack said, feeling terribly alone when the line went dead.

He hit the keyboard of the ancient computer on his desk, a true dinosaur, and began scrolling through the still-empty fields of information that had to be filled out.

*   *   *

An hour later.

The screen in front of Jack had long turned into a sleepy blur as he lost the fight to keep his eyes open.

A few minutes … he had told himself.

Everyone did it. As they waited—or hoped that the morning would come without anything happening. But then the alarm began ringing. A door slammed. Jack’s eyes opened. Instantly awake.

He looked up at the precinct map on the station-house wall. One spot glowed bright red.

Rodriguez was already suited up. “Breakthrough, Jackie. Red Hook. Same fuckin’ building as last week.”

Jack stood up, and started for the locker room with Rodriguez at his shoulder.

“Same building? Jeezus.” Jack said.

“Yeah. Sorry man.”

Jack knew the building well. Most of the old Red Hook section of Brooklyn had been fenced off. A few government warehouses sat there, not much else. But there were still a few apartment buildings with people in them, fortified with some security and really the only option for the poor slobs who lived in them.

Nowhere else to put them. And they didn’t have much of a voice in any decision about their fate.

And last week …

It had been a mess. A blocked tunnel, part of the water and sewage system that had been shut down for security’s sake, had been opened. No one saw, no one noticed, until the Can Heads began clawing their way in, rising up from the ground inside the building’s fence.

The Can Heads had been minutes away from getting inside the building. And all those residents sat, waiting—some with guns, some not—all knowing that if the building came under a full-blown Can Head attack, it would take a shitload of cops to save them.

An army of cops.

That night, they got there in time. Killed the few Can Heads who had gotten out. Blew the tunnel opening, sealing it.

Jack clipped on the protective vest and leggings, and then the new Kevlar shield designed to keep the lower head and neck safe.

In case one got too close, jumped on you, and dug its teeth in.

“We got any support from the neighbors? Maybe the Six-three? Been quiet over there. Maybe they’d like some fun.”

“Not tonight. They had two incidents already.” Miller just shook his head. “Captain says you two are all on your own.”

And Jack guessed that the Six-three’s captain didn’t want to leave his precinct low on firepower. Could be the start of a busy night.

You never knew.

Either way, it would be just him and Rodriguez facing whatever the hell was going on in the Van Hove Apartments.

“All set?” Rodriguez asked.

Jack nodded.

Rodriguez clapped a hand on Jack’s back. “Good. I’ll drive. Now let’s go kill some Can Heads.”

2

Red Hook

As they navigated the passable streets of Brooklyn, following a maze of detours made by the security fence, Jack thought of the call from Christie.

When she had called, everything had been quiet.