Not just me, Jack knew. Rodriguez, too. Jack quickly turned around to check the hallway. Then he took a step inside, looking left and right.
His partner was right—the neck protector made head movement hard. And hearing? That sucked, too.
But—
It didn’t cover the front of Jack’s face.
So he could smell.
Then, Rodriguez: “Oh, shit. God. We got—”
Jack took a deep sniff, hoping that whatever scent he just inhaled had been more in his mind than anything else.
The smell was metallic. A smell of decay and blood, so powerful here.
“Rodriguez, hold on there,” Jack said. “We better—”
He shifted on his feet. Rodriguez shouted back, “Motherfucking guy has been shredded, Jack. Christ, come in here.”
Then the sound of movement, steps, feet hurrying. Jack tried to imagine the likely layout. A small kitchen, a dining area to the side, a bathroom down a hallway, bedroom to the left.
The front door behind him slammed.
Stupidly, he turned to see what even his muffled ears already knew had just fucking happened.
Gunfire. The sound of Rodriguez’s gun blasting away. But only a few bursts and then the blasts abruptly ended. Jack’s hand went to his chest and the control for his two-way radio, his lifeline with the station house.
“Officer down!”
He raised his gun just as two of them appeared in the hallway.
Sometimes you saw Can Heads and they didn’t look any worse than homeless guys from decades ago, wearing their tattered clothes, eyes bulging out of drunken sockets, mouths open, teeth brownish, rotten.
These were not like that.
Thin, wiry, the two of them human animals, barely wearing shredded clothes, which made them look even more crazed.
Their eyes opened wide as they looked at Jack, close to being on all fours as they raced toward him.
“Command!” Jack yelled. Then: “Shit!”
There was a response in his ear bud, mostly static and then drowned out by his own gun, now shooting an erratic spray of bullets at the two creatures.
Enough bullets that the Can Heads flew past him, their bodies ripped open.
Nothing from Rodriguez, and as much as Jack didn’t want to … as much as he wanted to get the hell out of there, he ran deeper into the apartment.
A few steps. His handgun out now, too.
Jack passed a short hallway on his left, then the entrance to the kitchen, and arrived at the small living room.
He started firing crazily even before he knew what he was seeing, blinking as he took in the scene. Four Can Heads down on the carpeted floor, the rug turned a wet, bronze red, like the floor of a charnel house. They squatted around Rodriguez, his body armor roughly peeled away in jagged chunks.
In the moments between the last blast of Rodriguez’s gun and now, the Can Heads had made quick work of Jack’s partner. Gaping holes sprouted in his midsection, his upper legs, and a massive one by his neck.
And yet—
And yet …
Fuck. The poor bastard was still alive.
Jack watched Rodriguez’s near-dead eyes land on him. Begging. Hoping.
Not a thought. No question what to do. Jack moved his S&W handgun over toward Rodriguez, aimed, and fired twice.
And then the Can Heads could do no more harm to Rodriguez.
Which is when the Can Heads leapt up from their feast and made a mad rush for Jack.
Jack was on automatic now. Job straightforward. The reward clear.
Kill them before they kill you.
Can Heads coming right at him, inches away, he began firing, holding the M-16’s trigger down so it just kept spitting out bullets. His handgun—only a few shells left.
And they fell.
One down, then another Can Head climbing over it, still trying to get at Jack, and Jack made that one’s head explode. Would they turn on themselves, take the easy pickings, or keep coming at him?
He thought of Christie. Then Simon, Kate.
And he knew that, unlike his partner, there’d be no one to spare him.
No one to help end
In that moment, the other two had gone to either side of Jack; he looked both ways, trying to decide which posed the biggest danger.
All in seconds.
Choosing the one on the left, he tried to aim his handgun but suddenly felt that Can Head’s arm shoot out and its claw hand grab his throat. But the hand slid off the protective covering, and Jack both fired and awkwardly jabbed the thing with his pistol.
Then he wheeled to face the last Can Head.
His handgun clicked. Empty. And not a chance of being reloaded. He backed up against a wall of the living room. Now only one gun to keep the Can Head at bay.
Still a chance to get out of this.
Unless there were more of them, already drawn by the noise, the gunfire …
The machine gun jammed. Or maybe it was out of ammo too. How long had he been madly firing, his finger locked on the trigger?
The thoughts again.
Christie, Kate, Simon.
The neck protector reduced the sound around him. The grunts, the near-human sounds they made. The Can Head nearly hopping toward him seemed to flash on the fact that the gun had stopped firing.
The thing opened its animal-like mouth, screamed, and leapt forward boldly.
Jack stood his ground.
Not from bravery on his part.
He stood his ground. There was nothing else he could do.
The Can Head grabbed at Jack’s face but Jack turned away, the clawing fingers only inches away, now pawing at his armored body.
Those protective layers needed to be peeled away.
If he was to be eaten.
Another squeeze of the trigger. Still jammed.
The tugs threatening to rip Jack’s arms and his legs right out of their sockets.
The Can Head held Jack’s right leg fast. Armor roughly peeled off. Then it bit down hard.
Jack screamed, kicking at it with his other leg, pounding the useless gun against the thing’s head.
The pain—a white heat that made the apartment vanish.
Instinctively, he pulled the useless trigger again.
And now the gun responded with the oh-so-beautiful
“Fuck you,” Jack said, pressing the automatic rifle’s muzzle right against the head of the thing eating him. He watched the head explode into a fireworks display of bone and blood and smoke.
A look over his shoulder.
More could come.
He hacked out the words: “Command!”
He locked his eyes on the door and hallway outside.
Telling himself amidst the pain and blindness of his seeping wound,
