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.
Now, just past three A.M., they were driving through empty streets. Dead streets, heading to a godforsaken place where—incredibly enough—people lived.
Rodriguez dug out a cigarette. The smoke soon filled the interior even with his window cracked. Sometimes Rodriguez would ask Jack if he minded. Tonight he didn’t.
Certain open spots were lit by massive tungsten lamps; other streets were islands of darkness, the high-intensity lamps never installed at all or smashed by the Can Heads.
They liked the dark.
From the outside, their squad car didn’t look all that different than one from a decade ago. Still almost like a normal patrol car, white with blue markings.
But if you looked closer, you could spot the differences.
All the windows were fitted with shatterproof triple-plate glass. And the exposed undercarriage was covered with a solid steel plate designed to protect the car from any explosions or attempts to sabotage it. A second layer of bullet-resistant metal covered the car’s exterior—though it wasn’t too often that bullets were the problem.
Its Achilles’ heel? Had to be the wheels. As puncture proof as they could be, the army-grade, hybrid steel-belted tires could still be rendered useless.
Trick was to keep the thing moving.
Being stopped, giving Can Heads time to figure a way in… that could be real bad.
“Damn quiet,” Rodriguez said.
Of course, nobody would be out, everyone trusting the locks on their doors more than the lamps or the police or the grid of fences to stand between them and the Can Heads.
If there was one thing everyone knew, the Can Heads—whatever made them like that, whatever goddamn switch had been thrown—never gave up.
Not when so nearby, so close, there was fresh meat.
“Always quiet, isn’t it?” Jack said.
“Yeah. Just don’t like it to be so damn quiet when we’ve been called.”
Jack didn’t say anything.
Instead, he looked at the backseat. A powerful arsenal accompanied them. Two M-16 machine guns, army-issue that had become the go-to automatic weapon for police. Beside it, a shotgun and an open case with a foam “egg carton” filled with a variety of explosives, flares and smoke bombs.
They both carried a Glock 22—a cop favorite—and a Smith & Wesson .40, small but accurate.
The rule on a call like this was, scope out the situation and then do what you could on your own. Backup might be available, but only if absolutely necessary.
Once they left the vehicle, they had to bring all the firepower they thought they’d need. Because if you travelled light, getting back to the car, to its portable armory, might be a moot point.
Rodriguez cut the car to the left, heading down a narrow street. No lights. Perfect for a trap, but it was the most direct way to the main entrance of the building.
Rodriguez turned on the squad car’s twin light bars on the roof. The narrow street became bathed in brilliant white light.
Jack saw a lone rat scramble away.
Even they were a rarity.
What a fucking world, Jack thought.
Then they left the narrow street, a turn to the right and the building entrance lay ahead.
“Okay. Looks quiet.”
“Yeah,” Jack answered. In addition to a Safe Zone’s own protective fence, this building—like most apartment buildings—had its own security fence, complete with a guard and video monitoring.
Except most of the guards weren’t worth much.
Terrified rummies, cowering in the shatterproof glass booths, peeing into a bottle, waiting until dawn when some other hapless guard relieved them.
Rodriguez pulled the car up to the gate. He flashed his ID. The guard rubbed his grizzled cheek at the same time as his handheld scanner recognized the ID as genuine.
The man inside the booth communicated with them via a speaker.
In some apartment complexes, there had been cases of finding these guys dead inside their booths. Somehow a Can Head would get in and enjoy feasting on something from the bottom end of the evolutionary spectrum.
And every security guard knew those stories.