Vacation [Matthew Costello] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 3

“What do you want?” he asked Rodriguez.

“The usual. Maybe a few incendiaries, in case there is a hole. We start by sealing that.”

Jack noticed that his partner had already discarded their new lower head/neck covering, an item that had given him the look of a medieval Asian warrior.

“You forgetting something?” Jack said.

“No. I prefer mobility, amigo.”

* * *

Out of the car.

Jack knelt down and scanned the opening in the fence while Rodriguez kept up a steady 360-degree scan of the surrounding area.

Jack pulled back on the opening.

“I dunno,” he said. “Barely enough room for someone to wiggle through. Motion sensors should have turned on the big floods. If they even work.”

He looked up at his partner, who kept looking all around, the M-16 held in ready position.

“What you thinking, Jacko? Anything come through here?”

“Someone cut a goddamn hole. I dunno, and—”

“Right. Shit. I hear you. All right, we go talk to the tenant. The eagle eyes who saw something.”

Jack stood back up, shifting his own gun into a ready position.

“Yeah. Maybe we got lucky. False alarm. Some dog.”

Rodriguez looked right at Jack and laughed.

“Yeah. You think there are still dogs in this neighborhood?”

“Well, that hole—”

“Dream on, brother,” Rodriguez said. “Dogs. Shit. Just walking around.” Another big laugh. “Like the good old days? Dream the fuck on.”

They headed to the front door of the building.

3. Inside the Apartments

They took the stairs.

Way too many stories about elevators that just stopped. And then you were truly trapped. All boxed up and waiting for whatever would work its way down the steel cables to you.

Because whatever the Can Heads were, they weren’t completely mindless. They could still think a bit, even when they looked and acted like crazed rabid animals desperate for food.

Only in this case, food meant other people. The ones who hadn’t turned cannibal.

Did they turn on themselves?

Undoubtedly. Hungry enough, they certainly would.

But like any other predator, it was much more efficient for them to hunt weaker prey. Humans.

Jack and Rodriguez took the steps slowly, ears cocked for any sounds from the hallways.

“Seems all quiet,” Rodriguez said.

“Hmm?” Jack said.

Rodriguez turned to him. “See, Jacko? That new stuff around your head. Cuts down on your hearing. Not the best idea.”

Jack pushed the armored flap away from his right ear. “I hear fine. You were just whispering.”

“Riiiight.”

Past the third-floor entrance door, and up one more flight. The steps littered with trash. Kids probably still came here to screw or ingest whatever they could find in hopes that it might get them high. Maybe doing drugs was all the more exciting with the thought that there were dangerous things out there.

These teenagers had grown up with the idea of Can Heads for more than half their lives.

Just part of the wonderful landscape.

Yeah, different world from the one your parents grew up in.

That’s for fucking sure.

“Here we are,” Rodriguez said.

As the senior partner, he’d set up their recon plan.

“Okay, after we’re in, you lay back here. Just watch the hallway, the other apartments, ’kay?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll go talk to our Mr. Tomkins and see what the hell it is he thought he saw. Did the big lights go on outside, then go off? Where did he see them go? Maybe we can be out of here in ten minutes. Shit, maybe even stop for a beer on the way back.”

A local dive, The Hook, stayed open 24/7. Right near the 63rd Precinct, its customers were cops and those who didn’t really have any good place to hide for the night.

Sucking down beers and shots on a stool rather than facing the streets.

“Maybe.”

Rodriguez hesitated at the door to the hallway.

“What? You are so whipped. Don’t want the smell of a brewski on your breath for wifey?” He shook his head. “Better you than me.”

Jack grinned. He doubted there were too many women on the planet who could live with Rodriguez.

Rodriguez grabbed the doorknob.

“Okay. Here we go.”

They walked into the hallway.

* * *

Jack stayed twenty feet back from Rodriguez as he went to the apartment door.

The door moved as he knocked. Just an inch. It was open.

Jack kept looking to the rear, down to the other end of the dingy hallway for any signs of movement. Everyone was probably safely locked down and asleep for the night.

After the knock, no reaction.

Rodriguez looked back at Jack and gave a shrug.

Now a small push while at the same time pressing the doorbell.

The bell gave out a raspy shriek, way too loud, as if they had put the ringer on the wrong side of the door.

“Shit. I’m going in,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez kicked at the open door, the noise loud, the door banging open. Jack didn’t like making noise. He kept looking around.

Always fucking bad, he thought. Not knowing if something was about to happen.

Rodriguez took a few steps inside. Then: “Hello?”

Back to Jack.

Gesturing. Two fingers to his eyes. A freaking army move. I go, you stay back.

Like they were in a goddamn war zone. Police as army.

The ear bud in Jack’s left ear was silent. The two-way radios were so damn unreliable. No one from the station house asking how things were going. Everyone dozing. Though Miller undoubtedly had their audio on a speaker somewhere.

Very low.

Wouldn’t want to wake anyone up.

If he could pick them up at all.

Jack took another look behind him and then started moving closer to the open door. If it all looked cool, he’d follow his partner in.

He got to the doorway.

Rodriguez, louder now to an apparently empty apartment. “Hello? Anyone the hell here?”

Nervous.

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