“What? You are
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.
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 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.
