No one knew what had happened.
Had it been a secret experiment gone wrong, a secret superfood created, consumed, designed to end the plague of shortages? And if so, did that food actually carry a new virus that played with the genetic code and undo millions of years of evolution?
And what did he think?
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?