Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(66)

Because there aren’t enough police and soldiers to guard all the ruptures that are appearing these days they’re using rent-a-cops like me. I have a new partner named David, a high-school graduate whose primary relationship seems to be with his cell phone. He’s so entranced by its screen that he barely notices anything else – our uniform dress code, shift start times or when the aperture we’re guarding opens and closes. He’s grown up with ruptures so he’s not the least bit scared of them.

Have you put a note in the duty log? I ask.

David ignores me, focusing on his keypad as he taps out a text message. He hits the SEND button, then sits blinking at the screen for a full half-minute to underscore my triviality.

You’re not the boss o’ me, he grumbles. He takes up the binder on the ground beside his camp chair, opens it and scribbles a notation anyway. I stifle a smile and cross the deserted street to the barricades.

The rupture pulses and mutters as if breathing. It’s larger than it was when we started our shift – almost as big as the one that swallowed city hall last week – a huge, yawning electrostatically charged mouth mumbling its hymns to the Abyss. Magnetic spray arcs the maw of the quantum destabilization as it emits a low, disturbing hum. A police cordon extends for two blocks in every direction and all the buildings have been evacuated.

I check my watch. Lunchtime. Whistling quietly, I step back toward our guard post. There have been only a dozen or so fatalities attributed to this rupture. No big deal, considering. With any luck, it should close before that number climbs too high. That’s part of what I’m getting paid to ensure. Because this is how we live now.

? ?

Know how we learned that time has buoyancy? McLaughlin sucked his cigarette to ash, then butted the remains in the dashboard ashtray. Monkeys. Back when we had control over the ruptures we usedta send monkeys through. But they’d only be there for a short while because time is an ocean and living organisms are ping-pong balls that can submerge only so deep for so long before they pop back out. That’s buoyancy.

I checked my cell phone – a nervous habit I had whenever we were on ops. No new texts.

Then one day they opened a rupture to AD 1215 and sent a monkey through. Little rascal came back holding a banana. Now where the f*ck do you get a banana in 1215? Beats me. But if anyone could find out, it’d be a monkey. And he sure did!

I knew the story. But listening to McLaughlin tell it was part of the pleasure. Older than me and a font of wisdom, Mac taught me most of what I knew about rupture chasing.

Notification came 10 minutes later. The rupture was due to materialize 15 miles southwest of our current position. We moved out. I drove while Mac kept an eye on the Chronoflux Quotient. It’s climbing, he muttered. I steered down a dirt road, squinting ahead through the darkness. Apparently, ground zero for our rupture was the middle of a farmer’s fallow hayfield. So we parked by a fence and walked.

Can you believe the new evidence handling instructions? Mac lit a fresh cigarette off the stub of his old one. Christ on a cracker! We have to record our recoveries on four separate documents now. Un-f*cking-believable.

It’s a redundancy measure. (I disguised my weariness at having to explain – yet again – the newer, more streamlined corporate approach to rupture chasing.) They want to be able to cross-check the evidence and make sure we’re not boosting any before it gets logged for storage.

Where the hell do they put it all? Mac’s peeved tone persisted through the abrupt subject change. There must be… f*ck. Millions of items! Hey. He tapped his wrist display. It’s coming on, amigo.

We lingered by the edge of the field as the singularity rippled into existence. Two thieves emerged – both young, one a Native kid wearing a black windbreaker, the other in a ball cap and white sneakers. I went after the Native kid but she beat me to the fence. I fumed, watching her disappear into the trees before turning and hiking back to help Mac take charge of Ball-cap.

Looks like silverware. Mac shook a pillowcase, producing a metallic rattle. Pure stuff and good for smelting down.

Nice catch. I smiled. Why don’t you take that back to the car and log it? I’ll finish up here.

Mac hesitated for a moment, trying to catch my eye as I patted down the suspect. Mac needed to ask why I wanted to stay behind. But I pretended to be preoccupied long enough that he eventually gave up and marched to the car. I heard him pop the trunk. Then his silhouette appeared in a shaft of light from our laptop.

Ball-cap was terrified. I rifled his pockets and came up with a pack of Mokri cigarettes, the swastika tax label visible. What’s this? I demanded. I fished an SS notebook and a fistful of medals, including an Iron Cross with oak leaves and swords from his other pocket.

I’ll keep these, I muttered, stowing the lot. A little something for the souvenir hunters. And not a word to the old man down there or I’ll sneak into cells and kill you. I twisted his arm and added: I can make it look like an accident.

? ?

Hey.

I poke David. On the brink of voicing a complaint, he stops short and looks up from his cell phone at the rupture.

It’s growing.

? ?

I tried to be clean. I really did. But like they say: things change.

Mac had nothing to do with corrupting me, but he brought me along until I was one of the most competent chasers in our district. Pretty soon I was up for senior investigator, but they passed me over for promotion. Our new boss – a pencil pusher who was intimidated by competence – handed the job to his pet bitch, a crotch-snuffling suck-ass he hired a year before who jumped at the boss’s every little whim. Me? I had 15 years in. For a while I was angry enough to kill. Then I chilled out.