My eyes scanned the street. Every storefront was a shattered ruin, their windows like gaping, screaming mouths. Looters, emboldened by the world’s quiet death, moved with a casual entitlement, their arms laden with things that no longer had any value. Halfway down the block, one building stood intact. An auto body shop, its corrugated steel bay doors pulled down tight, a steel tortoise hunkered in its shell. It was a long shot, but it was better than leaving the cruiser to be torched for fun by someone celebrating the end of the world.

  I peered through a grimy window in the office door. The inside was dark, filled with the hulking shadows of cars on lifts. My eyes caught a flicker of movement, the flash of a kid’s bright red sneaker vanishing under a metal desk.

  I knocked, hard, the sound a sharp, percussive intrusion in the street’s chaos. The sneaker vanished completely.

  “Police!” I yelled, my voice a low, authoritative bark that I hoped sounded more reassuring than I felt. “We are not here to cause trouble. We need some help.”

  An old man’s face appeared in the window, his features creased with a worry so deep it looked like it had been carved there. He cracked the door open a few inches, his frail body blocking the gap. His eyes, sharp and terrified, darted from me to Kira, then to the cruiser.

  “We need to stash our vehicle,” I said, keeping my voice low. “The streets are a mess. We will be back for it. We just need it off the street so it does not get torched.”

  He looked at the cruiser, then back at us, his mind running the grim calculus of the new world. He was weighing whether we were more or less dangerous than the chaos just outside his door. He made his choice and opened the door. Two small kids, a boy and a girl no older than five, peeked out from behind his legs, their eyes wide and terrified.

  My gut tightened.

  Shit. The whole damn city was breaking down, and here was a grandfather trying to shield his grandkids from it. They were hiding from the looters, from the mundane human ugliness. They had no idea. No idea that the real danger was not human anymore, that there were things out there that made a riot look like a damn block party.

  We had to protect them. Not just them. Everyone like them. This was the job, stripped down to its studs. This was all that was left. The thought cleared my head, a cold, sharp blade cutting through the exhaustion. I have to get my shit together. There is work to be-done.

  “Stay inside. Barricade the door. Stay away from the windows,” I told him, my voice firm with a renewed sense of purpose I had not felt a moment ago. “don't open it for anyone unless you hear my name, Stormson, on a bullhorn. Got it?”

  He just nodded, his eyes wide as he absorbed the instructions.

  Kira started unloading our go bags and the extra shotgun from the trunk while the old man hit a button on the wall. The bay door rose with a low, electric groan. I grabbed my rifle. I tried to shrug back into my vest, but the damn thing would not close. The side straps were a good two inches short, the velcro barely catching. The stat points. They weren't just a feeling. They were physically rewriting me, turning my body into something that no longer fit the armor of my old life. I left it unfastened, a useless piece of kevlar flapping against my ribs as I drove the cruiser into the bay’s oily darkness.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  We helped the old man push a heavy workbench in front of the office door before we left through a side exit. He locked it behind us with a heavy, final sounding thunk.

  We broke into a jog. Kira, despite the shotgun in her hands, moved with an easy, athletic grace that never failed to impress me. She glanced over at me, a mischievous grin breaking the tension on her face.

  "You think you can keep up, old man?"

  I shot back a grin of my own, the familiar banter a small, welcome piece of normal in the middle of the crazy. "Hey, that is senior officer to you, rookie. Show some respect and try not to choke on my dust."

  Back on the street, the noise hit us. A dull, angry roar, the sound of a city chewing on itself. We stuck to the alleyways, the stench of piss and overflowing dumpsters a familiar companion from a hundred dead end calls. After a few blocks of weaving through the urban decay, we saw it. The detachment. It looked like a fortress.

  A handful of our guys in full riot gear stood behind a reinforced gate, their shields locked, looking like pissed off turtles. On the roof, a sniper, a dark silhouette against the hazy sky. Lethal overwatch. A small, familiar knot of relief loosened in my chest. At least our house was still standing.

  "Mikey! It's Stormson!" I called out, raising my hands as we approached.

  The guy in the middle of the formation—Mikey Reynolds, five years on the force, father of two little girls—let out a visible sigh of relief. His shoulders slumped an inch behind his shield as recognition washed over his face.

  "Fuck, Stormson! Where have you been? Shit's wild!" He stepped aside to let us through the gate, then grabbed my shoulder with his free hand. His grip was tight, desperate. “You look like hell mate." His eyes examined me up and down, noting the blood and tattered uniform.

  He shook his head, his voice dropping lower. "I've been doing this job five years. Thought I'd seen everything. Domestics, ODs, that warehouse fire on Fifth Street where we lost Jenkins." He paused, his jaw working. "But this? No signal? Isolated from everything? It's like the world just... broke."

  "Yeah," I said, because what else was there to say?

  He glanced back at the fortified detachment, at the riot gear and the desperate faces of the officers preparing for another wave. When he looked back at me, there was something new in his eyes. Not just fear—determination.

  "My girls are at my ex-wife's place. Other side of the city." His voice cracked slightly. "Emma's seven. Sophie just turned five. I need to know they're safe, Elias. I need to know this... whatever this is... we can stop it."

  The weight of that need, that desperate father's plea, settled on my shoulders like a physical thing. I met his eyes and saw myself reflected back—a cop who'd do anything, become anything, to protect the people who mattered.

  "We're going to stop it," I said, trying to make it sound like a promise instead of a prayer. "That's why we're here. That's what we do."

  Mikey nodded, but I could see the fear still swimming behind his eyes. Fear for his daughters. Fear that he'd never see them again. Fear that he'd fail them.

  "Stay safe, Mikey," I said.

  He gave me a tired, brittle smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You too, brother. World needs people like you. Like us." He paused. "Whatever the hell we are now."

  It was the first time I'd heard someone else voice it—the understanding that we weren't just cops anymore. We were something else. Something the new world was forging in blood and impossible fire.

  I clapped his shoulder once more and headed into the detachment, but his words echoed in my head.

  Whatever the hell we are now.

  Yeah. That was the question, wasn't it?

  It was time to see the Chief, I had one hell of a story to tell him.