Matthew Costello - Vacation

He dug a small flashlight out of his back pocket.

The right leg at the knee sent out a painful burst as it hit the stone floor.

Ignoring it, he craned down and looked under the car.

Why do I keep looking at this? he thought.

Checking it day after day.

As much as he didn’t want to accept it, he knew the answer.

His hand felt the reinforced underside of the car, the steel plate that ran from bumper to bumper, installed with the help of his cop friend Tim, who lived nearby. Jack then helped Tim do the same thing to his decade-old Land Rover.

But this new addition?

Nobody knew about that.

Positioned mid-car, in the center, it looked like a meter-long protrusion an inch and a half below the rest of the steel plate on the undercarriage.

The protrusion was lined with reinforced steel as well; it was also a compartment. Nobody would notice it. Not unless they did what he was doing now, sliding under the vehicle, a flashlight between his teeth.

And inside the meter-long compartment? Two rows of a mix of pentolite and RDX explosives. Compact and powerful. The NYPD used them to blow up and seal the holes made by Can Heads in their relentless desire to get under barriers.

He looked at the metal tube with its shielded wiring streaming from the compartment and to the front, up to just below the dashboard.

Did he look at this every day because he needed to comprehend what his fear—what installing this really meant? Was that why?

He slid out from under the car. Stood up. Opened the driver’s door and crouched down.

Jack aimed the light at a place to the right of the SUV’s steering column. The light showed the two-step switch that he had installed. There would be no chance of accidentally triggering it.

No, to make the switch active, he’d have to turn and open a protective cap a full 360 degrees. Only then would the detonation switch become active and be revealed.

And then—a single flick would send an electrical charge down to the compartment and explosives… and blow the car to pieces.

He straightened up, and sat back in the passenger seat.

Such a crazy precaution. Insane, really. But as long as no one knew, there’d be no harm.

Right?

His paranoia would be his alone.

And in what scenario would he actually throw that switch?

Despite his tendency to imagine the what-ifs, the possibilities, the dangers in detail—

Part of his job, to be sure.

—for this, he didn’t allow himself to go there.

“So where were you?”

“Just puttering with the car.”

“That car gets more attention than me.”

Christie’s tone was light—but Jack heard a dig anyway.

Then she said: “The kids are crazy excited, you know. I have them packing.”

He nodded.

“And it’ll be great. For them. For you. For us.”

“I know,” Jack said.

Then: “Think I’ll take that shower now.”

“I’ll have some more,” Jack said.

Christie passed him a bowl. The mixture of soy and a synthetic protein had been flavored to supposedly resemble chili.

It only reminded Jack that there were no beans here, no meat.

It was filling. And that was about it.

“I don’t like it,” Simon said. He stuck out his tongue and tried to continue talking. “It makes my tongue feel hot.”

Christie laughed. “Okay, maybe a bit too spicy.”

“Not for me,” Jack said.

He noticed that Kate had barely touched hers. “Not hungry?”

“For this?” Kate said. “Can I go, like, read or listen to music or something? This stuff makes me sick.”

“Kate.”

The girl looked at her dad.

“Yes?”

“Something wrong?”

“Shelly’s having her party when I’m away!”

Jack shook his head. “Not sure we agreed that you could even go to that. I mean, a party—”

“Let’s cancel birthdays, too.”

Finally, Christie jumped in. “So, you’d rather stay and go to her party than this vacation?”

Kate looked as if she was actually weighing the choice.

“Maybe. No. I don’t know. I can’t even remember what parties are like.”

She turned back to her plate and took a forkful of the pretend chili. “This tastes weird .”

Doesn’t everything these days? Jack thought.

Real food, real fruit, vegetables, or even more rare, meat—when available—were incredibly expensive. The fact that the Paterville Camp offered regular meals, with food fresh from their own protected farm area, seemed nothing short of miraculous.

The kids couldn’t wait. For that, and the swimming, the boats, the fireworks, the mountains.

Like going to a different planet.

And despite his fears, Jack started to feel as if this was something he should look forward to.

It wasn’t just something the family needed.

I need this, too.

Jack waited until the kids left the table.

“Maybe this trip is a good thing.”

Christie turned to him. “Good to hear you say that.”

“Yeah. You may be right. Getting away. Having fun. Doing things together.”

She smiled. “Good. That will make for a less grumpy driver.”

He smiled back.

For a moment, the only cloud in the kitchen was his secret.

What he had done to the car.

But that would stay a secret.

Jack leaned back from the dining room table, where his ancient laptop sat with a printer on the floor. Ink needed to be conserved; printing was rarely done.

Christie stood in front of the refrigerator, packing food and drinks for their ride.

An eight-hour trip lay ahead, maybe more with the checkpoints along the way.

Jack turned back to the computer screen. He entered his password for the NYPD secure site and navigated his way to an innocuously titled tab labeled ROAD REPORTS. Sometimes there’d be a connection, torturously slow, sometimes he’d get nothing.

Today he got lucky.

A screen appeared, showing a map of the metropolitan area.

A section of the Long Island Expressway glowed red. Another red spot flashed in Williamsburg, where the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway passed the Brooklyn Bridge on its way toward Queens.

And up in the Bronx, lots of red spots.

Par for the course for the Bronx.

All the hot spots were clickable, and Jack could see the details of whatever the incident was. But these would be no normal accident reports, no tractor trailers overturned and spilling diesel on the highway, no five-car pileups as commuters raced home.

No, this folder only carried reports of road incidents carried out by Can Heads.

And those could make for interesting reading.

Once, Can Heads had rolled barrels on the Belt Parkway after a fence breakthrough. The cars hit by those barrels became flaming traps; the people within turned into the pickings for the crazed Can Heads, who dug the screaming humans out.

Jack had seen video of that one. Stomach churning didn’t begin to convey it.

Human barbecue.

Or the Saw Mill River Parkway attack near Van Cortlandt Park. Though the walkway over the highway near Van Cortlandt Park was enclosed by a heavy-duty, prison-gauge steel-mesh fence, somehow a hole had been cut.

And like cavemen attempting to leverage boulders down to stop a lumbering mastodon, Can Heads had tossed down rocks and then leaped—some to their own deaths—onto the roofs of the careening cars.

Road safety. Shit.

Did that expression even have any meaning at all anymore?

In Staten Island, lots of places still looked peaceful. Living on an island, accessible only by a pair of heavily guarded and fortified bridges, with all the communities with their own security systems, there were hardly any incidents on the island.