Short stories about the end of the world

$18,000 per catch. Less if they’re incomplete. Nothing if the head comes off, for obvious reasons. $18,000. More money than most people earn in a year, and all being well, we can earn it in a single day. Of course it never goes well, but all the dollar-eyed applicants queuing up for the snatch detail don’t seem to notice. They hear a number, they start dreaming of the perimeter-view penthouse, salivating at the prospect of thick-cut slabs of real beef, visualising a transfer out of the city and into one of the rural settlements, all wheat fields and big, open skies.

Dreamers them all, even though one look at me should dispel their ambitions. Eight years on the snatch detail, longer than anyone, and nothing but scars and sarcasm to show for it.

I try to weed the dreamers out, but I don’t always get my say, and sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes people die. And sometimes… well, sometimes worse things happen. Sometimes we don’t get paid.