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.