You can purchase “C.O.D” and other great fiction in the “Men In Uniform” Anthology at Torquere Press!!

By Cat Kane

Even as he thought it, a jaw-cracking yawn shuddered its way from his toes to the tips of outstretched fingers. Four a.m. wasn’t good for anything much. The tiny old television in the corner of the security gatehouse only picked up three channels because the alarm systems messed with the signals. Sixteen different angles on the closed circuit camera monitors, and only three channels, two of which were showing the exact same anti-ageing face cream infomercial, with a three second timelag. The other one was playing some seventies’ sitcom that only the director’s mother would have found funny.

The computer system that ran the whole shebang bleeped and hummed in a lullaby rhythm. Myles knew he was on the verge of dozing when he could swear it whirred and beeped the Simpsons theme tune at him. It didn’t matter that the damn thing was state of the art and cost more than he’d make in a decade, if he fell asleep from boredom and couldn’t push the appropriate button. Alert. Breach. Clusterfuck. He wasn’t here to keep watch on the building; he was here to keep watch on the machines that kept watch on the building.

Plus, the security chief had a nasty habit of showing up at the asscrack of dawn to check that he hadn’t started a block party in the parking lot. If so much as a button on his jacket wasn’t facing due north, it was probably grounds for dismissal. The threat was a little moot; it was too damn cold overnight in the gatehouse to wear less than three layers.

And he had to admit, the peaked cap was pretty cool. He’d catch his reflection in the black-backed glass of the one-way mirrored windows, and resist the urge to salute. He just carried that look off, he decided. Maybe he should have gone into the military instead of trying to scrape his way through college with dead-end jobs like this.

His folks would have shat bricks. The closest Myles came to regimented discipline was three weeks in the Scouts, and that had only been because his then best friend Jerry told him they got to start fires and play in the river. When it hadn’t quite lived up to those Huckleberry Finn : Delinquent Edition promises, he’d quit.

Either way, the hat looked good. His hair looked a little messy, unruly chestnut tufts poking out under the edge, probably far too long by his boss’s standards, but the hat? Great.

It was Thursday morning, the hat had to look good.