All Chapters of LAST IMMUNITY: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
16 chapters
Chapter One: The Night It Turned Grey
For three years, Cole Asher worked as security at Harrow Logistics. He worked mostly nights shift, because it paid thirty more cents per hour and he wasn't too proud to admit thirty cents mattered. Cole went his usual checks around the floor, his boots loud on the concrete, flashlight sweeping the gaps between shelving units out of habit rather than suspicion. All he had to was show up, walk the floor, and make sure nothing happened to the shipments going in and out of the warehouse. Cole's security partner, Tann, sat in the surveillance booth, observing the cameras with his feet raised up the desk, whilst eating a bag of salted chips. "Did you spot anything?" Tann asked when Cole came back from his rounds. "Nothing," Cole said. "Same as always." He sat next to Tann and poured himself a mug of hot coffee from the thermos he'd brought from home but grimaced as the coffee tasted terrible. "Still drinking shit coffee." Tann chuckled as Cole's been brewing his coffee wrongly fo
Chapter Two: They Turned Grey
CRASH! Cole heard the sound before he saw the figure drop down the twenty feet frame, landing on the conveyor belt with a sound that should’ve broken every bone it had. Nonetheless, the figure stood up. Cole had seen bad things. Four years in the military, two deployments, and one tour he didn't talk about. He'd seen what violence did to human bodies and he thought he had a working understanding of the range. But this thing standing on the conveyor belt had recalibrated that range immediately. The Grey had been a man as the shape was there; two arms, two legs and an upright posture but its skin had become the color of pale, old ash. Beneath its grey skin, dark veins branched across its face and arms. Its eyes, when it turned toward Cole's flashlight, were flat white, its lips drooling thick black blood. It didn't look confused or in pain. It looked hungry in a way that had nothing to do with food and Cole threw his flashlight at its head but the Grey ducked it and came off t
Chapter Three: When Tomorrow Comes
The world around Cole was on fire, the city buildings were torn apart, traffic lights blinked green to yellow to red over an empty intersection as abandoned vehicles filled the highway. Moving along the wall of the overpass with a steel pipe in his right hand, Cole kept his boots light and his breathing controlled. ALERT ! NATIONAL EMERGENCY — PATHOGEN CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN — VECTOR: AIR BORNE / FLUID / CONTACT WITH AFFECTED INDIVIDUALS — CIVIL EMERGENCY DECLARED IN 47 STATES — AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION The one bar signal on his phone downloaded a broadcast message in pieces and he found a slight relief knowing someone was handling the situation. Cole watched the spaces between cars for any Greys or at least a survivor, almost making it to the end of the overpass when a Grey jumped out from under a delivery truck. It gave no warning, no sound, just a slender shape crawling from beneath the truck, pale and deadly fast. Cole had half a second to react and he swung high, catchi
Chapter Four: IDENT Drones
Tightening the pipe around his injured hand, Cole kept walking and the thought of Tann. He'd been failing at not thinking about him since he left the warehouse because Tann had become a constant presence in his new life. When the last of Tann had gone, his eyes turned flat white and the color of his skin were as pale as a Greys. Cole tried to speak to him, he tried to bring back pieces of his memories but Tann violently attacked him, lunging at him to claw out his eyeballs. After failing to see any form of sense or humanity in him, Cole did the only thing he could think of. No, he didn’t kill him. Instead, he used a length of heavy, metal chains to restrain Tann to the backup generator. He told himself it was necessary to keep Tann safe until the authorities get things in order and develop a cure for the plague. After all, situations like this were the reason why global institutions existed, the reason why people paid taxes, and followed rules. The citizens truste
Chapter Five: Dana and Biscuit
By the time Cole reached Dana's street, his kill count was fifteen. He'd begun counting after the overpass and along the apartment buildings on Greer Avenue, coming across fast ones, slow and injured ones, and even one that had been a teenager in a football jersey. Nonetheless, it was still four kills short from his first active combat in the military and Cole wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse. Dana's building was a four storey walk-up on the quieter end of Greer Avenue. The building had a buzzer system nobody used because the front door lock had been broken for months and the landlord — Mr. Previtt, had never fixed it like the ceiling mold problem. Tann had mentioned this once and Cole had filed it in his memory without knowing why but now, he understood why as he pushed the front door open and took the stairs. He knocked twice on Dana's apartment and listened quietly for any response or movements but he didn't hear anything. He knocked again and whispered th
Chapter Six: Mission Plan One
“So, where’s Tann?”Dana asked like she already knew the answer, the same way people asked questions about the obvious for confirmation, just to hear another person say it out loud.Cole gazed into her unwavering brown eyes. "He was bitten last night at the warehouse while we were trying to escape and Tann turned into a Grey early the next morning before I left."Dana nodded twice and slow, absorbing rather than disagreeing as she put Biscuit down. "Did he—" She stopped and tried again. "Was he in pain when he—""No," Cole blurted before she could finish. “He’s still alive and I know that once all of this is over, Tann and other Greys will be given a cure.”Dana stood up from the couch and turned away from him, moving towards the window and staring at the street below, through a gap in the curtain. Her shoulders jerked uncontrollably but they stilled and straightened before she could breakdown in tears."Tann talked about you," she spoke after a moment. "All the time, honestly. Cole
Chapter Seven: Basin Street
The market district seemed unusually clear from the entrance. There were blocks of shuttered shopfronts, overturned market stalls, and fruits rotting in the gutters.Cole scanned the street for a minute before moving in, but halfway through, a Grey came around the corner of a butcher shop and stopped. It looked at Cole and Dana and they stared back at it, wondering why it hadn’t attacked them yet, but in a second, it snarled hungrily and called out a pack of thirty.Cole's heart dropped to his stomach as he saw more sprinting around the corner, the sound of their feet multiplying from one alleyway to another."Run," Cole said to Dana, pushing her into the opposite direction."But Basin's Street is that way—" She said, pointing at the alleyway where the Greys ran out in numbers, snarling and coming toward them."Now, Dana!" Cole barked an order and they both ran for their lives.The Greys were fast but Dana was faster than Cole expected. She ran like she had wheels on her feet, arms s
Chapter Eight: Safe Haven
Cole knew he’d been reckless by risking everything on that one shot. He wasn’t in the military anymore, so why did he think he was efficient enough to make such a close call? “How much longer do I have?” He dropped the gun to the ground. “How long did Tann last for? Ten? Fifteen Minutes?” He mumbled to himself, reaching up to touch his wounded cheek but his fingers came back clean. Cole stared at his fingers for a moment, unsure of how or why he’d suffered no injuries from the Grey’s scratch and though it seemed strange, but the heat from the scratch had began to disappear. Picking up the gun and his steel pipe, Cole thought hard to himself as he trudged down Basin Road to meet up with Dana. Dana waited at a corner, bending forward with her hands on her knees, her lungs burning with every breath she took while Biscuit sat beside her, panting perfectly fine. “Dana, are you okay?” Cole asked and she quickly straightened up, her eyes trailing to his cheek. "It scratched y
Chapter Nine: Post Awakening Executive
It was cold inside the white tent as a portable AC unit blew in chilled air. The world had ended four days ago and somehow the man sitting at the far end of the tent had found time to be extra comfortable. “Ridiculous.” Cole hissed as an officer brought him to the table where the man sat with his laptop closed, his folder open and a glass of water on the right side of the table that hadn’t been touched. The man was somewhere in his mid-fifties, silver at the temples, clean shave and P.A.X uniform pressed sharp on his sturdy build. He had the kind of face that was difficult to read not because it was blank but because it was too tight and controlled. "Mr. Asher." The man rose up and smiled the minute Cole entered. "Please, have a sit.” He gestured to the chair at the near end of the table. Cole sat down, using the chance to rest his sore legs as his muscles were beginning to cramp from all the running and trekking. “My name is Director Hale and I oversee the Post-Awakenin
Chapter Ten: Awakened or Unawakened
Director Hale blinked twice. "I'm sorry?" "It’s my turn to ask questions." Cole leaned out the chair and smiled at the sudden crack in Director Hale’s countenance. Director Hale kept quiet for a moment then gestured with an open hand. “Go ahead.” "The Grey Plague," Cole started. "What do you know about it." "The Grey Plague, or as we call it Pathogen V-1, is an airborne virus unlike anything recorded in medical history," The man spoke like he’d given this briefing before. "The primary infection is respiratory and secondary transmission is through direct contact. The Initial outbreak turned nearly forty percent of the global population to bloodthirsty Greys within the first twenty-four hours." "So, what’s going to happen to the remaining sixty percent of survivors?” Cole queried. “Are we just going to sit and wait for the Greys to outnumber and find us?!” His voice rose an octave. "The Grey Plague triggered a biological response in a percentage of survivors, a mutated adaptive