LAST IMMUNITY

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 for years but had passed the point where he cared enough to fix it.

"Could be worse." Cole blew on the hot liquid and took another bitter sip.

Tann tossed salted chips into his mouth and began to rant about his sister's new apartment and the dispute she’s been having with her landlord about some ceiling problem.

Cole listened the way he listened to most things—by appearing not to as he stared into the distance rather than look at Tann.

He'd known Tann for eleven months, long enough to know the sister's name was Dana, the landlord was named Previtt, and the ceiling problem was probably mold.

At 3:47 AM the radio on the desk cut to static. Cole and Tann looked toward the device and waited as sometimes the overnight signal dropped and came back after a few seconds.

However, this time it didn't come back.

Cole picked up the radio and cycled through different channels but every one of them went static.

"Maybe it's a service issue?" Tann asked and Cole reached for his phone which had three bars, pulling up the news but nothing loaded.

He tried a different browser and still nothing.

"There's signal, but no data."

Tann swung his feet off the desk and stretched to grab his laptop. "Okay, that's weird.”

"Yeah." Cole murmured and went to the loading dock with the radio, opening the side door.

The night air outside was August-warm and still, parking lot was empty and the highway overpass, two hundred meters north was quiet which wasn't unusual at 3 AM on a Tuesday.

However, something about the silence felt off and Cole decided to stand in the doorway for a second longer, listening.

On the far side of the overpass, some car alarms screamed and another sounded like a truck's horn held down by a dead man's hand.

Abruptly, a far and unmistakable human shriek cut through the blare of car horns and Cole instinctively stepped back inside and locked the door.

"Dude, the warehouse is on fire!" Tann ran to Cole, pointing at the two columns of smoke visible from the warehouse roof. "We should call someone," Tann said.

"Who?!" Cole waved the radio in his face but Tann didn't have an answer as they both stood there and watched the highway overpass fill with cars, while people ran in directions that made no sense.

A fleet of police helicopters swept over the block and disappeared without coming back.

Cole's brain began running numbers. They had four possible exits, food supplies were a vending machine, a water cooler, and whatever was in the staff kitchen.

The loading dock was a solid defensible position, the roof access had a single stairwell, easy to hold. For weapons, they had nothing, unless he counted the fire extinguishers and box cutter on the security desk.

"Get inside," Cole said as a figure stared down at them from the forklift.

"Cole—"

"Inside, Tann. Now!"

CRASH!