The Night Shift Assault
A Submission For Fictionistas April Flashy Fiction
“Another night shift Sal?” asked Kevin as he grabbed his mug and stood up from the wall of screens. The glow of the grayscale images created a halo around his body.
“Always,” Sal replied. He put his half-drunk mug of lukewarm coffee down on the desk and waited for Kevin to finish his stretch before he claimed the chair as his own.
“Any action tonight?”
Kevin finished his yawn before shaking his head and strolled away.
The seat was warm.
Sal wondered how long Kevin had been asleep.
He glanced over the nine CCTV screens as he sipped. The prison was quiet. Just the way he liked it.
“Night Sal,” Kevin muttered as he opened the exit.
“Kev!”
Sal turned to face his bulbous colleague.
“Yes, Salvatore?” Kevin said as he leaned against the door frame with glazed eyes.
“There are cameras in here too! You’re putting everyone’s life at risk when you sleep on the job!”
Kevin snorted and turned to leave.
“How have you not received a misconduct yet?!” Sal shouted.
“Magic,” replied Kevin as the door closed.
Sal returned to the screens and positioned his eyes on the individual monitors for thirty seconds at a time. He made a point of counting out loud.
All remained quiet.
He looked down at his mug, empty.
“Nope.”
Sal got up and headed for the kitchenette. He peered his head behind the wall at the screens periodically as he made his second cup. He was searching for bodies and movement.
All he could see on each screen were closed doors.
Rows and rows of closed cell doors.
“Good.”
The brew tasted better this time.
It was hotter thanks to the newly installed wall-mounted boiler. It took eighteen months to have that thing put in. Management was so averse to having any form of perks for the staff. Their official policy was;
‘Anything that caused a prison officer’s attention to drift away from the job at hand was deemed ‘Verboten’!
How ridiculous.
Couldn’t even have a cup of coffee on the fucking night shift!
Sal took a longer swig from the mug. His eyes were fixed on one particular screen - the exercise yard.
He remembered the union meeting they had the day they decided to withdraw their labor. Sal stood on the bench press bed.
“Today it’s a lousy water boiler for a lousy cup of coffee! Tomorrow it will be a cut to your overtime rate! This is how it all starts!” He yelled to his cheering colleagues.
He smiled to himself.
FIRE!
The fire alarm jolted him out of the night shift daydream.
He frantically searched the screens. Wall to wall of closed cell doors.
His radio rattled.
“Sal, can we get a location on that fire?”
Sal's eyes continued to dart from screen to screen.
“I can’t find it!” He yelled into his handheld.
There was a particular movement on screen 8. The cell door appeared to be moving back and forth. Someone was trapped inside. That had to be it!
“East wing, cell block 8!” He yelled into the radio.
Suddenly from above, Sal heard a loud thundercrack, followed by rain.
Was that rain? Or sprinklers?
No sprinklers in prison, Sal remembered, suicide hazard.
It must be raining.
The sound grew louder.
It soured overhead.
It sounded like jet engines flying too low to the ground.
Was it a plane?
Sal watched screen 8 and saw his colleagues scrambling to open the cell door. There was visible black smoke emitting from the meal box slot. Even on a black-and-white monitor, you could easily make out the toxic black. He could see all of them turning away and coughing into their sleeves. The black smoke was filling the hall of the east wing.
The monitor room phone rang with a frightening bell.
Sal put the receiver to his ear to hear instructions from the three-starred Manager of Security.
“Sally! Can you ring the fire department, the outside phones are down!”
Sal felt for his phone in his pocket but remembered he had put it in his locker when he entered the prison. The last time he brought a phone on the night shift he received a misconduct report.
“I can’t sir, my phone is in my locker.”
“Jesus!”
Sal turned his attention from the fire in the east block to the one camera positioned in the exercise yard.
He leaned forward.
Splayed out on the grassy patches were bed sheets.
Two, three bed sheets.
They were piled on ropes.
Someone is trying to escape!
“Sir! You still there” Sal yelled into the receiver.
“What?”
“I think someone is…”
Sal saw legs drift down from the top of the screen as the body slowly descended onto the compound. It was a soldier. Someone in combat gear and body armor. They gathered their parachute and cut the bag from their body as they readied their weapon and slowly marched towards the prison cells. Soon they were out of screen.
“Sir! I think we are under attack!”
Another body appeared on the screen from above. It was another paratrooper. They cut the parachute from its bag, readied their weapon, and cautiously marched in the same direction.
Sal turned to screen 8.
He saw his colleagues attempting to open the cell door. This time, one of them had a key inside and was turning and twisting the handle, but the lock was jammed.
Sal grabbed his radio.
“Prescott! Are you alright?”
Sal could see a colleague standing behind the one at the door retrieve his radio and respond.
“The door has a shiv wedged into the lock. It’s jammed!”
“Well, get out of there! We’re going to have a riot!”
Sal watched as Prescott, Jimmy, and Victoria dropped to the ground.
Black marks appeared around their torsos. Victoria’s head was slowly engulfed in a dark liquid pool.
“Sal, you there!” It was the Manager on the landline.
“I’m here sir!”
“Get out!”
A silenced ping could be heard and the line went dead.