The street outside your home leaves you uneasy whenever the sun is down. Old street lamps coat the sidewalks with sick, yellow light from bulbs near death. Even the sound of nearby traffic seems muted.
Several doors down, an old vehicle rests at the curb. You look at it but don't recognize it. The trunk is slung open. You notice it shift. Its worn shocks creak against something pressing against it.
The painful moaning you heard before evolves into a wet, rattling cough.
You step closer, feeling the night's chill claw its way into your feet and up your spine. You muster calling out, "You okay over there?"
The silhouette of a man emerges from behind the trunk. In the sick light of the lamps, his shape takes form. He's a scarecrow of a man. Stooped shoulders pulled down by gravity draw taught with each cough. You think you see him grin.
"It's just a flu," he says.
Not just, you think. He's sick. The pandemic. It's all around.
The man coughs into his hands, the wet wheezing of his cough produces a heft of mucus. "Mind if I-" he pauses. "Wash my hands?" He splays them out towards you, light catching onto the viral sheen on his hands.
He shambles towards you, heels grinding against the sidewalk. "It's just a flu," he repeats again and again.
Your thoughts go back to the last book you read, SARS: A Case Study in Emerging Infections. Sick if he gets near. It's deadly. You repeat it like a mantra in your head until he closes the distance to you.