It had been raining for weeks and Nora was tired of sitting at home. The blue sky had finally come through. Purse slung over shoulder, light jacket half-zipped, anticipating the neverending quest for wardrobe. She never tired of new shirts, new prints, and old styles. The act of concealing is human nature. How it evolved to being such an important part of life, Nora could not say; there was always a slight creeping feeling that her preoccupation with things like external appearances could, almost ironically, help her save her sanity.

Opening the front door unleashed a gust of fresh spring air, freeing strands of her hair like the searching hands of desperate scandal. She inhaled; the curtains rustled. These days, she thought. These days you could almost forget what real air smells like. The breeze withdrew to a gentle trace... like fingertips, she dreamed idly; these days, even intimacy is hidden. Under countless layers she felt naked and exposed. She coughed, hand over her lips. The feel was foreign.

The dashboard of her car had accumulated a thin layer of dust. The feel of the steering wheel gave her a sense of control but the feeling of unease crept back again. She coughed again, longer this time.

It had been about two weeks since she had last driven. Her most recent excursions had been to the corner store for milk and movie rentals. Her bank card had been swiped through more debit machines than inserted into ATMs for cheque deposits. Money wasn't just an object anymore. Money was a calculation of how long you had left to live, the dwindling numbers in your bank book a measure of the minutes wasted. Unemployment rates thrived, businesses ran into the ground. CEOs tugged at their collars and took off their ties. When you ran out of money, you just stopped going to the store. People had been starving of hunger, trying to stay healthy.

Empty countryside melted past outside the car windows. In her peripheral, Nora caught sight of a small dark mass in the field... and then another, and another. Dead eyes staring and wings crushed in tight. Little bombs, she thinks. The car swerves across the solid double yellow lines as she sneezes violently into her scarf. She jerks it back of pure instinct; regardless, the roads are deserted.

The town where she used to work looked hardly familiar. There were drastically fewer pedestrians to jump out in front of her car as she drove. There were drastically fewer parked cars to block her path. She stopped at the intersection lights but felt vaguely stupid, as if the lights were broken; there was hardly any traffic and the drivers all eyed each other cautiously.

The blue sky looks more ominous here, she thinks, outlined by these starving skeletons of civilization.

The car parked, Nora takes up her bag. She didn't bother to lock the door. She had come to accept fate; locked doors do not intimidate car thieves, white masks do not intimidate colds. She brushed her nose with the side of her hand and rubbed it on her jeans. She didn't bother to look at the dark color mingled in with her nasal fluid; she had come to accept that too.

Nora looked at the worn out welcome mat on the concrete walkway to the sleepy little store with a weary eye, doubting its benevolence. She wiped her feet regardless. The mud left tracks in the off-white weave. She coughed into one hand and pushed the door open with the other.

Eyes snapped to the entrance like the faces of deer in headlights; Nora could almost see their ears perk towards the sound of her haggard coughing and sniffling. Their panic stirred a deep feeling of hopeless hysteria in her chest. She stared at her feet awkwardly and shuffled into the store, averting her gaze from the windows; she was fearfully certain she would see those little bombs in the gutter, little bombs in the backyard, little bombs falling off telephone wires, just like the footage on the news.

It was a thrift store, the sort with a section of ties, a section of belts and one cash register. The wooden bins that she had delighted in climbing into as a small child. The ritual of picking each piece of clothing, discovering its purpose, holding it proper and in a split second the moment of judgment, tossing it aside or across a shoulder to be kept, to be worn, to be "re-appreciated". Nora wandered to the bin declared "LADIES BLOUSE'S", shoved the clothes to the corner, and started the succession of judgments.

In the middle of reaching for a purple long sleeve sweater, she jerked her hand to her mouth and coughed violently, doubling slightly.

One of the customers dropped her armful of clothes into a bin labeled "MENS SWEATER'S" and made for the exit, wrapping her hand in her sleeve as she pushed open the door. The old woman at cash gave Nora a horrified look; Nora tried to ignore it. She wiped her hand on her jeans. She didn't look at the dark color spattered on her hand; she had come to accept that too.

And then she picked up the purple sweater; it was too wide in the chest. She tossed it aside.

Nora sniffled audibly and then cleared the phlegm from her throat. It became difficult to ignore the fact that the sound of conversation, the sound of shoes on painted-grey wooden floor, the sound of clothing being pushed and tossed, had died. They were looking at her; they were looking at the door. These things only used to happen on TV.

The old woman at the counter cleared her throat. The sound was harsh and reprimanding. Nora turned her gaze slowly. The old lady has a nice turtleneck, Nora thinks. If that were in a bin, I might buy it.

"Excuse me, dear," she spoke in a tone that suggested no excusing would occur, "have you been watching the news lately?"

A man in the "ODDS 'N' ENDS" bin snorted with derision and muttered, "shit, seriously...", as he started in to a stack of classical vinyl. Nora looked at her shoes. There was mud on them. Of course she watched the news, she wasn't a fucking idiot. Do you think she'd just look at the little bombs in her ditch and assume the neighbor's cat had whipped them out of the sky? Do you think she had quit her job merely because she hated her boss? Or was it because the number in her bank account looked about accurate for her? Do you think she was stupid enough to go out in public to make 6.80$ an hour to kill herself slowly?

"No."

"Town Counsel put out warnings, advisories. The schools and churches are shut down. They've been telling people to stay home."

There was hostility in the old woman's voice now. Nora coughed into her sleeve; a sharp feeling had stuck in her throat like she had been swallowing chips whole. She gasped quietly but muffled it with her jacket. A woman behind her echoed the gasp. Nora stood silent.

"Please," said the man-turned-boy from the stack of records, "go home. We have families..."

His desperacy stung. Nora coughed again, it felt so fucking dry in her throat, and she couldn't stop the onslaught this time. Tears pricked her eyes in the effort to subdue herself.

There was nothing to say, really. She knew she should go, but already was; she had come to accept that too. There were sins and there were tragedies. That boy who thought it would be funny to sneeze in his comrade's face ended up killing half the school. Nobody expect it would start that way but they had been warning us from the tv screens and the newspaper print for a long time. That was a tragedy. Going like this, this was only a sin.

Family, Nora thinks; you probably spend your nights downloading child porn.

The man dropped his clothes and made for the door. Nora put her hand on the frame of the bin, breathing in audible heaves and staring at her shoes (which now looked very blurry as if they had melded with the floor) in tears. It was at this point that her stomach hitched and she didn't know what to do. The bathroom was 25 paces away and she knew she wouldn't make it. The old woman at cash was 20 paces away and the woman behind her was about 13; Nora knew both of them wouldn't make it. The fluorescent lights spun and her stomach contents emptied into the bin of "LADIES SWEATER'S". Her grip on the bin bailed and she fell forward into her own vomit. It was streaked with red but she didn't need to see, she had come to accept this too.

The woman behind her started to cry, her sobs reminded Nora of the way her mother cried when the news caster scrolled her father's name on the hospital's list of H5N1 Recently Deceased. The woman ran past Nora with her sleeve over her mouth and her breath held, the armful of clothes still clutched to her breast. The old woman at the counter held back cries of "thief", grabbed her cane and walked out from behind the counter with her keys. She hobbled to the door, her eyes never leaving Nora's heaving body from where it lay in the sweaters.

The old lady paused at the door.

Nora coughed and spat, lifting herself up. Blood and stomach contents smeared across the left side of her face.

The old lady looked like she had something to say. She opened her mouth but Nora intervened.

"My bank account is empty."

The old lady left and locked the store. Nora's collapse to the wooden floorboards covered the sound of old lady flats tramping down the concrete walkway for the last time.

There was a car door noise.
There was no ignition;
there was a gunshot.

Nora stared at the ceiling. She thought she heard impact on the roof. Little bombs falling, she thinks, coughing and gasping and breathing.

Soon the helicopters would fly in, first with cameras and men in blue and black suits. Then would come the special air fleet with napalm. Once it intensified they would burn all the buildings. Skeletons of civilization. Just like the pictures on the tv screen.

It started to get dark and it started to rain, she had come to accept that. And when her breathing stopped it was okay, because she had come to accept that too.