Alana couldn't quite keep herself from discreetly looking the woman behind the counter over, thinking she was cute. She smiled again, and nodded as she fished enough cash out of her wallet to cover the cost of the clothes. After setting it down on the counter, she followed the other woman's eyes to the TV screen by the front of the store.

"Breaking news. What originally started as several small outbreaks of an unknown contagion in the southern states has continued to spread, quickly leading to warnings from health officials that this could quickly become a pandemic. Early symptoms of this as yet unidentified contagion are rapid onset of a high fever... wait, we have air coverage from one of our helicopters of a small hospital on the southern outskirts of the city where there are reports that this has reached... we take you live now..."

On the screen, footage from a helicopter's camera started playing while the news ticker continue to scroll across the bottom relaying details of the story. The hospital parking lot was crowded, right up to the doors. It was hard to tell what was going on, exactly, but as the camera zoomed in further, Alana felt her stomach lurch. Amongst the crowd of people, it became clear that several of them were actually attacking others, grabbing and clawing, even biting. Near the edge of the screen, a man bit into a woman's neck, tearing away flesh, and blood poured out freely. The footage was suddenly gone, replaced by the news anchors, who were scrambling to apologize for the footage and at the same time give some explanation of what was going on.

Alana wasn't listening to them anymore, though. She raised her hand over her mouth in shock, and turned to look at the sales clerk, seemingly seeking some confirmation that she wasn't crazy, wasn't imagining what she'd just seen.