black

Display on screen: JOSEPH

joseph (voice over)

My friends would tell me that menthols were for pussies. That I should smoke, you know, Marlboro Reds like a man.

I didn't care though, I liked menthols. I liked the deep, cold minty feel of each puff; I knew they were chick cigarettes. Pussy shit, sure, but I liked them and I don't change for other people.

CUT to fixed view of a Circle K. A fidgety, skinny guy in pajama bottoms and a gray hoodie is at the counter.

So here I am, buying my menthols, I pay, and as I'm leaving I see a TV screen up in the corner. And there's footage of hospitals full to the brim and streets backed up for miles in traffic and I think, you know, there's something going on.

The man is walking down the sidewalk of an urban, downtown street in Phoenix.

And now that I'm aware of this, uh, thing that's going on, some kind of panic or disturbance, I'm beginning to notice things. A woman who looked homeless came up to me and normally I'd think she'd ask for food or money. Instead she hugged me real tight and told me her son was sick.

The MAN struggles away from the woman and continues forward.

Int. hotel room

joseph (VOICE OVER)

I had landed in Phoenix on Thursday, April 28th in the early morning. It was a twenty-two hour flight so I went to my hotel and slept for something like thirty hours. Looking back, I now know that I had slept through the most important turning point in my life, and everyone elses as well.

The MAN enters the room and turns on the television.

What I picked up was that something really big was happening. Something awful-

BLACK

Display on screen: LUKE

luKE (voice over)

Things began getting antsy in the office on Thursday. Co-workers weren't working as much as they were talking about it all. Sure, I was worried, I went home that night and told my kids to stay home the next day and not leave the house. I still thought the whole thing would blow over.

CUT to an ordinary white-collar office building. The cubicles are empty and employees are crowded in the breakroom, craning their necks to watch the television news.

It was on, uh, Friday when things got really serious. Half the workers went home and the rest just watched the news in silence. It was completely silent in that breakroom.

The news told us a lot of people were getting sick. The epicenters were US and Mexican cities, one of them being Phoenix. It was in other countries too, but I think at that point it was mainly a North American thing.

Victims of this virus or whatever it was became really tired and would just leak out liquid from every orfice. It was all just awful, and now deaths were cropping up all over the nation.

LUKES phone rings and he takes it outside. It sounds very urgent.

So I got this call from my fifteen year old daughter Sarah, she's telling me to come home quick. So, you know, I get in my car and rush home.

CUT to traffic, backed up for miles.

And the traffic is bad. Really, really bad.

FADE OUT

At one point I considered getting out and walking

int. Bathroom of home

The running shower hisses and we see an overflowing bathtub, and soggy legs floating.

Outside, SARAH is pounding on the door, crying, screaming at her brother.

FADE OUT

[--there's more, I'm writing it right now--]