The Great War. The Last Of Us

I. The End Is Here

September 26, 2003.

THE setting sun glimmered across the horizon as Katelyn Warner loosened her work shirt from her slacks. Her curls fell over her shoulders as she tossed the shirt into the backseat of her truck. It was nearing eight as she pulled the handle of drivers seat and slid inside to the cab of her truck. Her shift at the detention facility had ended only minutes ago and the exhaustion was already setting in.

Two prisoners had gotten into a bloody fight and nearly killed each other. One ended up biting the other, the guard who'd separated them had even gotten bit. The memory caused a shiver to crawl of Kate's spine, the thought of all the blood spilt made her cringe. The prisoner who'd initiated the fight, a man called Needle, had died in the scuffle. Leaving only the guard and the other prisoner alive.

Her hands shook, as they had been for months. No doubt a side effect of watching multiple people die. The prisoners were violent and brutal and most of them weren't kind people. Kate dealt with the harsher inmates, the ones kept on the higher levels in the right wing. The ones in there for violent and aggressive crimes. She wished she was desensitized to the terrible acts that occurred, but it often just sat heavy on her shoulders.

     The woman sighed and slumped into the driver's seat of her truck, closing her eyes. Mindy was no doubt sitting on their front porch, fiddling with her handheld radio as she waited for her to come home with food. Kate's eyes fluttered open and she pulled her seatbelt across her body, latching it tightly before she turned the engine on.

She decided to stop by Outback Steakhouse before she headed home, knowing that it had gluten-free options to satisfy her sister's allergy.

Her eyes watched as the streets still buzzed with life and she furrowed her brows. Normally, the cars were dispersing by now and people were heading home. Taking it as one of those freak days, she shook the unease from her chest as went on her merry way. As the sounds of wheel grinding and blinkers beeping grew incessant, she flicked on the radio, only to have panicked voices and words of a pandemic greeted her. Changing stations, she was confronted with the same thing.

     Finally, since the traffic had stopped, she pulled a tape from the depths of her glove compartment and slid in easily into the cassette deck and let the sound of Gretchen Wilson's voice fill the cab of her truck and her fingers tapped along to the beat of Here for the Party. The album had only came out in May, but she bought the tape as soon as it hit the shelves. It played all the time, she always had with her; at the house, at work. She even played it on her large boom box radio that sat collecting dust on her back porch.

The neighbors had started to sing along to it when they were outside because of how often they heard it.

Pulling down the roads to her house, the takeout sizzling on the passenger seat besides her. The sun had set as she pulled along the curb and she sighed, Mindy was perched on the lip of the porch, her handheld radio on her lap as she chewed on her bottom lip; worry was prominent on her soft features. Opening the door, she hooked her hands along the plastic handles of bags and stepped out onto the asphalt.

Mindy was off the porch in an instant, holding out the radio with panicked eyes, "Have you been listening to the news? There's been outbreaks everywhere!"

"Outbreaks of what?" She asked curiously, a strand of her wavy hair falling in front of her eyes as she used her hand to push the radio out of her face.

"They haven't said."

Kate frowned, the muscles in her jaw pulling taut as she switched off the radio, her eyes glancing nervously about the road. It would be about two more hours before the sky darkened but that did nothing to quench her unease. "Come on." She insisted, pushing her sister towards the house, "Let's eat and I'll call Luke after."