Outbreak

Summer had already passed this year and autumn was well and truly there to stay. Not that it mattered, this town only seemed to have rain, or slightly less rain as weather anyway. It was big news when they got a dry spell, meaning everyone seemed to take it as a sign to wear as little clothing as possible to get a little colour in their pale skin. Kitty Stein was one of those very people, though she saw little point to it. It would takes a solid week of warm weather just to get her particular skin to white. She had lived in this town her whole life and had accepted the fact she would never have the golden tan all the magazines advertised. The magazines were always trying to persuade young women like herself to try the latest self tanner, or skin smoothing face cream. She personally didn't put much stock in them, and she didn't have the money for them either. A waitresses wage, even when coupled with that of an occasional bar tender, barely covered her living expenses. The only people with money in this town worked at the factory that packaged the very creams women all over the country bought by the case. 
It was 7pm and Kitty was running late for work. She was jogging across town from her job at the restaurant to get to the bar to earn a few hours extra pay. Slender fingers were running through her plum coloured hair as she went, loosening out the bouncing curls that had been tied back all day. She stopped moving only long enough to apply black kohl to her pale grey eyes right there in the street before moving on again. Kitty was in such a hurry she didn't even hear the sound of someone falling into a row of trashcans a few feet away. by 7:15 the young woman had burst through the back door of the bar, somewhat breathless.

"Seriously, Kitty?" A slender young blonde was shaking her head as she watched the other woman enter the bar. Grace Carmichael was not much better off than her friend but she was stickler for getting to work on time. She never let Kitty forget it when she was even five minutes late. "Big John is going to have a fit when he sees your time card. You know what he said about it last time." She shook her head as she returned to cleaning a row of beer mugs. "Would you hurry up already? I'm betting it's going to be busy tonight." 
It had been a warm day and people were going to be in the bar any minute celebrating the fact that the weather man had promised them a weekend that that was be even warmer. The lake was going to be packed which meant the entire town was going to be full of people. Grace could already imagine the crowds they would have coming to the different venues and the trash she'd be forced to pick up as part of her community service project for threatening to shoot the judge's nephew. At least she would have Kitty to talk to. The other woman had actually shot him. She grinned wickedly at the thought.

"Yeah? Well big John can cram it up his ass." Kitty muttered as she grabbed a tray and moved to the other side of the counter to begin collecting the glasses that still sat on tables. "I know that look, stop thinking about that dumb ass rich boy!" She warned when she saw her friend smiling. "He's a greasy little shit bag." She added, as foul mouthed as always. "I should have aimed lower when I shot him." She finished with a scowl.

Grace couldn't help but laugh at the thought. Seeing Winston Athens with his privates blown off would have made anyone's day. "Wonder if any of that beauty cream would repair the damage?" She snickered. "I bet it would be an improvement!" She added, nearly dropping a glass as she erupted into giggles. 
"You girls stop that laughing!" An enormous man thundered out of of the stock room, looking stern and more than a little angry. "This town is swarming with people and we're going to be packing. We don't have time for bullshit and Kitty....I ain't got time for that sewer mouth of yours!" He roared, stomping past them without giving either woman a chance to answer. 
Grace frowned as the door to Big John's office slammed hard enough to shake the bottles arranged on the wall. "Did you see him?" She asked softly, looking in the direction he'd gone. "He was sweating like a pig in heat. And he was holding his left arm... You think he's finally about to have that heart attack we've been betting on?"

"I don't think we're that lucky." Kitty replied with a snort as she dumped more glasses onto the bar. "I hate the nice weather anyway... When was the last time we got to go out to the lake and enjoy it like everyone else?" She lamented with a heavy sigh. "Nope... Thanks to that disgusting little lech we get to spend our time off picking up other peoples shit. I stand by what I told that stick up his ass judge, his precious little prince deserved more than what he got!"

"I can't believe he wouldn't listen to us about Winston." Grace said, shaking her head. That bastard had been trying to rape her. If Kitty hadn't come along he'd have gotten away with it. 
Even her former fiancee the sheriff hadn't believed her. Jack had been so sure that she and Kitty were trying to stir up trouble so he'd not only dumped her on the spot but had thrown all of her belongings out of his house that very night. He'd known full well that she had been in a holding cell and unable to get them because he'd put her there. She'd lost nearly everything she owned. "We'd better change the subject or I'm going to start drinking myself." She said with a soft laughing, knowing her friend was fully aware of where her thoughts had taken her.

"Maybe you should." Kitty replied with a shrug of her slender shoulders. "It's the only thing you can do when the whole town is run by the rich assholes. Who cares what two nobodies like us think." She added, moving around the bar and pouring herself a shot of something rather strong. "They're all just afraid well start a revolution or something." She mused.

"A revolution like what? Burning face cream in the town square? Demanding the men wear the tanning cream on their bald heads?" Grace laughed at the very idea. She imagined the judged wearing the cream. "We should explode a batch in Jack's patrol car." She muttered, turning back to cleaning her glasses. "Kitty...we should do something tonight. Maybe toilet paper his front yard?"

Kitty laughed and shook her head. "You really think he wouldn't see that coming a mile away? How about we do something fun instead?" She teased. "Play nice with the losers in here tonight, and we may actually be able to afford take out for once." She laughed. "How much trouble would we really be in if we cut service tomorrow and hit the lake like everyone else though?" She asked, sighing heavily at the mere thought of getting to have fun like the rest of the town. "We could find you someone to get your mind off Jerk, uh... Jack." It was no secret that Kitty had never liked her friends fiancée anyway.

"Ooh take out." Grace said with a wide grin. "as long as you agree to pineapple chicken." She put in, nodding her head. "And fried noddles. Though I still say we should use toilet paper."

Kitty wrinkled up her pert nose slightly. "Why do you like pineapple so much?" She wailed.

"Would it make you feel better if I told you Jerk is allergic to it?" Grace asked, raising an eyebrow. "I never used to get to eat it. Besides, it's good for you." She added, poking out her tongue. She went back to stacking glasses, humming along with the radio. It was quiet until big John opened the door and shouted that someone needed to open the front doors and turn on the jukebox.

Kitty made some wise crack about his panties being too tight as she kicked the jukebox, which caused it it start playing a random song. This time it happened to be 'have you ever seen the rain' by Creedance Clearwater revival. Kitty smiled to herself, happy with both the selection, and the irony of the song. That done she threw open the door and stood the board outside that declared 'happy hour'.

Grace shouted something about kicking the piece of crap again for a better song as the first of the customers began filing into the bar. The noise caused them to miss the crash that came from Big John's office.

Kitty was usually the one out there collecting the glasses and wiping the tables, purely because everyone always commented that she hadn't the people skills to be serving the customers at all. Everyone always loved Grace, and loved to tell her what a bad influence Kitty was. Kitty had pretty much been on her own since she was fourteen, she had had to develop a tough skin rather quickly.

Grace was a natural charmer. She floated around the barroom like an angel, batting her eyes at every man that that came in. Her tip jar was filling up quickly. She ignored the remarks about her best friend, patting shoulders and refilling mugs. More than once she gestured to the jar and made the motion of eating. She could wait for the night to be over.

Kitty just couldn't do it. It wasn't in her nature to smile sweetly at the drunken idiots that thought it was their god given right to grope her shapely behind. As it was, they were lucky she hadn't punched every last one of them in the throat. The darker haired of the two women working in the bar that night barely even looked at the faces around her. She did her job and spent every second thinking about any other place she could be but in that backwater town.

Grace had once thought she had a life here. She had been in love with Jack. And even though she swore to Kitty she was over him, she really wasn't. Just now she was thinking of him, staring off into the night and wondering how things might have been just a little different if he'd have listened to her. But she supposed money had more important things to say than she did. 
Deciding she needed to let it go before Kitty caught her pouting again, she turned back to her tables. She just missed the sight of a man stumbling past the bar, blood sliding past his lips.

Kitty didn't have such fond memories. Her mother had left when she was small, unable to take anymore of her father. Leaving four year old Kitty with an emotionally abusive drunk probably wasn't the best idea. The young woman had scars, the kind no one but she could see. These weren't things she discussed even with her best friend. As far anyone knew, Kitty simply had a chip on her shoulder.
The dark haired woman missed the stumbling man also, too busy cleaning up beer that had just been tossed at two arguing women.

Grace stood by the counter, wiping the beer off the front of her jeans. The two women had grabbed the beer right off her tray, not caring that it didn't belong to them. She was soaked now. She was pretty sure she was going to smell as rank as the fermented wheat. This put a dent in her good mood and her tip jar. She'd need to put some aside to get a new pair of jeans. These had been her last pair. 
The two women were still going at it, squealing like barn yard pigs. Sooner or later she was going to have to call Big John to come down and clear this up.

Kitty was the one who finally intervened. Despite her small size, she had placed herself between the women and grabbed each one by the back of her long hair. "Either you bitches calm the hell down, or I start breaking body parts, you got it?" She hissed, her pale grey eyes blazing with anger.

One of women, a brown headed skinny crack head, gave Kitty a toothy snarl and promptly threw up on her shoes. Grace saw this and immediately groaned. She hated puke. She could handle a lot of things but not that.

Like Grace, Kitty didn't exactly have a lot of spare clothing lying around, and those shoes had been her favourite. The dark haired woman didn't give a second thought before she punched the woman who had just thrown up. It was only when Big John still didn't appear that she began to sip islet something may be off. She was already on her final warning for hitting customers.

"Kitty!" Grace cried, glancing toward Big John's office. It didn't help that she'd just seen the sherrif's car pulling up out front. She ran toward her friend, only to have the other woman take a swing at her. The brown haired woman leapt on Kitty and the bar fight immediately erupted into a full scale disaster.

Kitty was right in the thick of it as Jack pushed open the door. He was technically off duty as of ten minutes ago, but that didn't stop the cop in him from demanding what was going on. A circle formed around Kitty, with all eyes glaring at her as though she had started everything.
"Figures." Jack sneered, already reaching for his handcuffs. "I guess it's another night in the cells for you, princess."

Grace was quick to rest her hand over the jack's hand and the handcuffs. Her ex was such an imposing figure. He made her look like a tiny doll in comparison. "Always ready to believe the local drunks." She snapped, placing herself in front of her best friend. "Why don't you grab a beer and mind your own business? There's no need for a sherrif in here. Thank you." She added, giving his hand a shove as she let go and crossed her arms over her chest.

"My job is to keep the peace. Doesn't exactly look peaceful in here, does it?" Jack growled, though he made no further attempt to arrest Kitty. "Funny now every time there's trouble... You two see to be at the heart of it."

"You're off duty. You're not keeping peace right now. Have a beer." Grace said, almost glad when the brown headed woman threw up on Jack's boots. It wasn't the first time she noticed how pale the woman looked. "I'm going to call her a cab." She said to Kitty, leaving her ex to deal with the mess.

Kitty nodded, already nursing a black eye of her own. "You think big john went home early? It isn't like him to just ignore all this..." She breathed as she reached behind the bar for brush to begin sweeping up the broken glass.

Grace shook her head as she hung up the phone and came back around the counter. "John would have given me the keys and a list of things to do. Not to mention stopping to give you a speech about not touching anything." She told her friend. She paused to leave a beer bottle at Jack's table before she went for the mop. "I'll go check on him when those two women are in the cab."