Nickname(s): Kate

Age: 17 years (June 12th, 1999)

Height: 5' 2.5"

Weight: 105 lbs.

Gender: Female (Hetero)

Birth Place: Antonito, Colorado

Someone describing Darlene would probably use words along the lines of slender, slight, delicate, and so on. She's not very strong, nor does she have much fat, but you can't say that she's only skin and bones either. Her weight is just above the border line of between being underweight, and just right.

Her eyes are probably the prettiest part of her, mostly green but with some brown closer to the pupil. Depending on the light, some say that her eyes are hazel instead of green. While once innocent and happy once, now they have become harder. She's seen more than she ever should have had the Plague never come, so now they reflect a wariness, and have become harder to read. The rest of her is pretty plain, though not ugly. Lightly tanned skin, a singular mole just beneath the corner of her right eye, medium brown hair with a tinge of red that falls just past her shoulders.

Even after the plague killed off millions of people, she tries to keep herself looking presentable. Cleanliness matters to her, but it's hard for to remain clean when baths are hard to come by in addition to the fact that she has been forced to become much more active lately. A few cuts, scratches, and bruises adorn her arms and legs, along with smudges of dirt here and there. She tends wears long sleeved button up shirts made of a light breathable material that seem identical to the next in cut, except for the pattern on them. Her pants are a pair of sturdy blue jeans.

Around her neck on a leather string, almost always hidden by her shirt, hangs a small square pouch. It hangs low, just between her breasts, and so it is concealed there. Through the loops of her jeans is buckled a thick plain brown belt from which hangs a holster on her right where a pistol is kept. On the left side of her belt hangs a hatchet, and behind it another small pouch.

Perhaps if you would have met her before the plague, you would have found Darlene different in a few ways. But people change with their surroundings, and different parts of Darlene's personality have become weaker or stronger in her during the past year or so.

While she had always been polite and known how to keep civil tongue, this behavior has now taken over almost everything she does and says. She keeps her voice level, says her pleases and thank yous, and tries not to flare up at others. Solving something with violence? No, not if she can help it. This way of speaking and acting has become like a shield or crutch for her, something that holds her up or protects her, something that gives her some sense of normalcy when everything around her has really crumbled to bits. It’s there to keep others from seeing how insecure she is inside, how lost and unsure.

She does have a lot of insecurity. She always doubts if what she does is the right thing, which is why she falls back on being polite and distant most times. She doesn’t want to show any weakness to those around her, she strives to be the role model, the one people can look up to. But really? Sometimes she just wishes that there would be someone to take care of her instead of it being the other way around. Not that she admits it often, though. Most of the time she keeps her feelings pent up inside, pressing them down. And when she can't stand it anymore, she tends to break down for a day or two before she gets her walls back up.

Not all of Darlene is uncertainty and loneliness, though. She has an ability to keep a pretty calm head, and she’s used to coming up with instructions and directions for her younger sister. That’s different from instructing people her age or adults, of course, but at least she’s able to take charge if she can get past the feeling that she might be wrong.

She will also drop the polite face occasionally, if you give her enough reasons to. Annoy her or anger her enough and she turns irritable, using sarcasm freely as she defends herself or scolds the person who displeased her. It's not something that happens often, but if it does, it's not one of those five minute bursts that some people give out before returning back to normal soon after. She will brood for hours afterwards if alone, and even in front of the person she lashed out at; but to anyone else she will remain polite. As to how long these episodes last? Depends if you try to apologize or if you leave her alone.

Darlene grew up in a very small town, and perhaps that is part of the reason why her parents were strict when it came to their standards for her. Apart from being the oldest and automatically needing to be the "responsible" one, they made sure that she remained at the top of class. "Don't let where you live keep you from your dreams," they always said. But she didn't... really have a lot of passions or dreams. Her days were filled with her contently browsing sites including tumblr, facebook, and deviantart, posting or sharing there. Or she would spend hours drawing, pretty much the only passion she did have.

As long as she made sure that she wasn't falling behind in her work, her parents let her do what she wanted. They believed in giving her a bit more freedom, after all. Darlene also had a younger sister, Claire. She wasn't actually Darlene's sister by blood, having being adopted into the family when Darlene was eleven. Darlene never quite understood why, her parents never explained much. Claire was five years younger than she was, however, so Darlene just couldn't relate to the young girl's fantasies and pretend play scenes. But at least Darlene made sure that her sister was always alright. One could have said that she helped to fill in the mother role, helping to advice and (as necessary), often give orders and lectures to the young girl. With their mother often away on business trips, who else was there? Their father?

Her life wasn't particularly eventful, but it was peaceful. And that was fine.

The arrival of the Plague shattered that sense of peace. Though it took a while for the Plague to reach the town she lived in, she felt its effects early on. In April 2024, when she was fifteen, her mother never came back from a trip. They had received news from her that she had fallen sick and would arrive home later but she ended up dying in the hospital instead, while their father had had to stay at home to take care of Darlene and Claire.

Her father, though grieving, soon realized that this sickness wasn't one that appeared for a few months before dying down again. They began to store up supplies, including ammunition for the pistol her father owned but rarely used. In early July, the Plague reached the small town of Antonito at last. Two weeks later, at age eleven, Claire died as well.

With now two of his loved ones gone, Darlene's father changed suddenly. He came up with this idea that they couldn't stay in this town, not when they were sure to die. He wanted to leave, to keep moving while keeping away from other humans. Wanted to find some uninhabited patch of land and live there. He wasn't exactly thinking logically, but Darlene had to follow, she had no choice. After packing up as many supplies as they could carry, they snuck off in mid-September.

Where were they going?

To a campground and forest only about sixteen miles away. It was perfect to Darlene's father, with barely any people. Who would be camping out here when Martial Law had been declared? Well, it was fine. They had food, dried, canned, even a little fresh stuff (though that didn't last long). Her father had his pistol and began to teach her to use it, for with feral animals beginning to roam and wild animals already roaming, they needed its protection. At least her father could aim pretty well. A shelter was soon erected for them to live in, and so the weeks passed.

But the food wouldn't last forever, and winter was coming. Knowing that by now things would have changed drastically, they left in November to head north towards Alamosa. Before they reached there, however, they ran into a group of four other people, survivors who were also heading towards Alamosa. They were lucky that these four weren't entirely hostile, so Darlene and her father were allowed to join them once the group realized that they could be of some use since they had ammunition and a gun. Once part of the group they continued to travel with them, soon reaching Alamosa.

In Alamosa they were able to find enough supplies to keep them going through the winter. The original four members of the group were more competent at this scavenging thing than Darlene and her father, so Darlene soon picked up a few useful skills. One of them? Lock picking. A much cleaner way to break into buildings that didn't have very strong locks, and a way to make sure the door could still lock afterwards. She also learned basic self defense moves, and got better at shooting.

This relative safety though, didn't last forever. It was mid winter when one of the members of the group fell sick, and was brought to a building streets away to die. Darlene couldn't stand it though, not when the man had helped her and taught her. She snuck there a few times to bring food, tossing it through the door. But he didn't live long. Despite the groups' care to leave the man once he got sick, soon one by one they fell ill as well.

At last it was just her and her father once more, but at least now winter was almost over and they were more skilled. But it turned out that that wasn't all she was about to loose. By the time winter was coming to a close, her father fell sick. She refused to leave him like the group's policies had once required, feeding him and caring for him until he died.

Now alone, she struggled to stay afloat from the grief and loss. For a while she stopped scavenging and lost her will to keep going, letting herself waste away. Until she realized that she couldn't just let herself die, not just because she wasn't brave enough to let go of life, but because she hoped that someday she would be able to find someone else. Or at least keep living because everyone else she had come to love and appreciate hadn't. She began to gather up more supplies once more, building up her strength again as well.

Afraid she wouldn't be able to handle the winter in Alamosa, she thought ahead and decided to make her way down towards the south, hoping that she would be able to get to a place where the temperatures remained well above freezing in the winter. Using the little information that had been imparted to her by the group, she managed to find a car that she was able to hotwire, deciding that using a car would allow her to carry more with her. She had hoped that she car would last long, saving her the trouble of having to find another car, but it disappointed her. The car broke down when she had just almost reached Albuquerque, New Mexico, after only a few hours of use.

Nothing at the moment.