The rhythmic effort of each footstep, matched with an audible 'shhh' of the worn soles of her boots against the blacktop, has been all Dinah's seen for so long that the interrupting, muted 'pop' of distant gunfire stops her in her tracks.<br/><br/>She stands straight, eyes darting around, and lifting her head leaves her blinded in one eye for a moment as the sunlight slants across her face where her hat-brim lifts.  Tilting her head against it and squinting, she surveys the street rapidly, panic starting to seep in around the edges of her consciousness.  Empty street-- an empty (she hoped) pickup in the parking lot of a bank on her right-- an intersection ahead-- looking like the main street.  She'd driven through this town a few times, and if she remembered correctly there was a big store on high street.  No more than a few hundred feet off to her right was an asphalt lot, a bank--<i>maybe I should hit the ATM,</i>she thought,<i>I might not get a chance for a while...</i>.<br/><br/>Survival instinct of the collegiate mind, protesting from behind the shotgun and the snake-boots and the need to find shelter and hide from the walking dead-- and the need to pursue, in desperation, the only sign of human life around.  It had sounded like a pistol-- well, maybe it was a car backfiring, she had little experience with small arms--<br/><br/>but what followed, seconds later, was the familiar crack of a distant shotgun.<br/><br/>For a moment, she couldn't move, but she was wide-eyed and staring at the bank ahead and ready to take off, at a run, to cross that corner to the main street-- to get to other people as quickly as possible.  Screw independence... sorry, Dad.<br/><br/>Then, she remembered that if there WAS a Home Depot, it might be best not to go in there.  Surely, when the outbreak hit, people tried to stock up on tools and repair supplies, and if they had flocked there, they most certainly would have died there.<br/><br/>She breaks into a run, but the weight of her pack nearly topples her-- she stops, unhooks the balance-strap across her chest, and crams the hiker's pack into a crevice between a mail drop-box and a wrought-iron trash can.<br/><br/>Then, shotgun in hand, she lowers her shoulders and pumps her legs-- the effort rejuvenating, familiar, speaking to her memories of cross-country matches and races across the farm with her brothers.  It felt good to run, at first, and soon she would be reaching the corner of E. High Street.