In the gloom of the abandoned hardware store, Dinah fights off a shiver and picks her way, using the spattering pool of light from the plastic flashlight to guide her way to her backpack.  Seeing a small drain in the floor nearby, she wrings her sopping jeans and t-shirt over it, the patter of water on concrete the only sound over the rain outside.  Her bare feet emit no sound as she pads back to the hiker's pack, eying it with the uncertainty of one checking a crawlspace for spiders or snakes.  Returning to the pack and its contents couldn't help but bring back that<i>this</i>was her reality.  The same world where she'd lived out of this pack for countless days, where the only security she'd had was her pistol, her daddy's shotgun-- Out of habit, she picked it up with nervous, rapid fingers.  She worked the lever to eject a cartridge and caught it-- the loud metal noise of the shotgun racking echoed in the cavern of the store.  She eyed the red plastic tube, the brass cap, and sighed, re-inserting the shell to the back of the tube after she checked the safety again.<br/><br/>Leaning on the end of the cylinder she rose to her feet and leaned it against the nearest rack, then fished from the pack a fresh pair of underwear, another t-shirt-- this one form-fitting like the other-- this one gray and labeled in black on the mid-chest with the right-side-up and inverted "U"s that made a clever "UA" logo.  She didn't have dry jeans-- she regretted this immediately, and sighed.  She lifted the soaking-wet sports bra from over her head, felt the patter of her long, auburn hair-- though it looked nearly black with all the rain-- as it fell back against her shoulder-blades and neck in damp locks.  She pulled the t-shirt over her head then, stretched it downward demurely and found that it barely reached her hips.  Cursing herself again for her desperation, she rolled her eyes at nothing and no one.  She drew her underwear down, stepping out of it, and wrung the cotton panties in her hand before laying them out to dry alongside the other garments, then picked up the dry pair-- simple black cotton-- and stepped into them.<br/><br/>Turning, then, she picked up the flashlight-- she looked once more over her belongings, then paused in a moment of recoiling terror at the memory of how she'd felt when she thought she might have stupidly left her pack in an irretrievable place.  She hoisted it, then her shotgun, and carried it back to the 'sleeping' rack, with its makeshift ballasts of PVC.  She smiled at Jake, though it might have been hard to make out in the dim light.  "Weird being clean, isn't it?"  She laughed softly and laid out her shotgun and pack on the next-highest rack, hoping that they'd be in arm's reach, and out of zombie's reach, should anything happen.  She then climbed the rack, a little ashamed.  "Just... gotta think of it like a slumber party I guess."  She'd laid out a couple canvases from the paint department, and immediately picked up one of these to wrap around her shoulders-- as if cold, but rather out of shyness-- as she stooped to arrange the cushions she and Marcus had brought in.