Re: The Right Track (Kathy)
(Those mats aren't too bad if you stack a few high > )
Tab opened her eyes slowly, never one to be a fast rouser or declare her awakening with loud yawns or other such things. The area felt almost too quiet as memories came back to her of everything that happened, and she groped around idly for the gun that she'd slept near all night, finger laying near the trigger as she began to fidget from under the pile she'd made, slowly moving enough to first view her own room for security... then slowly expand from there... the next rooms, the lockerrooms, bathroom and shower stalls, if any existed, the front room, naturally, on her way past it, and glancing beyond the front at the street outside, making sure her chair was unmoved and nothing was snooping around while she was asleep, before, at long last, she would return to that back window and peer at where the fires once burned. This early in the morning, their light would still help a little, though that benefit would fade quickly.
(etc, general notion: she doublechecks her area while planning her day, and if this area feels secure enough still, she may mark it as a safe point to bunker down in again in the future. Assuming she finds nothing and isn't forced from the building prematurely, she continues: )
Building secured, Tab quickly found herself stripping what few garments she had off and sliding into a shower stall (or whatever largest private/semi-private area with a decent faucet is), so she could wash up using the strangely still running water. Though she didn't feel as sweaty and heated as she probably should have given everything, those skates having done wonders on her long journey thus far, she still knew that even if she couldn't smell herself, others, especially animals, might, and even a few moments of brisk scrubbing would reduce the amount of her scent enough to make the difference between being caught a hundred feet down wind, or not alerting potential predators even within fifty feet of them. Even if her experience in this regard was more often applied to her being the hunter and trying to tranq dart them for sampling, the theory remained the same if she would rather avoid them entirely.
After a brisk wash, and borrowing any clean towels nearby to dry, making a point not to use any scented soaps or shampoos, Tab headed back out through the building, pacing out of instinct to get her morning blood flowing as she prepared herself for the day.
"The police station still needs to be a priority. They'll have a hard line that's more likely to be reconnected for emergencies than most other places. And even if the area was overrun... that's actually a step in my benefit once the monsters leave, since it means most of the weapons will be left there." She was whispering to herself again as if into a tape recorder... She groaned inwardly as she threw the imaginary device away and moved towards the front window cautiously, peering out from every direction as she edged up to it from a side-hallway, looking up and down the street. She eventually took the door-chimes down, deciding to wedge a small paper into it to silence it and take it with her, so she could use it as a first-alert system for future safe-houses, while she then opened the front door enough to poke her head out and look up and down the street... There was nothing quite like a morning of wandering out into a strangely asian townscape stark naked while waiting for a godzilla-type monster to rain death from above at any moment while his perverted offspring could be stalking around at any moment, waiting to pounce and potentially rape you...
Quickly dismissing her odd train of thought, having finished her scouting, Tab rushed back inside to do a final pack-up and dress again in her unusually anime-esque garb, something which only made the entire situation more absurd to her eyes, before she rushed off into the city streets in earnest, taking it by foot for now as she once again approached the police station as stealthily as possible, not having any other ideas for what she could do other than to just bunker down and hide away for everything to blow over... which somehow just wasn't her style... Maybe if those fools that were after that cheap radio toy had left her information for how to find them... but that was neither here nor there. With only a single option open in her mind, Tab approached the police station from the alleys, avoiding the main streets as much as possible, and using everything from dumpsters and trash cans, to cowering around corners as she peered out from behind them, to remain as hidden as possible until she'd be forced to expose herself for the final leg of her journey.
(Short answer: Tab doesn't have any other plans, and after a self-ridiculing look at the situation, she heads towards the police station anyhow.)