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roots.
    I completed the job on the attendant, crushing his head with the crescent wrench, too.
    “I pissed my pants! Fucking dead scared the piss right out of me,” she said, a hitch of a laugh in her voice.
    “You ok?”
    She put her fingers to her scalp.  Some of the hair had ripped out.  It left a little blood there.  “God that fucking hurts,” she winced.
    “Let’s take care of that.”
    Standing her up, I walked her into the ladies room.  I propped the door open for light.  I turned on the sink.  We were both surprised to see that the water worked.  I helped her wash her scalp and gently cleaned the blood out of her hair with some paper towels.
    “Thanks Dan,” she said.
    “You’re welcome.  Let’s go get in the van and relax a minute.  When you feel up to it, there’s a whole bunch of jeans and stuff in the other shop.  You can go get a new pair or two if ya want.”
    “Ok,” said with a crooked smile, “but I still gotta go pee.”
     
    After our short breather, Tara finally got to pee.  Afterward, we went back into the shop.  Tara took off her shoes, socks and her wet shorts.  She balled the shorts up and threw them into a corner.  “Won’t need those again,” she said as she flicked her underwear over there, too.
    She stood there, looking through the clothes, naked from the waist down.  My eyes kept trying to look down at her bare thighs.  She didn’t try to hide behind the rack of clothes at all.
    Since she wasn’t going to be wearing underwear, she found a pair jeans one size bigger than her normal size.  “If I got my regular size, they’d be too tight in the crotch since I like to wear them snug,” she said with a smile as she looped a belt with fake turquoise jewels around her waist.
    Then we went through the shop looking for food.  On one shelf we found two loaves of bread.  One package had already been open.  On another shelf there was a partial tube of squeeze che ese.  Some had been squeezed out on the shelf.  It looked like someone had tried to write something with the cheese, but we couldn’t make it out.  We stood side by side looking at the letters someone had written:
     
    FEE – FEE
     
    We had no idea what it meant.
    “What’s a fee-fee?” Tara asked.
    She found a small box of breakfast snack bars, some pop-top cans of fruit, and in one corner of the shop there was a basket of untouched apples.  We each ate one as we looked around.
    When we were done looting, I asked Tara if she was tired.  She said yeah.  I told her that I had seen a hotel on the way into town.  I thought we could stay there for the night.
    We backtracked to the hotel.  One side of the 3 story building had pancaked completely to the ground.  The other side seemed fine.  I went into the lobby first, tire iron in one hand, crescent wrench in the other.  The main desk was empty other than a clerk who was dead behind the counter.  We didn’t need to worry about him coming after us, though.  The entire top half of his head was gone.
    There was a creaky stairway off the main lobby.  We went up, took the fourth door to the left instead of the first.  Inside, the room was clean.  It had 2 double beds that were made.  I bolted the door behind us.  Tara had brought a plastic sack of goodies up from the van.  We ate some of the breakfast bars and drank bottled water.
    After, we both lay down in our own separate beds.
    “Where do you think all of the people went?” she asked.
    “I don’t know.  Maybe there’s a disaster shelter around here too.”
    “Yeah, but where ? There’s not a lot of places in this part of the state where thousands of people could go.”
    I shook my head.  “I don’t know.  Maybe they’re all in their houses. I’m just glad we’re safe.”
    “Are you scared?” she asked me.
    “I’m more con fused than anything else.  Why? Are you?”
    “I just don’t like thinking that deads could be hiding around the corner.”
    “Yeah me