Apocalypse Week

Chapter 3: ZOMBIES! RUN!

When Sheldon Cooper said they were going to spend an afternoon practicing, he meant they were going to repeat the same things over and over again until everyone could do it right. She was starting to see why Leonard hated Apocalypse Week. Leonard very rarely got anything right, and Sheldon was entirely unsympathetic.

She was surprised to find that after the three hour lecture on how to kill zombies, with workstations on how to make crude bombs and how to throw said bombs, that she wasn't entirely bored. In fact, she was the opposite. She was a little pumped at the possibilities.

That wasn't the only surprise of the afternoon. He told them to break for lunch and gave them each a card with specific instructions. Penny's told her to wear denim and leather, because thicker material made it difficult for blunt teeth to perforate skin. Somehow, Penny didn't think he meant for her to wear her leather skirt and thigh-high boots combo, because zombies could totally bite her skin in that.

Or at least that guy she had dated who worked as an office drone had been able to. That was kind of like a zombie, right?

Penny ate a sandwich and wondered what everyone else's cards told them to do. Sheldon didn't strike her as the type to give out little motivational messages, so either each card contained orders he expected them to follow or report cards on their progress. She was voting for the orders, but there was also a possibility Leonard's said:

You Fail.

In size 36 font.

After some mental debate, Penny wriggled into a pair of jeans made out of thick material that, while form-fitting, did not have a percentage of spandex in them, which made them as durable as she was going to get, considering her tastes in form-fitting apparel. As a member of the junior rodeo circuit, she knew to do a few squats and other exercises in them to test mobility. If she could still do yoga, she could battle a zombie.

She paired this with a white ribbed cotton shirt that looked like it could be a mens undershirt but she knew for a fact that it was not only thicker, but more flattering to her shape. Finally, she slipped on a pair of soft leather riding boots that she had once worn for 36 hours straight, including a night of dancing and stumbling drunk around town, without getting blisters. Just because she was hanging out with men who had no sense of fashion didn't mean she wasn't going to look movie star perfect.

Grabbing her leather jacket, Penny slipped across the hall moments after she heard Raj and Howard arrive. Could those two ever do anything without the other? Sometimes she thought Raj might be closer to finding his Mr. Darcy than he thought.

Penny knew as soon as she entered apartment 4A that everyone's card had said the same thing. Part of her wanted to laugh, but the more predominant part wanted to both cry and rip out her eyeballs. They had taken Sheldon's suggestion far too literal, and Penny could pretty much see where their closets exploded to accommodate the rules.

Leonard had on jeans and a jean jacket, coupled with a fake denim cotton tshirt with a little fake denim breast pocket. All were different shades of blue and circa 1993, which made sense considering that was probably the last time he bought new clothes. Sadly, he was the best dressed. Howard had on an updated version of his goth outfit, resplendent in spikes and a fishnet shirt that zombies could probably gnaw off with their teeth in a very sexy fashion, and Raj was wearing both jeans and a pair of leather chaps, as well as a leather jacket – all with tassels.

Penny was pretty sure she was going to burst her appendix in an attempt not to fall to the floor laughing.

She opened her mouth to make some kind of joke about one of the New Kids on the Block, a cowboy and a goth walking into a bar, but thought better of it.

She was about to ask Raj why the tassels but also thought better of that too. It wasn't entirely their fault they had dressed like this. Sheldon was the one who had given the assignment, and if he'd asked her to wear argyle, she would have had trouble unending pieces from her closet too.

So no, Penny wasn't going to mock her friends for looking like they were about to break out into doing the YMCA, but she'd definitely keep that option open.

"Cute jacket." She grinned at Leonard and he preened, puffing out his chest and adjusting his truly hideous jacket collar.

Don't laugh, she reminded herself. Ok, so she was a little mean, but who could resist, really?

She heard Sheldon's door close before she saw him and her mind immediately went to jeans buttoned beneath his armpits and his familiar beige jacket.

So when Sheldon walked down the hall from his bedroom in a dark pair of jeans of normal rise, one of his thermal shirts, and a leather jacket, Penny wasn't amused anymore. In fact, she was the opposite of amused. She was pretty much stunned speechless in ways she hadn't thought possible.

She simply gaped.

Holy crap on a cracker, when did Sheldon get hot? In fact, Penny thought the apocalypse might just be real because the world just stopped.

He wasn't moving any differently than normal, but there was something about his straightforward confidence in the dark leather jacket that seemed a world away from the same, everyday motions he usually made. She wasn't sure why this made her heart trip over itself a bit in her chest. It was just Sheldon, right?

"Let's go," he said, not sparing them a glance as he walked out the door. Penny trailed behind him with no argument. She couldn't help it, this might be the most intrigued she'd been all month, and if she had an unobstructed view of his butt as they descended the stairs, well that was just an added bonus. Besides, she had to watch where she was going. Constant vigilance and all that. What if a zombie attacked? She had to be ready.

"Where are we going?" she asked him on the way down. His shoulders still did that stiffening thing he did when he was annoyed, and it was kind of a sight to behold in a leather jacket. She was definitely starting to get the appeal of apocalypse week, in ways Howard probably didn't even realize.

Unless, of course, that whole rumour about him and Raj was true, in which case he was probably just as delighted as she was.

"Sheldon?" Penny sing-songed after him. "Where are we going?"

"Patience woman!" he snapped and she smirked at him.

Of course, the issue with tormenting Sheldon now was that he made her drive Howard and Raj in her car while he drove with Leonard ahead of them in the two car caravan.

"So, what do you think Sheldon is up to now?" Penny asked.

"Awesomeness," Howard answered, still revering Sheldon this week. "Legendary awesomeness."

"Yeah, what kind of legendary?" she asked, turning behind them through a yellow light. Well, it was yellow when she started. Ok, so maybe it had only been yellow as she approached, but if Leonard was the considerate person he was supposed to be, he wouldn't have sped up to make the light, he would have slowed down instead so she didn't have to make executive decisions like that.

"Dear God," Howard exclaimed, holding on to the armrest.

"Its ok sweetie, I haven't had an accident yet." That wasn't strictly true, but it had definitely been the other guy's fault that time. Penny was actually a really good driver, she'd just learned how to do it on back country roads where traffic laws didn't even exists and potholes were the size of the entire car. Euclid really had nothing on that.

When she pulled up outside of the Caltech track and field, she had to double check to make sure she hadn't accidentally started to follow a car that looked like Leonard's, but wasn't actually his. Her mind couldn't quite wrap itself around any of the reasons they could possibly be here, but once Leonard and Sheldon got out of the car, she joined them. Howard was swearing about Sheldon, probably understanding exactly what was going on considering how much of a fanboy he was about Apocalypse Week. Raj looked uneasy, a thin veil of sweat already coating his forehead, probably from a combination of her driving and the unnecessary layers of leather he was wearing.

"Sprints," Sheldon started once they were all gathered around him, "are based in endurance. A human's top speed cannot be maintained for more than approximately thirty seconds before a build-up of lactic acid deprives the legs of oxygen. When running from zombies, it is important to know your level of endurance and how to regulate your pace so you can outrun the threat without tiring. The world record for the 200 meter race is 19.19 seconds, but I only expect you to run a 30 second race."

"You're kidding!" Leonard exclaimed, looking carefully at Sheldon's face. "You're not kidding."

All three boys groaned and looked down in dismay at their feet.

Raj moved to take off his jacket.

"No," Sheldon barked. "Leave your jackets on. If you're being chased by zombies, you need all the protection you can get. Additionally, in a real life scenario you will not have time to disrobe or change footwear."

Penny wasn't too happy about the possibility of getting her leather jacket sweaty, but she had to admit that Sheldon Cooper was an evil genius. Raj was already sweating bullets. Leonard was wearing clunky work boots he could barely walk in without them scraping against the ground, and Howard had on PVC platform boots.

"You could have warned us," Howard said unhappily.

"Do zombies stop and tell you before they attack?" Sheldon asked. "Oh hello Mr. Wolowitz, I would just like to give you the courtesy of informing you that in approximately 30 seconds I will bite your arm and the subsequent laceration will undoubtedly fester with infection, kill you, and reanimate your body."

Penny smirked at Sheldon.

"No," Howard responded sulkily.

"Still think he's awesome?" Raj jeered.

"I do," Penny said with a grin.

"You can go first," Sheldon told her, taking out a stop watch and striding forward to the 200 meter mark. She exchanged a shrug with the rest of them and watched Sheldon to give her an indication of when he was going to start. She wasn't sure if he was trying to punish her or reward her by making her go first.

She almost missed his signal, and then she was off.

Penny had been too interested in being a cheerleader to be a track star, but she could have been and being in a pair of knee-high leather boots didn't really stop her. While she was a good, strong runner, it was her starts that really shaved seconds off her time. She could go from standing to all-out running with just a twist of her ankle.

"28 seconds," Sheldon said, peering at her in interest. "Physiologically, women are at a disadvantage for running sprints due to their leg length, muscle strength, and even the shape of their pelvis."

"Yeah," she said, panting only a little as she stood next to him. "You know my time is going to be the best, right?"

Sheldon gave her his evil smirk and Penny grinned back. "You're so evil," she told him, but meant it fondly.

Sheldon, of course, didn't catch on to the nuances behind her tone. Instead, he looked bothered.

"I don't mean that badly, sweetie," she told him. "Even Batman is a little harsh every once and a while."

"Yes," Sheldon mused. "He can be rather unsympathetic towards Robin."

"Only because he wants him to survive and Robin won't learn otherwise," Penny said pleasantly as if she knew what she was talking about. The last Batman she had seen with Robin in it had been the George Clooney movie. As a teenager she had such a crush on Chris O'Donnell.

Heck, she still had a crush on Chris O'Donnell. She kept trying out for episodes of NCIS Los Angeles in the hopes of meeting him. Well, also in the hopes of getting work, but honestly, having only one motivation in her line of work was like only having one star player on a football team.

Sheldon looked pleased that she understood, though, so maybe she was getting better at pretending she knew what he was talking about. Maybe the key to getting along with Sheldon Cooper was to compare him to Batman every once and a while. She should probably rewatch those movies.

"Leonard!" Sheldon shouted next to her. "Don't dawdle. You're just prolonging your inevitable failure."

Watching the boys run was a spectacular failure which turned out to be more pathetic than amusing. Howard was the only one who finished the race at 34 seconds. Leonard tripped. Raj fainted from heat stroke before it was even his turn to run.

"For the next week, we will practice your running," Sheldon informed them, standing like a drill sergeant as the four of them lounged on the bleachers. "Since Penny is the only one who successfully completed the sprint within the time constraints, we will practice while she is at work. You men are pathetic."

That bastard had planned this, Penny realized, right down to the inappropriate clothing. He counted on her succeeding where his friends had failed. It kind of made her want to kiss him, especially considering how inappropriately attractive he looked in jeans, the muscles in his neck corded as he berated his friends.

"What about you?" Penny asked before her inner filter could stop the words from exiting her mouth.

The three stooges, which she really couldn't unsee now that her brain made the association with Moe, Curly and Larry, all turned to simultaneously stare her down with almost identical looks of vexation. It was their 'don't poke the crazy person' look.

"What about me?" Sheldon asked.

"Let's see if you can do any better, marathon man," she taunted.

Really, she shouldn't be goading him considering he had just given her a get out of jail card, but it was too difficult to resist. Plus, she thought he'd probably run all awkwardly flailing limbs and long gangly steps, so it might get her mind off the idea that he looked absolutely bite-able in those clothes.

"Is it safe?" Howard asked, looking pleased with himself when Raj snickered.

"You wit astounds me," Sheldon said dryly, handing the stop watch to Leonard and stepping up to the start line.

And ok, Penny would be the first to admit that she was wrong, but she wasn't. He did thrash around a bit when he started running, but his long legs pretty much ate up the 200 meters, and his arms didn't really flail around as much as she thought they would. It was actually oddly graceful, like a baby gazelle just learning the parameters of its body. She was almost sure that he'd hit stride if he had to go another 200 meters, and then she'd be screwed. Thinking of Sheldon in terms of agility and sexiness was something to avoid at all costs, but those impressions were quickly taking root in her mind.

"29.45 seconds. Cutting it close buddy," Leonard proclaimed. "You almost didn't make your own limit. You know what this means, right? Penny would beat you in a race against the zombies and usually survival comes down to being the fastest runner."

Sheldon shot him a scathing look.

"Yeah, well, they'd probably be too busy gnawing on our remains anyway. Sheldon would have sacrificed us to the slaughter to ensure his survival," Howard shot back.

"Dude," Raj exclaimed. "I fainted before the race even started. I probably would have been one of the zombies chasing after you."

"Not very terrifying," Leonard shot back.

"Well, he wasn't the one who tripped. Zombie Raj wouldn't have had to worry about pesky overheating issues."

"So what's next Sheldon?" Penny asked, running interference. She wasn't protecting Leonard, per se, because she really didn't care if Leonard stuck his foot in his mouth, but she did feel bad for Raj, who had taken off his jacket and the chaps and was simply sitting sprawled across the bleachers and chugging back water like he was trying to replenish everything he was sweating out. Howard looked equally as uncomfortable and kept shifting, trying to move the tight leather on his thighs and wincing.

Chafing was definitely a bitch, Penny thought with a smirk.

Sheldon simply raised his eyebrows.

It turned out what was next was even better than everything else combined. He brought them to a shooting range. At first, Penny looked at the large warehouse shaped building with the words shooting range written across the window and assumed they were here to practice using airguns or rent guns, but then Sheldon dragged a large protective carrying case out of the trunk of Leonard's car, and she was curious enough to follow closely on his heels.

"Hello Dr. Cooper, the range you booked is ready for you and your party. Ya'all will just have to show me your IDs and sign in."

After Sheldon finished scrawling his signature on the sign-in sheet, Penny quickly stepped up after him and handed the clerk her license as she signed her name in flowery print that was at complete odds with Sheldon's spikey cursive.

The clerk gave her a look of surprise, his eyes running over her and then flicking towards Leonard, Howard and Raj behind her. "You and your boyfriend teaching your friends how to use a gun?"

Penny smiled noncommittally and shrugged. "They need all the help they can get," she said, drawling in an accent similar to his. It was a game she liked to play sometimes, to see if she could convince someone she was from the same place they were. She managed it more often than not.

She was about to add that Sheldon wasn't her boyfriend, only her friend, but she didn't really care to get flirty with a guy who worked at a gun range. It wasn't that she had standards – she really didn't – it was just that she really, really wanted to see what Sheldon had in his case and getting her flirt on would take far too long.

She punctuated her signature with a smile, grabbed her ID back and hurried after Sheldon. He had his case set on an available table by the time she joined him. Sheldon's eyes flicked to her casually as he open the locks on the case, both a keypad code and a key lock. He opened the case just as Leonard joined them in the room, giving her a penetrating look.

"Oooooh," Penny breathed when the case opened, revealing a collection of guns. "Oh Sheldon, a Beretta M9! Do you know what this is?" she turned back to ask Leonard, assuming that Sheldon knew all the specs down to how much the thing weighed when loaded and how many were made per year.

"It's just a gun. You shoot, it goes bang, zombie dies," Leonard supplied.

"Just a gun?" Sheldon yelped.

"Just a gun!" Penny yelled, she and Sheldon turning towards Leonard simultaneously. "The M9, or the 9mm is the pistol of choice for the US Military, and some people thinks that makes it one of the best pistols on the market. It has a semi-automatic with a tradition double-action trigger and a short recoil. It also has a number of internal safety features like a firing pin block, which makes it safe for a n00b like you to handle and not shoot yourself in the foot."

"Additionally," Sheldon continued her lecture, "the Beretta M9 has passed a number of stress tests that are necessary to the prolonged survival of the human race in the fight against zombies, including: submersion in saline, exposure to temperatures between -40 to 140 Fahrenheit, being dropped on concrete, and being buried in various naturally occurring substances, while maintaining a firing average of thirty-five thousand rounds before failure. For those of you unfamiliar with firearm statistics, that is approximately six times the pistol's service life. If there was a gun to survive the end of the world, this would be it."

Leonard backed away from the two of them with his hands raised. Howard came through the door and almost walked into him. Craning, Howard peered around Leonard's side. "Hey cool gun!"

"It is cool," Penny responded, her fingers making quick work of loading all 15 bullets into the magazine, sliding the magazine into the pistol grip and then racking the slide, chambering a round. She gave him a toothy grin that had both of them backing up a step and knocking into Raj.

"Dude!" Raj said from the back.

"You know your guns," Sheldon said, sounding pleased.

"Heck yes," Penny said. "You should see me with a rifle." She and Sheldon shared a smile borne of growing up in the mid-west, where cowboys still roamed. And if her Nebraskan accent was prevalent, well guns brought out the junior rodeo in her. "Don't you worry boys," she said towards the doorway and holding the gun safely towards the floor. "This here is practice ammunition, and I'm a pro."

Howard moaned. "I'm terrified but oh so turned on. Do you think Penny is a terminator?"

"Which one of us is John Connor?" Raj asked.

"Maybe we're all John Connor," Leonard said hopefully. "I bet together we could defeat Skynet no problem."

"Dude, I doubt we're even smart enough to MAKE Skynet, and we certainly don't have the physical skills to wage a war against the machine. We are sooo not John Connor."

Howard nodded towards Sheldon. "I really hate to admit this, but Sheldon is the super genius. He's also the one with four emergency escape routes for any one room. If anyone could figure out a way to kill an evil computer it would be him." Howard paused thoughtfully. "But would he want to?"

"Quit dithering in the doorway!" Penny called out. "We get to shoot actual guns boys. No virtual simulations today."

"I like simulations," Leonard muttered. "No one accidentally blows off their own foot in simulations."

"Wow," Raj said bluntly. "I forgot how much of a whiny baby you are."

"Penny, will you kindly demonstrate for me as I explain the proper way to load this gun?" Sheldon asked, ignoring them.

"Sure," Penny chirped, rapidly reversing the process.

"Oh sweet Jesus," Howard moaned after Sheldon was finished explaining the process of loading the Beretta. Penny was actually an old pro at demonstrating. She might not have ever gotten any roles, but she had auditioned for hundreds of commercials that asked her to do exactly that. Really, Sheldon had nothing on some of the demanding commercial directors she'd met over the years. Some of them made Sheldon Cooper look like a amiable, loveable CareBear.

She looked up from concentrating on both the gun and Sheldon, making sure she was matching his words, to find all three boys staring at her in unveiled admiration.

"Pervs," she said with a laugh. Sheldon looked disturbed, and then told them it was their turn to put their guns together.

All three of them gave Sheldon looks of utter confusion, as if they hadn't even realized he was talking the entire time.

Howard, surprisingly, was the only one who was able to. Maybe he was so used to skeezing out on women all the time that he was a functioning pervert, or maybe it was the engineer in him. The other two failed spectacularly. Leonard got his thumb caught in the clip and dropped the half-loaded weapon on his foot (ironically) and started cursing in a plaintive tone. Raj kept trying to put the bullets in backwards.

"You fail," Sheldon told them, "try again."

This went on for half an hour until Sheldon was convinced they would be able to load a gun if he wasn't standing over them barking orders. Penny wasn't sure how long that ability would last. From the lack of surprise the boys were showing at this activity, she thought it might be annual. They then moved on to shooting practice as a group. Penny had been itching to fire the gun since they had walked into the range.

She quickly put a happy face in the target paper down the range from her station and then looked around to see how the other guys were doing. Her eye caught on Sheldon and she paused, shaken and feeling like her world was falling apart and pulling together at the same time.

Of course Sheldon Lee Cooper knew how load a gun, and of course he knew how to shoot one. He might have been a child prodigy, but he was also from Texas. Texans gave their children baby's first gun right along with teething rings and stuffed teddy bears, so Penny had already taken for granted that he could shoot. What she didn't expect was the sheer confidence he embodied with a gun in his hand and a resolute expression on his face.

Gone was the man with the awkward limbs and the nervous facial expressions. He seemed just as comfortable with a 9mm as he did with a game controller in his hand.

It was one of the facts Penny had always known in the back of her head when she moved across from the boys in 4A. If, by random chance, something happened to trigger one of Sheldon's insane safety protocols, you stuck by Sheldon if you wanted to survive. He'd know what to do.

She just didn't expect he'd know how to do it too. In the back of her mind she always thought she'd be the one who had to dig out the old SIG under her bed and use it to defend the homeland (a gun she and the Navy SEALs actually thought to be better than Sheldon's Beretta, but who was she to rain on his parade). The boys and real weaponry seems very incongruous.

Except when it didn't. She didn't really subscribe to Sheldon Cooper's brand of crazy. Penny didn't think there would ever be a zombie apocalypse, nor did she see aliens in her future, but she could see, especially after spending enough time with her boys, how there was a small possibility – not that she would ever admit that. Sheldon was right to train them now, so they at least knew how to load a gun and hide from predators.

Apocalypse Week was almost a necessity when one had friends like Larry, Moe and Curly.

And if Penny was actually agreeing with Sheldon on the actual purpose of something that on the surface looked, and was treated like, one huge game, she was plenty crazy herself.

She couldn't take her eyes off him, even as he paused to evaluate his target, looking intently down the line of his gun. His shoulders were squared, legs slightly spread for balance, and God did it look good with the strange clothes he was wearing. He looked almost... dangerous, like he was a man she should never underestimate in the future. When he had said he could shoot close enough to a racoon to make it crap itself, she thought that meant he couldn't actually hit it. Now she knew the difference. He meant his aim was that good that he could purposely shoot that close to an animal and miss if he wanted to.

Ohhhh, Penny thought with a smile. She wasn't competing against Howard because it was really Sheldon who was on her level.

"Hey Sheldon," she said, sidling next to him as he pushed the button to bring his target paper to his station. Had she taken the spot next to him on purpose? she wondered, subconsciously understanding her need to compare her skills to his. "How did you do?"

He showed her the target with all shots localized to the central forehead. If she didn't know any better, she'd say it was only one bullet hole, but it was a little too wide and not even, looking a little like Mickey Mouse ears. Penny grinned at him and showed him her paper. "I missed a little on the second eye," she yelled over the muffling headphones and the sound of the boys shooting. "But a head shot is still a headshot. Look, it's happy to see you!"

Sheldon did not look as impressed as he should. Penny simply grinned at him and slipped back into her own station, catching his eye as she set herself up another target.

It was sooo on.

x.x.x.x

A/N: My heartfelt thanks for all the support and encouragement I've been receiving for this story. I hope this chapter lived up to the hype. I promised a Sexy Sheldon, so with any luck you were all as hot and bothered by him in this chapter as Penny was! Let me know what you thought...