Chapter 6

"Hungry." It was all he said when he walked into the kitchen 16 hours later and reached up for a high fiber cereal. Winkle was sitting at the table drinking one of the last soft drinks they had and saw him wince when he reached up to get a box of cereal.

"There's no milk left, Sheldon. I can scramble you some eggs and you can have toast. Penny's down in the parking garage checking out the goodies." She hesitated and then plunged on.

"I'm sorry for questioning your presence on this, Sheldon. I had no idea you could be so organized and resourceful in the real world. I apologize."

She was sincere so he just smiled and nodded his acceptance of her offer. "Yeah, eggs would be fine. Thanks."

He needed a shave and his hair was a mess. His voice was scratchy and the strain of the last weeks was apparent in the worry lines around his eyes. He looked…older, tired and worried, but somehow more mature. Leslie thought he looked…good sitting there in a camouflaged t-shirt and boxers and bare feet. He looked like a man who'd been rode hard and put away wet but Penny said they just 'slept' and she had no reason to doubt her.

"Tell me about your adventure. I want details, not just a summary like you'd head a paper with. No executive summary; I want details."

He had risen early and dressed. Penny was still asleep, curled up in the warm spot where he'd been. She looked so beautiful asleep, her face free of worry. He resisted crawling back in with her. He had things to do.

Sheldon left her a note and headed downstairs. He took Leonard's car and went through the routine of driving out onto the street and then running back into the garage and closing the grill. He'd rigged it so that it locked automatically when the gate closed.

He consulted his mental list and then the notepad with locations and headed out into the nightmare that was Pasadena. He jumped on the interstate and made his way down to Compton. He hated to do it but once he found alternate transportation, Leonard's car was no longer needed. 'Sorry, Leonard,' he mumbled as he left the car in the dealership lot, keys in the ignition.

Thanks to Howard's involvement in various projects for NASA, he now had a list of fabricators who had only the finest materials and top-notch equipment.

The motor coach was 42 feet long, had a maximum range of 1200 miles on on-board 100 gallons of diesel but that wasn't good enough. He secured two 55-gallon drums and made for the nearest fabricator shop on the list.

He punched in GPS and drove carefully through almost empty streets for an hour. Someone threw a rock that banged against the metal of the coach and then another that banged off the window frame near his head. That prompted a change of plan and another delay.

He read the manual and started to work. It looked simple but by the end of the day he had a new respect for people who worked with their hands. His own were burned and dirty and stiff. There was a pharmacy a block down the street and he headed down there to get some hand sanitizer and fill some open prescriptions for antibiotics and sundries assuming the place hadn't been looted.

The automatic doors weren't working but someone had thoughtfully kicked out the glass so he eased his way in and then stopped. It looked like a tornado had struck the Walgreen drug store. There were broken items and discarded clothing all over the floor and the most popular aisles, the ones holding batteries, bottled water, baby formula and food, were practically bare.

He put a shopping cart back on its wheels and started to slowly make his way behind the counters and found several cartons of cigarettes and he added them to his cart thinking that they might be good barter items. Next he bagged up all the unopened candy and gum. Penny had a sweet tooth and they could always use them for bartering.

Personal hygiene came next with toothbrushes, paste, lip balm, floss, sanitary pads and tampons, and almost shyly, he took down all the prophylactics on the rack. He had no intention of using them but again, the girls might require them if things turned ugly in the future.

He bagged aspirin, cold remedies, mouthwash, shampoo and conditioner and soap as well as rubbing alcohol and anything else that might be useful or of value in the new world to come. He found hand sanitizer and surgical-grade disinfectant soap just before coming to the pharmacy section.

Drugs. He hopped over the counter and began gleaning what few drugs remained, using his forearm to sweep them off the metal shelving and into his large trash bag. He didn't care what kind they were or what purpose they might fill, everything was valuable to someone.

When it was full, he put it in the cart and got another bag and started to head for the locked cabinets but someone grabbed him around the neck and shoved him into the shelving and then screamed gibberish at him. Shocked and scared he fell but when he tried to crawl away, the man attacked.

His name was Paul and he was the pharmacist according to his nametag. He stabbed at Sheldon but Sheldon kept kicking at his knees and scuttling far enough away so that he could get to his feet and run.

The tall man slashed instead of stabbing at Sheldon who'd been prepared to parry any thrusts and he felt his clothing give way effortlessly and then a burning pain in his side that made him scream like a girl.

He stopped talking and went into the kitchen and scraped off the eggs into the trash, rinsed the plate then washed and dried it and walked to his room. He remembered what had happened next but he was damned if he'd say the words. That made it real.

'I killed him. I bashed his head in with some ceramic thing I grabbed off the counter. I kept hitting him until his skull was crushed and his brain was mush. I only said I shot him because it seemed less savage somehow. I didn't have the pistol then, just that heavy thing that I bashed him with again and again and again...'

"Is Sheldon still asleep?" Penny had a sheaf of papers in her hand and wanted to know why he needed some of the stuff he'd cached away. She'd spent the last 3 hours going over the 'manifests' and various lists that Sheldon had all over the bus.

"He was up earlier for a short while. I scrambled him a couple of eggs and asked him to tell me about his adventure. He did. Not all, but enough for me to know he's a survivor and we need him. He took a shower and then I think he went back to bed. He only told me part of it but that was enough."

"Okay." She saw how Leslie was nervously twisting her fingers around one another and sat down across from her. She reached out and grabbed her hands to stop her and get her attention.

"Tell me what he said. There are things in the bus that…he must have robbed a bank or jewelry store and it looks like he hit the National Guard armory judging by the clothes and other stuff he's got on this list."

She handed Winkle the 'inventory' Sheldon had made up on the back of some advertising fliers. "See if you can figure out what some of this stuff is or maybe can be made into? I watched him make grenades and bombs right here in the damned kitchen from stuff from my kitchen!"

He was asleep on his side and probably wearing only boxers but he was covered from the waist down by a sheet and she snuck over to 'his' side of the bed and checked out his dressing. It was new and taped almost professionally and she wondered if Winkle had done it.

A sleepy voice interrupted her musings. "Penny, it's not polite to touch people when they're sleeping. I assure you that the wound is not suppurating nor is the sutured area red or swollen more than one would expect from something so newly treated."

"I didn't mean to wake you, sweetie. Go back to sleep and we'll talk about the inventory sheets later when you're rested."

"Penny, could you do me a favor? I didn't think to bring up a clothing bundle for myself and I trashed the clothes I wore back here and so I'm – don't grin so lasciviously, Penelope - naked under here. Could you please fetch the bundle for me? There's one for both you and Winkle but I had to guess at the sizes for Leslie. I already know yours."

Her grin widened and he looked at her askance. "What! After picking up your dirty clothes in that septic tank of an apartment, how could I not know your sizes? Really, Penny, observation is one of the keystone principals of the Scientific Method."

"Awww, that's so sweet even though you cloak it so unconvincingly in the 'logic of science'. Admit it, Sheldon, you care for me, maybe even love me a little bit, doncha?"

He turned bright red and spluttered on about something she didn't even bother listening to. Instead, she cupped his cheek and kissed him on the lips, softly, chastely, with no hint of the wildness of that frantic coupling of weeks ago. This wasn't desperation. This was…she felt exhilaration.

"Penny! Control your baser instincts, woman! Winkle is in the next room and – " he was whispering tersely but she shut him up with another gentle kiss and then she whispered, "I'll control my 'baser instincts' for now, Moon Pie, but you know I'm right. I need to check your dressing again, sweetie."

"PENNY!" She whipped the sheet off him and her eyes ran over his lanky form, hesitating at the sight of his flaccid manhood before continuing to the dressing.

"Hush. You have nothing to be ashamed of." He was trying to jerk the sheet from her hands but she wouldn't let go.

"Nuh-uh. Let Nurse Penny see to your dressing and then maybe I'll let you get up. Seriously, sweetie, we can't chance infection. Lord knows what germs might have been on whatever sliced you up."

Penny gently closed his door. The smile on her face only got bigger when she saw Winkle's look of surprise.

"Well, it's true. He's got nothing to be ashamed of! I'm going down to get his clothes. I'll bring yours up and then we'll finish off whatever's in the fridge for dinner and finish up our planning."

Next morning

Sheldon had wanted to get an early start but the girls had so many questions that he felt an 'orientation' briefing was necessary.

He went over every facet of the operations of the vehicle, the meanings of all the gauges, the steps necessary to level the coach and lastly, how the generators and water and waste storage tanks were accessed and emptied.

"What about these, Sheldon. Why all the guns and ammo? We're going up north and then east towards Nebraska, not invading Mexico." She was admiring the 9mm Beretta that he had given to each of them along with several magazines and two boxes of ammunition.

"People have needs, Penny. There are no laws or order and they will fill those needs any way they can. You need to load those magazines and then figure out how the things load and where the safeties are. I never handled an automatic pistol, just revolvers and hunting rifles." Neither noticed the twitching outbreak that spawned all over his face.

"I have. I used to date a guy who was a survivalist." She saw the looks she got from Penny and Sheldon. "Hey, he was great in the sack, taught me how to shoot and scoot. Why do you think I was so good at paintball?"

"Okay, Leslie. You're the expedition's weapons expert." Leslie nodded and then began taking her own inventory of what he'd scavenged up in the way of things that killed people.

"Penny, didn't you notice the western sky this morning?"

"Well, yeah, it was a beautiful sunrise."

"The sun rises in the east, Blondie," Winkle frowned when she thought about it. She hadn't noticed anything but then she wasn't a morning person.

"That beautiful sunrise was Los Angeles burning, Penny. Things are going bad more quickly than I figured even given my limited understanding of the actions of human beings in such situations."

The lights in the garage died at that moment and it was eerily quiet. There were none of the noises of a living city. No sirens. No horns. Nothing.

Sheldon walked down and out of the coach and the girls followed him. Sheldon took one of the rods that locked the grille down and walked around the coach smashing every light, including the headlights.

"What the hell, Sheldon! Why – "

"It's bad enough this thing sounds like a bus, but at night there's no sense advertising our exact location. There are night vision devices in the green duffle bag and the batteries are rechargeable. We'll need to rig up blackout curtains for all the windows so we can have light at night."

Sheldon looked at his two companions and frowned. "You two will have to share the driving. I barely got this thing here and with the trailer, I'm afraid it's more than I can handle."

Winkle laughed and then quickly explained that, "for a guy to admit that two women are better drivers…maybe it is the end of the world."