A.N: Lost 200 readers between last chapter and this one. Might start killing them off one by one...bwahaha.

Reviewer had the AUDACITY (just kidding) to question the 'rush to nice' by Winkle. I like her. I figure that once she's removed from the Male-Dominated environment of CalTech she can let some of her guard down and show a little decency toward male characters (as well as scratch that damned itch of hers).

Nuff said. Thanks to the faithful reviewers and the followers. Are ya getting bored with it? Is it dragging for ya? Losing 40 readers per chapter. That means no one will be reading after chapter 24. Sad fact of life.

And to Howie(guest), can you say Sault St. Marie? Amokeh, nice catch on the name. I blew it with Penny's last name in later chapters (Ford) when I introduced her in chapter 1 as Drummond. Mea Culpa.

Reparata (yes, it's my real name, Pookie)

Chapter 16 Plague

While Penny and Leslie pushed their late supper around on their plates, thoughts on the guys in the fuel truck, Deborah ate and talked about the afternoon the raiders had shown up. Her dad had told her to take off and hide. She ran out to the storage shed and took off – on her dirt bike - tearing down paths she hoped the men on their big motorcycles wouldn't or couldn't follow.

She followed game trails until she hit the open pastures and then headed cross-country for her uncle's place but soon ran out of gas and found herself on foot and even colder. She stumbled onto a line shack and broke in and found heavy rubber boots and a rain slicker. The blankets on the cot smelled like stale cigarettes and sweat but she was freezing. She spent the night there and woke up to several inches of snow.

She spent the day wrapped up in the blanket on the cot and finally realized that freezing to death or dying of starvation just sitting on her butt were the only options open if she stayed in the shack so she scrounged what she could and took off, heading southeast toward the N. Platte River and the Medicine Bow where her uncle lived.

"I found this place by accident and like you guys, saw the sign flashing and figured if they had juice maybe I could stay for a bit, get warm and maybe get something to eat. Y'know, not everyone had the plague and so I banged on the door for 10 minutes or so and then just went around front and walked in."

"So you didn't know about the upstairs either? Where'd you get the shotgun, sweetie?"

Penny was slowly piecing together a scenario (although she didn't call it that) and didn't like it much. Raiders burning and killing made no sense at all unless they were crazy or desperate or had some master plan. Not knowing would drive Sheldon crazy so she kept prompting Deborah to keep talking.

"It was leaning against the registration desk. I took it and then walked around, getting the lay of the land, looking for game signs…looking for anyone I could hook up with."

"Deb, do you know what's going on with the first travel trailer? Sheldon said we weren't to go into it, that we should just burn it."

"My name is Deborah, not "Deb" or "Debbie". I saw…and Dr. Cooper is right. We should burn it."

Leslie asked her why she didn't break into the bar or restaurant and look for food or better clothes. Or use the showers and get clean.

"I was only here a few hours before you guys showed up and I hid until I figured out you weren't with them and so I snuck back into the office and you guys know the rest."

It took both of them straining at the bolt cutters to finally break through the titanium padlock that secured the steel fire door at the rear of the pharmacy/Post Office. They approached their target from the rear just in case anyone happened to stroll down Main Street at 1am.

Sheldon used a crowbar to jimmy the door and then they were in, finally. Sheldon swept the facility with the thermal goggles but everything was 'cool'. He chuckled at his own joke and then put the imager device back into his backpack.

Bomber cut through the cheap padlock that secured the refrigerator and smiled when he opened it. There was still power to the unit and he saw brown boxes of insulin on the shelves. Either the pharmacist was a hoarder or the town was a haven for diabetics.

"We'll need syringes, too, Sheldon," Bomber whispered as he held up the 4 cartons each containing 12 little glass vials of insulin. He could see Sheldon's broad smile even in the light of the tiny penlight. Bomber grinned and then they began looking for syringes.

They were in and out of the pharmacy in less than 30 minutes. They drove slowly down the alley and out onto the main street and headed back to the Resort.

"That went well, Bomber. In and out in under 30 minutes and – Oh, no!" There were headlights of several motorcycles just down the street. They'd been spotted and they could hear the impact of bullets on the side of the truck as someone 'walked' automatic weapons fire across the truck as it turned.

"I'm hit, Sheldon!" yelled Bomber. A bullet had punched through the steel of the truck door.

"Can you continue to drive the truck?" Although Sheldon had watched Penny drive the fuel truck on several occasions, he'd never driven a standard shift and certainly nothing as complicated as the truck. The big coach had an automatic transmission.

"Sheldon, I've been shot in the calf and am probably bleeding like a stuck pig and you want to know if I can still drive?" There was a hint of aggravated hysteria in his voice. It reminded Sheldon a little bit of Leonard.

"Yes, Bomber. If you can still drive, slow down so that I can jump out and ambush our pursuers. We'll see if Leslie's acquisitions can disrupt their pursuit."

"Sheldon, you're nuts!" Bomber yelled.

"No, I'm not. Mother had me tested. After I debark, drive down the road a few hundred yards and then wait for me. I'll be along directly. If I'm not there in 15 minutes or if the looters show up, drive quickly back to the resort. I don't think motorcycles will do as well in 3 inches of snow as this truck does and that will give you the advantage."

"Sheldon, we can outrun 'em. You're right about the snow and – "

"And if they follow us? If they report back and more come here? Are you willing to take that chance? No. Leslie was right all along. Never leave the enemy in your rear."

The truck had rolled to a near-stop during their heated 'conversation' and Sheldon pushed open the door and hopped out, rolling over a few times in the snow.

'It looked easy in the film when Indiana Jones fought the Russians over the Crystal Skull in the jungle…' He lay there in the snow for a few seconds catching his breath. Sheldon Cooper, physicist, was scared shitless and when the truck pulled around the bend and out of sight, he was downright terrified.

Bomber sat in the idling truck, watching for Sheldon to come walking down the road in the big side mirror. He never took his eyes off the road, not even when he tightened the makeshift tourniquet that he'd wrapped around his left leg, just below the knee. He could feel the blood pooling in his boot and – BOOM!

The sound of a grenade exploding startled him and his right foot slipped off the clutch and the big truck lurched forward and stalled.

'Stupid move, Hideki. Should have shifted into neutral, ya idiot!' He berated himself for not thinking but wrote it off to the panic he felt about his leg. His imagination was on 'high' and he had visions of being held down by his friends while Leslie took off his leg with a hacksaw.

He looked at his expensive Aviator watch and noted the time. Fifteen minutes he'd said. Hideki decided to wait a bit more for his friend. All night, if necessary. 'You don't leave anyone behind, ever.'

He shifted into neutral and restarted the truck and kicked the heater on high. Between the stress of being shot and the heater blowing on him full blast, he dozed off.

Sheldon almost cried with relief when he saw the truck idling along the side of the road. He could hardly put any weight on his right leg and so it seemed to take forever for him to get back to the truck. Sheldon knew Bomber wouldn't leave him behind but he'd been terrified that the pilot would follow his instructions even though no one else ever seemed to.

He jerked open the door and pulled himself up into the cab and gently shook Bomber awake. It wouldn't do to startle him and get shot for his trouble.

"Did you run them off? I heard the grenade and a few isolated shots."

"No pursuit. Let's get going. Can you drive?"

"Yeah, I think so, but God, what's that smell?"

Sheldon shifted his MP-5 around until he could unwind his window. "Drive, Bomber. No questions, just drive the damned truck."

Bomber pulled the truck up beside the coach and blew the horn. When the three girls tumbled out of the coach, Sheldon shouted that Bomber had been shot. Bomber opened his door and stepped on onto his healthy leg and the two older women helped him into the coach. Sheldon sort of slid down out the cab and then limped directly to the shower and laundry building still carrying his weapon. There was hot water there and he needed to get clean.

Deborah watched him ease down out of the cab, favoring his right leg. She started to go to him but when he turned and limped away and headed for the shower and laundry building she climbed back into the coach, emerging a few minutes later with towels and clean clothes for Dr. Cooper.

Yes, she knew who he was. Deborah had idolized Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper, the youngest man ever to win the Stevenson Medal. He was her role model. She even had his picture on the wall of her apartment back in Cambridge.

She'd been a freshman at MIT majoring in Physics when the Plague hit and she'd returned home when the school suspended classes. She was smart, getting a perfect score on her SAT test and had won a National Merit Scholarship that paid her tuition. She knew all about Sheldon Cooper, PhD, the smartest man on earth.

Sheldon threw his field jacket onto one of the benches and stepped into the shower stall and closed it's chest-high frosted glass door and turned on the hot water. He tried, but couldn't bend to undo his bootlaces. His hip was killing him. He undid his belt and let his BDU trousers pool around his ankles. He pulled the BDU blouse over his head and then used the camouflaged t-shirt to wash the feces from his butt and thighs.

The four men rode their motorcycles carefully in the 3-inch deep snow. Sheldon aimed the suppressor-equipped MP-5 that Leslie had insisted he take. She'd even duct taped two magazines together and showed him how to quickly change magazines. He had two additional magazines in his field jacket pocket.

He took a deep breath and then stood up and took aim at the lead cyclist. He fired a 4 or 5 round burst and was surprised at how little noise it made. He felt like a gunfighter in some old western of TV, standing the street facing down crooks. One down and three to go.

Sheldon knew he threw like a girl but desperate times called for desperate measures. He pulled the pin on the baseball-sized grenade and threw it towards the three approaching cyclists.

'Boom'

Two more down and only one to go. The screaming of one of the wounded sounded like a woman and for a second he was distracted by the thought that he had hurt a woman.

The last cyclist fired at Sheldon and gunned his cycle. His spray went wild except for one bullet. It hit him on his holstered Beretta and the force of the blow spun him around and onto his back. The impact was less than that of a bullet but Sheldon didn't know that. He felt his bowels loosen and he hoped none of his friends found his body. It would be horribly embarrassing for him.

He found the strength to roll over and fired the remainder of his magazine at the approaching cyclist. The man flipped over the back of the bike and Sheldon must have hit the gas tank because the cycle burst into flames.

He got to his knees and the pain was incredible. He grayed out for a few seconds but managed to get to his feet and check out the bodies.

One of them was a woman. He felt an immediate rush of shame for his actions until he saw her necklace of ears – human ears – and some were very small.

"Help – help me, please…" she whispered. Sheldon knelt down and tore the necklace off her with his gloved hand and stuffed it into the pocket of his field jacket.

His interrogation was short and violent. Once he had the information he needed, he checked on the other thug. He was dead.

"Please, I answered your questions…you said you'd help me…" she raised her hand in a begging gesture. Her wounds were fatal and Sheldon saw no reason to speed the dying process along for her.

"I lied."

He turned and hobbled away, a grim smile on his face.

The hot water cascaded over his aching body. From the hip across and down his upper thigh, the skin was turning black. No bullet wound. He felt his shame grow. 'Coward!' his mind yelled.

"Dr. Cooper, I've brought you a change of clothes and if you toss me you uniform, I'll throw it in the washing – "

She looked over the partition and saw him standing with his pants around his ankles, still wearing his boots. She knew what had happened but didn't think any less of him for it. If anything, it increased the adoration she felt for him. He was a physicist but also a warrior in the traditions of her ancestors.

She opened the shower door and kept her eyes on his boots. "I promise not to peek, Dr. Cooper. Let me help you get your boots and pants off. I brought soap and shampoo. I'll be right outside if you need any help."

Sheldon was too embarrassed and humiliated to do anything more than nod. He was grateful for the help but wished – 'if wishes were fishes, no one would starve' – as his Meemaw used to say.

Deborah stood at the washing machine, sobbing quietly. She had emptied the pockets of Dr. Cooper's field jacket and removed the extra magazines and two grenades and found the grisly necklace – she recognized one of the ears by its heart shaped diamond stud – her father had given her mom those earrings for her birthday.

Bomber's leg wound turned out to be a deep and painful gouge through the fleshy part of his upper calf. It bled until Leslie packed the wound and then bandaged it. He'd talked nonstop through out the process, giving them details but admitted that he knew nothing about what the 'Doc' had done, only that he'd barely said a word on the drive back and that 'there would be no pursuit'.

"Where is he, anyhow? And where's Deborah?" asked Penny.