A/N: Warning - this chapter deals with unsavory subjects and situations. No sex. You have been warned.
Why does Sheldon put his trust in someone he just met? He can 1) ignore his fears for Penny and his team or 2) extend trust and go find them. He has a fertile imagination and it's all explained and expanded upon here despite the spoilers published by one of my most ardent reviewers who I swear hacked into my notepad. That's how accurate she is. Or maybe great minds such as ours simply travel in the same direction?
To the guest who bailed after a comment, thanks for not inflicting this on yourself. Respect but indifference.
Reparata
Chapter 22 Plague
Tasha didn't sleep at all and when she heard the ATVs approaching, she almost wept with relief. Being alone with her daughter in this strange vehicle all night had scared her to death and she hurried to make coffee and greet her new fellow travelers. She glanced outside and saw that dawn had broken and the sky seemed clear of snow clouds.
She wondered why Sheldon had finally decided to trust her, giving her a pistol and leaving her in control of their bus, effectively their entire life. She knew that it hadn't been an easy decision for him. Leaving her alone was a display of trust that she found difficult to understand but grateful for.
The two 4-wheelers crested the hill after a short ride of maybe 10 minutes and saw their home on wheels just a few yards away down the slope. They'd only been a few hundred yards from the coach when they decided to hole up and each of them now felt guilty for not pushing on.
They pulled up along side the coach and turned off their engines. Penny ran to the door and pounded on it to wake him up and give her a hug. She was all ready for his anger but knew he'd approve of what they'd done - eventually.
A young woman with a little girl tucked behind her opened the door and Penny stepped back and brought her MP-5 to bear. The woman held up her hand…
"Wait! Dr. Cooper isn't with you? He left last evening to find and guide you back. You didn't see him?"
Sheldon had explained that he would probably find them in a makeshift shelter somewhere along the path and not to worry. He'd just crawl in with them and spend the night if the weather was too bad to return.
"He did what?!" Penny forgot to ask who she was and what she was doing in their bus but Winkle picked up the slack.
"Who are you and why are you here? Where's Sheldon?" Winkle had her weapon pointed at the dark haired woman. She hadn't seen the little girl but it probably wouldn't have mattered.
Tasha stuttered out her story and Penny and Leslie started for their ATVs but Bomber stopped them, grabbing Leslie by the upper arm and almost violently shoving her back towards the bus.
"No! I can make better time without you and he's going to need a ride back. Get warm clothes and soup ready for when I bring him back. He's gonna be cold."
He looked at Penny and Leslie with a smirk. "And pissed off beyond belief."
Bomber jumped on his 4-wheeler and took off along the trail they'd just made. It was easy to see where they'd gotten off the original track and he could see where Sheldon's footprints had run parallel to the faint depressions of their original path out to the town.
To the casual early morning observer, the snow-covered lump on the edge of the clearing would have looked like an old tree stump – that made snoring sounds. Sheldon awoke with a start and for a moment sat shivering in his sleeping bag until his brain came on-line and began processing data.
He pushed away the plastic tarp that had sheltered him against the stump and unzipped his thermal sleeping bad and stepped out of it. He quickly brushed off the snow and rolled it into a tight cylinder and secured it with bungee cords.
He looked around carefully and then unzipped and wrote his name in the snow. He got as far ad the 'D' before he ran out of pee. He could see his path from the bus and smiled in satisfaction.
'Only a few feet off their track. I'll wake them and then we'll be back in the bus and drinking hot coffee and trading tales of nearly freezing to death in the wild.'
He brushed snow off his backpack and secured the sleeping bag and tarp to it in his usual precise manner and then slung the shotgun over his shoulder and headed off in the direction of town.
Sheldon quickly got warm from his exertions and twice he lost the track but easily found it again. He didn't, however, notice the 'branch' the two ATVs made on their way back to the bus. In other words, he was still following the outbound track to town.
He knew he'd made a mistake when he walked past a mobile home, doors and windows wide open to the weather. There were two propane tanks on the tongue of the trailer and he made a mental note to retrieve them once he checked out the cluster of buildings that made up New Salem. He had a crescent wrench in his backpack for just such opportunities.
He walked down the center of the main street without paying much attention to his surroundings other than to note that his 'crew' had already been there. There were relatively fresh footprints and ATV tracks and he figured that somehow he'd missed them in the scrub woods or –
He checked the MP-5 and clicked off the safety. Maybe he hadn't missed them. Maybe they'd never left New Salem and were even now being tortured or worse by elements of the Select. The thought of Leslie or Penny being abused set his heart beating faster and faster and he called out their names as he ran towards the church at the end of the street.
Bomber stopped and shut down his 4-wheeler on a small rise. It hadn't been hard to follow his tracks and he saw where he'd set up for the night. The yellow 'SHEL' in the snow was a dead giveaway. There was a black column of smoke that he knew could be seen from miles around coming from the direction of the town.
'Doc, what have you done now?'
Bomber started his 4-wheeler and porpoised through the deep snowdrifts, going entirely too fast for safety but he had a feeling that the Doc was in trouble.
Penny was sitting on the picnic bench deep in thought about their situation – actually Sheldon's situation. She knew that he would do anything for his friends and she was torturing herself with thoughts of him lying in some gully or blow-down, his legs broken from the fall and slowly freezing to death.
She'd worked herself up into quite the worrisome lather and was seriously thinking of just jumping on the ATV and following Bomber into the brush but what if she were out there, searching, and he came back? Wouldn't it create a 'loop' situation? She smiled sadly at the Sheldonesque thought.
'He's rubbing off on me. I can feel hibernating brain cells waking up every time he speaks. God, I've got it so bad for him!'
Sheldon dug the hole in the nearly frozen earth using a shovel he'd found in the back of one of the pickup trucks parked behind the church. This was the last one of four and he felt a sense of satisfaction that colored his sadness. It didn't have to be the standard size or anything but he wanted it deep enough to keep scavengers from getting at her.
He had wrapped her in a blanket he found on the pew beside her mother and tucked it tightly around her, covering her face so it wouldn't get dirty or cold.
Bomber stood back and watched, not exactly sure what Sheldon was messing with. The church was fully ablaze and even this far from it, the heat was intense. And then he saw the four mounds and knew Sheldon had gone into the church, found the kids and buried them but what was he doing now?
Sheldon filled the last grave slowly, not wanting to bruise the tiny body but wanting to get the whole thing over and done with.
He got to his feet, his knee joints cracking from being on his knees so long, and poured gasoline on the dirt mounds to keep away scavengers. The parents could provide a hot lunch for any thing that wanted it. They deserved no consideration whatsoever in Sheldon's mind.
They had murdered their own children.
"Ready to head back, Sheldon?" He spoke quietly, almost reverently, not wanting to startle his friend, especially not when he had his filthy hand on the pistol grip of his MP-5 and a murderous look on his face.
"Yeah. I picked up some things for little Penny. Let me get them and then, yeah, let's get the fuck away from this place."
"Little Penny?"
"Tasha's daughter is named Penny also."
"Tasha? Oh, the woman with the pistol that Leslie went off on. What's her story, Doc?"
"We'll talk more with her when we get back. We've spent enough time here. I want to leave now." Any one who knew Dr. Sheldon Cooper a year earlier would have heard 'old Sheldon' in his voice and mannerisms.
Penny was perched on the picnic bench and was the first to hear the ATV's engine and she ran back to the coach to give them the good news and then ran back to greet them.
Bomber grinned when Penny squealed and ran to Sheldon and threw her arms around him, squeezing him. He wrapped her up in his arms and just held her. It was so good to be back 'home'. Home wasn't the bus. Home was in her arms wherever they were.
Leslie knew he'd gone into the church from the look on his face when he climbed up into the coach. His eyes were darting around the cabin and then lit on the little girl who was sitting almost on her mother.
"Hey, Penny Blossom, I brought you some things that you need and some things I hope you like." He sat down beside the girl and starting digging around in a plastic trash bag he always kept in his backpack.
"I got some pretty rubber boots so you don't get your shoes wet in the snow and some mittens and gloves and a hat with ear flaps to keep your ears warm."
He glanced up at Tasha and shyly asked, "I hope that was alright? She needs boots and gloves. I couldn't find a jacket that would fit her. Oh, and a nice long scarf."
The little girl, hereinafter Penny Blossom or just Blossom, pulled on the cap and smiled and it made Sheldon's day.
He turned away and dug into the bag some more and pulled out a coloring book and a box of crayolas and presented them to her as if they were crown jewels and got a hug as his reward and a smile from her mother.
Penny watched the scene unfold and had a stray thought about how good a father Sheldon was going to be to their kids.
"I must have missed you guys in the dark. I spent the night quite warm in my sleeping bag covered with a tarp." He looked at Bomber and shook his head as if to say 'No' and continued. "Bomber found me and, well, here I am."
No one called him on his obvious lie. Penny knew he'd come clean later in private. She knew he hadn't found those things for the little girl in the snow despite what he wanted them to believe.
Bomber mouthed 'Later' to Leslie and then the two guys sat down and ate soup and drank coffee and got to know their two new team members.
The sun was shining and clumps of melting snow were falling from the trees that sheltered the rest stop. They talked about pressing on for Omaha in the morning.
"We have a detour to make. Tasha needs to be dropped off in Lincoln. She has friends or relatives there."
Penny saw the tic begin in the corner of his eye and knew he wasn't being truthful. One look at the expression on Tasha's face and she knew that Sheldon was lying.
Sheldon excused himself and showered and changed clothes and then closed himself up in their room and tried to reconcile what Tasha had said to what he'd seen in the church classroom where he'd found the coloring book and box of crayolas.
There were photographs of the church's 'families' on the wall and one caught his eye. It was of a man, his wife and daughter, laughing and sitting together at a table.
The little girl was Penny Blossom and the woman was Tasha Myers.