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Pete threw himself up out of the chair, at that point.  That was the only way Sheri could think to describe it.  He didn’t get up, he didn’t jump up, he looked like he had thrown himself up out of his own chair as he staggered when he got to his feet.  “SHUT UP!” he roared, the joint flying from his mouth with little strings of saliva.  “Just shut UP!”  He had his hand on the butt of his gun, which he was no longer carrying slung low, but actually at his hip.

“Why, Pete, why should I shut up?  What exactly have I said that isn’t true?  Which part of what I’ve said should I take back?  The fear part?  I’m not afraid of you.  I’m afraid of pain, death, being shot, and I’m even afraid of spiders, but I’m not afraid of you.  The slave part?  Please!”  Sheri made a dismissive gesture with her free hand and a little ‘pffft’ noise with her mouth.  “Not a chance, not even with that gun to my head, literally.  That bit about the hand cannon, I can’t take that part back, and it isn’t mine to take back.”  She did her best Scottish impression, which was, admittedly, pretty bad, “Ye canna change th’ laws a physics!  Your gun only holds six bullets, dude!”

The entire time, even when Pete had gotten up suddenly, Sheri had never flinched and never backed down.  She’d been looking directly at him, and locking eyes with him as long as he’d been looking at her.  They stared at each other for a full half a minute before Pete turned and stalked out of the house.  To his credit, he didn’t slam the door.

Sheri slumped back against into the chair and thought she was going to faint or throw up or both, neither of which would be a good idea right now.  She was also sweating for the first time that day, which was odd, as the heat usually didn’t bother her, which meant it probably wasn’t the heat.  When she’d gone on her diatribe, she’d specifically not said being afraid of being raped, although she knew that was on his mind.  She just didn’t want to let that genie out of the bottle.

Girl, that was dumb, though you might not have to worry about tonight now.  Ok, now what?
Sheri thought.
  The town is apparently peopled with cowards, sheep, and potheads.  I didn’t see a single gun on the way in, but they didn’t sound like they were actually going to join up with us either, so they probably have some somewhere.

The handcuff was too tight to slip off, but not tight enough to chafe, yet.  It didn’t look like the ‘novelty’ variety either, which was disturbing in its own way.  She could actually stand up and stretch, she just couldn’t go anywhere.  “This is gonna suck, and I am so sick of saying that!”

For the first time, Sheri could take stock of her surroundings.  She could probably yank this stupid towel bar off the wall, but who puts a vertical towel bar…wait a minute, that’s not a towel bar.  Wonderful!  Whoever had lived here in the past had either been handicapped in some way or had made the house handicap accessible.  Her mom and dad had put these all over their house when she was growing up for when her walker-bound grandmother was visiting.  Ok, so she was stuck here in the kitchenette.

I can’t reach anything from here either.  He took my Gerber tool, he took my sidearm, and he took my keys, although I don’t know why I kept any of them except the one to the Explorer.  I don’t even have a coin to flip.
  The kitchen appeared to have been well stocked at some point, but had been cleaned out in the last couple of weeks.  Too bad, too, the fridge looked almost brand new.  It had been fairly well kept up since Pete had moved in, too, unless it had only been a couple of days ago, which she doubted.  The three stoners had seemed too cowed for that to be true.

She could see the living room from where she sat; a dark TV sat in an armoire with a dark DVD player and stereo system.  There was a couch, a love seat, a recliner, and a couple of tables and lamps.  She got up and stretched as far as her arm would let her and then peered as far as she could down the hall.  Then she jumped near out of her skin and wrenched her shoulder something fierce when the refrigerator kicked on.

What the…?!
  She tried the light switch, and got nothing, but sure as she was standing there, the fridge was purring away.  Well, probably not almost brand new then, absolutely brand new. 
I wonder where the generator is, since I don’t hear it.
  She shrugged, which hurt, and had to admit that, dumb as he’s acting, Pete
was
an Electrical Engineer after all. 
He’s probably got a bank of deep cycle batteries in the garage, duh!  Fridge is probably full of beer too, assuming any survived this long without being refrigerated.
  Her mouth started to water at the thought of ice and she shook her head to push the thought away.

“How can one person be so smart and so stupid at the same time?” She said out loud and then laughed softly.  “You are so one to talk, girl.”

…

There were a number of problems with time slowing down, not the least of which is the fact that, well, time slows down.  Chuck was losing his mind and it had only been three hours since he'd found out about Sheri.  He was debating whether or not he could get away with going and seeing Mallory when Joel and Rachael came by his tent.  “Hey, can you stand some company?” Joel asked.

“If you can stand me, yeah, I've been kinda distracted the last little bit.  I know Pete and this is just so petty and,” Chuck sighed, “I'd love to say that it isn't like him, but I'm afraid it is.  Petty, and small, and typical, and I'm going to kill him for this.  I swear I am Joel.  I'm sorry Rachael, but I'm gonna kill that worthless piece of crap.”

Rachael laughed, “Don't apologize to me; you're going to have to get in line bud.”

Chuck didn't respond to the last part of what she'd said, although only Joel caught it.  “Still, I'm sorry for my language.  Sheri's always getting on me about it.”  Chuck ran his hand through his hair, “I can't believe he did this, though, you know?  Whether or not it’s like him, I can’t believe he would actually do something like this.”

“Yeah,” Joel replied.  “It's a real wake-up call though, for all of us.  We can't just assume that everyone can keep getting along like they have been.  As long as there are people like Pete out there, we're going to have to be more on our toes than we have been.” 

“Have they decided what they are going to do yet, I mean in the immediate future?” Rachael asked.

“Aside from not staking out the truck no, nothing new that they are telling us.  It's just that the waiting is driving me nuts.  It's like it happened a week ago already and I'm going crazy.  If something happens to her, I don't know what I'll do.”  Chuck hung his head for a few seconds and when he looked back up his eyes were red, but he wasn't crying, not yet.

“The morning the power went out, I asked her if she had somewhere to go, somewhere safe, because I was really worried about her.”  He forced a laugh, “She said 'Yeah, I'm sure the house is still there', and then she told me she had you folks, and Eric and Karen.”

“I was relieved, but I'll admit I was also a little jealous.  I'd kinda hoped she'd, I don't know, need me?  No, that's not right, that's not Sheri either.  That's also the difference between me and Pete.  He's been stung ever since she turned him down at the bar.  But then she invited me to come with her and you all invited me to come along.  Now, the reason I came along in the first place is gone because of that, that," Chuck caught himself this time, and just shook his head.

Rachael reached out and put her hand on Chuck’s arm, “Chuck, I think she knows that…deep down.  She’s not stupid, she’s just gun shy.  She’s had so many people trying to hook her up for so long with so many other people that she’s just shut that conscious part of herself down.  It doesn’t matter though, because she still knows, and frankly, so does everyone else.”

Chuck snorted, “Everyone keeps saying that.  What’s the old saying? The first time someone calls you a horse you punch ‘em in the nose, the second time you call ‘em a jerk, but the third time, maybe it’s time you go get fit for a saddle.”

“I don’t know that we’ve had any saddle makers show up, but I’ll let you know if they do.  By the way, I think the term Kyle used to describe Pete was worthless meat-sack.  Summed it up nicely if you ask me.”  Rachael replied.

Chuck couldn’t help but laugh, which he’d really needed right now.  “Thank you.  We should probably go ahead and get some chow and I should try to turn in for the night.”

“Good call.  Hey, I hear we’re having veal wheels,” Joel jibed.

“Oh please, not those again!” Rachael made a retching sound.  “Do me a favor guys, please take two each, even if you just throw them both away, please!”  They were all three laughing as they ducked out of Chuck’s tent.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Despite her best intentions, Sheri nodded off before Pete came back.  Mostly due to the fact that he’d been gone for several hours.  The screen door squeaking woke her up, and she was just barely sitting up when the front door opened.  “I have
got
to replace the light bulbs now that I have power in this house.  Keep forgetting to do that while there’s daylight.”  Pete pulled out a flashlight and turned it on, the light temporarily dazzling Sheri’s eyes.  “Sheri, I brought you something to eat.  If you promise not to kick me,” he paused, “or do anything else that might cause me to do something either of us might regret, I’ll bring it over and set it gently on the table for you.  Deal?”

“Deal.  Thank you.” Sheri said.

“Don’t thank me yet, they’re a bunch of freakin’ vegans out there.  I went back to the Humvee and grabbed the backpacks from the back.  I can’t believe they sent you guys out there with only your sidearms.  You’ll be glad to know that they came and got your buddy though, apparently they felt he was more important than the truck, because they left it there.”

You are such an idiot Pete, you have no idea.  They didn’t send us out without weapons you fool, they just took them with them when they took Keeler back to base.  They left the Humvee, not truck, because they wanted you to pilfer it, probably wanted to make sure I had something decent to eat.  Hopefully it’s an MRE, you might be dumb enough to give me an actual fork.  And last, and in this case also least, it’s called a rucksack jerkoff.
  The comments were all completely to herself of course, but they helped her feel better.

“Anyway, like I said, don’t thank me yet.  I can’t stand vegan, but I don’t know if I can do these MRE things either.  You want ‘Beef Roast with Veggies’, ‘Chili Mac’, or ‘Meatballs Marinara’?”

“Chili Mac please, I like the candy pack that comes with it.  Usually it’s cinnamon candy and includes gum.”  When he handed her the packet and a water bottle, she shocked him by warming up the Chili Mac in the included warmer.

“So that’s what that’s for.  How long have you been with that Army bunch?”

“Since day one.  We actually hit the Armory on Thursday afternoon.  One of the guys in my neighborhood was regular Army until about seven months ago, and we got together about ten minutes after I got home.” She’d just barely stopped herself from saying ‘once Chuck and I got home’.  She didn’t know why, but something had kept her from saying it.

“We had two normal meals at the Armory before we pulled out and then lived on these for almost two weeks.”  She toyed with the idea of
not
telling him the next part, but figured it would only do her harm in the short term, “Do yourself a favor if you’ve eaten one, Pete, drink a LOT of water, otherwise you’re gonna be a bound-up mess.  I didn’t believe them when they told me and boy did I pay for it for a couple of days.”

“Thanks for the tip.  I believe it though, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it before too.”

Sheri figured she would try to keep the conversation steered away from any potential landmines.  “How’d you get the house rigged?  Solar?  Generator?  Is there an auto parts store within thirty miles that still has any deep cycle batteries left?”

Pete chuckled, “Yes, yes, and maybe but not for lack of trying.  There are probably twenty houses here that are up and running with all the power they need.  This place is no good for wind, but solar is fine.  We have almost a dozen generators and a bank of switches set up.  One of the guys here used to be a programmer, and another was a really sweet engineer.  They set up a panel that monitors the levels of each of the battery banks when the sun is down and kicks on the generators as necessary to recharge the batteries.  If it needs to, it will rotate the generators out to the different banks in series to keep everybody up and running.  It’s scalable too as we add more houses or generators.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to keep all the generating capacity in one place and simply re-energize the town?” Sheri asked.

“Probably, but the problem is that there were already a number of folks with generators, alternators, and battery banks in their houses.  These folks wanted to be ‘off the grid man’”, Pete said in a fairly passable Tommy Chong impersonation.  “Short of killing half the town, which would probably royally piss off the other half, centralizing the power right off the bat wasn’t going to happen.  We could probably convince them to do it now, with two of us who know what we’re talking about.”

“You were always better at dealing with people than I was.  You were the one that got everyone up out of the dam, even got me to help get Cathy up the stairs.  I didn’t even think about that.  All we’d have to do is disconnect the town from the rest of the world, electrically, at the other side of any substations that feed us, and depending on the amount of power necessary, simply plug the generators into the line.”

“They’d have to be wired right, and they’d need to go through some step up transformers, but I’m sure they haven’t all been destroyed.  Shoot, for the size we’re talking, we could make ones that would last long enough to get some manufacturing going to build real ones.”

“So, do you have any light bulbs floating around here?  As long as this isn’t a double throw switch it should be off.  You can save the lantern batteries.”

“Just a second, let me look.  I was more concerned with the fridge and the A/C, I haven’t looked for bulbs.”  The first place he looked was over the fridge, which held cookbooks and a number of pieces of elementary school art class pottery.  Next was over the stove.  Why is it that people always store their light bulbs over the stove?