Chapter 25

When they pulled into the motel Pat reminded the girls to be quiet about what had happened at the outdoor store. Shasta rolled her eyes to the roof of the truck and assured him that they had heard him a hundred times and that they weren't going to say anything to the others.

As Pat got out of the truck he saw that the Escalade was missing. He got worried and hurried into the motel. He found Pauline walking through the lobby.

"Where's the Escalade?"

Pauline walked into his arms and kissed him, "Sarah went to find a drug store. A couple of the girls have been sick for a few days and this morning they were really complaining about being sick. Sarah said that she thinks its bronchitis. She went to see if she could get some antibiotics for the girls. She said that she's going to talk to you when she gets back about holding off on traveling for a few days to give the girls a chance to get over the bronchitis."

"Did she take her gun with her?" Pat asked.

"I think so," Pauline said with a concerned look on her face.

Pat paused to think, "I don't see where waiting will matter one way or another. I'd rather make sure that everyone is well than have a crisis on our hands by pushing it."

Just then the power went off and Pauline muttered, "Damn, that's all we need."

"That's going to happen more often now," he said, "There's only so much fuel that the coal fired plants can possibly store at the generating plant and the nukes can't take up the slack of the coal fired plants going down. Eventually the nukes will go down too. We should have a little hot water for a while yet."

"But there's no one using the electricity but us," Pauline said with concern in her voice.

"But you have to remember," Pat reminded her, "when everyone disappeared they were living a normal life and they were using electricity at pretty much full capacity. It was the middle of the day and everyone was going about their life just like they did every day. I'm sure that there's a lot of electrical devices running right now that aren't needed but we just can't be running all over the world turning the lights off. A bigger problem is what is going to happen at the factories and refineries when the power suddenly goes off."

"I guess we'll have to learn to live with or without electricity," Pauline said.

"Tell everyone to not open the refrigerators and the icemakers unless they have to. The freezers will remain cold for a long time so we should move some of the food that we'll need into the freezers. The pool will remain clear until we leave so that won't be a problem if anyone wants to use the pool."

Sarah pulled into the parking lot with the Escalade. She got out of the SUV and walked into the motel. She saw Pauline and Pat and walked over to them.

"I got the antibiotics for the girls," she said with concern, "I had to research the dosages and the recommendations. I'm sure that these doses won't hurt the girls. Damn, I never thought that I'd have to do the doctoring this soon."

"You'll do fine," Pat said reassuringly.

For some reason the power came back on and stayed on. Pat figured that it had something to do with the electrical grid shifting power to their section of the grid.

The next two days Sarah nursed the two sick girls and did her best to keep the other girls away from the sick ones. Each day Sarah assured Pat that the girls were making good progress and would be ready to travel when he was ready.

Two days before they were to leave for the long trip to their permanent residence a fight broke out between two of the girls. Pauline stepped in and tried to break up the fight and got a punch in the eye for her trouble. After she had calmed the fight down and separated the girls she came back to the lobby. As she stomped through the lobby Pat could see that she would have a black eye the next day.

"Let's go, we have to talk," she snapped at Pat; almost taking his head off.

Pat followed as she walked quickly away from the motel. She was walking so fast that Pat had trouble keeping up with her. When they were out of sight of the motel, Pauline slowed down.

"Hey, are you going to talk to me or not?" Did I do something wrong?" he asked.

Pauline turned, "That fight was about you. Apparently the girls were arguing about who was going to get you into bed with them and it escalated until they started swinging at each other. Brenda's in love with you and she has decided that she's going to get you in bed and she feels that you belong to her so she was defending her turf. It's time for you to step up to the plate. If you don't do something about Brenda this is going to get out of hand."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play coy with me," she snapped, "I'll get her in a room away from the others tonight and after everyone is calmed down you go to her room and do ... whatever."

"Pauline, I don't..." that was all he got out before she stomped away from him.

Pat walked around until it was almost dark and then walked back to the motel. Several of the girls were swimming and there were some in their rooms. The girls sitting in the lobby talking got quiet as he walked past them. He found Pauline in the kitchen drinking tea.

Pauline looked at him as he walked in the kitchen, "Brenda's in room 206."

Pat saw that she was still mad about the black eye that she was going to have so he didn't attempt to say anything else to her. He left the kitchen.

An old saying came to him as he left the kitchen, "When you walk through the jungle don't go kicking the tigers."

Pat made his way to room 206. He knocked on the door and he heard a voice call form him to come in. Brenda was laying on the bed with a sheet covering her. Her leg was out from under the sheet. She seemed startled to see him in her room.

"Uh, Mr. Pat. What do you want?"

"I want to talk to you Brenda," Pat said in a soothing voice, "What was that fight about this afternoon?"

She began to blush, "It was just nothing. We just had an argument."

"Look Brenda, we have to try to get along. This fighting could tear us apart and seriously affect our efforts to survive. There's going to be some arguments I'm sure but we have to get past them and work together. I guess you know that Pauline is going to have a black eye tomorrow."