Up with the dawn.

The pair of you make out lazily until Todd drifts off to sleep, peaceful silence descending on the dark room when his movements slow and breathing softens. You lie awake, nestled against him, for some time, thinking and planning, working over a million possibilities in your mind. Thoughts of hunger, danger, the coming winter, your potential pregnancy, and the complications of all of these coming together at a time of near human extinction... It's a bleak set of circumstances.

You manage to get a couple of hours of disturbed sleep, but having Todd's warmth next to you definitely helps to keep you calm, and you still feel more refreshed when the first fingers of dawn creep through the window and caress your troubled face.

Deciding that you might as well get up, you quietly slip from the bed and tuck Todd in behind you. Going to the bathroom to freshen up, you clean yourself as best you can, devote a quarter of an hour to maintaining your smooth, hairless legs and underarms. Then you clear a few stray patches of regrowth from around your fairly neat little patch of pubic hair. Concession to before times beauty standards that you can't yet break yourself from complying with. Prior to the plague, you maintained a full Brazilian wax of your lower regions, which is pretty impractical now for obvious reasons. You do your best to keep your lips and asscrack hair-free, and otherwise have had to live with keeping a clear bikini line. After many years of enjoying a hairless feel down there, you aren't ready yet to fully give up and let it all grow back. With your dark hair, it would look like a wild jungle in next to no time.

Reasonably satisfied with your efforts, you regard yourself in the mirror and try to see what Todd sees. You've never been unconfident, but your appearance feels rather unremarkable to you. You're in good shape from your prior athletic lifestyle and the rigours of wasteland living, but weight loss due to sparse nourishment has stripped some bulk from your bust and reduced the feminine swell of your hips, leaving you with an appearance that feels a little too mannish for your liking. The general loss of most of your body fat reserves has left your face looking unfamiliar: too angular and sharp, but at least it still mostly looks like you.

At least your hair is still the same. It's adapted well to a low-maintenance regime. You try to rinse it once a week at least, but without access to products it has actually flourished in a way that you didn't expect. Maybe it really was just marketing bullshit all along. After initially being overloaded with natural oils, it's begun to regulate itself and has a lustrous fullness that you could only have dreamed of back in the day. Admittedly it's pretty unkempt at best, and keeping it under control is not easy, but you mostly just pull it back in a loose ponytail to get it out of the way, and it tends to not be an issue.

At least Todd seems to love it, you think to yourself. It feels good to be desired again, and having something... some one to live for is energising, after many months of teetering on the brink of despair.

You slip your clothes back on, relishing the warmth that they contribute in the chilly air, and head downstairs to have some breakfast and prepare for the coming day.

***

Todd comes down sleepily, dressed in his strangely mismatched gear that you assembled for him yesterday, and smiles through a yawn at the sight of you.

"I don't think I'll ever not feel panic if I wake up and you're not there." He gives a rueful look. "Months of sitting at home by myself... I don't want to go back to that."

"Me neither. That's why we have to look after ourselves. Here, have someting to eat."

He munches on the small handful of crackers and trail mix that you offer him, taking occasional sips of water to soften the exceedingly dry food. "So. We're going to find a ride. What's the plan, boss?"

You smile despite yourself. Even after dispelling his illusions of how in control you are, his persistent faith in you is both endearing and reassuring. "I think we should start local. I'll bet we find something within a block or two. Maybe even on this street. There's a few locked garages that I noticed on our trip out yesterday, and I know that a fair few of the neighbors had cars they were proud of keeping in good nick. Just a little bit of light burglary and grand theft auto for a..." you think. "Uh, Tuesday? morning."

Todd checks his watch, which confirms that it is indeed Tuesday. You'd better have a calendar system in place before that thing runs out of battery, otherwise you'll rapidly lose track.

"Anyway, I think the safest way to do this is for you to keep watch from upstairs while I check the nearest houses. I built this very hi-tech alarm device that you can use to draw my attention if you see somebody coming."

You hand him an empty food can that you half filled with bits of scrap metal and re-sealed with duct tape.

"Throw that as hard as you can into the street towards where you last saw me. It should make enough noise that I will hear it even if I'm inside a house. If or when I find something, I'll come back here before trying to get the car moving - we probably want to drive off immediately and make ourselves scarce instead of making more engine noises and sticking around while we load up."

Todd seems reasonably happy with the plan, although is a bit nervous about allowing you out of his sight. You silence his worry by saying that it's going to be necessary at times, and we just need to take precautions.

You switch out his pistol for the 9mm you prepared, adjusting his belt and holster and showing him the small differences in how the two weapons operate.

"This will be easier to use. The magazine holds more than twice the number of rounds as the other one. The bullets are smaller, so they won't bring somebody down as easily, but it's still very much a lethal weapon. We also have hundreds of rounds for it, so you can use it to keep bad guys' heads down if needed, while I try to flank them." He nods and hefts the pistol in his hands. You approvingly note his discipline of controlling where its pointing and keeping his finger off the trigger.

You elect to equip yourself with your brother's pistol, leaving the revolver stashed on the side of your pack as a back up. You could also benefit from having a weapon that's slightly easier to handle, after all. Now that you have plenty of belts and holsters from the sheriffs armory, you won't have to keep it stashed in a pocket like you rather worryingly made Todd do yesterday.

Sending him up to your bedroom window again, you check over yourself. No need to carry much with you for this outing, so it's just the pistol strapped to your thigh and a mid-sized hatchet - the most suitable tool you could locate in your Dad's toolbox for breaking into homes.