Amanda Carter in the L.A.Z., life after zombies

by Jo Lee Auburne

The bottom shelf held unopened glass bottles of club soda. These she kept. A thorough search of the rest of the kitchen turned up another box of pseudocheese crackers, a bag of beef jerky, a half-pound of coffee grounds, a quarter-bottle of dish soap, and almost half a small liter jug of bleach. This was more like the hauls she was accustomed to finding on the runs, minus the stash of alcohol.

  Amanda figured that at some point, the man must have had a wife or significant other that had liked to bake, but judging by the layer of dust over the items, that had been a while back.

  “Not much here,” Sam said, sounding disappointed.

  “I told you that we don’t normally find so much food in one house,” Amanda said, allowing Sam to get the door for her again.

  It was easy to stuff the items that she had just returned with into the small nooks and crannies of the extra cab.

  “Now, can we go?” Sam asked impatiently.

  “Not yet. A man his age must have a stash of pills upstairs,” Amanda said. “We’ll check the upstairs and then the garage before we leave to go get your truck.”

  “Fine,” Sam said, issuing an eye roll to show her displeasure.

  In the living room, Amanda found a prescription bottle of pain pills, half full. She stuffed the bottle in her pocket knowing that Maryanne would be pleased with the find. The remainder of the room was messy, dusty, and musty, making both of them sneeze. The open window was bringing in bursts of air that stirred the dust up and didn’t help with the air quality.

  The stairs seemed to make the same creaking noises as the previous house, and like the other house, the temperature escalated as they climbed.

  “Yuck, what’s that smell?” Sam said, putting an arm up to block her nose.

  “I imagine that it’s cat feces and urine,” Amanda said, finding the smell as equally repulsive as that of a dead body or two.

  Upon the landing, looking down the hallway, they could see that the carpet was stained with urine spots. The walls up here were bare. Absent any paintings or photos, it lacked the homey feel of the other one.

  “You’re right again,” Sam said, looking down the hallway with contempt.

  “Still think it would be awesome to have a cat?” Amanda asked, not having really been a cat person herself.

  “As if, I wouldn’t lock my cat up in a house like this.”

  “Good point,” Amanda said, taking a peek in the first room, knife at the ready.

  The room had been made into an office, with a computer, bookshelves, filing cabinets, and papers strewn about the desk and floor. On the walls hung military medals and some framed black-and-white photos of men in uniforms standing next to large war machines from another age.

  “Think he’s got some guns?” Sam asked, following Amanda into the room.

  “I would bet the bank on it,” Amanda said, checking to make sure the room was clear of creepers. “Shut that door, would you, just in case. I don’t want anything walking in on us.”

  She began to search the desk while Sam looked over the books to see if there might be something of interest.

  “I found a .45 APC, there’s seven in the clip and one in the chamber,” Amanda said, sounding excited. “That doesn’t surprise me, the military used this gun in both of our world wars. I like this one.”

  “There’s a lot of history books here,” Sam said, running her fingers over the old and splitting spines.

  Sam grabbed a couple of titles that she felt her father might be interested in and slipped them into her pack. She thought it would be nice for him to have something to do while he healed up.

  “Found a nine-millimeter too,” Amanda said, removing the clip to check that it was loaded. It was. She slid the clip back in and then clicked the safety on. “The nine-millimeter comes in handy because it’s easy to fire, and it holds fifteen rounds.”

  “I think I’d like something like that,” Sam said, admiring the gun,” before Amanda slipped it and a half box of rounds for it into her pack.

  The small closet contained old army uniforms. Amanda thought that it was sad that they would be burned up in the fire, but she couldn’t be trying to save historical relics so she closed the door on them.

  The bathroom off the hall was a large source of the foul smell. The cat had used the litter box until it had overflowed and then had moved on to the bathtub. The smell made her eyes water, and for a brief moment she thought that she might toss those barbeque chips back up. The cat had clawed the toilet paper off of the roll, and there were puffy tufts of it all over the floor.

  “Uh, I’ll wait in the hall,” Sam said.

  “Sure, you might as well. We both don’t need to be sick right now,” said Amanda while opening drawers and cabinets.

  She returned to the hall with a bottle of aspirin, some ibuprofen, a new tube of toothpaste, and an unused stick of men’s deodorant. Once in the hall, she took a deep breath of cat urine and considered herself grateful for having escaped that room with her lunch still rolling around in her stomach and not spread out across the bathroom floor.

  She saved the master bedroom for last and opened another door to a room that in the other house had been the child’s. This room was organized and tidy; it had been claimed by a woman that had liked to sew. There was a sewing machine, lots of fabric, and a number of quilts folded neatly atop one another. On the walls were needlepoint pieces of art that depicted various types of fruit and several welcome greetings. Overall, the room was cheerful but not of much use to them.

  Amanda did toss a few spools of thread that had sewing needles stuffed into them into her pack. It might come in handy for repairing their clothes at some point in the future, or for stitching up a wound.

  She checked the closet, only to find another sewing machine and more fabric but nothing more of use.

  The master bedroom was unappealing in its messy state, and a cursory search did not yield anything of value by today’s standards. But the bathroom medicine cabinet was a veritable jackpot of pill bottles, most of which she did not know the use for. She scooped up all of them and dumped them in Sam’s pack, along with a new pack of disposable razors, a roll of toilet paper, and some mouthwash that still had the plastic seal in place.

  “How come we didn’t check the garage at the last house?” Sam asked as they were walking back down the stairs.

  “That was the oversight committee’s fault,” Amanda said, expecting Sam to get the joke, which she didn’t.

  “What?” Sam asked perplexed.

  “I guess that’s an old-people expression,” Amanda said with a sigh. “I forgot because of all the commotion.”

  “Oh,” Sam said, “I was hoping that we might just skip that and move on to getting my truck.”

  “I’m sure you were,” Amanda said, exiting the house.

  These houses had no connecting door into the garage from inside the house, but there was another door in the backyard that would lead her into it.

  “It’ll be dark in there, so get your flashlight ready,” Amanda said. “We’ll make noise before we open the door. If there’s anything in there, hopefully it’ll show itself and not surprise us.”

  But before they could get to the garage door, loud popping noises stopped them in their tracks. Knowing the sound for what it was, Red dashed underneath the truck to seek cover. He whined, as if wanting them to do the same.

  “What is that?” Sam asked, having frozen in her tracks, head tilted toward the direction of the sounds.

  “That is gunfire,” Amanda said, “and lot’s of it.”

  “They aren’t shooting at us, are they?” she asked with eyes wide.

  “No, trust me, you’d know it if we were getting shot at. That’s coming from somewhere else,” Amanda said, trying to picture in her mind the location of town that it was most likely coming from.

  “It kind of reminds you that we’re not alone here, doesn’t it?” Sam said, shivering.

  “Yep,” Amanda said. “There are times when you might believe that the worl
d is now deserted except for the creepers, but don’t fall for it. There are survivors out there, and plenty of them have guns.”

  “What do you think is going on?” Sam asked, still looking toward the sound that continued now in periodic bursts.

  “It might sound callous, but I don’t know and don’t care to know as long as they leave us out of it,” Amanda said. “The bands of raiders will sometimes shoot it out with one another. The fire must have tensions on high alert.”

  “I guess,” said Sam. “That’s a lot of rounds of valuable ammunition that they’re using, must be something serious.”

  She turned to follow Amanda to the garage door, where Amanda proceeded to pound on the door with her fist. They waited, but nothing stirred.

  “This means that there’s most likely nothing in there, but don’t count on it,” Amanda said, positioning Sam to the side before opening it.

  Thankfully, the garage smelled like a garage as the scent of it wafted out—a mixture of dirt, dust, and engine oil, but nothing too foul.

  It wasn’t hard to tell that the garage was clear. The man might have been messy in his home life later on, but the garage was ordered and pristine, as far as garages went. Everything was organized neatly in the small space, with an older model sedan resting in the middle of the concrete slab, looking like it had not been used for quite some time.

  “Wow, that’s a seriously old car,” Sam said as she played the flashlight over it.

  “What are you talking about?” Amanda said. “That car isn’t a classic, it’s a European luxury sedan that was manufactured in the 1980s.”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean. That car was made before I was born.”

  “Kids,” Amanda muttered as she closed the small garage door and began scanning the area in earnest.

  There was a five-gallon gas can with nothing in it, but she’d take the can and maybe even get some gas out of the car that was sitting here.

  “What about these tools?” Sam asked, scanning the pegboard that they were displayed on, complete with the outlines to mark where they belonged.

  “Grab anything that looks useful.”

  “Okay, but I don’t know much about tools,” the girl said, pondering over their possible uses.

  “Roy’s the mechanic, if it’s not something simple, I don’t know either,” Amanda answered. “But take Roy back a few goodies, and he’ll be happy that we thought of him.”

  “Sure,” she said, grabbing for something that looked cool, but she couldn’t be sure what it was. She slipped it in her pack along with a few others.

  “There’s a small fridge over here,” Sam said, indicating a spot under the workbench.

  “Go ahead and check it.”

  Amanda pulled the length of tubing out of her pack and began the gas siphoning process, letting it trickle out while she continued to scrounge around.

  “There were three bottles of beer,” Sam said.

  “Take it.”

  “I figured you’d say that, already done. Should I get the battery from the car?”

  “Don’t bother,” Amanda answered. “The car’s been sitting here in the heat of the summers for a while. I can’t imagine that the battery will be of much use to us now.”

  “Oh, Amanda, I found a tire patch kit and something called plugs for fixing flats. Is that good?”

  “Absolutely, take it.”

  The gasoline had stopped dripping out, and she retrieved the tubing and hefted the can. They had collected about a quarter of the can, and that was better than nothing these days.

  “What about this tube of stuff that says its radiator sealant?” asked Sam.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Oh, yes,” the girl said, “I found two cans of that stuff that you spray into a flat tire.”

  “Good job,” Amanda said, knowing that all these finds could become essential to them sometime in the near future especially with no town anywhere near them once the fire finishes sweeping through.

  Unfortunately, on her side of the garage, there didn’t appear to be much else of use, so she went over to join Sam who was digging through some drawers under the workbench.

  “He sure held on to a lot of nuts and bolts,” she said.

  “Go ahead and keep a few of those kinds of things. I don’t know what Roy will be needing to rig us up some creature comforts around camp.”

  “How about this?” Sam said, holding up a one-pound coffee can full of both.

  “Yep,” Amanda said, trying herself to make sense of some of the tools up on the pegboard.

  “Now, can we go?” Sam pleaded.

  “Oh, I’m glad that I didn’t miss this,” Amanda said, ignoring Sam’s question.

  She would need to take what they had already out to the truck and come back for the box of engine oil that she had just spotted. It had five quarts of oil in it.

  “Go with me, and we’ll drop this stuff off, and I’ll come back for this,” she said, pointing to the case.

  “Sure,” Sam said with a shrug.

  Chapter 40

  Amanda had to leave the case of oil resting beside the solar panels in the former veteran’s backyard because she couldn’t find a place for it in the truck. Red was sitting on Sam’s lap and happier to be there than Sam was to have him there. Leaving that house, she had had a moment of sadness wash over her as they rolled past the creeper hanging out of the window. She wished, like with so many of the others, that there was the time and that she had the energy to bury the dead. He had obviously provided a great contribution to the service of their country, only to end up as a creeper hanging out of his window. But she pushed the thought out of her mind, deciding to concentrate on the here-and-now and their survival rather than all the should have, would have, and could have’s that existed to mess with her mind.

  When they had returned to the truck, the windshield was covered in a thin layer of ash, causing Amanda to have to use the wiper blades to send it flying away. She wanted to make sure to be on the lookout for another truck like this one that she could take the air filter from, knowing that this truck would invariably arrive back at camp with the current one clogged with soot.

  Finally, much to Sam’s pleasure, they were in route to pick up the second truck. Amanda had tried to judge the location that they had heard the gunshots coming from and hoped that she was right about whatever trouble that was going on not being around them; otherwise, things could get real bad, real fast.

  “Do me a favor, and dig through my pack and get that nine-millimeter, will you,” Amanda said to Sam.

  “Sure, whatcha gonna do with it?”

  “It’s not what I’m going to do with it. It’s for you. I engaged the safety, and there’s a round in the chamber and a full clip. Keep it on you, and don’t use it unless you have to, but if you have to, I want you to shoot to kill,” Amanda said, being sure to sound stern.

  “Wow, cool,” said Sam, hustling to grab the pack.

  “Remember, if you want to use it, you have to . . .” Amanda began, but Sam finished her sentence for her.

  “I have to disengage the safety, got it,” Sam said, pulling the weapon out of the bag and looking at it with what amounted to a sense of awe.

  “You’re worried about the gunshots, aren’t you?” Sam asked.

  “Yep,” Amanda said as she rolled out onto the main street in town, hoping that they didn’t encounter anyone.

  The shooting had ceased by the time that they had exited the garage, but that didn’t mean that everything was copasetic out there.

  Amanda drove up and stopped uneventfully at a tall chain-linked gate that was locked with a chain and a combination lock. She was relieved to see that it looked undisturbed since she had been here last and locked it behind her. Sometimes that acted as a deterrent, while other times, it seemed to invite trouble.

  A tall chain-link fence ran around the property, with rolls of barbed wire on top. The people that had owned this place had wanted to make sure that none of their stuff
was messed with or stolen. Amanda took a quick look around to see if there was anyone around before she exited the truck.

  “There’s a lock on the gate,” Sam said, as if that might stop them from gaining entry.

  “I know, I put it there,” Amanda said, hopping out of the truck.

  Sam proceeded to do the same, but Amanda halted her, assuring her that she would be right back.

  The lock was new and spun easily around to unlock the preset combination of numbers and she was back to the cool air in no time.

  “So we’re going to rent a truck?” Sam asked, laughing at her joke.

  “In a matter of speaking, yes,” Amanda answered, driving through the gate.

  Once on the inside, she debated about whether to lock them in or not and decided on the former. If someone were to come after them, it would take them a little time to get past the lock, and that was valuable time that she could use to help them in whatever way possible.

  Six large moving trucks were parked alongside each other, all sporting the logo of the agency in big red letters. When she had scoped this place out before, she had made sure to keep the key for truck number 16, being sure that it had a full tank of gas. Inside the van compartment, she had slid four metal rails and stashed two small bottles of water in the cab, because you never know what you might be in need of when dealing with this type of heat.

  Amanda rolled their truck around to the far side of number 16, hoping to conceal it from any passersby. And then they all exited the vehicle, giving Sam the opportunity to see her new ride.

  “Here you go,” Amanda said, dangling the keys to the truck in front of Sam.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Sam said, looking exasperated and not reaching for the keys right away. “A moving van is what you picked out for me to drive. That’s so not cool.”

  “What, are you afraid of being seen driving around town in it?” Amanda said, goading her.

  “Okay, okay,” said Sam, finally reaching out to snatch the keys away from her.

  “Trust me, you’ll like it. You get to ride real high up from the road. It has air conditioning. I checked to make sure that it works, and it’s got a CD player so that on the way back home, you can listen to music. And the best news yet is that if you come across too many creepers in your path, you can just run them over quite easily,” Amanda said and then gave the girl a wink.