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

by Jo Lee Auburne

  “Okay, I can see how that can be cool,” she said. “What do you think, Red, want to go with me in the truck?”

  Red had slid underneath the big truck to get his paws off of the hot asphalt of the parking lot, and he looked to her expectantly, knowing that she was speaking to him but not knowing of what she was referring to.

  “Can I get in, and start it up?” Sam asked, now anxious to be driving it.

  “Sure, get it going, and start the air conditioning because we’ll need to head out of here soon, but first, I have to get us some more gas.”

  Sam climbed up into the cab, and Amanda heard the engine flare up with ease as she walked back and grabbed the partially full gas can that she had tied on to the side of the truck because she couldn’t get it to fit anywhere else.

  Amanda turned to see Sam—bandana dropped below her chin, grinning widely back at her from her perched position in the driver’s seat. She gave the girl a thumbs-up sign and took the can and the siphoning hose to one of the trucks. She had been taking gas from these trucks for weeks. It was a good thing that no else had come up with the same idea, but she was glad that they hadn’t.

  Amanda felt like she was an egg that was frying in a pan as she stood there with the smell of gas fumes, waiting for the can to fill. Feeling woozy, she stepped back away from the operation and could see the fumes rising up in the heat before dissipating in the air.

  For a while, she felt mesmerized by the waves of fumes until her vision became fuzzy and her ears began to ring. She went to take a step toward the truck and the water, when everything went black and she lost consciousness.

  Amanda awoke with the feeling of drowning, as she spat water out of her mouth, coughing. Sam was standing over her, having just finished pouring a one-gallon jug of water on top of her upper body.

  “What the hell,” she said irritably while struggling to sit up.

  “You passed out, and I didn’t notice right away, and gasoline was running out all over you,” Sam said, and the girl looked worried.

  Amanda glanced quickly to the gas can and saw that Sam must have snatched the tubing out to help save the gas from being wasted. She shook her head, trying to get more oriented to space and time because she felt like she was floating.

  She picked her arm up and brought it to her nose. “Whew, I smell like gas,” she said, turning her nose up.

  Not only could she smell the gasoline, but she could taste the smell, and it made her stomach roil and churn.

  “Can you do me a favor, Sam, and bring another couple of those jugs of water over here and douse me?” she asked, pushing herself onto her feet to get out of the puddle of spilt gasoline.

  “Right now, I’m a human torch,” she said and couldn’t help but laugh.

  Sam had returned with the water, and Amanda stripped her gas-soaked T-shirt off. She stood there in her undershirt, letting the water sluice down her. The water coalesced with the gasoline that she had spilled, making pretty rainbow patterns in the sun.

  The .45 APC dug uncomfortably into her back, and she pulled it out, smelling it. It smelled of gasoline too, and she wasn’t sure if she should be firing it until it could be cleaned up; she didn’t want to blow herself up. She would have to ask Roy once back at camp. Until then, she would either use the shotgun that she had found in the pawnshop or the .22 pistol that she kept in her pack if trouble broke out. She couldn’t help but chuckle—not because there was anything legitimately funny, but because the situation was a great example of Murphy’s Law at work.

  “It’s not funny,” Sam said. “I was really scared. I thought maybe you had died or something. I was worried that you’d come back as one of them.”

  “It was just the gas fumes,” she said, dismissively, hoping that she was right about that and not that she was sick with the infection and already showing symptoms.

  “Ummm, are you sure it’s not?” said Sam, pointing to her arm without bothering to finish her sentence.

  “Yes, I’m sure, and don’t be ridiculous, Sam,” Amanda said, a little unkindly, while still experiencing a feeling of light-headedness.

  “So you’re sure that you’re okay?” Sam asked, not in the least phased by her disgruntled tone.

  “Well, let me see,” Amanda began, “I’m overheated, sick from fumes, doused in gasoline, and have just passed out in a rental truck parking lot, during the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Additionally, I’ve been saved by a fifteen-year-old girl, and I guess you could say that I’m not doing so good.”

  Red was lying under one of the trucks next to her. He whined, and Amanda realized that she was ranting and probably looked like a real lunatic. She stopped speaking and brought her arm up to sniff it again and see if she still smelled like gasoline.

  “Do you want another gallon of water?” Sam asked, eyeing her quizzically while holding up another jug.

  “Lay it on me, sister.”

  This time, she attempted to scrub her arms and face while she was still being doused.

  “How about now? Are you feeling better now?”

  “Much, thanks,” Amanda said, feeling contrite about going off on such a fanatical diatribe to the girl.

  “So I saved you, huh?” Sam asked.

  It was obvious that she had zeroed in on the compliment that had been mixed into her ranting earlier.

  “Yes, you saved me, and I’m very grateful,” she said, already feeling the hot wind evaporating the little bit of water that remained on her skin and beginning to work on wringing it out of her clothes.

  That’s a shame, she thought. I was beginning to like the cool feeling.

  Two of the empty water jugs that Sam had set down blew across the lot, skimming quickly over the asphalt underneath a couple of trucks before one of them became lodged against a tire; the second one continued on until it hit the chain-linked fence on the other side of the lot.

  Sam ran to retrieve them. Amanda went to the truck to grab another shirt. She was in the habit of keeping her spare clothes in the truck because there wasn’t a suitably clean place back at camp for them. But over time, their ability to wash their clothes happened so seldom that she had been switching out more dirty clothes for less dirty ones. So now, she would dig around and see if she could find one of the dirty shirts; at least it wouldn’t smell like it had been soaked in fuel. She held up the shirt that she had taken off and let the wind drag it away, which it was quick to do.

  “Your shirt just went flying,” Sam said, trotting up with the two now-empty containers that they could fill with river water later. “Want me to go get it?” the girl asked, clearly out of breath from her run in the hot sun.

  “Leave it,” Amanda said, looking at the myriad of supplies that were all stacked atop her clothes in the extra cab of the truck. “I can’t reach my clothes,” she stated, “not without reorganizing everything.”

  Sam tossed the two empty jugs atop the pile of stuff in the backseat.

  “You have that white tank on, and it’s hot out, maybe you should just call it good,” said Sam, matter-of-factly.

  Amanda shrugged and slammed the truck door. The kid did have a point, she figured. She had already been bit, so there wasn’t any point in putting something on that might offer some protection. Over the years out in this desert, her naturally olive skin had become a toasty brown color, so the risk of sunburn was minimal.

  She could still smell the fuel and knew that it would be nice to wash up with some bar soap soon, but she didn’t figure that this was the time for that, considering the gravity of their situation.

  From here, the ash wasn’t coming down as hard, but they still had a lot to do and very little time to do it in. And then there was also the clashing raiders to think about, all riled up from the fire and from being displaced. She used to know where they hung out and would take steps to avoid their territory, but now she didn’t know how to do that. The fire would have scattered them all throughout the town, and that was a bigger concern to her than the creepers. People co
uld be much more ruthless with their intentions, and they were packing enough heat to feel that they could spend a barrage of bullets. If she and Sam ended up in a firefight with them, they would be gravely outnumbered and would never make it back to camp.

  She didn’t want to think about that possibility and what it would mean for the others, so she decided to press on and just try to be smart about it. There was nothing else to be done.

  Chapter 41

  Amanda could feel that the gasoline was still burning her skin underneath her jeans and that the seams of her underwear were rubbing into her uncomfortably. But when you added that to the bite she had received, the burn on her arm from the lighter, and the itchy, scratchy feel of her throat and lungs from the smoke and the gas fumes—it became just another day in the LAZ.

  “Are you sure that you’re okay?” Sam asked, looking at her skeptically.

  Amanda surmised that she must have been wearing an expression that denoted her level of discomfort. She made a point of grinning broadly to Sam.

  “Right as rain,” she said, using a term that she had often heard her grandmother use, not really knowing if she had used it in its proper context or not.

  “I guess that’s good,” Sam said, still eyeing her warily.

  “Let’s pop some of the hoods on these other trucks while we’re here,” Amanda said. “It looks like they’ve been fairly well maintained, at least outwardly, so let’s hope that their batteries are strong. And I think it might be a good idea to grab a few other things from them while I’m at it. It’s really Roy’s forte, but the trucks look to be identical, and that means that I can take some air filters and whatever else I can manage to pull off quickly. I think we’ll want to keep your truck for a while and a few extra parts might come in handy in the future.”

  “I can snag the batteries,” Sam said, after chugging down a bottle of water. She tossed Amanda a bottle too.

  “Thanks,” Amanda said, catching it.

  “But first, I have a question,” Sam said, looking like she was thinking about something before she wanted to say it.

  “Ask away,” Amanda said, throwing her arms out widely.

  “Well,” she began, “all this is going to burn right?”

  “There is a better than good chance that all this will burn, yes.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, nodding her head. She looked like she had come to some sort of a decision. “Then I’ll get us some more gas because I have an idea about that.”

  Sam had been impatient with their slow gas siphoning process and had spent some time considering how they could get the gas out quickly without having to get a mouthful of it when you had to suck on the tube and then watch as little by little small trickles went into the can.

  The girl went to dig around in the bed of the truck and then inside the toolbox. She grabbed a plastic tent spike, a hammer, and a couple of empty gas containers.

  “If you could get us started by opening up some of those hoods,” Sam said as if she had been in charge of their operation from the start, “then I’ll be ready soon to start pulling those batteries, once I’m done here.”

  And just like that, she walked to one of the trucks, slid underneath it, and punched the plastic tent spike into the truck’s fuel container. Being that it was plastic, there was no chance of a spark, and with the hammer, she was able to easily punch through. She was ready with the can and liquid came gushing out, filling her container rapidly.

  Amanda looked on for a second, not able to believe how resourceful that child had become, before she slipped into action. There were three more empty five-gallon plastic containers and another metal one. She grabbed these up, dropping one off with Sam and resting the other three under the next truck, positioning them by the tire so they wouldn’t blow across the lot.

  “And I thought that I was teaching you some things,” Amanda said, in a tone that clearly denoted pride.

  Amanda couldn’t help but think of all the time she had wasted standing around while gasoline trickled into containers when it could have been as easy as that. She knew she was right about believing in the girl’s abilities, but this really helped to cement the thought. Of course, this plan of Sam’s only worked if you planned to never make use of the vehicle, which in this case was true.

  “I’ll start popping hoods,” Amanda said because it didn’t look like Sam needed her help. The girl had already moved on to the next truck and would be filling all their available gas containers in a minimal amount of time. She hoped that they could come across a few more empty containers out there because with Sam’s new method and another truck with plenty of storage, it was entirely possible that they could be returning to camp with over fifty gallons of gas, which would certainly take some of the pressure off for a little while.

  Amanda opened three of the hoods and began collecting the air filters, which was a fairly simple process minus the burns she was receiving on the underside of her forearm from the hot metal of the truck, but when she added that to her growing collection of injuries, it didn’t seem that bad.

  By the time she had the third air filter, Sam was already unhooking one of the batteries, and Amanda instructed her to put that at the back of the moving truck.

  The truck she had picked out for Sam looked to be in pristine condition. She hoped that was true for it inside and out. It had twenty-four feet of enclosed storage space that would be extremely valuable now that there was the added complication of the fire; she planned to fill it up today.

  The sound of vehicle engines nearly sent her into a panic, as she looked for Sam, and Red and tried to judge how much time they might have before the rapidly approaching vehicles would reach them. She determined it to be not very long, a matter of seconds. The wind had carried the sound to her sooner than had it been a still day, and for that, she was thankful. It gave them a small window of opportunity to get themselves ready for contact with others, probably raiders.

  “Hear that?” Sam asked, whispering as if they might overhear her.

  “Yep, quick, get to the other side of the truck and stand in front of the tires, that’ll hide your legs from view. Take Red and keep him quiet and still,” Amanda said, already beginning to move.

  Amanda positioned herself by the front tire of the truck that they had picked out, and Sam and Red went to crouch down together at the rear tire.

  She had had the foresight to park their vehicle out of sight, should someone happen to pull up to the gates. The way that she was having them position themselves on the other side of the big rental truck would keep them from being spotted right away and offer them an element of surprise. But that is about all the advantage that they would have because by the sounds of it, there were multiple vehicles approaching from the east. Whether or not they would converge upon this spot, she could not guess.

  Red whined, knowing that he needed to listen to Sam and sensing trouble, but the asphalt was hot. By the way he kept lifting his legs and shifting his weight, Amanda could tell that the hot asphalt was burning the pads of his feet.

  Amanda reached behind her back for the gun and felt nothing but empty space. An awful feeling of dread washed over her as she remembered the sequence of events that had caused her to drop off the gun at the truck. The truck was a mere ten feet away, but she couldn’t risk moving now when the sounds of many vehicles were nearly upon them.

  “Do you have your gun on you?” Amanda asked of Sam.

  “Yes,” Sam said, still whispering.

  The sound drew closer, and a few seconds clicked by while her heart felt like it was beating out of her chest. The sound passed on the next street over. Amanda could tell that it was multiple vehicles, and they were all traveling fast, certainly not on the lookout for them. She felt herself able to take a full breath again, even though when she did, the noxious smell of fumes assaulted her all over again.

  “That was close,” Sam said, still whispering but looking relieved.

  As soon as Sam released him, Red dashed under the truc
k and into the shade.

  Amanda was thankful that they had not run into them out on the road. Sometimes survival came down to timing, and oftentimes timing was a chance happening. It might have been nice to consider who they were and where they might be headed, but she opted not to as she was feeling a very real sense of urgency again. They needed to get back to work.

  “One battery out,” Sam said as if reading her thoughts. “I’ll go get the next two.”

  Amanda nodded and went to her truck to grab her .22 pistol that she had always used because of its simplicity and the ease to which she had been able to find ammunition for it compared to some of the others. The nine-millimeter rounds were hard to find these days. She slid the gun behind her back until it was pressing against her skin and her jeans. Now she felt a lot more comfortable getting back to work at taking parts off of the other trucks.

  When it was all said and done, she had salvaged a fan belt, several water hoses, and an alternator. Sam had finished with the batteries, and Amanda had her roll two spare tires, out of the garage bay of the on sight shop, to the moving truck that they would be leaving with. And then they both worked to roll out a large floor jack that she assumed would be appropriate for this big of a vehicle, but she would need to ask Roy about that. But there was no point to taking the extra tires if there was no way to put them on the truck, so she hoped that this jack would work.

  “There are four metal rails already loaded in the back,” Sam said, passing Amanda on her way to grab some more tools from the shop.

  “Yep, I put those there the last time I was here, just hoping that no one would mess with it and that I’d have someone to drive this truck out of here on this run.”

  “I guess that’s me,” Sam said, pleased to feel that she was making a significant contribution to their survival effort.

  While Amanda was at it, she grabbed two more cases of oil from the shop, a couple of oil filters, a large socket wrench, and some fittings, which when she matched them up, would work to unlock the lug nuts.