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

by Jo Lee Auburne

  “You’ll follow me,” Amanda said.

  Amanda fired up her truck and pulled out, looking back to make sure that Sam was indeed following her. She had another store in mind that was essential toward fulfilling her agenda. But she wanted to make sure that she didn’t lose her perspective again and put them in any unnecessary danger, like she had back at the home improvement store.

  They rolled up on the farm and tractor supply store without seeing a single person or creeper along the way. The town was once again giving off the impression that it was deserted, but she knew that wasn’t true. It might be that all the living people, other than themselves, had fled town, but the creepers were coming eventually.

  Amanda stopped before entering the store’s parking lot because something seemed off about the look of the place but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what was giving her that impression. She left her truck running and reached for the binoculars. Though she could see no movement, she quickly figured out why the place had been giving off warning alarms.

  The store windows were shattered, but that had happened a lot during the looting and would not in and of itself speak of danger, but she could see a lot of shiny brass bullet casings littering both the parking lot and parts of the store, along with what looked like fresh blood and bullet holes in the walls. This, she considered, was most likely the place that the shoot-out that they had heard earlier in the day had taken place. But the question was, “Where was everybody now?”

  She needed to get in there if this long-term plan of her was to work, but again, she didn’t want them risking their lives to do it. She bit her bottom lip and continued scanning the area with the binoculars. With so many bullets, there must have been bodies, but she could only see a couple of creeper bodies that looked like they weren’t freshly fallen. She had to ask herself if this was a trap.

  Amanda tossed the binoculars onto the pile of stuff on the passenger seat and began to slowly roll into the lot, choosing to drive all the way around the back of the store to take a better look. She had known this store well from the LBZ days because they carried a lot of essential items for people like her that had chosen to live for periods of time in the way out part of the desert. Because of her knowledge of the place, she knew that she would be able to roll around the back and complete a loop back out to the front if they needed to jet out of here in a hurry.

  As she drove slowly along, she could clearly see all the signs of a recent gun battle. It was entirely possible that the two bands of raiders had clashed right here only a couple of hours ago in a territory dispute that had been caused by the fire. It was also very likely that all the raiders had left, giving the town up for lost because they had recognized that the fire had no intentions of stopping before it had engulfed most if not all the town.

  In the back, four human bodies were stacked. They were fresh corpses, all with gunshots. She looked away. Even being accustomed to how things were now, it was still difficult to see sights like that. She was sorry that she would be exposing Sam to that, but it was the world that they lived in now, and hiding it from the girl wasn’t going to protect her anymore.

  Amanda rolled to a stop after deciding that there was no one around anymore. They would be partially hidden from view back here, and that would give them a chance to try to load up what they needed without being seen, if someone were to drive by.

  “Is it safe to get out?” Sam asked.

  The girl had rolled her window down and was glancing in the direction of the stacked bodies.

  “Yep, looks like whatever happened here is finished,” Amanda said.

  “Is this where that gun fight happened?” Sam asked, climbing down and letting Red jump out.

  “I think the odds of that being true are good,” Amanda said.

  “What do we need from here?” Sam asked while Red warily sniffed around, his hackles up.

  “There is a lot that we could use from here, but we’ll have to see what’s left. I’m sure that the raiders already looted it.”

  Sam followed Amanda, who had taken her .22 out, just in case, into the store.

  The large bullet holes in the blood-smeared walls were much more real to her up close than they had seemed when looking at them through the binoculars. She stepped over some debris that had been blown off of the shelves by some type of large caliber weapon, probably an automatic.

  There were a couple of collapsible army green cots, still set up on the store floor, with clothes piled on and around them, along with some empty food and water containers. This made Amanda feel like somebody might be coming back for some of this stuff.

  “People were living here?” Sam asked.

  “Looks like,” Amanda said, being sure to check around each aisle to be sure that no one was waiting for them.

  “Do you think that they’re coming back?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better about this,” Sam said, glancing around at the chaos in the store.

  “Me neither, so let’s just grab what we need and hightail it out of here,” Amanda said, finally feeling like she could slide the .22 behind her back.

  Red seemed to concur that they were alone for now.

  The shelves still contained some items, and Amanda glanced over all of them carefully before grabbing another small water pump that they could hook into the truck battery. The one they had been using still worked, but it was old and wouldn’t stay working forever. They could really use this one as a backup.

  The store had carried at least a dozen of them, but there were only two left, so she grabbed both of them.

  “See that little generator on wheels,” Amanda said, “can you roll that out of here?”

  The store had also carried thirty or more different types of generators of all shapes, brands, and sizes. Amanda could only see two left, and she chose to take the smaller one because it would be easier to handle. They had a generator back at camp, but like the water pump, it wouldn’t work forever, and who knew when they would come across another one.

  The only other thing that she could find inside the store that would be of some use to them were jumper cables for charging a battery from one car or truck to the other. The store had previously offered a lot by way of water filters and purifiers, batteries, solar panels, and the like, but all those items were gone now.

  After loading up the water pumps, jumper cables, and generator, Amanda had Sam follow her over to where they stored new hundred-gallon tin drums for water that came with a faucet attached to make getting water out of them easy. They were essentially identical to the one that Amanda already carried around in the back of her truck. There were still a number of drums left so they worked on carrying, one by one, four of the tin ones and a smaller black plastic one over to the truck.

  If the fire was going to cut off their ability to collect gasoline from town, then Amanda was determined to go back to camp heavily loaded with water, enough to last them for a month or so, if they used it sparingly. She hoped that would buy them some time to figure out what they were going to do about their water situation in the future.

  Amanda had not bothered to check the specs out on the moving truck to know for sure just how much weight that it could carry, but she chose to assume that since it was used to move people’s furniture and stuff that it would hold some weight. She hoped so, because the amount of water that she wanted to bring back would be heavy, in addition to everything else that they had loaded in there.

  They had to unload one of the drums when they discovered a bullet hole in it. They went back for another one, since there were still plenty of them left. And then Amanda had Sam help her with carrying a wooden tower back to the truck. These towers were made to hold a full water tank, and she could envision them being able to rig a shower up by standing underneath it and turning on the faucet. Of course, in order for them to feel comfortable using their water to shower, they would need a steady source of water close by to refill it from. But those were all proble
ms that would need to be worked out. The important thing for now, Amanda thought, was that they would have what they needed to carry and store water.

  “I don’t know about you, but this place is giving me the creeps, let’s get out of here,” Amanda said, jumping down from the truck, followed by Sam who hopped down beside her.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” Sam said. “What’s next?”

  “The store across the street is boarded up, and we could use that wood. Let’s drive over there and grab it,” Amanda said, sounding more enthusiastic than she felt.

  The reality was that Amanda could feel the fatigue of the day in the muscles of her body as she walked back to her truck. Her left arm felt as if it were on fire too. Without the thin cotton over shirt, the sun had been beating onto the wound, compounding the pain that she would have been feeling from it anyway.

  Plus, every time she got back in the cab of her truck, she was reminded of the gasoline spill because within the enclosed cab, the smell was strong. Her jeans had been rubbing all afternoon long against the chemical burn on the soft part of her skin between her thighs and around her buttocks, and she could tell without looking that the skin was raw and chapped.

  Clearly, the adrenaline that had been pouring through her system at regular intervals and masking the pain had worn off. She could feel the weariness that the drop in high adrenaline levels always caused, but there was more going on than that. She could feel an aching through all her muscles that felt as if it were down to the bone, and it worried her to think that this was perhaps the feel of the infection setting into her system. If that were the case, then by tomorrow, she would invariably begin to run the fever that would end in her turning into one of the loathsome creatures that she despised. These days, that was everyone’s worst fear, of turning into a creeper. It was viewed as a fate much worse than death.

  Amanda hoped that she was wrong about the cause of the aching in her body. For a moment, she thought that if she were just able to close her eyes and rest for a minute before continuing on, then she would feel much better. She closed her eyes and took a breath in, not even bothered this time by the smell of the fumes.

  Sam was tapping at the window of her truck, and she jumped, startled, and then rolled the window down to find out what she needed.

  “Is everything okay?” the girl asked.

  “Yeah, why?” Amanda queried.

  “Well, because we’ve been sitting here for almost ten minutes, and I thought that you wanted to get out of here.”

  “We have?” Amanda asked, shaking her head to clear out the fog that she was feeling. “I must have closed my eyes for a minute or two, sorry.”

  She slapped her cheek a couple of times and then reached for two water bottles, handing one to Sam.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Sam asked, eyeing her intently.

  “Yeah, honey, I’m fine, just tired is all. I dozed off. It has been quite the day.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, sounding as if she wasn’t entirely convinced. “Are we still headed across the street then?”

  “Yep,” Amanda said, mustering a luster to her voice that she knew she did not feel.

  Sam began walking back to the truck, slowly, before turning to look at Amanda again, as if she were lost in thought and might have another question. But then Amanda could see in the mirror that the girl turned back to her vehicle and hopped in. That’s good, Amanda thought, because I’m not up to answering any more questions just yet.

  Amanda pulled out around the looped parking lot and parked down an alley across the street.

  As they had been noticing for most of the day, the alley was deserted of all things moving except for the blowing trash. The winds had subsided somewhat but not enough to give the fire a chance to die out, and Amanda knew that it was continuing to engulf the town.

  She could tell by the position of the sun that the time must be around four o’clock in the afternoon, giving them a chance to still make it back to camp before darkness fell. She never liked being caught away from home in the dark these days. It wouldn’t be dark until eight o’clock or so, and that left them less than a four-hour window to begin heading back. They could do it, she decided.

  Chapter 49

  They downed waters and ripped boards off of storefronts while Red supervised from a lying position on the sidewalk underneath a board that Sam had rested up against one of the buildings to provide him with some shade.

  “You do realize that most people these days would think that we were crazy to bring a dog into town because of the fear that they would bark and draw in the creepers,” Amanda said, by way of conversation as they worked.

  “Yeah, I get that, but Red’s not like most dogs, and we aren’t like most people,” Sam answered.

  “True on both counts,” Amanda said.

  “Hey, this one was a mattress store,” Sam said, using her hand to shield the sun as she peered into the big glass window that was still intact.

  “No, we aren’t bringing back mattresses,” Amanda said, pausing from work to catch her breath.

  “No, silly, I wasn’t thinking about mattresses, but pillows,” Sam said excitedly.

  “Oh, pillows,” answered Amanda, thinking of how good it would feel to fall out tonight on a pillow.

  She had collected two pillows from the guest room in that family’s house, but there were six of them, and she would feel guilty about using one when everyone wouldn’t be able to have a pillow.

  “Okay, you talked me into it,” Amanda said, going to the door to test it.

  It was locked, of course, so she went to the truck for the crow bar. The door would be easy enough to pry open, and now with the plywood off of the windows, the store would be lit enough to see if there were any creepers trapped inside.

  The door didn’t require much prying, and they were inside easily. There was a relatively small sales floor, piled high with mattresses of all sizes and brands. There were no creepers up front, and Amanda saw no need to check the back office and store room, as there was most likely little of use to them back there, and their time was valuable.

  She identified a pile of new pillows and began loading her arms. She was a little miffed by the fact that now they would be covered in the soot and grime that had been accumulating on her skin. But there wasn’t much to be done about that, so she shrugged it off.

  “Look, I found pillowcases,” Sam announced happily. “How many pillows are you getting?”

  “There are ten here, and I’ll just take all of them. The truck still has some room.”

  Sam seemed to enjoy looking through the various colors and prints of the cases, so Amanda left her to that while she went to off-load the pillows in the truck.

  Before Amanda could jump back out of the truck, Sam came around the corner, carrying not only the pillowcases, but a foam cushion that was folded in three separate places. It appeared that once it was unfolded, it would make a nice pad to sleep on. The folding cushion even had a handle that made it easy for the girl to carry it.

  “Where’d you find that?” Amanda asked, wondering if there were any more of them because she was envisioning the value of having one for all of them.

  “Inside, in the corner are stacks of them, all different colors too,” Sam said.

  “I’ll go grab us some more,” Amanda said, beginning to feel a little excitement herself.

  They had been sleeping on the hard ground for so long that she could only imagine how nice it would be to have some padding.

  “So you aren’t going to tell me that I can’t take it?” Sam asked.

  “If we’re going to start living more civilized, then let’s do it right,” Amanda said, heading back into the store.

  Sam had been right; there were stacks of them. She decided that they should take eight out of the dozen or so that Sam had found. It would be nice to have a spare couple of ones, just in case their party grew, or one wore out or something.

  Once their foam pads were loaded, they
began stacking the wood, careful to pull the nails out first before loading them, so as not to rip or tear any of their other items on the return trip. Besides, they stacked closer together that way, and the truck had begun to fill up.

  Amanda did not even want to think about what a nightmare it was going to be to off-load all this stuff, but in the scope of things, it was a wonderful problem to have, and they could deal with that later.

  “What now?” Sam asked after they had closed the truck back up.

  “We’ve got just about everything that I could have hoped for today, but it would be a good idea to go back to that housing community and see if there’s any more food, gas, medicines, and I need to fill our two empty propane cylinders off of one of their big tanks. Roy put together a regulator for us to attach to a large propane tank to fill our smaller ones off of,” Amanda said, digging the truck keys out of her pocket.

  “Yeah, I guess it’s not like we can be coming to town anymore to fill those, is it?” the girl asked, thinking about what would not be left anymore after the fire had finished. “And we still haven’t found any more chairs. I know that was on your list.”

  “Thanks, Sam, you’re right. It’s hard to live like we’re civilized when we’re busy sitting in the dirt. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some collapsible ones in someone’s garage,” Amanda said, heading back to her truck.

  They arrived uneventfully back in the veteran’s neighborhood, where the ash was coming down in earnest. Amanda pulled to the side of the street, three houses down from the family’s house that they had left not so long ago. There was a truck like hers in the driveway.

  In this rural desert community, white trucks were the most popular form of transportation, and domestic trucks like hers were common. She wanted to grab the spare from this truck because they had the same tire and rim size. She needed another air filter and whatever else she could manage to loot off of it easily.

  “How about you do your little gas trick and get whatever’s in this one?” Amanda said to Sam.