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

by Jo Lee Auburne

  Amanda grabbed a jacket that Tammy could grow into from the closet, along with two pair of jeans and a couple of T-shirts. Tammy was growing fast, despite their forced fasting, and it would be difficult to clothe her soon once she outgrew what she had. The girl would probably never even realize that these had been boy’s clothes.

  Amanda shut the door to the room on the way out, and that only left the master bedroom and bath to check out. She stacked the items in her arms on the landing with the other supplies and then they moved on to the last room of the house. She would be glad to get back down and out of the house because it was hot and stuffy up here, and she was sure that she had not been drinking enough water to replace all the sweat that she had been so profusely losing through her pores.

  “Do you want me to take this room?” Amanda asked, kindly thinking of the girl’s feelings.

  “No, I’m fine. I’ve dealt with it, and I have the picture,” Sam said, following Amanda into the room.

  Amanda was sure that she had not entirely dealt with it, but that was a struggle that they all lived with these days, and sometimes emotions would erupt at odd times when memories stirred, needing to be dealt with all over again. And that didn’t even take into account the nightmares that were so prevalent these days.

  The master bedroom was adorned rather stoically, lacking much for furniture or knickknacks. It appeared that Ms. Garcia had preferred spending her time in her office and spending her money on her son.

  The room was clear, and Sam went to the closet while Amanda checked the master bathroom.

  In the bathroom, Amanda found two new adult toothbrushes, more shampoo, conditioner, a bottle of pain reliever over the counter pills of an off-brand, some leftover antibiotics that would certainly come in handy, and some first-aid supplies.

  When she exited, Sam had picked out several pairs of jeans and some tops that were spread across the bed.

  “We wore the same size,” Sam said. “Who knew?”

  “That’s good,” Amanda said. “Those jeans that you’re in now are probably ruined for good.”

  “Yeah, I wish I could find some clothes to take home to Mom. But she has kind of a fuller type of figure, these wouldn’t work,” Sam said, shrugging her shoulders and then gathering up the items.

  “I hear you, just don’t say that to her. You know, she’s still kind of sensitive about that,” Amanda said, leading the way out.

  “I know,” said Sam. “It’s like Mom’s all skinny now and everything compared to before, and she still thinks that she’s fat.”

  “Welcome to womanhood, Sam. I would have loved to have your mom’s great set of boobs, and she looks at me like I’m the ideal body type.”

  Sam laughed and gathered up the items on the landing until her arms could carry no more. Amanda grabbed what was left.

  Back at the truck, Sam climbed over the water tanks, and Amanda tossed her the items, so that they could try to keep things somewhat organized.

  “It is so hot back here,” Sam complained while Amanda peeked around the truck to see where the fire had reached while they were in the house.

  The fire had not yet reached the veteran’s house, but it was getting close—close enough that Amanda wondered if she should move the trucks farther down the street, but there wasn’t much street left before the housing complex ended and a field that used to grow melons began.

  “Let’s pull down a couple more houses before we start scrounging again,” Amanda said once Sam had jumped out of the truck. “We did find some more toilet paper, and everyone will have you to thank for that when we start getting down to it.”

  “I know, right,” the girl said, brushing sweat from her brow with the back of her dirty-gloved hand. “I hate it when we run out of toilet paper. I think I’d rather skip a day of food.”

  “You say that now, but wait until you’re hungry,” Amanda said.

  “We forgot the garage again,” said Sam.

  “Oh, yeah, let’s go check it out.”

  It wasn’t like her to forget things like that, but the fatigue that seemed to be creeping over her body, along with the aches and pains that made it feel like she was coming down with the flu, had been affecting her decision-making process. She cringed as she followed Sam around to the back. She knew that it wasn’t the flu that she was coming down with.

  “Don’t open the shed,” Amanda said when she caught Sam looking at it. “There’s a rattlesnake in there, and I’d prefer not to disturb him.”

  Red had already alerted to that fact and had trotted to the shed, sniffing around.

  “I bet he thinks that he’ll catch us some dinner,” Sam said, adding a chuckle.

  Amanda pried open the garage door and shone the light in to a very organized room that had nothing to do with fixing cars or storing tools.

  The room was dedicated to an obvious obsession with archery. Bows of various types and sizes lined the walls. Arrows were stacked neatly and were laid out on a worktable. There were paper targets and extra bowstrings. Amanda imagined, judging from the various sizes of bows, that they had both been into the sport.

  “Too cool, Ms. Garcia!” Sam exclaimed, going over right away to put her hands on a bow.

  “What do you think, Sam? Do you want to learn to shoot a bow?”

  “Absolutely!” the girl exclaimed. “They are quick, quiet, and deadly, like me.”

  “Go ahead, and pick out some of these bows and lots of the arrows, some bow strings, and we’ll take it all with us. It’s a pretty cool gift from your teacher if you ask me. I’m sure that you can learn to shoot with them.”

  Sam was all smiles as she left the garage with her arms loaded. Amanda was carrying all she could too. She knew nothing about the sport. But with all this stuff, Sam was sure to find something that suited her, especially with Ms. Garcia being the same size as her.

  When they exited the garage, the smell of smoke was pungently strong, but Amanda figured that it was because the garage had been a relatively smoke-free zone.

  Red was frantically digging into the dirt to try to gain entry into the shed to go after the snake, but the ground was so hard that he had merely scratched the surface. He noticed them, turned back to the shed, as if he was being forced to make a difficult decision. In the end, he turned away from the shed and followed them around the house, back out toward the trucks.

  When they rounded the corner of the house into the front yard, Amanda realized why she had thought that she had smelled more smoke. The winds had picked up and were now blowing directly toward them, sending big wafting black waves of air at them. The fire was already jumping houses, propelled by the strong winds and as much as Amanda would have liked to stick around, this was their cue to leave. She didn’t want to live through a repeat of the home improvement store fiasco.

  Chapter 53

  Even though she knew it was time for them to go, Amanda stared down the street, watching the fire spread, as the wind whipped at her and her eyes watered from the smoke. She watched the throng of creepers that had gathered to the fire, like she had seen back at the store. She couldn’t help but wonder how it was that they could sense the fire.

  “Weird,” she said to no one in particular.

  “What’s weird?” Sam said.

  The girl was standing beside her, and unlike Amanda, she did not find the sight to be fascinating, but rather, she thought it revolting enough to make her stomach churn.

  The street was now packed with zombies, some of them ablaze, while others weren’t.

  “Back in the LBZ, I used to be a fan of zombie movies, but I would watch them and tell myself, ‘That couldn’t really happen, but it sure is entertaining.’ Yet here we are in the LAZ, and zombies are a very real part of our life, and I wouldn’t really call them entertaining,” Amanda said.

  “Yeah, so let’s go, okay, before they get all real on us,” Sam said, growing impatient.

  “I wonder what’s left of them. They can smell, maybe see, and hear things even thou
gh they’re so decayed it doesn’t look like it would be possible. I wonder if there’s still some primal part of their brain that’s cognizant of what’s going on around them,” Amanda said, not appearing to notice the girl’s impatience.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Amanda, and knock it off,” Sam said. “You don’t know for sure that you’re infected, and you’re not one of them yet, so stop thinking about it, and let’s go.”

  Amanda was thinking about it. She had been spending a lot of time thinking about it the past few hours. She wondered what she would feel in the moment that she turned, or if she would be aware of feeling anything at all.

  “Now!” Sam said, giving her a shove.

  Amanda blinked and then shook her head, as if that would clear the fog that had been steadily coalescing in her mind.

  “I’m just tired is all,” she said lamely, knowing that Sam wasn’t going to buy that.

  “Yeah, okay, whatever, just get in the truck, and lead us out of here,” Sam said.

  “I can do that,” Amanda said, taking a big breath of the smoke-filled air. “I can do that.”

  Amanda had to take them farther west before she could circle around and head east toward the river. The fire had blocked all the central roads through town, and she was left with the scenic route. She blasted the tunes on her CD player even though it went against her rule to never listen to music while in town because she was so bone weary that she worried that she might doze off while driving. Sam had already been worried about her; it would be worse if she drove off the road and had an accident because she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

  Her arm hurt where she had been bit. It seemed like it was the burn that she had inflicted that felt so bad and not the actual bite, but she couldn’t be sure. It would sure be a wonderful ruse if she really wasn’t infected and all that she was feeling right now was just a natural consequence of the tough day that she had had. She hoped that was the case and that the heat, exertion, gas fumes, burn, and lack of proper hydration were all that was wrong with her. For all she knew, she was suffering from heat exhaustion.

  She automatically drove for the river, so familiar with the town that she didn’t even really have to think about it too much. She drove in a daze, and before she knew it, they had arrived at the Colorado River.

  The river looked wild today because the wind was blowing across it so violently that it was making white caps form within the quick-moving water. In the LBZ, this had been a popular vacation spot, with people bringing out their water and off-road toys because there was the river to play on and a wide span of desert to explore on both sides of the river. Amanda generally tried to avoid this particular stretch of the river because even though it had easy access to the water, via a boat ramp, the place had been crawling with creepers that were leftovers from the LBZ era. But the fire had forced her hand and rather than have to backtrack another twenty miles out of their way in the opposite direction, she had chosen to check this area out again.

  Amanda turned onto the access road and rolled slowly down, checking the surroundings. There were generally a lot of creepers at this end of the river, but not this evening. The area appeared to be abandoned, and she backed her truck down one of the boat loading areas until it was close enough to the river that the hose would reach. She watched as Sam did the same, pulling snuggly up beside her truck, back first.

  They decided to use both of the water pumps to make things go quicker, and because the battery that was located under the hood of the moving truck was too far away to connect the pump to, they used two of the spare batteries that they had collected for Roy and his solar project. Should Roy get their solar hooked up, then they could recharge the batteries again in that way.

  “Be careful down there up close to the water,” Amanda said. “Every once in a while, a submerged creeper will climb out at you, or there will be one floating by that grabs a hold of the bank and pulls itself up onto land.”

  “That’s all we need, is submersible creepers,” Sam said with a shiver. “There are so many really icky things to have to watch out for these days.”

  “Sorry, kid, but it’s just the way it is.”

  “So are the creepers like alligators, hiding out under there?” Sam said, peering into the water but being sure not to get too close at the same time.

  “I guess, but I haven’t really seen too many alligators in my lifetime, so I wouldn’t know how similar they are,” Amanda said absently while tossing the hose into the river before connecting one of the pumps.

  “Who do you suppose would win a fight, creeper or alligator?” Sam asked.

  “An alligator would win, I imagine, unless he was outnumbered by creepers,” Amanda said, liking that Sam hadn’t lost all her fun side during the day.

  “That’s what I thought too,” Sam said, before connecting the leads to the other pump.

  The water pumps hummed and vibrated against the metal water tanks they were setting on, making conversation more difficult, and both of them were too tired to be adding any difficulty level to their day, so they fell into silence. Amanda found the sound of the water pouring into the tank, mixed with the humming of the water pump, to be soothing, like a lullaby. She drifted off to sleep while sitting on the side on the corner of the bed of her truck, her back pressed up against the window to the cab.

  “Amanda, you’re water’s overflowing!” Sam yelled, waking her.

  “Oh,” Amanda said, jerking awake with a start and quickly moving to unhook the lead to the battery.

  Water had poured out of the top of the metal tank and, because they were resting on a slant, had filtered down the bed of the truck and back toward the river. There wasn’t anything in the bed of the truck that couldn’t get wet, but Amanda was concerned about having fell asleep right out here in the open when she was supposed to be keeping an eye out for Sam. She just couldn’t remember a time lately when she had felt this fatigued.

  Amanda stifled a yawn and jumped out of the bed of the truck, with the water pump and a length of the hose. Now she would be working with Sam to fill the remaining tanks that were stored in the back of the moving truck, and that would probably make it easier for her to stay awake and alert.

  The back of the moving truck was hot and stuffy, and the vibrating noise of the pumps was magnified because they had two pumps in such an enclosed space. Eventually, both women moved to wait for each tank to fill from outside of the vehicle because they didn’t want to become deafened by the noise and the heat had become unbearable.

  Amanda had always enjoyed going on the runs and getting away from camp, but now all she wanted was for the tanks to fill quicker so that they could get back to camp. She wanted to go to lie on one of those mats and put her head on a pillow and fall out for a few days of sleep. She didn’t even think that the extremely uncomfortable temperature would keep her from going out and staying out for a while.

  This trip had been a wonderful bonding experience for her and Sam, except that she found that now Sam kept eyeing her oddly but without saying anything. Amanda knew that she was tired, but she must be acting differently than what the girl was used to, or else she wouldn’t be studying her so often and so intently. Amanda didn’t say anything about it, and neither did Sam, both of them choosing not to try to compete with the sound of the pumps. Amanda thought that that was just as well because she really didn’t feel like having any lengthy in-depth discussions at this time.

  All she was hoping for on the return trip was that she could stay awake the whole drive. This fatigued attitude of hers was a little depressing to her because normally, she would have enjoyed pumping her music way up and basking in the beauty of the desert for the entire drive home. But tonight, the desert seemed a lot less beautiful and more of an obstacle that was keeping her from getting to sleep than anything else.

  “Won’t they be surprised when they see all the stuff we’ve got?” Sam asked, trying to bring some enthusiasm back into their adventure, once they had finally been able to
unhook the pumps.

  “Yep,” she answered, less than enthusiastically.

  This elicited a crestfallen look from Sam, who had every right to be proud of their significant accomplishments today.

  Amanda had to give the girl an A for her effort, but she just wasn’t feeling it.

  “Hey, do you mind if I grab a couple of CDs for the trip home?” Sam asked, remembering that she could listen to music for the remainder of the trip.

  “Sure, just leave the one that’s in the player, that’s my favorite. I want you to know that you did a good job today. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day,” Amanda said, hoping that the girl’s good spirits wouldn’t be dampened by her lack of energy.

  She wanted Sam to go home wildly happy about their cache, and more importantly, she wanted the girl to understand that she had done well during some very difficult situations and a very trying day.

  “Thanks,” Sam said, looking back to her and giving her a broad smile. “I appreciate that, I’m just worried about you, is all.”

  “I don’t think that its anything that a little rest can’t fix,” Amanda said before returning the smile and working hard to make sure that the corners of her mouth were really upturned for the girl’s benefit.

  Sam had had a tough day too, and she deserved to be able to rock the tunes and enjoy the drive back to camp without any additional worries. The good news was that from here on out, it should be fairly smooth sailing. They most likely wouldn’t run into a single creeper or raider on the road back. And if all went well, the only thing that would be required for the remainder of the trip would be some careful driving.

  Red must have known that there were no creepers lurking under the water because he had gone to the edge to get a drink. That water would taste cooler than what they had been giving him all day, and it was probably a treat for him. So far, the infection had not been transmittable to the animal kingdom, so they need not worry about him drinking directly from the river. It seemed to be a disease that targeted Homo sapiens exclusively. For that, Amanda was glad because their job of survival would be made so much more difficult if they were also battling infected animals.