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

by Jo Lee Auburne

  “Don’t be mean, Dad. Look, when we left St. Louis, we had stuff. You had lots of weapons, we had a car and some food, but we have nothing but two shovels now. You don’t even have your lighter anymore because they took it. How are we going to sanitize the water at the river without a way to make fire and with no pot to put the water in?” Cody asked, sounding like he was the adult. “We’ll die if we don’t go with them. You know that.”

  Amanda could hear the silence that stretched between the two, even as her ears strained to listen in case they began to speak again, because though she shouldn’t think so, it was rather entertaining. But there was no need. The two of them had reemerged back in front of her. She did her best to act as if she hadn’t heard anything.

  “We’ll come with you, but the first sign that you’re not the kind of people that I want my son around, and we’re gone,” Cole said flatly.

  “Suit yourself, it’s not like you’re our prisoners or anything,” Amanda said.

  “Yes!” Sam said, giving the boy a smile and a wink.

  “Sam, can you pass down a bag of jerky and a couple more waters. We need to get on the road again,” Amanda said, turning for her truck. “You two will come with me.”

  “Can’t Cody ride with me?” Sam asked in a pleading tone.

  “Yes, Dad, can I?”

  Cole looked to Amanda and then looked at the single seat that was available in her truck. It was true; either Cody rode with Sam and Red, or Cody would be sitting on his dad’s lap for the ride, and though the boy wasn’t full size yet, he was big enough to make that kind of situation uncomfortable for both of them.

  Amanda took a long look at Cody, trying to assess whether or not he would be a threat to Sam. The boy looked like a cherub, with two dimples in a face that still had baby fat, even though the rest of his body was thin and emaciated. The boy’s sandy brown hair had angelic looking curls to it, like his father’s. It was easy to imagine that in a scuffle, Sam could best the boy, and if that didn’t work, Red would step in. And to top it off, the boy sounded like he wasn’t any kind of a fighter.

  “Sure, kid, you can ride with Sam and Red. He’s a wolf, so don’t try any moves on my girl, okay?”

  “A wolf, really, that’s so cool,” Cody said, running excitedly around the front of the truck to go to the passenger side.

  “What are you doing with a wolf?” Cole asked.

  “Long story, better put your shovels in the back of the truck,” Amanda said, nodding to her truck.

  By the time that Sam pulled back out in the lead, night had fallen, and they still had miles to go before they would reach camp. But unlike before, when Amanda had not wanted night to reach them before they made it home, now she was glad for it. With potential raiders out looking for Cole and Cody, it would be harder for them to follow the footprints in order to find them. Amanda just hoped that the headlights from their vehicles would not alert the raiders to their location. But from where Cole had described, the newly set up raider camp to be, they had just turned away from it and were headed farther out into the desert, thus the chances of the enemy seeing their headlights was probably slim to none now.

  “Thanks for taking the chance on us,” Cole said. “I know these days that it’s difficult to trust people. I get it.”

  “You, I wouldn’t trust,” Amanda said flatly. “You look like a dangerous man that knows how to handle himself, and I’m still not certain about you. It was Cody that cinched the deal.”

  “Oh,” said Cole, nodding, “he makes friends easily, and I worry about that.”

  “Well, try not to worry too much because he’s made friends with the right people. You’ll see when we get to camp,” Amanda said before yawning broadly. The encounter had left her exhausted all over again. She thought of some of the music stars during her lifetime that had collapsed on stage during a tour because of exhaustion; she could relate.

  O

  “I’m not kidding, enough is enough,” Maryanne was saying. “It’s all the way dark, and my baby still isn’t home. We need to go out there and stop wasting time.”

  “Not a chance,” Roy said firmly, feeling in his gut that they would be home soon. “We already discussed this, and it’s just too dangerous.”

  “We can’t leave them out there in the dark with God-knows-what lurking around,” Maryanne said, sounding exasperated.

  “As much as I hate to say it, Roy’s right, honey. We stay put,” Jason said, expecting to get an avalanche of disapproval from her.

  He was not disappointed.

  “Of all the people that I would think would be on my side,” she said, allowing her blood pressure to rise, until she could feel the pulsing of her blood in the vein at her temple.

  “Sorry, honey, it’s the truth, and you wouldn’t want me to lie to you, would you?”

  “Whose truth is that? That’s our daughter out there with the raiders and the creepers and that god-awful fire. If everything was okay, then they would have been back by now,” she said, suddenly feeling faint. She had allowed herself to become too upset.

  Roy had begun to light the lanterns, but he noticed Maryanne lose her balance and ran over to steady her.

  “You need to sit down. You’re too worked up,” Roy said kindly, understanding where her worry was coming from.

  “We don’t need you suffering from a stroke or a heart attack now, Maryanne,” Jason said. “Please, honey, sit down, and let them have a chance to get back to us.”

  “You haven’t seen Amanda in action more than that one time when she rescued us. She’ll get Sam home to us. You need to trust that,” Jason said, hoping that he was right.

  “I trust Amanda, I just don’t trust everybody else,” the woman said, sitting as Roy helped her down.

  She looked so unlike herself, sitting in a little heap with a posture of defeat, small and deflated. Roy could only hope that Jason was right and that they would be back soon, or the dynamics of their little group were about to change for the worse.

  “I promise to keep a lookout for them,” Roy said. “And if they haven’t made it back by morning, I will personally go looking for them. But you are staying here. The world is in too short a supply of doctors these days. You are far too valuable to be sending out into the field on some special op that you aren’t equipped for. End of story,” Roy said, feeling badly that it was necessary to take such a staunch approach to the situation.

  He wasn’t one to want to be involved in conflict, and generally, he avoided it whenever possible, but he couldn’t at this time. His father had told him that there was a time to take a stand and a time to let things be and that more often than not, letting things be was the better course of action. But he definitely felt like now was the time to take a stand before he and the doctor were to go out on a suicide mission that did no one any good.

  “Mommy,” it was Tammy’s small voice.

  The little girl had picked up on the mood of worry and tension around the camp, and she was feeling insecure, which was really out of character for her.

  “Yes, honey,” said Maryanne, wrapping the girl up in her arms and pulling the child down into her lap.

  “Amanda and Sam will be back, right?” she asked. “Amanda promised me a coloring book, and even though Sam doesn’t like me much, I like her and want her back.”

  “Sam loves you so much, honey, you’ll see when they come back, you’ll see,” Maryanne said, feeling that if she could convince her youngest daughter of this, then it would be true.

  O

  “You’re looking a little worse for wear,” said Cole from the passenger seat of Amanda’s truck.

  “Thanks,” Amanda said with sarcasm dripping from her voice. “It’s not like you look like a champion yourself or anything.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean anything offensive by it, I was just saying.”

  “Yeah, well, we had a real rough day, and I think that I took the brunt of it,” Amanda said, trying to concentrate on the red set of tail lights in front
of her, while at the same time, keeping a look around to make sure that they had no impending company descending upon them.

  “That’s a nasty wound on your arm,” Cole said, completely undaunted by Amanda’s reticence to engage with him civilly. “You didn’t get bit, did you? And maybe you’re trying to cover it up by a burn?”

  Amanda slammed on the brakes of her truck, sending a small avalanche of goods raining down on them from the extra cab.

  “Look, you don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but I’m in a foul mood, I hurt like hell, and that is all none of your damn business. We are going home to some really good people, people that I would die to protect. If you try to hurt them in any way, then I will kill you myself because they’re too nice to do it. Got it? And yes, I was bit,” Amanda said, letting loose a torrent of words that came flooding out like water from a loosed dam. “I’m not trying to cover it up. I was trying to disinfect and clean it because it was really rather minor, but there’s a chance that I’m infected, and if I don’t have long to live, I’ll use my time making sure that my friends are going to be safe around you.”

  “Sorry, sorry, it’s just that we’ve been through a lot, me and Cody, and I never know whom I can trust or who’s hiding what these days. I didn’t mean any offense. It’s in my nature to be direct, not tactful,” Cole said, and he really did sound apologetic. “Can we get going again because I really don’t want to lose sight of them?”

  Amanda didn’t want to lose sight of them either, and she began to drive fast enough to catch up. The steering wheel shook in her hands as the truck shimmied and bumped over the rough terrain. But it turns out that she had nothing to fear because Sam had stopped at the upcoming turn and was awaiting direction from her. She flipped her left blinker on and watched as the big lumbering vehicle began to make the turn, slowly and carefully.

  “That Sam’s a good driver for someone so young,” Cole said in his way speaking the truth while trying to repair some of the damage he had caused by offending Amanda.

  “Yes, she is,” said Amanda, knowing that her voice sounded caustic.

  “It smells like gas in here,” Cole said, sniffing around to try to determine the source. “Do you have gas spilling?”

  “It’s been a long, long day, and yes, I had gas spill all over me, and my skin is burnt, my lungs are screaming, and I have the window down to try and air out the truck. Is there anything else you would like to say before I crank the tunes way up to keep from having to visit with you?”

  “Sorry,” Cole muttered again, feeling like there was no winning with her. “But yes, I’ll need to talk to your group because they might not realize it, but they’re in a lot of danger from this group that I left today.”

  Amanda felt tempted to stop the truck again because her heart had begun to race at the thought of a group of cannibals out to get them. But she continued driving and made sure to take a breath before questioning him on the subject.

  “How many?”

  “There were about fifty of them until the fire horde and the shoot-out. Now there are thirty. Oh wait, twenty-eight since we left,” he said. “How many in your group?”

  “You’ll see when we get there,” Amanda said, suddenly feeling like she had ice running through her veins.

  If Cole’s information could be trusted, then there were twenty-eight bad-ass raider cannibals that had it out to get them, and they were no longer as safe as they had thought that they were. There were six in their crew, and Roy is the only one she would trust to go into a gunfight with because at least he had some experience with the use of guns, and she and Roy had already survived one shoot-out in town a while back. They had a small arsenal now, but very little by way of ammunition when she considered the firepower that she had heard being used from town today. Their prospects of being able to fight off a group of twenty-eight heavily armed raiders were bleak at best.

  Amanda cranked the radio up. She was suddenly feeling tired and weak again, and she needed some time to process what she had been told. In a way, she was glad for the information, but she didn’t want Cole to see that. She still didn’t know if he could be trusted and hoped that the two of them had not been sent as a plant to infiltrate their little group and lead the raiders straight in. She had a lot to think about other than how bad her body felt.

  Chapter 56

  “I see two sets of headlights off in the distance,” Roy said, excitedly jumping down from the boulder that gave the best view of their entrance road. “I think they’re back!”

  Roy jumped down from the boulder while Maryanne leapt to her feet, inadvertently tossing Tammy out of her lap. Jason tried to push himself out of the reclining lawn chair but fell back again. He had been having a bad pain day and hadn’t wanted anybody to know. But he realized that he wouldn’t be going anywhere even with help.

  Roy and Maryanne both grabbed flashlights, and Roy grabbed the shotgun and his nine-millimeter and began to move down the hill with Tammy following.

  Maryanne turned back to her youngest child.

  “You need to wait right here for us, okay?” she said to the girl, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her wide eyes.

  “Okay, but I want to help,” she said, already turning away from her mother’s grasp to go back to camp.

  Boo followed her, like she was the girl’s little shadow.

  “Come to your papa, honey,” Jason said, able to commiserate with how Tammy was feeling because he was feeling it himself with not being able to go and greet the returned crew.

  Once down to the Jeep, Roy handed Maryanne the shotgun.

  “What do I need this for?” Maryanne asked, staring at it in her hands like it was some form of dangerous animal.

  “That’s for if it isn’t them,” Roy said, digging the keys to the Jeep out of his pocket.

  The headlights were still far enough out that Roy and Maryanne would need to hop in the Jeep to go and meet them. There was a good chance that they would be able to catch up with them at The Trench because it would take them a while to get the trucks across. Roy imagined that the two had probably had a tiring day, and he wanted to help, and Maryanne was unstoppable in her desire to see her daughter as soon as possible and assuage her fears.

  O

  Sam slowed to a stop before The Trench and then jumped out, leaving the big truck idling in park.

  “What’s this?” Cole asked. “Is this your camp?”

  “No, this is The Trench, it’s one of the things that keeps us safe in our camp,” Amanda said, opening her truck door and leaving her truck running.

  Her muscles hurt, and her legs felt shaky as she climbed out to go to the back of the big truck to collect the rails.

  “Sam is so cool,” Cody said excitedly to his father. “She’s killed like fifty creepers today alone, and she drives, and she’s only a year older than me. Can I learn to drive next year?”

  “If we have a vehicle by then, then you can learn to drive,” Cole said, looking to his son with surprise.

  It had been a while since Cole had seen his boy this happy. He had begun to think that it was a sight that he would never see again. But yet, here Cody was enthusiastically talking a mile a minute about a new friend that he had made.

  “I might have exaggerated about my creeper kill count,” Sam said, whispering to Amanda.

  “Honestly, Sam, I don’t think that it was an exaggeration after you consider all the ones that you ran over back at that store when they were swooping in on us,” Amanda said, wincing from the pain in her body as she reached to roll up the door to the back of the truck.

  “Really, no kidding,” Sam said, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of the metal door rolling up.

  “So how do you get the trucks over The Trench?” Cole asked.

  “We used to use wooden planks, but we brought back some metal rails from town for this big truck,” Amanda said while pulling herself up into the back of the truck.

  She was impressed that their load had not
become too jostled about during their drive in on the bumpy road. As she shone the flashlight around inside the big enclosed space, she could see that the caps on the water tanks were still in place, meaning that they had not lost any water either. She smiled. Even though it had been a rough and perilous day, they were coming home with enough to ensure their survival for a while, even with the two new additions to their party, and make it possible for them to be able to take care of their own needs in the future.

  “Anything I can do?” Cole asked while peering up into the back of the truck.

  “Yes, you can grab these rails when I slide them out,” Amanda said.

  Amanda handed down the first rail, which Cole grabbed, while Sam and Cody talked together a little ways off to the side. She knew that for Sam, finding a friend amidst this really messed-up world must feel like a real milestone for her. Cole couldn’t help but feel the same way about it as he listened to tidbits of their conversation.

  “Uh, we have company,” said Cole, with worry in his voice.

  “What?” Amanda asked, snapping her head up so quick that she began to see stars floating in front of her eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” Sam yelled into the truck. “It’s one of us.”

  “How can you be sure?” Cole asked, still sounding nervous about it.

  “We know because there’s only one way in and one way out of camp,” Amanda said, reaching for the second rail while still feeling dizzy.

  “Oh,” said Cole while grabbing the rail, “that makes it a more defensible space.”

  Yeah, right, thought Amanda. Wait till he takes a look at our small group, and then we’ll see how defensible against the raiders he thinks that we are. Amanda didn’t mean anything negative by the thought, but she did know that when it came to an army, they had none.

  Amanda heard two doors slam and figured that they had arrived. Naturally, they would have been worried when she and Sam had been so late getting back from town. Additionally, they would have undoubtedly seen the fire even from here because of the massive amount of smoke that it was producing, and this would have worried them more.