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

by Jo Lee Auburne

  “Sure thing,” Roy said, going to collect Tammy, who was excitedly asking about her coloring book.

  “What do you want me to do?” Jason asked, thinking about the difficult logistics involved in getting him down the hill without aggravating his leg.

  “Honey, you stay there and shut your ears,” Maryanne answered.

  “You have a doctor in your camp?” Cole asked, clearly amazed.

  “We’ll talk down the hill. Nobody argues with the doctor,” Roy said, knowing that he had earlier today, but that was just to keep her from running off and killing herself in a poorly planned rescue attempt for her daughter.

  “I don’t believe it,” Cole said, as his voice was receding down the hill. “I didn’t know that there were any doctors left.”

  The camp suddenly became hushed; even the dogs had disappeared down the hill, and Jason didn’t make a sound.

  Maryanne busied herself with the IV line, wanting to get that going before they began their conversation, in the hopes that getting Amanda hydrated would help the situation.

  Amanda didn’t argue anymore, as she wished to not further aggravate her friend. And when the fluids began to course through her veins, she was glad for them. She could feel her body soaking them up and realized that to some extent, what she was feeling had been brought on by heat exhaustion and dehydration, but not all of it.

  “So?” Maryanne asked, while sitting on her folded legs and gently rocking back to get a better look at Amanda by the light of the lantern.

  “I found us a couple of chairs for around camp,” Amanda said, suddenly feeling like she wanted to avoid the topic altogether.

  “Speak,” Maryanne said, looking at her sternly. “As your doctor, I need to know what’s going on with you so that I can do my best to treat it. I can see that you’re covered in filth, obviously dehydrated, and you have a nasty burn to your left forearm. That burn alone could cause a person to pass out. The pain must be monumental. And to top it off, you smell like you fell into a gasoline tank.”

  “I got bit in town today,” Amanda said, letting the words gush out tactlessly unfiltered.

  Amanda winced when she saw that the color had drained out of her friend’s normally rosy cheeks. For a moment, Maryanne stared at her speechless, stunned, with all the thoughts about the ramifications piling up in her head.

  “Come again?” she asked, as if she might not have heard it right the first time.

  “I got bit,” Amanda repeated, not wanting to have to say the words again.

  “I see,” Maryanne said, looking past Amanda and trying to collect her thoughts and separate herself from being the friend so that she could be the doctor.

  “Where?” she finally said. “Where did you get bit? I need to take a look at it,” and she sounded like she was now all-business, but there were emotions roiling like clouds across the surface of her face.

  “It’s my arm,” Amanda said, raising it, even though it felt like it was encased in lead.

  “How did it get burned too?” Maryanne asked, looking confused.

  “A kid creeper, maybe two years older than Tammy, sprang at me and scraped her teeth down my arm. There were three superficial scratches that broke the surface of the skin. I quickly disinfected it and then burned it with the disinfectant still on, and it made quite the blaze for a few seconds, and it hurt like hell. The bite isn’t horrible, but I have been feeling poorly today since then.”

  “I see,” Maryanne said again, “and the gasoline smell?”

  “I passed out on the asphalt while siphoning gas from a truck, and before Sam realized it, I was lying in a pool of the stuff. It burns the skin too. Sam poured a couple of gallons of water over me, but I can still feel the burn on my back, neck, stomach, and down my legs. And I’ve been smelling the stuff all day.”

  “Looks to me like you have a chemical burn as well as a second-degree burn on your arm. I can see that it’s blistering and puckering up on your arm. Perhaps, you got to it in time, and you’re not infected. If it wasn’t that deep, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility that you might be okay, that it’s survivable.”

  It broke Amanda’s heart to hear the tone of hope in her friend’s voice. She wanted with everything within her, for that to be true, if for no other reason right now than to not break her friend’s heart by becoming infected and turning.

  “It also sounds like your skin has absorbed the gas, and it’s acting like a poison. The fluids should help you flush it out of your system. It’s possible to die from something like that alone. I’m not surprised that you passed out down the hill, but why earlier today?”

  “It was so hot, and it was shortly after the bite and the burn, and I was smelling the fumes, and then suddenly it was lights out,” Amanda said, with a voice that was low and faraway sounding to her ears.

  “Anything else I need to know?” Maryanne asked, “Do you have any bullet holes, stab wounds, or rabid animal bites? Because it sounds like you’ve seen it all today.”

  “No,” Amanda said, managing a smile and enjoying the feel of the fluids, even while feeling guilty for using them.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing,” Maryanne said, patting her. “You brought my daughter home safe to me, and I will look out for you because you obviously put yourself on the line to do it. Rest, I’ll be back in a minute to clean you up, and then I’ll wrestle you up something soothing to eat that won’t upset your stomach.”

  Amanda could barely take in the doctor’s directions because she had already begun to fall asleep.

  Chapter 58

  It seemed like no time at all before Maryanne was back with a basin of water, a bar of soap, and a rag. The woman began to strip Amanda out of her gas-soaked clothing, and Amanda didn’t complain. Normally, she would have thought it childish to allow someone to do something like this for her, but she felt like a rag doll and didn’t have any energy to fight her friend about it.

  “Oh my,” Maryanne said, taking a look at the red rashlike burns that were spread across her body. “Yes, it’s definitely a chemical burn.”

  The doctor began to soap her down with the warm water in the pan and the rag. To Amanda, it felt soothing and heavenly, when added to the fluids, like she was floating on a cloud compared to how she had felt earlier with the constant burning feeling that seemed to be spreading and heating up all over her body, like the fire that was coursing through town.

  “Now, these clothes are some of mine. I apologize that they’re too big for you, and they might smell a bit, but it’s better to get these washed,” the woman said, tossing Amanda’s clothing to the side before she began to redress her.

  Amanda slept in a type of twilight sleep through the whole process. Without ever realizing that Maryanne had left and came back, the doctor was applying gooey aloe vera from a freshly cut frond, to her burn, and that felt heavenly too. Next, Maryanne gave her two pain pills with a large glass of water. She managed to take the pills but could only drink half the glass before needing to lie back down.

  Amanda wanted to get up and be a part of the dinner that she could hear that they were having, but that was outside of the realm of possibility, as Maryanne would say, and so she stayed sprawled out on her sleeping bag, wearing her friend’s clothing and wondering if the fever would hit her tomorrow.

  “It was so crazy out there,” Sam was speaking, and Amanda was picking up bits and pieces of the conversation during her twilight sleep. “I got to whack my first one at the pawnshop that we broke into.”

  “You wouldn’t believe all the stuff that we found there,” the girl was saying, and Amanda could tell that some time had gone by when she had dozed off.

  “So many creepers and some of them were on fire,” she heard Sam say later. “We barely got out of there, having to fight them off. I must have run over, like, fifty of them to clear a path for us to get away. I was getting thrown all over the seat of the truck as we bumped over them, and poor Red got thrown onto the floor.”

 
; Amanda could hear that this caused quite a stir among the group by the sounds of their reactions. She smiled, thinking of how well Sam did today, and then she fell into a deep, full, sleep.

  She awoke when Maryanne and Roy were rolling her onto one of the foam bed mats that they had acquired in town. A soft pillow was pressed under her head, and she smiled again, but she never fully woke up, so Maryanne skipped bringing her something to eat, choosing rather to let her sleep.

  Amanda awoke in the night and had to call for Maryanne’s help because she had to pee. Maryanne came and said that that was a good sign and meant that her body was becoming hydrated. It was mortifying to Amanda that even with her friend’s help, she couldn’t make it down the hill to The Pit and had to go at the beginning of the path that led down the hill.

  Maryanne told her not to worry about it and that when the rains came, they would wash it all away down the hill. That didn’t make Amanda feel any better about it, but there was nothing that she could do about it. She decided that sometimes, things just were what they were and that there was no sense in worrying about it.

  It was equally mortifying when Maryanne moved her own foam bed over to lay it beside Amanda in case she needed anything else. Amanda wanted to protest, but again, she felt too tired to do a thing about it, especially after the recent potty expedition, and then she was fast asleep, forgetting about the day and oblivious to the pain.

  O

  “Mom, I’m worried about Amanda,” Sam said in the morning.

  Maryanne and Cody were preparing breakfast, and to look at the two of them, one would have thought that they were accustomed to working together and had been friends for a while. Cody was intuitively helpful, so much so that Maryanne kept smiling every time that a necessary item kept appearing in her hand.

  “Can I go check on her?” Sam asked before her mother could even answer.

  “I think it’s for the best that we let her sleep. She put her body through a lot yesterday, and I want her immune system to be tip-top so that she can fight any infection,” her mother answered without looking up from the pot that she was stirring.

  “Well, okay,” Sam said, stealing a glance toward Amanda’s silently sleeping form, while looking worried.

  Sam had awoken with a feeling of panic that she would lose her friend Amanda. And after what they had been through yesterday, she felt closer to the woman than she had ever felt before. She couldn’t wait for Amanda to open her eyes and tell everyone that she was fine and then Sam could see her jumping up and pitching in around camp like nothing had happened. Sam bit at her lip with worry and then turned her eyes to her new friend, Cody, that had apparently adopted her mother as his own. She didn’t know how she felt about that. Emotions were whirling and warring with each other inside of her. On the one hand, she wanted Cody to fit in and have a mother figure because his mother had died. But on the other hand, it felt weirdly strange to see him getting along better with her mother than she did.

  Finally, besot with too many emotions to feel comfortable dealing with, she went to go sit in the silent place partially away from camp that Amanda was prone to use. Out of all the people in their camp, she felt like she could relate the most to Amanda. And for now, Amanda wasn’t here; she was maybe sick, and she didn’t know if she would ever be able to talk to her again. She wanted more than anything right now to be able to go out on future runs together and be real bad asses. Rather than walk, she stomped down the hill, feeling like her feet could help her express some of her feelings.

  “Dad says that you’re a doctor,” Cody said, looking up to Maryanne like the sun only shone on her and that everyone else was some mere mortal that functioned in the dark.

  “Yes, your father is right,” said Maryanne, not able to keep another smile from crossing her face.

  “He usually is right,” Cody said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “Back in the LBZ, the experts said that I was a genius and destined for great things, but now all the world needs are fighters and survival types. But I could learn to be a doctor, and then I could still do great things, and I could help people. Would you teach me to be a doctor?” Cody said this with such heartfelt sincerity that Maryanne couldn’t help but be deeply touched by it.

  “Of course, if you want to learn, then I will teach you everything I know about becoming a doctor,” she said, instinctively reaching her arm out to pull him to her side in a short half hug, because her other hand was occupied.

  “Thanks,” he said and then wiggled away. “Dad said that a doctor is a rare thing these days. He said that he thought they were all dead, until he met you. Dad says that I need to fight and learn to shoot and kill stuff. I don’t like guns, and whacking creepers doesn’t appeal to me. I think my dad’s disappointed in me sometimes now.”

  “I doubt that your father’s disappointed in you, honey. It’s just that he wants you to know how to keep yourself safe. He worries about you,” Maryanne said, surprised when a cup of flour magically appeared in her hand.

  Even though Cody was involved in this heartfelt conversation, he was still able to concentrate on the biscuits that they were making, and he seemed to have a natural feel for what he was doing. She wondered if it would be the same for him as a doctor, and she imagined that it would be.

  “I think that there might be some other doctors out there someplace,” Maryanne said. “But trust me, the world is going to need a whole lot more of them.”

  “Dad used to be a police officer in St. Louis. He was real good at shooting things. He even received some awards and stuff. Sam reminds me of him, you know, good at doing stuff like that. Sam’s totally cool. I wish I could be that cool.”

  “Well, trust me, Cody, doctors are real cool too,” Maryanne said, beginning to stir the ingredients and frowning when the wind caught some of the powders and sent them swirling off.

  “I know,” Cody said, looking around. “Where’d Sam go?”

  “I think that she wanted some alone time. She isn’t much into cooking.”

  “You mean that I could be better at something than her?” Cody asked with a note of awe in his voice.

  “Absolutely,” Maryanne said, forgetting about her lost ingredients and smiling again.

  O

  “It’s just that he’s too trusting,” Cole was saying to Roy. “Even in this world as it is now, he’s always giving people the benefit of the doubt, like they deserve it or something. To me, people need to earn my trust. I’m scared for him.”

  “I can see how that would be,” Roy said, nodding his head.

  The two men had gone down by the vehicles and were sitting and drinking coffee on the tailgate of Amanda’s truck. Cole and Roy had become instant friends, and Cole had spent so many months worrying about his son that he felt glad to finally have someone to talk to about it.

  “What did you do, before all this happened?” Cole asked of Roy.

  “I was a mechanic in town,” Roy said, choosing to leave out that he was also retired military. “And you?”

  “A law enforcement officer in St. Louis, Missouri.”

  “That must have been rough,” Roy said, looking surprised.

  “I loved my job, but you’re right. When the infection broke out, it was tough being in my line of work. All the officers I knew, except one, died. And I don’t know where she ended up,” Cole said while staring out across the desert. “I don’t even know if she’s still alive. I haven’t seen her in months.”

  “Was she a lady friend?” Roy asked.

  “No, just a friend and a respected fellow officer, we rode together for a while. I was her training officer. Later, we would meet for coffee and talk, catch up, mostly on work stuff, but she was also interested in Cody. Cody makes friends easily, so we went out together a few times, not as a date, but as friends, miniature golfing with Cody, pizza, stuff like that.”

  “Sounds like Cody was trying to hook you two up,” Roy said.

  “Really?” Cole said, snapping his head around to look at Roy. “Now that y
ou say that, I think you’re right.”

  “Kids often don’t like seeing their parents alone. How long since your wife passed?”

  “That was over five years ago. She went from cancer, and it was horrible for her, for Cody, for me,” Cole said. “She was too good of a person for this world. I didn’t see it this way at the time, but I think her passing was a blessing because she wasn’t meant for the world as it is now.”

  Roy didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded, and that seemed to be comforting to Cole. And then, they just sat, staring at the desert and sipping their coffee, waiting for breakfast.

  O

  Tammy had taken no time this morning to begin busying herself with one of the coloring books that Amanda had brought back for her. She had been delighted to see all the wonderful things that had been brought for her. In her memory, she could only recall one Christmas morning, and to her it had been like another Christmas morning to wake up to the small stack of presents that Roy had brought up for her and sat by her sleeping bag. She had carefully examined each item, explaining to an attentive Boo what each one was and what it was used for.

  “Boo, we are going to practice real hard at our artwork because Mom says that the world will need talented artists in the future,” Tammy explained, even as she worked to keep the colors within the lines.

  Jason was lying on his chair, smiling as he watched his youngest daughter and thinking that humanity might have a chance yet of redeeming itself from its caustic deeds, if their children had anything to say about it.

  Chapter 59

  “Breakfast is ready!” Maryanne called loudly down the hill.

  Sam, whose stomach had been growling for hours, jumped up and began sprinting, despite the early heat, up the hill.

  Cole and Roy both moved more casually, being sure to put the tailgate up so that a strong wind didn’t make off with some of the items in the back.