“How bad is it?” Jason called over from his position in the chair.
He hated not being able to move around, especially in a crisis situation. And though he was getting the gist of most of their conversation, he could not hear all of it, but he did know that his wife wasn’t just worried; she was downright scared.
“Promise you won’t let him shoot her, not till you’re sure,” Sam said, and this time, she was pleading.
“I promise, not till we’re sure,” Maryanne said, in a voice that sounded like it was coming from faraway, like it was somebody else’s voice, talking about somebody else’s friend.
“What’s wrong?” Roy asked, and he looked wild-eyed and was out of breath from running up the hill.
“It’s the fever, she’s got the fever,” Maryanne said.
“Are you sure?” he asked, hoping that there was some kind of a mistake that had taken place.
“I’m sure, she’s burning up.”
“This isn’t good,” Roy said, looking terrified because of all the implications associated with the fever.
“Sam, take Cody and go down the hill for a little while,” Maryanne said, sounding defeated.
“No, I’m staying right here,” she said defiantly, staring her mother down.
“You go and take Cody, or I swear that I will beat you senseless!” Maryanne said, standing and looking like she had just been possessed by some demonic entity.
Sam gawked at her mother, and in that moment, she was 100 percent certain that she would follow through with the threat. Sam backed away, staring from her mother to Amanda and then back to her mother. She had never in her life felt the sense of loss that she was already feeling. It felt like a chasm had ripped open in the ground beneath her and would swallow her alive. She ran, and Cody and Red followed after her.
Sam ran out of the camp and down the hill, with eyes blurred by tears, feeling humiliated and afraid. Not only was her best friend now a potential creeper that would be shot in the head soon, but she had been treated like she was only some child to be sent away, an unimportant part of their “adult” decisions. She tripped because the tears had blurred her vision. She fell into a graceless heap into the sandy dirt. She felt like that chasm had indeed swallowed her.
Sam bawled and wailed, while Cody held her, trying to soothe her, but to no avail.
“We should send somebody after them,” Jason said, feeling helpless and hating it.
Jason received no response and looked like he would go himself as he struggled to get onto his one good leg.
“I’ll go,” Sky said, quietly. “I’ll go and check on them, and I’ll take Tammy with me. It might be dangerous for her to stay up here, until we know more.”
Tammy had noticed the commotion and had gone straight to her father, where she stood, looking confused and agitated.
Sky had not known Amanda long, but she had immediately liked her and had begun to already feel close to her. She hung her head as she walked slowly down the hill. The wailing grew louder the closer she drew to the parking area, and she began to dread the next few hours.
“How did she seem when you relieved her of the watch?” Maryanne asked of Roy, because being a doctor, she wanted as much information as possible.
“She seemed fine, you know, like Amanda fine,” Roy said with a mystified tone. “She was chipper, surprisingly so, given the late hour, and she said she’d see me in the morning.”
Roy’s voice trailed off, as he stared with a stupefied expression down at Amanda.
“Well, now we need two watches,” Cole said, “one to keep an eye on the surrounding desert and the second to keep an eye on her. Who has the stomach to pull the trigger if she wakes up as one of “them”?
Maryanne closed her eyes and swallowed. She knew that Amanda would never want to be one of them. Amanda would never want to hurt any of them, but she didn’t know if she would be able to pull the trigger in time to keep anyone from getting hurt. She hung her head. I should have checked on her arm when I told her that I would, she thought. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she had somehow failed her friend, failed the doctor’s oath that she had taken so many years ago.
“Anybody?” Cole said, still waiting for an answer.
“I will,” Roy said, after a long pause. “I could do that for Amanda, but not in front of the children.”
“Well, you may not have a choice,” Cole said. “The kids can’t stay down there forever, away from us.”
“I’ll do it, regardless,” Roy said, and then he sighed loudly and stared down at his old and weathered boots.
“I can’t trust myself not to pause and get somebody hurt,” Maryanne said, feeling defeated, deflated and dumb with shock.
She felt like she had failed Amanda yet again, by not being strong enough to fire the shot that would end it all quickly, if she were to awaken as a creeper.
“Okay then, it’s Roy and me in shifts,” Cole said. “Can you handle that, Roy?”
“I can handle it,” Roy said in a surprisingly strong voice.
“Good, then it starts now,” Cole said, reaching for a folding chair that was nearby.
Cole set himself down in the chair, gun at the ready.
“Are you sure, Doc?” Cole asked.
“Um, uh, let me think,” she said, looking around her, as if to gain her bearings. “I, uh, should check her out thoroughly and make sure there isn’t another cause for this high of a fever. I can take steps to bring the fever down too, not that it will help if she’s, uh, infected and about to turn.”
“Okay, then get to work at whatever it is you do, and back away if she stirs,” Cole said. “I’ll be here to watch your back and make sure you’re safe, as long as you don’t do anything stupid, like try to reason with a creeper, or something like that. You know that once they change, they aren’t them anymore, right?”
Cole knew that, as a doctor, she knew this, but he thought it might help if he pointed it out.
“I’ll go take watch,” Roy said, moving to go and position himself on the boulder, in Cole’s stead.
Roy could hear the loud sounds of sobbing all the way up here, and he cringed. He had not had breakfast yet, and now he wanted no part of any food. But he did refill his coffee cup, cringing at the thought of how much Amanda enjoyed her morning coffee.
“Bad news,” Jason said as Roy walked past him.
“Real bad,” Roy mumbled as he picked up the binoculars that Cole had set down.
Wouldn’t it be nice, Maryanne thought, if this was a false alarm and there was a perfectly natural explanation for the fact that Amanda was lying there with such an extraordinarily high fever? Maybe, she considered, Amanda’s burn had become infected, and that was why. Burns, she knew, were prone to infection. But it still seemed that Amanda would have been complaining yesterday that her arm was bothering her, instead of expressing that it had been itching.
Maryanne made a command decision to refrain from any absolute thoughts about the fever until she had had a chance to check Amanda out more thoroughly. She would hate to have her friend awaken to find a gun in her face because she had misidentified the problem. Jason had had an infection and had run a high fever, and he had not been turning. She tried to comfort herself with thoughts like this, as she jogged for her medical supplies, leaving Cole to watch Amanda. It bothered her that Cole had his gun at the ready, but it would have also bothered her had he not.
Chapter 72
“I’m going to be very thorough,” Maryanne told Cole after she had returned to Amanda’s side with her supplies. “I’m going to set up an IV and administer our last bag of fluids to her. If it is the infection, the fluids won’t stop it, but her last moments will be more comfortable, and I think she deserves that, at least. If it’s something else, then the fluids will certainly be beneficial.”
Maryanne couldn’t believe that she was hearing herself talk like this about one of their own. Being out here in this camp that Amanda had brought them to had given her som
e distance from what the reality of living in today’s zombie apocalypse was like. The cold, hard truth was, that some of them wouldn’t make it to see old age or die of natural causes.
“How long does the fever usually last for?” Cole asked as he carefully watched Maryanne work, looking for any signs that Amanda was beginning to awaken, but she remained crypt-like still.
“That was one of the problems for us doctors at the time,” Maryanne said, trying to focus on being a doctor and not Amanda’s friend. “We didn’t have a lot of access to information about the condition because it blew out of control so very fast. As near as I could piece together, all the cases I worked with, or had heard of, all submitted with the fever in under twenty-four hours of the bite and within forty-eight hours, had already turned. With some cases, when the bite had been worse than others, the infection and subsequent fever presented a lot quicker, as did “the change.”
“But she had already passed the twenty-four-hour window by a long shot,” Cole said. “Do you suppose it just took longer because the bite was so superficial?”
“This can’t be right?” Maryanne said, having taken the gauze dressing off of Amanda’s arm.
Clearly, she had not heard Cole’s question and was distracted and deeply mystified by what she was looking at.
“What can’t be right?” asked Cole, sounding alarmed.
“Well, the burn on her arm . . . it’s . . . well . . . it’s . . . nearly healed already, and not like healed by a scab on top and messy underneath. I mean it looks weeks old, and that can’t be. Didn’t she just return from the run the night before last?” Maryanne questioned, suddenly wondering if she had lost track of time somewhere along the way because the situation seemed so unreal.
“Yes, so?” Cole said, expecting some type of an explanation that would make sense from someone that had trained as a doctor.
“Well, this isn’t right,” she said, disappointing him.
“Obviously, it happened, so therefore, it must be possible,” Cole said, trying to state the obvious and thinking that perhaps the doctor was losing it.
Cole had traveled a long ways through the LAZ, since St. Louis had fallen to the affects of the infection, and he had seen a lot of people lose it along the way, crumpling under the strain and pressures that existed now. He was now watching both Amanda and Maryanne closely because sometimes, when people suddenly “lost it,” they could be very dangerous and do things out of character.
“Stop looking at me like that, Cole,” Maryanne said, sounding snappy. “I know what I’m talking about. This is not natural. There is no medical explanation for what I’m looking at here.”
“Is it possible that you had misidentified how serious the burn was? After all, it was dark when you first took a look at it. We were all tired, and it was a little distressing to see Amanda pass out like that,” Cole said, sounding uncharacteristically kind, as if he were trying to coax a confession out of a suspect.
“I wasn’t mistaken,” Maryanne said without sounding defensive. “I took care of the wound yesterday morning too, and I wasn’t mistaken then either, except I do remember thinking that it looked much better than it had the night before. But for all those reasons that you mentioned, I dismissed the peculiarity of it.”
“I see,” Cole said, frowning down at Amanda, deep in thought.
Cole was not accustomed to running into problems that had no logical explanation, and he was drawing a blank as to what to do about it. He didn’t like feeling out of control like this. Not only did the situation make him feel uncomfortable, but so did this dilemma.
Maryanne had the IV line in place and handed Cole the bag of fluids to hold, for lack of a better alternative. Cole, in turn, did not like it that he didn’t have both hands free, in case of an emergency, but he supposed that he could toss the bag should he need to.
“I just don’t understand,” Maryanne said. “I did catch her scratching at it yesterday, which didn’t seem right to me at the time. That burn should have hurt like hell, I had thought, and there was no way she should have wanted to touch it like that. Oh my, I should have checked it then. I was so exhausted and was feeling overwhelmed by all that needed to be done. I forgot that my first priority is as our doctor.”
Cole studied Maryanne for a second, understanding that the woman was guilt-ridden by feelings of her own inadequacy.
“These are extraordinary times, Maryanne, I don’t think you should be too hard on yourself,” he said kindly.
“It doesn’t matter what the situation is, I have a responsibility to all of you,” she said, looking like she was heavily burdened.
“I should have kept my officers safe back in St. Louis too,” he said, his voice growing distant. “I shouldn’t have assumed that sending them out the back was still a viable option. It’s just that things were tense, and there wasn’t a lot of time to make a decision, and I made the wrong one. I’ll have to live with that. What you did was an honest and human mistake. Mine wasn’t like that, it was inexcusable.”
“We all have a lot to live with,” Maryanne said. “I’ll deal with my demons, and you’ll have to deal with yours.”
Maryanne was wetting a rag with a combination of water and rubbing alcohol. The way they were blowing through their store of the stuff, she would have to start diluting it from here on out. She hated to have to do that, but because their town had burned down, there wouldn’t be much by way of guarantee that they would be able to replace it anytime in the foreseeable future.
Amanda stirred, and Maryanne unconsciously moved back, hating herself for having such fear of a patient.
“Stay back,” Cole cautioned, tossing the IV bag to where it landed on Maryanne’s lap, further startling her.
“Mom, what’s going on?” Sam asked.
“I couldn’t keep her down there,” Sky said apologetically, but Maryanne already understood how difficult it could be to try and control her daughter.
“I told you to get out of camp,” Maryanne said in a no-nonsense tone that was bordering on rage.
Maryanne could see that Cody was lingering in the distance, having followed Sam up the hill. He looked like he was torn as to what to do.
“I don’t care if you beat me senseless. I’m going to be here for her until the end if that’s what it comes to,” Sam said, sounding more defiant than Maryanne had seen her before.
“Okay,” Maryanne said quietly, “just do me a favor and stay back.”
It was difficult for Maryanne to think about the psychological trauma that her daughter would carry with her for a lifetime if she had to watch her friend being shot in the head. But the way she figured it, still not taking her eyes off of Amanda, was that with the world being this way now, it was bound to happen sooner or later to the girl. And there was something admirable about Sam’s intentions, she had to grudgingly admit.
Amanda moved, beginning to sit up. Her hair was wet from the rubbing alcohol and water solution, and there was a pungent smell that filled the air from it.
Red growled and took a step backward but looking like he was ready to spring at her should he need to. And that was saying a lot because she had been the one to rescue him and the little Boo dog. They had previously been on good terms.
Amanda was now sitting fully upright, but she had not opened her eyes. As Maryanne watched, in horror, waiting for the moment that could change everything, she could see that sweat had begun to bead up on her friend’s face, arms, and neck. Large droplets formed, before gravity sent them running down her skin.
Cole had the gun pressed to Amanda’s temple now, ready as soon as he knew for sure; he would be able to pull the trigger.
Sweat sluiced and ran down her skin, like she was a stone statuary fountain.
“The fever broke,” Maryanne whispered, feeling like she had never known suspense like this before.
Nobody could take their eyes off of Amanda.
Cody held onto Tammy’s hand, ready to run away if need be. Roy had come over. Sky
stood beside Roy, looking worried and agitated. Maryanne had crawled back to get out of the way of the possible gunshot. Sam was holding her breath and praying. In the background, Jason kept asking everyone what was happening and was frustrated to hear nothing in return.
Amanda opened her eyes.
“Would you get that gun away from me,” she said, suddenly swatting at it.
Cole was so stunned that he nearly pulled the trigger on accident.
“I haven’t turned, okay?” she said. “It was a close one, and I could feel something happening to me, a shift or something, but I’m still here, still me,” she said, looking around at the faces.
“Mom?” Sam questioned, looking stunned. “What’s wrong with her eyes?”
Sam had stated the obvious question that was on everyone’s mind, because Amanda’s eyes had changed drastically in color.
“What do mean, what’s wrong with my eyes?” Amanda queried, looking to Maryanne for an answer.
“Your eyes, they’re gray,” Maryanne said, finally answering her.
“My eyes aren’t gray, they’re brown,” Amanda said, looking to her friend with a puzzled expression.
“I know,” Maryanne said. “That’s the problem.”
Amanda’s once very chocolate brown eyes were a steal gray, with little flecks of white interspersed, like tiny little clouds set in a gray sky.
“Your irises have changed,” Maryanne said, sounding both breathless and mystified. “I wonder what else has changed?”
“Stay back, everybody,” Cole said, not knowing if they were in any danger from her or not.
“I’m starving, can I get something to eat, before you do any more doctoring on me? Honestly, I feel fine.”
About the Author
Jo Lee Auburne has a BS in Psychology degree. She has been an avid outdoor adventurer—including, but not limited to, cave exploration, hiking, desert exploration, scuba diving, running, and horseback riding. She is a retired hunter/jumper horse trainer and riding instructor that still has a great passion for the horse and the sport. Jo began writing as a child and has spent many years working out her talent and perfecting a style. She gives the many authors she’s read over the years a lot of credit for her decision to become a published author. Jo credits her writing talent to a strong belief in God. She has dedicated a lot of time and energy to charitable pursuits and believes that we all have something to offer others. Her family and friends have nicknamed her The Storyteller because of her ability to spin an imaginative and entertaining tale. She is dedicated to satisfying the reader with a great story. She now resides in a small mountain community where people often wave to one another, and horses are commonplace.
Amanda Carter in the L.A.Z., life after zombies Page 50