Amanda Carter in the L.A.Z., life after zombies (31 page)

Chapter 53

E
ven 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 though 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.

Maryanne had shared a theory with her once that posited that the infection was a manufactured, genetically modified pathogen that targeted people alone. Perhaps, the doctor had speculated, it had been intended to be used as a weapon. But none of them really knew any of this for certain, but it did kind of ring true to Amanda when they had discussed it months ago.

A sparrow landed on a branch of a plant directly in front of Amanda. The small bird looked at her, cocking its head from side to side inquisitively, before lighting away in graceful flight. Amanda smiled, a real smile this time. There were always small reminders for her to appreciate and know that life would find a way to survive, as long as there was a way. She knew in that moment that her species would do the same, survive and eventually thrive again. It was a knowing that she felt deep down, as if the bird had just imparted it to her. She sighed.

“Red, let’s go,” Sam called to him as he was still lapping up the cool water.

The girl had already started her big truck, letting the air from the vents cool and slipping in a CD. Music blared from the cab, and even though they weren’t technically on the road yet, Amanda didn’t say a word.

“Do I follow you, or will you follow me?” Sam asked loudly to compete with the music.

“I’ll follow you. I have the cargo net rigged up to my truck to cover our tracks. That means that you have to go first. Take this access road to the right, and then make your second left and follow the dirt road. When you come to a fork in the road, look back, and I’ll use my blinkers to signal which way to turn. If you don’t need to turn, I’ll flash my lights for you to go straight. Does that make sense?”

“Right up the access road, second left, and then look for your signal when I come to a fork in the road, yep, I got it,” Sam said, obviously looking forward to the independence of driving for a long span.

Red took his cue to leave and ran and leapt up into the cab, already knowing to move over to the passenger seat. Sam turned to go.

“Sam, drive slow so we don’t slosh all the water out. Those caps for lids will pop off if the water hits them hard enough, and we don’t need to lose any of it,” Amanda said, glad that she had remembered to let the girl know before they left.

“Sure thing, go slow,” the girl repeated.

“Oh, and one more thing, turn your headlights on because it’ll be dark before we make it home, and I don’t want you accidentally running off the road because you can’t see anything.”

“Turn headlights on,” Sam repeated, bounding for the cab of her truck as if she couldn’t wait a second more.

Chapter 54

T
hey rolled out with Sam in the lead. The big truck rocked and swayed gently as the girl slowly rolled down the rutted dirt road. The truck was taking a lot of weight, and it was visibly resting lower than it had before, but much to Amanda’s relief, it appeared to be handling it okay.

Sam was singing to the tune of one of her favorite songs. She was belting it out loud, even though she had never had much of a singing voice, Red joined in howling, as if he didn’t want to be left out. Sam felt accomplished, like she had reached a milestone in her life. The feeling did have something to do with the freedom that she felt while driving this big piece of machinery, knowing that she was in control of a lot of power. But she had also survived her first trip to town, and she felt older and wiser for having accomplished that, even though she wasn’t even technically twenty-four hours older yet.

Amanda also had her tunes cranked way up. She had rolled down the window on the driver’s side for some fresh air. It wasn’t helping her feel any better that there was such strong gas fumes while the truck was closed up. Hot air streamed in from outside and the air conditioning worked to try to replace it with cool air. She ended up with a happy medium. The truck wasn’t hot, and it wasn’t cold, and that worked for her, as long as she didn’t have to continue smelling the gasoline fumes.

She was proud of Sam’s driving, slow and easy; the girl was negotiating the rough terrain responsibly. Amanda knew that she would want to put in an especially good word for the girl back at camp because her parents did oftentimes treat her like she was a child. And clearly from what Amanda had seen today, the girl had earned her young-adult status. Maybe if her parents could recognize that, then it would relieve some of the friction around camp that consistently existed between them, with Sam trying to assert herself and her parents treating her like a child. Amanda imagined that such a struggle at this age was a normal part of growing up for both the parents and the child, but it was still difficult to deal with when there were a lot of people around camp to consider. And it was especially difficult because now they were living in such abject poverty compared to what their lives had been like before.

Amanda helped herself to a sports drink, wishing that she had thought to send one with Sam. The girl had bottles of water and some beef jerky up in the cab with her, but the sports drinks were great for replacing valuable electrolytes that their bodies were losing in mass because of the massive amount of exertion that they had put into such an extremely hot day.

She decided, after she had finished the fruity electrolyte-filled drink and had chomped down a couple pieces of beef jerky, that she was feeling a little better.
At least
, she figured,
I don’t feel like I’m going to fall asleep on the drive, but I don’t feel like myself either
. She looked at the jerky bag and shook her head. After being a vegetarian for so many years, it wasn’t too long ago that she wouldn’t have been able to imagine herself wanting to eat such a thing as beef jerky, but now she was ecstatic to have it and thrilled that they had been able to find so much of it today. Amanda had noticed, when she had moved out here several years ago, that beef jerky was a common staple among the desert dwellers, and that made sense because it was salty and kept for long periods of time, even in the extreme heat. Before, she had thought it to be unnecessary for people to be consistently devouring that much meat, but she had changed her mind; at least by LAZ standards, it was a welcomed addition to their dietary needs.

Soon they would be coming up on a turn, and Amanda wanted to be ready to signal to Sam that they needed to turn right, so she took her eyes back to the truck ahead of her. But instead of rolling along, Sam’s brake lights had come on, and the big truck was grinding to a stop. Confused, Amanda tried to look around the big frame to see if there might be a reason for Sam to be stopping. And then she saw it, two figures had been walking along the side of the road, one tall and one much shorter, both carrying shovels.

It was certainly an odd sight to see survivors so far from town with no apparent means of transportation and carrying no supplies. In this heat, it was suicidal to be crossing the desert without water, at the very least. To Amanda, the picture didn’t seem to add up, and her first thought was that it was an ambush by one of the raider crews that had left town. She felt stupid for having believed that now that they were out in the desert and well on their way home, they were free and clear with all their loot from town.

“Don’t stop,” Amanda said aloud, as if Sam would be able to hear her.

But the girl came to a complete stop despite all of Amanda’s frantic cries for her to continue driving. Amanda didn’t know if this was an ambush, but she would like to have had some time to try to figure it out before they had stopped. It would take a big truck like that some time to get back up to speed, especially if they didn’t want to risk spilling a large amount of water in the process, and it could be that they would need to run away in a hurry. But that isn’t practical either because where were they going to run to that someone couldn’t easily follow them, thought Amanda.

Amanda rolled out and around the big moving truck, sandwiching the two people in between the two trucks. Thankfully, though Sam had stopped, the girl was making no move to get out of her truck. At least she was exercising some thought to her safety.

Amanda could see the two people clearly now, even though the sun had begun to drop and the desert had taken on a shaded look, making it easy to miss people lurking on the perimeter.

The man was tall with dark, wild-looking hair and filthy clothes. He was thin, and like most men these days, he had let his beard grow out. Despite his gaunt and disheveled appearance, he was a strikingly handsome man, and Amanda could not even imagine how much more so it must have been back in the LBZ, if she was able to notice it so much so now even.

He was traveling with a boy, and as she pulled up beside them, the man instructed the boy to put his shovel down as a sign of surrender. The boy did as instructed, and they both bent down to place their only visible weapons on the ground. Of course, thought Amanda, the man could be concealing a weapon in his tattered jeans. It didn’t pay to be too nonchalant about these things. She pulled her pistol out of her pants and exited the vehicle.

One .22 pistol wouldn’t be much up against the type of arsenal that she and Sam had heard earlier while in town, but it was better than nothing. Sam also had a weapon, but Amanda couldn’t count on her having the presence of mind enough to be able to use it on real live people. It was one thing to kill a creeper but something else entirely to shoot a living breathing human being. She didn’t really even want to have to put Sam in that kind of position at her age, not unless their lives depended on it.

“Put your hands up where I can see them,” Amanda said, leveling the pistol on the man even as she walked around the front of her truck to them.

She was careful to sneak a peek behind her every few seconds, wanting to know if others would be descending on them.

Sam rolled the window down on the big truck; the music was still blaring.

“Cool,” said the boy, looking up at Sam, “I like the music.”

“Thanks,” said Sam, much to Amanda’s chagrin.

“Stay in the truck, Sam, and shut the music off,” Amanda said, throwing the girl a stern look.

“All right already,” said Sam, throwing back some matching attitude.

The tunes from the big truck went silent, and Amanda felt like she could hear herself think again.

“Sam, keep an eye out around the desert in case they have some unwanted company about to come down on us,” Amanda said before turning her attention solely to the two strangers.

“I know, stranger danger and all that,” Sam said, sounding exasperated.

Amanda made a note to herself to deal with the girl later about this. If Sam wanted to be going out on these runs with them, then she was going to need to be more cautious when it came to encounters with others because even if this time was not life threatening, there would be other times that would be.

“Names?” Amanda said, still holding the .22 on the man.

“I’m Cole, and this is my son, Cody,” the man said, with a voice that sounded hoarse and gravelly. “And yours?”

“I’m Amanda, and this is Sam. Where do you come from, and why are you out here without a vehicle or any supplies?”

“We ran away from some bad people,” the boy said before the man could silence him.

“Is that true?” Amanda asked of the man, though at this point, she would be much more inclined to trust the boy.

“Yes,” Cole said, “we don’t have a vehicle, and we couldn’t take anything with us. We saw an opportunity to get away, and we took it. I was hoping that we could make it to the river. How far away is it?”

“The river’s about eight miles down this road. How long has it been since you’ve had some water?” Amanda asked, knowing that the sun was dropping even as they spoke, and that soon night would fall like a blanket, drowning out their visibility.

It was the perfect time for an ambush, but this was not looking like a trap to her, but she needed to make really certain of that.

“About noon, we had some water, I think,” Cole said, and it occurred to Amanda that the man looked really weary.

“I had some just a couple of hours ago,” Cody said. “Dad gave me my share and his share.”

“I see,” said Amanda. “Sam, will you toss them a couple of water bottles?”

“Sure,” said the girl, who had obviously already been prepared to do just that, because right away, two bottles came flying out of the truck to land in between Amanda and the newcomers.

“Thanks,” Cody said enthusiastically while he bent down to pick them up. “These people are already nicer than the other ones, Dad. Can we go with them?”

“Be quiet, Cody,” Cole said with his hands still up in the air.

“Let me just check you both for weapons, and I’ll let you put your arms down,” Amanda said, moving toward them. “Sam, put your gun on them while I pat them down.”

“Okay, whatever,” Sam said, reaching for the nine-millimeter that Amanda had given her earlier.

Sam clearly didn’t want to be pointing a gun at these people, but she complied.

“You can put your hands down,” Amanda said after determining that they had no other weapons besides the shovels.

“What if they come for us?” Cody asked, looking up to his father.

“Who’s coming for you?” Amanda asked, cluing in right away on what the boy had said.

“Cody’s right, they’re going to be real angry once they realize that we’re gone. They’ve probably already realized, and it will just be a matter of following our footprints. I tried to cover them up, but it’s been miles, and I got tired, and I was hoping to make it to the river, so I stopped covering our tracks a while back.”

The man cracked the lid on the bottle of water and then downed the whole thing without taking a breath. Amanda waited. The boy sipped at his water and left half of the bottle, apparently saving it for later.

“Anything else I should know?” Amanda asked.

“They are real bad people,” Cody said. “They eat other people, and not like the creepers do. They’re cooking some now.”

The boy’s eyes had grown real big while he was speaking, and it would be hard to believe that he wasn’t telling the truth because there was something very sincere about him. Cole winced at his son’s outburst but said nothing.

“Is that true?” Amanda asked, feeling her stomach roil at the thought of it.

“Yes,” Cole said, and it sounded like there was shame in his voice.

“Have you eaten other people?” Amanda asked of them.

“Heck, no,” Cody said. “Dad says that he’ll never let something like that happen, no matter how bad things get. He said we had to run and take our chances out here, and if we died, we died trying to get away.”

“I see,” Amanda said, lowering her weapon and then stealing a glance over her shoulder.

It was disconcerting to know that somewhere out here within walking distance were human cannibals.

“Can we go now?” Cole asked, surprising Amanda.

She had not been looking at it like she was the aggressor here in this instance, but now that she had thought about it, she was the one holding them up at gunpoint.

“Sure,” Amanda said. “You have a choice, you can go with some food and water and take your chances out there, or you can come back with us.”

“Come back with us, please,” said Sam, looking to the boy who was about a year or two younger than her.

“Dad, I can tell they’re better people already,” Cody said. “They just gave us a much better choice than those other people did. Can we go with them?”

“I think it’s best that we take our chances on our own,” Cole said, looking like he had not entirely decided on a course of action yet.

“Please, please, please,” Cody begged, seizing on the opportunity to state his case.

“Can you give us a moment, we’ll go behind the truck to discuss it?” Cole said to Amanda.

Amanda shrugged and stepped back a few feet, indicating that it was of no concern to her.