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

by Jo Lee Auburne

  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

  They 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 eas
y 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.

  Chapter 55

  Cole and Cody were behind the big truck, talking, and the wind was blowing most of their conversation directly to Amanda, who was willingly listening, still trying to gain some insight on
them.

  “Dad, they’re good people, I can tell,” Cody was saying.

  “Nobody can tell these things so soon, son, just look at what happened with those others and the ones before,” his dad was answering.

  “I hope they come with us,” Sam said, sounding excited to have a friend that was more her age than anybody else back at camp.

  “Shhh,” Amanda said, trying to quiet Sam so that she could hear their conversation.

  “Oh, you are so eavesdropping, no fair,” Sam said, looking like she was going to get down out of the truck.

  “Shhh, stay put and keep the truck running,” Amanda said, shooting the girl a look of annoyance.

  “Fine, whatever,” Sam said, turning away from Amanda.

  “They have a dog too, I saw it in the truck with the girl my age,” Cody was saying, obviously still working at pleading his case. “If they were the type of people that go around eating other people, then wouldn’t they eat the dog too?”

  “You have always been too smart for your own good, son,” Cole said, sounding like he might be beginning to relent.

  “You know I can’t fight. I’m no good at it, and I haven’t the heart or the stomach for it, but maybe there’s something I can do back at their camp, like wash dishes or cook or something,” the boy said, and it was all Amanda could do to keep from laughing.

  “My son, the dishwashing vegetarian pacifist,” Cole said with a deep sigh.

  “I’m not a vegetarian anymore, and this world needs more than fighters, and I’m smart, you said so yourself. I’m good for stuff,” Cody said, sounding offended. “Besides, the therapist said that you’re supposed to let me be who I am, remember?”

  “Son, the therapist is dead, along with all the pacifists in St. Louis,” Cole said, and he sounded like he was losing patience with his son.