Amanda Carter in the L.A.Z., life after zombies (29 page)

As they had been noticing for most of the day, the alley was deserted of all things moving except for the blowing trash. The winds had subsided somewhat but not enough to give the fire a chance to die out, and Amanda knew that it was continuing to engulf the town.

She could tell by the position of the sun that the time must be around four o’clock in the afternoon, giving them a chance to still make it back to camp before darkness fell. She never liked being caught away from home in the dark these days. It wouldn’t be dark until eight o’clock or so, and that left them less than a four-hour window to begin heading back. They could do it, she decided.

Chapter 49

T
hey downed waters and ripped boards off of storefronts while Red supervised from a lying position on the sidewalk underneath a board that Sam had rested up against one of the buildings to provide him with some shade.

“You do realize that most people these days would think that we were crazy to bring a dog into town because of the fear that they would bark and draw in the creepers,” Amanda said, by way of conversation as they worked.

“Yeah, I get that, but Red’s not like most dogs, and we aren’t like most people,” Sam answered.

“True on both counts,” Amanda said.

“Hey, this one was a mattress store,” Sam said, using her hand to shield the sun as she peered into the big glass window that was still intact.

“No, we aren’t bringing back mattresses,” Amanda said, pausing from work to catch her breath.

“No, silly, I wasn’t thinking about mattresses, but pillows,” Sam said excitedly.

“Oh, pillows,” answered Amanda, thinking of how good it would feel to fall out tonight on a pillow.

She had collected two pillows from the guest room in that family’s house, but there were six of them, and she would feel guilty about using one when everyone wouldn’t be able to have a pillow.

“Okay, you talked me into it,” Amanda said, going to the door to test it.

It was locked, of course, so she went to the truck for the crow bar. The door would be easy enough to pry open, and now with the plywood off of the windows, the store would be lit enough to see if there were any creepers trapped inside.

The door didn’t require much prying, and they were inside easily. There was a relatively small sales floor, piled high with mattresses of all sizes and brands. There were no creepers up front, and Amanda saw no need to check the back office and store room, as there was most likely little of use to them back there, and their time was valuable.

She identified a pile of new pillows and began loading her arms. She was a little miffed by the fact that now they would be covered in the soot and grime that had been accumulating on her skin. But there wasn’t much to be done about that, so she shrugged it off.

“Look, I found pillowcases,” Sam announced happily. “How many pillows are you getting?”

“There are ten here, and I’ll just take all of them. The truck still has some room.”

Sam seemed to enjoy looking through the various colors and prints of the cases, so Amanda left her to that while she went to off-load the pillows in the truck.

Before Amanda could jump back out of the truck, Sam came around the corner, carrying not only the pillowcases, but a foam cushion that was folded in three separate places. It appeared that once it was unfolded, it would make a nice pad to sleep on. The folding cushion even had a handle that made it easy for the girl to carry it.

“Where’d you find that?” Amanda asked, wondering if there were any more of them because she was envisioning the value of having one for all of them.

“Inside, in the corner are stacks of them, all different colors too,” Sam said.

“I’ll go grab us some more,” Amanda said, beginning to feel a little excitement herself.

They had been sleeping on the hard ground for so long that she could only imagine how nice it would be to have some padding.

“So you aren’t going to tell me that I can’t take it?” Sam asked.

“If we’re going to start living more civilized, then let’s do it right,” Amanda said, heading back into the store.

Sam had been right; there were stacks of them. She decided that they should take eight out of the dozen or so that Sam had found. It would be nice to have a spare couple of ones, just in case their party grew, or one wore out or something.

Once their foam pads were loaded, they began stacking the wood, careful to pull the nails out first before loading them, so as not to rip or tear any of their other items on the return trip. Besides, they stacked closer together that way, and the truck had begun to fill up.

Amanda did not even want to think about what a nightmare it was going to be to off-load all this stuff, but in the scope of things, it was a wonderful problem to have, and they could deal with that later.

“What now?” Sam asked after they had closed the truck back up.

“We’ve got just about everything that I could have hoped for today, but it would be a good idea to go back to that housing community and see if there’s any more food, gas, medicines, and I need to fill our two empty propane cylinders off of one of their big tanks. Roy put together a regulator for us to attach to a large propane tank to fill our smaller ones off of,” Amanda said, digging the truck keys out of her pocket.

“Yeah, I guess it’s not like we can be coming to town anymore to fill those, is it?” the girl asked, thinking about what would not be left anymore after the fire had finished. “And we still haven’t found any more chairs. I know that was on your list.”

“Thanks, Sam, you’re right. It’s hard to live like we’re civilized when we’re busy sitting in the dirt. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some collapsible ones in someone’s garage,” Amanda said, heading back to her truck.

They arrived uneventfully back in the veteran’s neighborhood, where the ash was coming down in earnest. Amanda pulled to the side of the street, three houses down from the family’s house that they had left not so long ago. There was a truck like hers in the driveway.

In this rural desert community, white trucks were the most popular form of transportation, and domestic trucks like hers were common. She wanted to grab the spare from this truck because they had the same tire and rim size. She needed another air filter and whatever else she could manage to loot off of it easily.

“How about you do your little gas trick and get whatever’s in this one?” Amanda said to Sam.

“Uh, there’s only one problem with that,” Sam said. “All our gas cans are full.”

“That’s a nice problem to have,” Amanda said, thinking of all the times that she had struggled to find enough gas just to be able to make the round trip again. “Take one of the cans, and fill your truck up again, we must have already used a couple of gallons today, and we’ll check the garage for more cans.

“Roger,” the girl said, turning to get to work on the task while Amanda fished some tools out of the toolbox in the bed of her truck.

“Found one,” Amanda shouted to Sam once she had walked up the drive to the vehicle.

Whoever had owned this truck had kept a spare metal five-gallon gas can strapped in the back. But because the truck had been backed into the drive, she hadn’t noticed it. She checked the can. It was empty, and she lifted it out and set it down on the driveway.

The truck was unlocked, and that made it easy for Amanda to pop the hood and begin taking out the air filter.

“You’re right,” Sam said, walking up and shaking the gas can in her hand. “It took about half of this. My truck sure sucks up the gas.”

“Can you do me a favor and dig around inside the cab under the passenger seat in the extra cab and bring out the jack. I want to pull the spare and grab a tire from this thing. That desert we live in eats tires for breakfast, and I need a couple spares,” Amanda said.

“Will do,” the girl answered enthusiastically, as if it was her idea of a dream job.

Amanda considered again how perfectly suited to going on these runs the girl was. She wondered how that had happened, when both of her parents were so very different. And considering that they had always sheltered her so much, it was a wonder that she was the way she was. She thought of the whole nature-versus-nurture question that had never seemed to be answered back in the LBZ and decided that Sam was a product of nature and not nurture.

“Got it,” Sam said, holding up a metal jack that looked way too small to do the job, but Amanda knew that it would do the job because it was the same model as the one that she had in her truck.

“I’ll check inside the truck and see if there’s anything we can use,” Sam said as Amanda, air filter on her arm, began working at removing the radiator hose.

“Good thinking,” Amanda said.

Red had decided that it was time to take another nap underneath the truck, and Amanda was glad to have him there because she had her head under the hood, and Sam was busy inside the truck, and there wasn’t anyone keeping watch, just in case something was moving up on them.

“Hey, look what I found!” Sam exclaimed, holding up a plastic grocery store sack. “There’s a new tube of toothpaste, some men’s deodorant, and three cans of chili with beef. I guess he or she never remembered to take it in,” Sam said, staring at the sack.

“We’ll take it,” Amanda said. “Good find.”

“I thought so,” Sam said, sounding proud. “I’ll go put it in the truck.”

“When you come back, can you pull this battery out,” Amanda said, wiping sweat from her brow that left a black smudge across her forehead.

“Will do.”

While Sam pulled the battery, Amanda began lowering the spare tire that was stored underneath the truck. Fortunately, when she had it down and out, it was full of air and looked ready to use. She let the tire loose, and it rolled down the slightly slanted driveway until it plopped over in the street. She’d retrieve it later, but for now, she wanted to begin work on jacking the truck up enough to get another tire off of it. She considered having only one spare tire to be less than adequate and would do the work required to make it two spare tires.

Amanda checked to make sure the brake was on and then loosened the lug nuts on the left back tire. Sam had finished removing the battery, and Amanda began giving her a lesson on how to get a tire off.

The tire jacks that came from the factory with these trucks were made of cheap materials, and as the truck lifted and pressed its weight down upon the jack, the metal that the jack was made out of had begun to bow and warp. The truck shifted slightly, and Amanda held her breath, hoping that it would hold enough to pull the tire off. Obviously, it was a cheap jack and was only going to be a one shot use. The metal held, and the truck settled with the tire far enough off of the ground that she was able to spin the lug nuts off and pull the tire.

“That looks like a lot of work,” Sam said.

“Yep, but it’ll be worth it when we end up needing this tire.”

It used to be that if something went wrong with a vehicle, they would limp it to town or drive the Jeep in and replace it, but with the fire gobbling up everything, that would no longer be an option.

Amanda had Sam load both of the tires while she worked to pull the alternator and the fan belt, which wasn’t easy because of the way the engine’s compartment was designed. When she had finished, she figured that more than an hour must have been eaten up, and that didn’t leave them much time to finish here.

She stared down under the hood, wishing that Roy was here. Most of what she was looking at, she didn’t understand, and she had no idea if there was anything else that she should be taking. She hoped that this truck, though the same make and model, was the right year and that the things she had already pulled off of it would work on hers. She left the hood up and stashed the parts on the passenger floorboard of her truck.

“Thanks for leaving me with those big, heavy dirty black tires,” Sam said, holding out her arms to show Amanda how dirty she was.

“I can’t tell because you’re wearing too much soot,” Amanda said with a chuckle.

“Well, I guess it’s not like I’m going to run into anybody I know besides you. And you look way worse than me right now,” the girl said.

“Thanks, I’ll remember that the next time you want a favor from me,” Amanda said, razzing her.

“The fire’s just down the street,” Sam said, looking into the wind and the smoke that it brought with it.

“I know.”

“I don’t want this to end up like last time,” Sam said. “I’d kind of like to keep my lunch down this time.”

“I know, let’s see what this guy has in his garage, and we’ll hit a couple other houses and head out,” Amanda said. “Are you game for that?”

Sam stared toward the fire for a second, biting the inside of her lip; she was thinking before she answered. The dicey situation back at the home improvement store had changed her perspective a little about wanting to involve herself in really dangerous activities. Amanda was glad for that and hoped that the girl would remember and keep herself safe in the future.

“Yep, we can do it, but can we skip that house,” the girl said, pointing across the street.

“Sure, that was your friend’s house, right?”

“Yeah, I’d rather not come across them like, that . . . you know?”

“Sure, I get it,” Amanda said, moving to the front porch to peek in the window of the house with the truck in the driveway.

Chapter 50

A
manda could tell right away by looking in the window that the house was in shambles. Either some raiders had been here, or the owner had ransacked the place in a hurry to look for something. The front door was unlocked when she tried the handle, and she decided to skip going through the house and move to the backyard to check out the garage. She knew by the location of the fire that they didn’t have a lot of time before this neighborhood would be up in flames, and she didn’t want to waste a second of it on looking anywhere that there wasn’t a high probability of success in finding things that they would need.

They traveled between the fence and the backyard, with Red trotting along beside them. It seemed that he was well rested from the naps that he had taken, and Amanda wished that she could say the same thing for herself. She felt that if she could just get a little nap in, then everything that was going on with her body would be fine, but she knew that was a lie. If she made it without being infected, she was still days out from healing up, and she would always carry a scar on her arm from the burn.

“Look,” Sam said, pointing, “there’s the cat!”

The poor, bedraggled-looking cat was sniffing through some trash in the backyard. The owner’s trashcans had been dumped over by something bigger than the cat, and trash was scattered all over the yard. The cat had survived over six months, living off of mice, rats, and old trash.

The cat looked at them as if daring them to pounce on his or her catch. Red noticed the creature right away and felt it necessary to get in between his two charges and the cat, as if he felt the cat would make a move on them. Red’s hackles were up, and he was growling, low and menacing.

The cat grabbed whatever morsel that he or she had found and then sprinted with it in her mouth, up and over the fence. Red stared for a minute before lowering his guard, apparently determined to make sure that the threat had left the area and wasn’t planning on coming back.

“You silly boy,” Sam said, “it’s just a cat.”

“Red’s wolf ancestry tells him that cats can’t be trusted. I don’t think there’s any changing that,” Amanda said, carefully double-checking the backyard for creepers.

She didn’t want to trust the cat to tell her whether there were any threats back here; she preferred to trust her eyes. But there were none, and she relaxed a little.

She was glad that she had brought the crowbar with her when she checked the garage door and it was locked. Whoever had ransacked the house had not been interested in anything they might find in there. They had probably been after food but had missed the bag in the cab of the truck.

Amanda beat on the garage door a couple of times and then listened. She could hear nothing, and with any luck, that meant that it was a creeper-free zone.

She opened the door and shone the beam of her flashlight inside. This garage was not as neatly organized as the one had been at the veteran’s house, but it had the same engine oil smell and no smell of decay. She stepped inside, instructing Sam to wait, but it was easy to tell right away that there weren’t any creepers about to lunge out at them.

“You can come in now, and close the door behind you,” she said to Sam.

Whoever had lived here had been working on an engine. It rested in the middle of the room on supports, and there was a puddle of oil underneath it that had seeped out, eventually soaking into the concrete floor. Various tools were scattered about the floor. There were several bicycle and motorcycle frames in a pile together. There were boxes stacked, with markings like, “dishes,” “clothes,” and “books.” Amanda disregarded these, as she did the old lamps that looked like they were from the 1960s or ’70s.

“I’ll take those,” Amanda said when she saw two lawn chairs hanging on a hook up on the wall.

“Oh, look, it’s a little gas can,” said Sam, holding up a 2.5-gallon can.

“We’ll take that one too,” Amanda said, glancing around the room to see if there was anything of value to them that they might have missed.

It wasn’t like this room held a lot of value to them, but she did spy some grease-cutting dish soap resting beside the one tub garage sink. He had probably used that to get the grease off of his hands. Amanda knew that Maryanne would appreciate it for doing their dishes. She had already found some on this trip, but there wouldn’t be any way for Amanda to get any more without driving to the next city, and that was a hundred miles away or more from where they had their camp set up, so every little bit helped. The bottle was nearly half full.

“Let’s go,” she said, moving for the door, anxious to have the time to get the gas out of the truck in the driveway and possibly check out a couple more houses.

“What about all these tools?” Sam asked, stepping over some of them.

“Leave them, we already have a lot to take to Roy, and I wouldn’t know if there was anything critical here that we didn’t already grab,” Amanda said, stepping back out into the backyard.

The smell of smoke seemed stronger to her now, but that might be because they had been in the garage where there had been no smell of smoke, or it could be that the fire was closing on them.

They moved quickly around the house to the front, where Sam gathered up her hammer and tent spike and then went to get the gas out of the truck.

“Don’t punch that spike very hard because that truck’s just teetering on that jack right now, and I don’t want you getting smashed under there. You’re still in one piece today after one heck of a run, and I don’t want that changing now.”

“Got it,” Sam said, scooting under the truck.

The girl did as instructed and punched a small hole without using much force. The truck rocked slightly and then stopped. Gas trickled out of the small hole and the girl positioned the large metal can under there first. It just barely fit, but only because the truck was up a little higher than it had been; otherwise, there wouldn’t have been enough clearance for this tall of a gas can.

“It’ll take a little longer this way, it’s just trickling out,” Sam said, with her voice sounding muffled.

Amanda looked to make sure that there were no embers from the fire being carried in with the ash because she didn’t want a spark to blow Sam up under there. But it was still just the ash raining down in gray and blackened flecks.

“It’s done,” Sam said, crawling out from under the truck. “It didn’t even fill the metal can up. We got maybe about three gallons.”

“That’s fine,” Amanda said. “Load it up, and tie it to the others so it doesn’t fall over, and then let’s pull a little farther down the street, and we’ll see if there’s anything else we can find before we have to give this town up for lost.”

“It’s kind of sad, you know, losing Blythe. I hadn’t lived here for very long, but it’s where I was when the world changed. And now it’ll just be gone,” Sam said.

“I know what you mean,” Amanda said, looking around at the once-quiet little neighborhood that had housed so many families and hardworking people.

The world had irrevocably changed. And even after the threat of zombies was long gone, it would never be the same as it was before. Amanda felt as if they were standing at the cusp of a new era, and she didn’t know what it would hold for them, but she did know that this event had changed everything for all humanity and most of the animals that they had shared the planet with.

It used to be common to see dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, and field mice out in these parts. But even though Red could manage to scrounge up a few of the rodent types now and then, they had become a rarity, like that cat that they had seen twice now. But then again, it used to be common to see people walking these streets too. Amanda shrugged, deciding that there were better ways to spend her time than pondering the things that had been, and she headed for her truck. Someday the vehicles would stop working, and there would be no way to repair them, and when that happened, that would change everything all over again.

The engine of her truck fired up right away, and Amanda found herself feeling grateful that she had it and that it worked. She allowed herself to smile, and this seemed to make her feel a little better.

She rolled slowly down the street with Sam close behind. It was difficult to tell from the outside of these houses whether they would still have anything of use to her anymore, but she attempted to try to figure that out anyway as each house came into view. Finally, she stopped. The only thing that she knew for certain about the house that she had stopped at was that it had been boarded up, and at the very least, it had wood for them to take, if nothing else.

“What’s so special about this one?” Sam asked, wanting to understand how Amanda decided to pick a home to scavenge.

“Nothing really,” Amanda said. “I can’t tell from the outside of them whether they’ll have stuff we want, but I know that we can use the wood.”

Sam nodded, apparently disappointed with Amanda’s answer, as if she had expected her to give out some magic formula to live by. The girl shrugged.

“Let’s get to work then,” Sam said, going to Amanda’s truck for the hammer.

Amanda grabbed another hammer and the crowbar and joined Sam on the front porch.

“It kind of looks a little like our house, before we left it,” Sam said, eyeing the two-by-fours and plywood that was hammered up. “Except Dad and Roy used screws to board ours up. They said they hold better than nails, but these boards are still here.”

“For the record, screws do hold better than nails, but it could be that the people who lived here never came under siege by as many of them as your family had,” Amanda said, beginning to pull one of the boards off.

The day was finally beginning to lose some of the intense heat that had been plaguing them. Amanda figured that it must be five o’clock by now, if not later. The hottest part of the day was over, and even though the temperature still would not drop below a hundred degrees, even this evening, it was still a relief to feel it drop below 120.

They had pulled several boards and a piece of plywood off of the big living room window when a female creeper with long stringy hair hit the glass of the window on the other side, scaring all of them.

“Guess there’s at least one in the house,” Amanda said after she had gained her voice back again.

“Totally scared me,” Sam said, looking to Red who had moved back, hackles up, ready to strike. “Why didn’t you say anything, Red?” Sam admonished.

Red didn’t seem to understand the question and held his position, ready to attack, should the thing get loose.

“You know, Sam, this is probably a good sign that there’s a creeper in the house. Looters would have taken it out, I would think.”

“Yeah, maybe this one has more food and medicine and stuff,” Sam said, beginning to get excited. “Can I take this one out?”

“Not yet, just stay back from the window while we get the wood away from the door, and see if any more of them come. It’ll help to know what we’re walking into,” Amanda said.

“Oh, man,” Sam groaned.

“What is it?”

“There’s a kid with her, another little creeper kid,” Sam said, backing away from the window. “That’s all we need, is another little creeper kid.”

“Just help me get the wood off of the door,” Amanda said, “and I’ll take care of them.”

“Wait a second,” said Sam, drawing closer to the window. “I know that kid, and I know that creeper lady. That’s my math teacher, Ms. Garcia, and her son. This totally sucks, I really liked my math teacher.”

“Most kids don’t like math much,” Amanda said.

“Ms. Garcia made math fun, everybody thought so,” Sam said, and Amanda could tell that the girl was really working herself up just thinking about it.

“We can skip this house if you want,” Amanda said, trying to save the girl some grief.

“No, I’m sure there’s some good stuff in there, and I don’t want to just leave them that way. That would be really lame.”

“I’m sorry,” Amanda said, wondering how it was that she had picked this house and not some other one. “Why don’t you go to the truck, and I’ll take care of them and check the house out?”

“No,” Sam said. “I can’t believe I have to whack my favorite math teacher over the head. You take the boy, his name’s Juan.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I can do it, and I should be the one to do it because I cared about her, and you don’t leave someone you cared about like that,” Sam said, resigning herself to the task ahead.

“Let’s get the boards off of the front door. We’ll open it and let them out, and then they’ll be easier to take care of,” Amanda said.

“Sure,” Sam said and followed it by a long sigh.

The boards were pulled off, and they had taken all the nails out, deciding to go and stack the wood in the truck before they took care of the creepers inside. It seemed to Amanda that the girl needed a few minutes to ready herself emotionally. Amanda knew from experience how hard it could be to have to put down someone you cared deeply about.

“Ready?” she asked the girl, being sure to look her in the eyes.

“Ready,” Sam said, hefting the baseball bat.

“I’ve got Juan, and you take Ms. Garcia, quick and easy. We’ll put them out of their misery. I’m sure she would thank you for that if she could,” Amanda said.

“I know I’d want someone doing it for me,” Sam said, beginning to walk very determinedly toward the house.

They had put Red in the truck, not wanting him to be confused by what his job should be in all this. He had looked at them as if they were betraying him in some way, but they didn’t cave, and he currently stood watch from the passenger seat of the big moving truck.

Amanda forcefully used her hip and shoulder to push the door open. The lock came free of the doorframe, and she pushed the door a little farther with her foot before backing up.

The two creepers found their way out and down the front steps to the walkway. The front yard was cute, covered in rock and small cacti with gnomes of various shapes and sizes looking like they were working with the plants. This place had once been a happy home for this woman and her son, and all that had come to a sudden end. Amanda found it hard sometimes not to become resentful because of all that had happened. But she knew that anger and resentment wouldn’t help her now; it wouldn’t help any of them now.