Amanda Carter in the L.A.Z., life after zombies (19 page)

Chapter 34

“
N
ow we listen, and stay alert. One of us scrounges around the kitchen while the other stays on lookout,” Amanda said. “I have a feeling we’re going to find a lot of good stuff in this house because it doesn’t look like it’s been raided at all.”

“I’ll stand lookout,” Sam said, wielding the bat up and at the ready.

“Good then, you take first watch while I look, and then we’ll switch places,” Amanda said, already beginning to open up cupboards.

She had been right. The shelves were fully stocked, as if nothing unusual had happened to the world, and Amanda could not have been more thrilled. There were plenty of spices, which she shoved off of the shelf and into her open pack, knowing not to take the time to organize anything neatly at this point. With the fire, time was not their friend, and they could all work on sorting out the jumbled mess later on back at camp. With the pack full, she grabbed a few of the bigger items by hand and loaded them up in her arms, like an economy-sized container of salt and another one of pepper and the same for a large cinnamon jug. It seemed that someone in this household had been very serious about baking.

There was a metal canister that when opened she could see contained flour, another one for raw sugar, and a third for brown sugar. She grabbed all these, making her arms nearly impossibly full, so Sam helped by opening the back door and then the passenger side door of the extended cab. Amanda dumped the pack out, scattering the spice containers all along the floorboard. With the flour and sugars, she took better care to tuck them in tightly, so as to insure that they didn’t spill their cargo. Spices were a wonderful commodity these days and something that was nice to have around to help make whatever food that they could get a hold of taste more edible, but they were not an essential like the food was. She would take great care with the food to make sure that none of it was lost in any careless attempt to get it back to camp.

Back in the small kitchen that had been well used by the previous occupants based on the types of food and the enormous amount of wear on the tile, there were still no signs of trouble. The quietness of the house was in stark contrast to the terrible smell of this place, and she knew that somewhere in this house lurked some trouble. But as yet, they had still not come across it and that was fine by Amanda, as she had time to completely clear out the kitchen before having to take care of any problems or abandoning the house because the trouble was too risky for the two of them to handle on their own. Even though it was vitally important that both of them do their best to gather as many resources and supplies as they could today, she could still not forget that this was Sam’s maiden run, and as such, the girl would not be prepared for the kind of trouble that was spelled with a capital
T
, and that kind of trouble was not too difficult to find these days on their trips to town.

Opening up one of the long, thin cupboards that stretched from the floor to just over her head, she was pleased to discover what had functioned as their pantry. She opened the adjoining door and peeked inside. Though it was not anything as grand as a walk in pantry, the shelves did go back a ways and there were plenty of items stacked neatly upon them. Amanda had not seen this much food all in one place in months.

She felt her eyes begin to tear up in her gratitude for the find and was quick to brush them away. She told herself that she could cry about it later, but for now, she needed to move fast. But she had a feeling that she would not be the one crying about it later; she would leave that to Maryanne, who would be completely thrilled to be able to have enough food to properly feed their crew for a while.

She grabbed an unopened box of pancake mix, another box of white crackers, and one of a buttery type of cracker that Amanda had once loved having with a little wine and cheese back in the LBZ. She tucked these boxes under one arm, using her chin to stabilize them, while her other arm went to work on grabbing a big jar of pickles and a box of the type of processed cheese that had a long shelf life without needing to be refrigerated; that probably wasn’t entirely real cheese at all. But far be it for her to be complaining about the quality of the cheese that she could still find. These last items she stuffed into the pack, along with several bags of sunflower seeds that were salted and some cans of sweetened condensed milk.

“We totally scored,” said Sam, glancing to Amanda’s full arms, before returning her eyes back to the empty house, taking her job as the lookout seriously.

“Score is right,” Amanda said, a little breathlessly, knowing that should she grab one more thing on this trip that she was in danger of toppling her entire cache. She had Sam follow her back out to the vehicle.

“Are we going to have room for all this stuff?” Sam asked, seeing how full the extra cab portion of the truck was becoming.

Had Amanda taken more time to organize all this, there would be a bit more room; however, the extra truck they would be picking up would take care of any of their storage problems, and she needed the time more than she needed the space.

“If need be, Red can sit on your lap until we reach our second vehicle. I had no idea that we’d be looking at loading up this much from this housing community. I’m glad we came to check it out,” Amanda said with the scent of fire flaring in her nostrils, “and looks like we are doing it just in time too. Can you imagine if all this food was to get burnt up?”

“No, I can’t imagine that,” Sam said, slamming the truck door and following Amanda back into the house, “especially not with how we’ve been practically starving ourselves for months.”

“I mean, just look at all this stuff,” Amanda said, stuffing her head in between the open cabinet doors and taking a moment to analyze it.

“Hey, look!” Sam said, excitedly pointing. “It’s pancake syrup, yum.”

Once again, Amanda loaded up her arms. This time, she grabbed the syrup for Sam’s benefit, a dried salami that had not had the plastic sealing it disturbed, a full plastic bottle of ketchup and mustard, which she stuffed into her pack, along with two unopened bottles of wine. The wine was an economy brand that she recognized, not the best by any means; but when you had none, it was going to be heavenly to imbibe in back at camp.
Maybe
, she considered,
I’ll have some wine with the cheese and
crackers
.

The pack was full again, and she started loading up her arms, wishing that she had a cardboard box to dump it into, but it had not occurred to her as generally, their finds weren’t as monumental as this. She grabbed a large, half-full bottle of Vodka, again an off-brand, a full bottle of rum, some coconut rum, and a mostly full bottle of brandy.

“Hey, we can’t eat that stuff,” Sam said, complaining.

“Do you wanna bet?” Amanda said. “Besides, your mom said to bring back some alcohol if I could because it’s good for medicinal things, you know?”

“I guess it doesn’t matter as long as we have time to grab everything,” Sam said, being sure to glance out into the living room area to make sure that no creepers were sneaking up on them.

“I plan on taking everything,” Amanda said, huffing a little as she made her laborious way back out to the truck in the heat.

“You seriously haven’t found this much stuff all at once before?” Sam asked with curiosity. “It’s like we walked into a small market or something.”

“Nope, I seriously haven’t found this much in one place before,” Amanda said. “I have a feeling that this day, before it’s over, will be one for the record books.”

“Who’s around to keep records anymore?” Sam said rhetorically. “Let me help some, it’ll go faster.”

“Nope,” said Amanda. “Trust me, I don’t want you to have to dump any food because of a threat. It’s best to keep one person on lookout and one gathering, at least for as long as possible anyway. If the fire gets too out of hand, we may have to improvise a little, but I’d rather not risk it.”

“Sure,” Sam said, with a shrug, “but doesn’t seem like there’s much going on here.”

“Keep watch, okay?” Amanda said, trying to repeat her point and hoping that the girl was catching it, because there were too many times when things had gone awry too quickly for her to want to take any chances with Sam or their food.

Red watched them reenter the house and decided to go and lie down, realizing that they might be awhile here.

Back inside was some powdered milk, two jars of unopened peanut butter, a large sealed canister of coffee grounds, and a Christmas-decorated one pound bag of hazelnut coffee beans, a box of prepackaged cakes with a crème filling, nine cans of vegetables of various types, a full bag of rice, and then Amanda had Sam give up her backpack to fill it. In Sam’s pack, she stacked seven cans of beans and then tossed a plastic sack of dried split peas in along with some cans of fruit and a couple of pudding cups. She was stunned because there were still two full shelves left.

She passed Sam’s pack back off to her to carry and then loaded up her arms with pasta and tomato sauces from the second to last shelf.

After unceremoniously dumping the load out of her arms and upending the packs back at the truck, she returned to finish the job.

The last shelf contained juice boxes that claimed to be real juice.
Nice
, she thought. And then there were a myriad assortment of sodas and sports drinks, all of which would be greatly appreciated back at camp. Lastly, tucked way in the back, were two six-pack bottles of an expensive type of crafted beer.

“Do you think we found enough for three or four months?” Sam asked, sounding excited about some of the items she had seen.

“No, not hardly, but it’s a good start for now,” Amanda said.

The owners had been meticulous with their kitchen, and the other cupboards, and shelves were dedicated to various appliances, except for a secret stash of two chocolate bars that someone had hid on the backside of the blender. She did find an opened can of a premium brand of coffee grounds above where the coffee maker rested on the counter; it was as if the appliance were ready to brew a cup at any moment.

The two chocolate bars were soft and squishy with the heat, and she handled them carefully so as not to lose any of their contents out of the wrapper because they had become nearly liquefied.

“I call dibs,” Sam said, reaching her hand out for a bar.

“Not now,” Amanda answered. “But you can have it later after you’ve fully earned it.”

“Really!” she said. “Cool.”

Unfortunately, the refrigerator didn’t contain anything that Amanda would trust eating, so she slammed the door shut before the odor emanating from it could add to the obnoxious smell of the house. But under the sink, she found a nearly full bottle of bleach and a new package of rubber gloves, along with a new economy-sized bottle of dish soap and a pack of brand-new sponges. She added this to the truck’s stash, knowing how pleased Maryanne would be to see it.

“What’s next?” Sam asked after Amanda was convinced that the kitchen would provide them with nothing more of use to them.

“Follow me,” Amanda said, feeling good about the amount of food they had found but a little worried that now they were carrying the previous equivalent of gold bullion around with them. If any of the raiders knew what they had, they’d be killed for it.

She shook her head, trying to dismiss the thought as she made her way into the tidy living room. A cursory search didn’t yield anything of value to them. But she did sneak a look out the front window, up and down the street to make sure that no one was around to ambush them, even though it was ridiculous to think that anyone out there would be any the wiser to their presence here with the truck tucked away in the backyard.

“Now we go upstairs,” Amanda said, feeling the oppressive heat mounting as they ascended the stairs to the second floor.

Some of the steps creaked, sounding loud in the otherwise quiet house.

Chapter 35

“
I
say there’s no time to lose,” Maryanne said, gathering up some full bottles of water and stuffing them into one of their extra backpacks. “We need to go to town and bring them back.”

“There’s no need to get crazy now,” Roy said. “Just because there’s a fire doesn’t mean that they are in any kind of immediate danger, besides, the Jeep doesn’t have enough gas in it to make it to town.”

“Well,” Maryanne said before pausing to think, “we drive until we run out of gas and then hoof it from there.”

It was clear that as a mother, Maryanne was beside herself with worry for their safety, given the new threat of the fire with the smoke that they could clearly see now even without the use of the binoculars. She was red in the face, and the large veins on either side of her temples were protruding, causing Roy some concern that her high blood pressure was spiking.

Jason had fallen asleep, and Roy didn’t want to wake him but felt that it might be necessary if he couldn’t get her to calm down soon. It wasn’t like her to become quite so irrationally emotional.

“I have an idea,” Roy said finally as he watched her gather items together for a pointless trip to town that would inevitably end in disaster. “Let’s sit down, we’ll have a drink and discuss our options before we do anything.”

Roy grabbed the rum bottle and two glasses and went to sit with his back at the boulder under the shade.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Tammy asked, looking up from her playtime with a freshly scrubbed face.

“Oh, nothing that can’t be fixed,” Maryanne answered, looking to her daughter and putting her plans on pause.

“How about it?” Roy asked. “I know it’s early yet, but it might help to take the edge off of what you’re feeling right now.”

Maryanne wiped her amber hair back and blew out some air that felt like it had been trapped in her lungs for a while.

“Sure,” she finally said, answering Roy and going to join him in the dirt. “It’s just that I know what’s out there, and it’s bad enough without adding a fire to it.”

Maryanne had begun to lose some of her pent-up steam and was sounding tired and discouraged.

“I know how it is,” Roy said kindly. “I don’t know what it’s like to have a kid out there in that mess, but I do know how things are now, all topsy-turvy. It’s enough to drive a person crazy if you let it.”

Roy poured some of the dark liquid in each glass, nearly emptying the bottle. He handed her a glass and took a sip of his own.

“Let’s talk this through before we make things worse on ourselves,” he said.

“I want to go get my daughter out of that town,” Maryanne said, sounding determined but less hectic.

“I don’t want her there any more than you do, Maryanne,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is that she’s equipped to do a very important job for us, one that she’s been looking forward to doing for a while, and she’s doing it with a very experienced guide. Sam will be fine, and Amanda is going to bring her back, you’ll see.”

Maryanne had drained her glass quickly and extended it for a refill.

“Look, I’ve become a lush,” she said, “and it only took an apocalyptic event to do it.”

Roy laughed and poured the last of the liquid in her glass.

“Maryanne, you’re my friend and one of the most reasonable people I’ve known. Try to understand that you’re just under a lot of stressors right now that aren’t helping you to think clearly,” Roy said, trying to help calm her while helping to make sure she wasn’t being too hard on herself.

“It’s funny,” she said. “You sound like Jason right now.”

“Well, I think I’ve picked up some of his psych talk over the years that we’ve been friends,” Roy said, allowing a chuckle to escape.

“I know that what you’re saying is right. We don’t have the gas. Someone like me would never make it on foot into the city in this heat, past all those creepers, and then God forbid, we run into a pack of raiders. I just feel so helpless right now, and it’s worse that I have to watch that smoke, knowing the dangers,” she said and then issued a long sigh. “I thought that I’d feel better if I did something to help her.”

“Sometimes the best thing that we can do is nothing at all,” Roy said, sounding philosophical. “We’ll just make more trouble for ourselves and for Sam and Amanda if we go out and get ourselves in trouble. We stay put and wait. You’ll see, they’ll be back.”

“Will you keep an eye on the fire and the road into camp for me?” she asked. “I think it would be best if I purified some water and tidied up around camp. You know how it is when they come home with a lot of stuff. I’ll try to get things organized, tidy.”

Roy nodded, understanding her need to busy herself and forget about the possibilities for a little while. He had his own worries, but he wasn’t about to share them with her, not when she was just coming back to her reasonable self.

O

The smell of decaying flesh was much worse up here, and Amanda was concerned about what they might find and how that would affect Sam. She told Sam to stay behind her while she moved forward, surveying the layout of this section of the house. They were in a wide hallway. Framed family photos covered both sides of the wall, reminding them of what life had been like before, the happier times. Seeing the smiling faces in the photos clashed with the odor of the place brought some sadness to Amanda. She looked away from the wall hangings, not wanting to think about what had been. It was important that she remain in the here-and-now in order to do what needed to be done.

There were two doors on either side of them. The first room she came to on the left had an open door, and she stopped at it, listening, looking. Sam stayed close behind her with the baseball bat held up, eager to up her creeper count. Amanda could hear the girl’s escalated breathing as adrenaline, no doubt, was coursing through her. But the room, which appeared to have been used as a guest room, was empty.

The only thing she spied in the room that would be useful to them were two clean pillows with cases and a blanket that were stowed on the top shelf of a shallow closet that also held Christmas ornaments and wrapping paper. She grabbed the blanket and the pillows and stacked them at the top of the stairs. Amanda had never grabbed a used pillow off of a bed because of the fear that some infected person might have used it. She had no idea if it would be possible to become contaminated through contact like that, but she didn’t want to find out the hard way because something like that couldn’t be undone.

She then moved on to the closed door on the right. She didn’t like the feel of this room, probably because the smell seemed to be intensified here. She pushed the door open and then instructed Sam to step back; uncharacteristically, the girl obliged. The room was dark and required her to snap her flashlight on for a clear view. Heavy curtains were tightly closed, shutting out the brilliance of the sun and adding to the ominous feel. She listened for any sound of movement but could hear nothing except for the buzzing of flies that were drawn to the two corpses lying on the bed. It wasn’t difficult to presume that these had been the man and woman from the photos, though it would be impossible to recognize them as such in this state.

Decomposition had done its best to liquefy the bodies. A brown stain had spread across the comforter, and these people were now mummified skin stretched over bone. There was a gun lying there, and the solution to what had happened to them became obvious. Amanda felt like she was intruding upon them and their self-inflicted solitude that had been their last desire.

It was difficult to forget scenes like this, and she backed up, pushing Sam back with her.

“I’m going in there, and I want you to stay here. It’s very unpleasant in there, and I don’t want you seeing it. I’m trying to protect you, and I have your best interest in mind, just trust that,” Amanda said, looking the girl in the eyes to see if she would comply.

“What is it?” Sam asked, trying to peek around Amanda to look into the room.

“I’ll tell you so that you’re not curious, but it’s best if you don’t see it,” she answered.

Sam nodded and then swallowed, looking nervous and excited at the same time.

“The couple that lived here killed themselves, and they are lying in the bed. They’ve decomposed mostly, but that’s where the smell is coming from. This happened a lot, especially in the early days of the event. People were frightened, had lost loved ones, and didn’t want to suffer a worse fate than death, killed themselves, their families,” Amanda said.

Sam nodded, looking somber.

Amanda decided that she didn’t need the pistol that was lying with them badly enough to disturb what they had hoped would be a more peaceful resting place than joining the ranks of the walking dead. She walked in with the hopes of finding some ammunition, which she quickly discovered on the nightstand next to the bed. There was an entire box of .38 hollow points—minus two, the rounds that they had used on themselves.

She gathered up the box quickly and stuffed it in her pack, convincing herself that there would be nothing more of use in this room. She backed out to the hallway, shutting the door behind her. She had seen scenes like this one during her runs, but it never seemed to get any easier for her. She felt rattled, especially having seen how they had lived from the privacy of their house, the homey yet organized kitchen, cozy living room, and the ideal-looking family photos on the walls all made it hard to process what had eventually happened here.

“Thanks for that,” Sam said, whispering. “The run’s been kind of fun, but I can see how it gets real hard sometimes to deal.”

“Yep,” Amanda said, feeling the sweltering heat pressing in on her and knowing that they wouldn’t have a lot more time to spend up here without making an effort to get hydrated and cooled down. One or both of them would be passing out soon if they didn’t do anything to take care of themselves.

Another open door on the opposite side of her was the upstairs bath, and it was the only other bathroom that the house had other than the one in the master bedroom. She briefly wondered how awkward that must have been when they had guests over to have to send them upstairs for the facilities, but of course, none of that mattered now.

She had chosen to leave the master bathroom undisturbed, which was an unusual practice for her. Generally, she would thoroughly search everything when she had the time; but somehow it just hadn’t seemed right, and she had left it. She hoped that this common bathroom would yield some useful items so that she wouldn’t feel compelled to have to reenter that room.

After checking the small confines of the bathroom for creepers, she let Sam do the scrounging through the cabinets and drawers, looking for anything useful. Items like toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouthwash, and liquid medicines they would only take if they were unopened. With no way to know how else the infection might travel, they were cautious to not use anything that an infected person might have used so as not to pass it on to themselves. This had been Maryanne’s idea, and one that they had staunchly followed.

Amanda could hear Sam rustling around in the bathroom, and she took this time to walk to the window at the end of the hallway. The pummeling winds were blowing debris around, and some of it was catching up against the fences. The neighbors had once had a swimming pool, but now there was no longer water in it, save for a soupy black-looking muck that was the bottom two or three feet of it. A creeper was trapped in the pool, clawing at the sides mindlessly, unable to escape. It was a sad sight to watch the hapless creature, but what interested her about the yard is that they had used solar to heat the pool and perhaps the house. A dozen large panels rested angled upwards to catch the sun. She wanted those panels.

“I found a tube of toothpaste, still in the box,” came Sam’s voice, echoing off the walls of the small room, “some gauze bandages, a tube of toothache medicine, still in the box, and some antiseptic spray and two rolls of toilet paper.”

“Good job,” Amanda said, snapping her head away from the window and walking toward the girl.

Hearing about the toilet paper had reminded Amanda to check the upstairs cabinets as well. Toilet paper had been scarce these days, and she knew that it was a camp favorite apart from food. She opened one cabinet to find stacks of towels and wash clothes. She closed that one and opened the adjoining one.
Bingo
, she thought as she grabbed a plastic-encased pack of twelve rolls. There was also some new coconut shampoo with a matching conditioner and three boxes of bar soap. She stacked the toilet paper at the top of the stairs beside the pillows and blanket that she had found earlier. Then she went back to stuff the other items into her pack.

“Um, I have a question,” Sam said, coming up behind her to whisper it.

“Yes,” Amanda answered, turning from the stack of goodies she had collected.

“Well, um,” Sam began, her eyes darting side to side, obviously finding it difficult to voice her question, “there’s a kid in the pictures and kid’s toys in the yard, but where’s the kid?” she said, still whispering.

Amanda took her whispering to be some form of homage for the dead and didn’t correct her about it. When it came down to it, they were struggling through a potentially extinction-level event, but it didn’t mean that they had to be heartless.

Sam could be moody, flippant, disrespectful to her parents, and way too excited to throw herself into the midst of some dangerous course of action, but when it came down to it, the girl was also compassionate, and Amanda didn’t want to do anything to change that about her. It was refreshing to know that it was possible to raise up the next generation amidst these types of conditions and that they might still carry with them their humanity toward their fellow man.

“I have a feeling that we are about to find out,” Amanda said, nodding toward the last closed door on the upstairs floor.

“Oh,” Sam said, looking over her shoulder toward the door and then shivering despite the heat.

“You might want to wait here,” Amanda said kindly. “I wouldn’t even bother checking that room except that I think Tammy could use some of the things in there because it has to be the former kid’s room. But you can never tell Tammy about who they belonged to and what happened here, okay?”