Amanda Carter in the L.A.Z., life after zombies (34 page)

“Oh, that makes sense,” Cole said. “Sam and Cody have sure hit it off.”

“Yes, Sam’s been wanting a friend, and her little sister’s too young to fall in the category, I guess,” Amanda said, noticing that the big truck ahead had gained some ground on them because she had begun to drive real slow.

She pressed down on the accelerator, catching up to them.

“Do you want me to drive?” Cole asked, noticing that Amanda was struggling.

“No, there isn’t much farther to go.”

“So is their entire family still intact? They haven’t lost anybody?” Cole asked.

“The Albrecht family is intact, and though we almost recently lost Jason, the father, on a run to town, they are all still present and accounted for,” Amanda said.

“Interesting,” answered Cole. “That’s unusual these days. Most people either got split up or have lost one or more of their family members to this infection. How old is the youngest daughter?”

“Tammy’s six, or just turned six, I think. It’s easy to lose track of time out here,” Amanda said, seeing the red taillights to the big truck in duplicate in front of her.

Her vision had begun to blur, and she put a hand to her eyes to rub them. That did not succeed in clearing up her vision, but it did make her eyes sting from the soot and chemicals on her hand. Her eyes watered, and the taillights swam around.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Cole asked.

“No, I’m fine.”

“I was just wondering because you’re weaving,” he said.

“Oh, I’m trying to figure out which set of taillights I should be following,” she said, realizing as she did that he wouldn’t understand what she was talking about.

Chapter 57

T
he big truck squeezed up next to the mountainside and stopped on the landing that had served as their parking lot all these months out here. Amanda pulled next to the truck, and then Roy rolled his Jeep up alongside her truck. It was a tight fit with the three vehicles, but it would work.

Sam shut the big truck off, and the headlights automatically turned off, and Amanda and Roy did the same, leaving them in the dark. Soon the beams from their flashlights were bobbing about as they moved to congregate at the back of the vehicles. But Amanda, after having handed Cole a flashlight to use, remained in her truck. She felt like she needed a moment to collect herself before joining in on the homecoming. What she really felt was that she might pass out should she exit the vehicle now.

In times past, she had experienced occasions where she had felt a little faint after an adrenaline rush had worn off and the threat had dissipated, and this was what she was feeling—that and her grueling day. She took a breath, trying to steady the shake that she felt in her body.

Her arm throbbed with the burn, and she wondered what it looked like now because it sure hurt quite desperately bad, especially now that the adrenaline had been flushed out of her system. She wanted to take a look at the wound because she knew that she ought to, but another part of her was dreading the experience and would rather put it off and allow the doctor to handle it. She refrained from shining a flashlight on it or from using the truck’s dome light to take a peek. She took a few minutes in the dark to rest, not believing that she felt well enough to be socializing with the others at this time.

Amanda still had her truck window down, and she heard Roy asking Sam if she had applied the emergency brake. She was relieved to know that someone would be handling the details from here on out because she clearly had no energy left to deal with much of anything.

The back door rolled up on the rental truck, and she could hear a lot of sounds of appreciation as Roy, Maryanne, Cole, and Cody, shone their lights inside to see what they had managed to bring back with them. It felt good to hear this, and she smiled, in spite of the fatigue that was weighing her down like a scuba diver that was wearing too many lead weights on their belt.

“Amanda, it’s incredible what you two were able to do today in town,” Maryanne said, rushing up breathless and flushed, to congratulate her on their haul.

It was obvious to Amanda that her friend was pleased, both to have her daughter back and to have so much by way of supplies, and that was without even knowing exactly how much they had managed to collect. There would be a repeat of this when they were all unloading the truck together tomorrow. Again, she smiled, a thin anemic smile even when she wanted to do a broad, bold one.

“Hop on out, and let’s get you four fed. I’m sure you’re all ravished with hunger,” Maryanne said before giving Amanda an odd expression that Amanda didn’t know how to interpret.

“Are you feeling all right?” Maryanne asked, finally speaking again after staring at her for a while.

“There are some things that I need to talk to you about, really important things,” Amanda said before sighing.

She didn’t like it, but she could feel her eyes watering up at the thought of having to tell her dear friend about the bite. Having to tell Maryanne about it almost seemed worse than the bite itself. She sighed and twisted to reach in the back and pull out the plastic grocery sack that had the two cans of chili, the toothpaste, and the men’s stick of deodorant.

“We can have this for dinner to keep things simple, since the food’s mostly buried by things in both trucks,” Amanda said, not recognizing that Maryanne was beginning to look flustered.

It would have been difficult to see the physical aspects of Maryanne’s flustered appearance by the light of the single flashlight that she was carrying. Amanda sensed it by noticing that the woman had begun to sigh loudly and repeatedly, until finally Maryanne cleared her throat, so as not to be ignored.

“What?” Amanda asked innocently.

“What do you mean, what?” Maryanne asked, and Amanda could see that the woman’s hands had gone to her hips. “It sounds to me like you need to drop some bombshell on me, but you’re sitting there and acting like it’s no big deal.”

“Honestly, I don’t know how to act in this situation, and I’m much too tired to think about it,” Amanda said in a tone that sounded weary.

“Now, you’re really scaring me,” Maryanne said, pushing herself up close to the window of the truck and shining the light in to take a look at Amanda. “What’s that gasoline smell?” Maryanne asked, backing up a few feet and blowing out puffs of air to clear her nostrils.

“Well, that’s one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about,” Amanda said, sounding even wearier this time.

They could hear the small collection of people talking and laughing at the rear of the vehicles, and Roy was rustling around inside the moving truck, apparently too excited about their finds to wait until morning to check it out.

“You look horrible, and you smell worse,” Maryanne said, not intending it to be an insult, but it came out that way anyway.

“Thanks,” Amanda said stoically as she pulled on the door handle to let herself out.

“Sorry,” Maryanne said, “I didn’t mean it like it came out, but you’ve had quite the day. I thought that Sam looked like she had taken one for the team until I got a look at you. Sam looks pretty as a daisy compared to how you fared.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Amanda said, pulling her body out of the truck.

It felt to her like all systems were shutting down when her legs gave out from underneath her, and for the second time today, she fainted.

When she came to, Cole had her in his arms; despite his emaciated appearance, he was quite strong. They were headed up the hill, and it did not appear to be difficult for Cole, and Amanda wondered how thin she must be by now. She scoffed at him, telling him to release her and that she could make her own way up the hill.

“This is one of those nonnegotiable situations,” Roy said kindly, and she easily acquiesced.

Amanda was not entirely certain that should they let her down, she would be able to make the journey up the hill.

Maryanne was hustling along beside them, telling her that she needed to take a look at her and that she would go on up ahead and get the fluids ready.

“You’re probably suffering from heat exhaustion,” Maryanne said loudly on her way up the hill.

Amanda could only wish that it were that simple.

“Are you going to tell them, or should I?” Cole said, and he was obviously referring to the bite that she had told him about.

“I will, and you’re not to say a word,” Amanda said, feeling ire rise at the thought of this near-stranger speaking to her friends about such a delicate subject.

“Sorry, I’ll stay out of it,” Cole said, becoming quiet and sullen-looking.

Once at the top of the hill, Maryanne directed them to lay her out on her sleeping bag, and she met them with a bag of fluids and the IV line.

“Please don’t waste it,” Amanda said, struggling to sit up.

Maryanne gently pushed on her shoulder and nudged her back down. “I won’t hear of it,” she said. “You’re getting these fluids if I have to knock you out to do it.”

Amanda sighed and nodded, thinking that her friend might feel differently once she was informed of the whole situation. But she also knew, with how passionate Maryanne could be once she was on a mission, that the woman just might knock her lights out to get the job done.

“I want all of you to go down the hill and start doing something, but give me some private time with Amanda. We need to talk, and I’m sensing that she’d prefer to do it in private, patient-to-doctor-like.”

“Sure thing,” Roy said, going to collect Tammy, who was excitedly asking about her coloring book.

“What do you want me to do?” Jason asked, thinking about the difficult logistics involved in getting him down the hill without aggravating his leg.

“Honey, you stay there and shut your ears,” Maryanne answered.

“You have a doctor in your camp?” Cole asked, clearly amazed.

“We’ll talk down the hill. Nobody argues with the doctor,” Roy said, knowing that he had earlier today, but that was just to keep her from running off and killing herself in a poorly planned rescue attempt for her daughter.

“I don’t believe it,” Cole said, as his voice was receding down the hill. “I didn’t know that there were any doctors left.”

The camp suddenly became hushed; even the dogs had disappeared down the hill, and Jason didn’t make a sound.

Maryanne busied herself with the IV line, wanting to get that going before they began their conversation, in the hopes that getting Amanda hydrated would help the situation.

Amanda didn’t argue anymore, as she wished to not further aggravate her friend. And when the fluids began to course through her veins, she was glad for them. She could feel her body soaking them up and realized that to some extent, what she was feeling had been brought on by heat exhaustion and dehydration, but not all of it.

“So?” Maryanne asked, while sitting on her folded legs and gently rocking back to get a better look at Amanda by the light of the lantern.

“I found us a couple of chairs for around camp,” Amanda said, suddenly feeling like she wanted to avoid the topic altogether.

“Speak,” Maryanne said, looking at her sternly. “As your doctor, I need to know what’s going on with you so that I can do my best to treat it. I can see that you’re covered in filth, obviously dehydrated, and you have a nasty burn to your left forearm. That burn alone could cause a person to pass out. The pain must be monumental. And to top it off, you smell like you fell into a gasoline tank.”

“I got bit in town today,” Amanda said, letting the words gush out tactlessly unfiltered.

Amanda winced when she saw that the color had drained out of her friend’s normally rosy cheeks. For a moment, Maryanne stared at her speechless, stunned, with all the thoughts about the ramifications piling up in her head.

“Come again?” she asked, as if she might not have heard it right the first time.

“I got bit,” Amanda repeated, not wanting to have to say the words again.

“I see,” Maryanne said, looking past Amanda and trying to collect her thoughts and separate herself from being the friend so that she could be the doctor.

“Where?” she finally said. “Where did you get bit? I need to take a look at it,” and she sounded like she was now all-business, but there were emotions roiling like clouds across the surface of her face.

“It’s my arm,” Amanda said, raising it, even though it felt like it was encased in lead.

“How did it get burned too?” Maryanne asked, looking confused.

“A kid creeper, maybe two years older than Tammy, sprang at me and scraped her teeth down my arm. There were three superficial scratches that broke the surface of the skin. I quickly disinfected it and then burned it with the disinfectant still on, and it made quite the blaze for a few seconds, and it hurt like hell. The bite isn’t horrible, but I have been feeling poorly today since then.”

“I see,” Maryanne said again, “and the gasoline smell?”

“I passed out on the asphalt while siphoning gas from a truck, and before Sam realized it, I was lying in a pool of the stuff. It burns the skin too. Sam poured a couple of gallons of water over me, but I can still feel the burn on my back, neck, stomach, and down my legs. And I’ve been smelling the stuff all day.”

“Looks to me like you have a chemical burn as well as a second-degree burn on your arm. I can see that it’s blistering and puckering up on your arm. Perhaps, you got to it in time, and you’re not infected. If it wasn’t that deep, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility that you might be okay, that it’s survivable.”

It broke Amanda’s heart to hear the tone of hope in her friend’s voice. She wanted with everything within her, for that to be true, if for no other reason right now than to not break her friend’s heart by becoming infected and turning.

“It also sounds like your skin has absorbed the gas, and it’s acting like a poison. The fluids should help you flush it out of your system. It’s possible to die from something like that alone. I’m not surprised that you passed out down the hill, but why earlier today?”

“It was so hot, and it was shortly after the bite and the burn, and I was smelling the fumes, and then suddenly it was lights out,” Amanda said, with a voice that was low and faraway sounding to her ears.

“Anything else I need to know?” Maryanne asked, “Do you have any bullet holes, stab wounds, or rabid animal bites? Because it sounds like you’ve seen it all today.”

“No,” Amanda said, managing a smile and enjoying the feel of the fluids, even while feeling guilty for using them.

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” Maryanne said, patting her. “You brought my daughter home safe to me, and I will look out for you because you obviously put yourself on the line to do it. Rest, I’ll be back in a minute to clean you up, and then I’ll wrestle you up something soothing to eat that won’t upset your stomach.”

Amanda could barely take in the doctor’s directions because she had already begun to fall asleep.