Amanda Carter in the L.A.Z., life after zombies (21 page)

Chapter 37

A
manda could see the first two creepers rounding the side of the house by the time she made it to the back of the truck. She grabbed one of the thick planks that they regularly used to cross The Trench and frantically worked to shimmy it loose until she was able to pull it out completely. Now the two creepers had reached the front of the truck and the other four were rounding the corner of the house. She tucked the plank under her injured arm and motioned for Sam to move to the six-foot-tall privacy fence. Sam complied, still looking a little out of sorts and confused. Amanda could feel her arm shaking at the weight of the plank and knew that she wasn’t quite up to her old self yet, so she hoped like hell that this plan of hers that she had conceived of quickly would work.

Even on her best day, it was difficult to come up against six creepers, and though she had done it and more before, she knew that now was not the time for that. Fortunately, none of these creepers were recently turned, and they were all slow moving. The first two had reached the back of the truck but now needed to cross the distance to the fence. The four had changed course and were headed directly for their location up against the fence. They were all set to converge upon them at about the same time.

Red had taken on a fighter’s stance and was still issuing a low and deep-throated growl. He appeared to be having some trouble deciding which one he should zero in on first, something that Amanda could entirely relate too.

Amanda picked the plank up and shoved it over the fence, until the bottom half hit the dirt on the other side and the top half was resting on the fence on the neighbor’s side.

Next, she quickly popped the latch, opening the connecting gate to the neighbor’s yard, motioning for Sam and Red to run through, which they quickly complied with. Amanda was the last one through with the creepers having come to within six feet of her. She increased the distance a little by running, but there was still not a lot of time to put her plan together. She grabbed the plank.

“Run to the other side of the pool, and make a lot of noise,” Amanda said, sounding breathless.

It was like the strong wind was tearing her words away from her and flinging them. But Sam had heard her, and she and Red were already running for the other side of the yard. From her vantage point on the second floor, Amanda had seen no other creepers besides the one that was so hopelessly stuck in the pool, and she hoped that this was still the case, as she didn’t need any more complications right now.

Amanda ran for the back of the neighbor’s house and then crouched, trying to control her labored breaths, so as not to make a sound. It worked. The six creepers, who had all joined up now, came piling through the gate, drawn to the yells that Sam was issuing, while the girl jumped up and down. Red barked, following her lead and helping with the noise factor.

Amanda waited, watching as the six, who were now piled closely together, headed for Sam and Red. She waited until they were all directly in front of her beside the swimming pool before she stood and lunged forward with the plank extended horizontally.

She plowed forward, using all her strength to catch them completely by surprise. She and the plank crashed into them. They were light, having most of their muscle mass and all their body fat dissolved by the decaying process in the heat of the desert. They flew off of their feet, plummeting into the pool. One of them reached out and snatched at her, catching the plank instead. Amanda put the skids on her feet just in time to keep from joining them down below in the muck that had once been someone’s swimming pool.

Gasping, Amanda accidentally dropped the plank into the pool. She had used a much larger amount of energy than she had anticipated, and out in this heat, after what had happened upstairs, she felt light-headed and woozy.

“Watch out!” Sam screamed.

She could see out of the corner of her eye that the girl was running, baseball bat extended, ready. Knowing that the threat must be close, Amanda lounged to the side, rolling, and was back up on her feet, with the knife ready.

There had been a latecomer, a seventh creeper, possibly the one that had been pounding at the front door. Sam bashed it upside the head, sending it down into the pool as well to join the others. But it was either too stunned to move, or it was dead when it landed.

“Wow!” Sam exclaimed, eyes shining with adrenaline. “That was cool how you did that.”

“And you just saved my butt, thanks,” Amanda said, putting her hands on her thighs to bend and catch her breath before she really did pass out.

Red sniffed the air, and looking satisfied, he sat down by Sam’s feet, happy to know that his new friend had come back to him in perfect health.

“I’m okay, Red,” Sam said, scratching him behind the ears. “Sorry if I scared you before.”

“There, you have some friends now,” Amanda said, looking down into the pit of a pool, speaking to the one that had spent so much time down there that she had become terribly water-logged.

“How did you know?” Sam asked.

“I saw the pool from the upstairs window,” Amanda answered, figuring that was what the girl was referring to.

“That was some fast thinking,” Sam said. “I hope that I can be as good as you when I get older,” the girl said with a sense of awe.

“You will be,” Amanda said, hoping that she would be around to see the girl grow older.

“But the plank is in the pool,” Sam said, pointing.

“Leave it,” Amanda said. “I think I’ve got the problem fixed already with some metal rails.”

“Oh,” said Sam, hazarding another glance down into the pool.

The creepers were agitated, clawing at the sides, but they would not be getting out, as evidenced by the waterlogged one that had been down in that pool for a while.

“Let’s get moving,” Amanda said. “We still need to get some kid’s stuff out of that house and bring the remainder of the stash from upstairs, and our day has really just begun.”

“I’m with ya,” said Sam. “That makes two for me and nine for you today,” she said, as if Amanda cared to keep count of her creeper kills.

“Sure, whatever you say,” was Amanda’s answer as she strode back into the yard that their truck was parked in. “Close this gate once you’re through,” she called back to the girl.

Amanda was glad to see that Sam had closed the backdoor to the house. In all the commotion, she had remembered asking Sam to do that, but she hadn’t had the time to make sure that it had actually been done.

Just inside the door, Sam retrieved the pile of things that she had dumped on the kitchen floor and stacked them in the extra cab of the truck while Amanda worked on a bottle of water and tried to calm her nerves. It was very unsettling not to know whether she had actually been infected or not, and this was adding to her shaky feeling in addition to the tremendous amount of exertion she had put into plowing that small herd into the pool.

“We are sure going to have a story to tell back at camp tonight,” Sam said, a little breathless and very much excited.

“That, we are,” Amanda agreed sanguinely, following the girl back into the house and closing Red outside of the back door again.

It wasn’t the dog’s fault that his barking had brought the creepers. He had been worried about all the screaming that he had heard coming from the upstairs part of the house and was sounding an alert that something wasn’t right. She wanted him to operate that way. If he was going to be Sam’s companion from here on out, it was a good thing that he would let everyone know if he thought that she was in trouble, especially since Amanda didn’t know how long she was going to be around to look out for the kid.

“I . . . I, uhhh, forgot about what happened to you, being bit and all,” Sam said, and suddenly her emotions had dampened as she followed Amanda back up the stairs. “When I was talking about the cool story that we had to tell, I was thinking about the swimming pool,” she said, sounding contrite.

“Don’t worry about it, kid, and you’re right, it will be a cool story,” Amanda said, feeling the intense heat up on the second floor hit her all over again, along with the smell.

“I guess it was a really good thing that you had looked out the window and knew that swimming pool was there,” Sam said, bending to pick up the bundle of stuff that remained.

“That’s a good lesson for you to remember, always try to know you’re surroundings, be observant, because it just might save your life and the lives of others,” Amanda said, knowing that in this case, luck had about as much to do with it as anything else.
But where is the lesson in that?
she thought wryly.

“Follow me back down, and we’ll load that up, and then let’s see what we can find to take to Tammy,” Amanda said, leading the way back down the stairs.

“Roger dodger,” Sam said, surprising Amanda with how much energy the girl still had while working in the heat.

“I’m glad that we talked your parents into letting you come,” Amanda said, feeling suddenly sentimental. “You make an excellent run partner.”

“Thanks, I needed that,” Sam said, and though Amanda couldn’t see it because of the bandana over her face, she knew that the girl was smiling.

Hopefully, Amanda thought, she would have the time to tell everybody in her life something that she really appreciated about each of them. These days, life was such a fragile thing, and so many had theirs snuffed out too quickly to have an opportunity to do anything like that. Maybe, she considered, she could count herself fortunate to have this time, however short it may be. She just had to keep doing what needed to be done and then get them all back safely to camp. That was all she needed to be thinking about, she finally convinced herself. But it was hard not to be distracted by the nagging feeling that a countdown had just begun on what remained of your life.

“There,” Sam said, slamming the truck door. “Not too much more is going to fit in there, and Red will be sitting on my lap. Can we pick up the other truck soon?”

“Yep,” she answered, leading the way back inside and up the stairs again.

It was like returning to the scene of a crime, stepping into the child’s room again. It was as if it were a déjà vu moment. She double-checked to see that the small girl was still collapsed dead on the carpet and took a breath once she verified this.

“Is something wrong?” Sam asked, sounding worried. She had stopped at the threshold of the door.

“Nope, nothing wrong,” Amanda said, proceeding to the child’s very orderly desk.

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not come in,” Sam said. “That really freaked me out.”

“That’s fine,” Amanda said, trying to sound chipper in order to make it easier on Sam.

Without even thinking about it, Amanda’s hand reached out for the journal marked Heather. She didn’t know why, but she felt compelled to take the child’s journal with her, so she grasped it and thrust it into her backpack. Generally, she preferred to not think about the creepers as human beings, but this felt different. She thought that perhaps if she wasn’t infected, then she may want to read it someday.

A quick search of the desk drawers provided a gold mine of coloring sticks and pens as well as one slightly used coloring book and a brand-new one. She felt relieved that she would be able to go back to camp with what she had promised the child. While she was at it, she grabbed five slender books off of the shelves. Tammy had a total of two books back at camp; the little girl would be thrilled.

“Okay, let’s go,” Sam said, sounding as if she were still freaked out by the room and anxious to leave it.

“Just a minute,” Amanda said, heading to the open closet.

The clothes appeared to be Tammy’s size, if not a little big. She picked out two pairs of jeans and three T-shirts, along with several pairs of socks and underwear from the dresser.

Amanda had no idea how things went with kid’s shoe sizes, but she snatched up a cute pair of pink sneakers in the hopes that they might fit Tammy.

“Remember, you’re not ever going to tell her about this room or the girl that this stuff came from. I want these things to have happy memories for her.” Amanda said, feeling woozy from the heat of the room. “Now we can go.”

Sam had beat her down the stairs, and it was a relief to both of them when they made it out the back door for the last time into the strong wind that whisked away the sweat from their skin.

“Can we go get the other truck now?” Sam asked, a little anxious as she had taken a whiff of the smoke and was worried about not being able to grab the other vehicle because of the fire. The girl’s eyes were glassy, and Amanda couldn’t be sure that the shock of the event had worn off.

“Not just yet,” Amanda said, going to the toolbox that she kept in the bed of the truck.

It took a little bit of readjusting some of the items in the bed to reach it, but she pulled out an adjustable wrench and two different types of screw drivers, not knowing what she was going to need.

“What’s that for?” Sam asked, looking perplexed.

“I’m going over to creeper central next door and dismantle those solar panels so that we can stack them and come back to pick them up with the other truck,” Amanda said.

“Oh,” Sam said, sounding discouraged, “what should I do?”

“Keep watch, same as before,” Amanda answered, making her way to the adjoining gate between the properties. “We need to be careful walking in this yard again in case another wandered in,” she said, getting her knife ready.

Red issued a low growl at the gate, and Amanda knew to be ready, and so did Sam.

She popped open the gate, and all three of them stepped back to let a lone creeper crawl in. This one had once been a teenage girl, wearing ripped shorts and a tattered T-shirt. She was crawling because her legs were no longer usable.

“I’ve got it,” Sam said, bashing the bat into her skull twice just to be sure. “Three,” Sam whispered, stepping over the body, following Amanda into the yard.

“I hope that I didn’t know her,” Sam said as she looked back to eye the creature closely. “It’s hard to tell now, she’s in such bad shape.”

“See what I mean about them deteriorating on us over time? I’m sure that someday this will all go away, and we can get our lives back,” Amanda said, sounding confident.