Amanda Carter in the L.A.Z., life after zombies Read Online Free PDF Page A

The Jeep was air-conditioned, and it had cooled the sweat on his clothes. Now he felt cool and damp, but that wouldn’t last long once they returned to camp. After their return, he would have Maryanne and Tammy come spend a little time cooling down, gas be damned. It was just too damn hot out here to go day in and day out so overheated. Unfortunately, it would not be possible to get Jason down from the hill and into the Jeep, and he probably needed it the most with the fever he had been running. It was difficult for Roy to see his friend languishing there, dying, but not as tough as it was for Samantha.
    Jason had started yesterday with a fever from an infection that had set into the compound fracture of his leg, and no amount of air conditioning was going to change the fact that the man needed antibiotics. If Amanda didn’t come back or if she made it back but without the medicine, Jason would die.
    It didn’t make any sense, but for a brief moment, Roy felt guilty, fearing that Samantha might have read his thoughts. To make up for it, he smiled, but he had nothing to fear because she was paying attention to the rutted dirt road, driving carefully, creeping along real slow in first gear because she kept stalling the Jeep anytime she tried to shift it into second.
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    “Mom, Where’s Sam?” Tammy asked after looking around the camp. She had just awoken from a nap. “It’s hot,” she moaned, picking her long curly brown hair up and away from her neck.
    “I know it’s hot, sweetie,” Maryanne said, dipping a ladle into a pot of their precious water.
    “Hold still,” her mother said, bringing the ladle toward her youngest daughter, careful not to spill any along the way.
    “The water’s hot too,” Tammy groaned. “Yucky hot water,” she said, twisting away from the stream that her mother was pouring over her head.
    “The water’s warm, not hot, and it will still help cool you down. There’s a nice wind today, and when it hits the water, it’ll act like air conditioning, so stay still, okay?” said Maryanne.
    One more ladle, and Tammy’s hair was wet and dripping. Maryanne ran her fingers through her youngest daughter’s hair and mussed it up in a playful gesture.
    “Don’t you mean that the wind will feel like getting hit with the air from a hot blow dryer, Mother?” it was Samantha’s voice using one of her sarcastic tones.
    But when she walked up, she was smiling, which Maryanne considered was better than the mood she had left in.
    “You’re back,” Maryanne said, “you startled me. I didn’t hear you coming.”
    “It’s the wind,” Roy said. “It’s loud. We didn’t go past The Trench, not today.”
    “No, Mom, it wasn’t the wind. Roy’s teaching me to be stealthy like Amanda. It worked,” Samantha said.
    She was walking with a spring in her step and was in a good enough mood to be telling jokes. Maryanne was pleased; it had been a rough few days with her oldest daughter.
    Samantha went to the pan of water and plunged her hands in, scooping some up to splash her face.
    “Be careful with that water!” Maryanne yelled sharply, eliciting a sour look from her daughter. “If you must, use the ladle. Now the water is contaminated from your dirty hands, and we haven’t got much left to drink.”
    “Hello, Mom, I’m using our wash water, for God’s sake,” Samantha snapped back. “It’s not like I’m messing up our drinking water or something, geez.”
    “Watch your tone with me, young lady, and don’t use God’s name like that,” Maryanne said, practically echoing her own mother’s words and hating herself for it. Snapping at her daughter like that only caused more strife, but sometimes, she didn’t see any way around it.
    “Whatev,” Samantha said, using one of her favorite slang words. She wheeled around and stomped away to plop down in the dirt.
    “Whoa,” Roy said, feeling the need to step in since his friend Jason couldn’t. “It’s hot, let’s just,