Fermata: The Winter: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series (The Fermata Series: Four Post-Apocalyptic Novellas Book 1)

by Harper, Juliette

  She let the curtain fall back. Slowly she sank down the wall, crumpling on the floor. Dear God. Could they all be in that state? Could they all be that violent? Her eyes snapped open. Julie. Julie was out there.

  Vick ducked into the musician’s entrance at the concert hall. She sagged against the closed door breathlessly. The screaming pandemonium in the streets dropped several decibels. The muffled sounds of gunfire echoed from somewhere uptown.

  When she left the apartment, she’d dropped south several blocks and then came up a side street to reach the concert hall. She had her keys and managed to get inside without encountering anyone.

  The cavernous backstage area was cool and dark, but to her surprise, the house lights were up. She cautiously peeked around the curtain. Lawrence Abrams, the concertmaster, stood center stage.

  “Larry, thank God,” she said, coming out of the wings. “Have you seen Maurice and Julie?”

  When he turned, Vick froze. His face was a bloody ruin. His filmy eyes glowed against the raw muscles and tendons. A low rumble emanated from his throat and he moved toward her.

  Vick had long enough to think, "How can he still be moving?" before she tripped and went down.

  The only thing that saved her life was his broken leg. As he moved toward her, it flopped wildly, forcing him to hop more than walk. When he fell to his knees and lunged, she had just enough time to roll. Her hand touched a toppled music stand. On instinct, she grabbed the base and swung awkwardly.

  Larry slowed for just an instant, but he didn't stop. Vick scrambled to her feet and grabbed another stand. This time when she hit him, the sharp edge of the tray caught him just under the left ear. It sliced to the bone. Blood gurgled out of his mouth.

  Vick yanked backwards and the base came free. She reversed the two ends and hit him again and again, not stopping until he did. When his gurgling moans trailed into wet silence, she staggered, slipping on the gore and falling to her knees sobbing.

  She dropped the bloody stand, kneeling in the crimson aftermath of a hideous new reality. The only coherent thought in the maelstrom of her mind was Julie. Glancing around, Vick found her bag. She looped the strap over her shoulder automatically, and that’s when she remembered the gun. She’d just beat a man with a music stand with a pistol lying four feet away in a Louis Vuitton handbag.

  No man had ever laid a hand on her again since the day she bought that gun.

  After years of dutiful silence, her fights with Maurice had begun to escalate. When she "talked back" on that day, he slammed her against the kitchen wall, pinning her right hand flat with an iron grip. Using a knife from the block on the counter, he lazily carved an outline of her fingers in the plaster.

  “Which finger do you think a concert pianist can best function without, my dear?” he’d asked, in a bemused tone of voice. “Would you like to pick which one I remove?”

  She'd spat out, “You go to hell,” never betraying the sick terror coiled in her gut.

  He’d laughed then, drawing the blade across the back of her hand and leaving a pale line of blood in her flesh. “You are too defiant for your own good, Victoria. Someday I will make you regret that.”

  She bought the automatic that afternoon with his credit card. Afterwards, when she made it known she carried the weapon, she said with perfect honesty, “Maurice bought it for me." He didn't dispute the statement, playing the role of attentive and protective husband with a malice only she saw.

  A week later, she silently put a target on his desk, turned on her heel and walked out. Six shots lay nestled in the center circle taking up no more room than a half dollar. Maurice never touched her again. In any way. She took her own bedroom after that.

  Now, the weight of the weapon in her hand calmed her. She remembered the sense of power she felt the first time she pulled the trigger. Without hesitation she chambered a round. Whatever these things were, they'd caught her unawares for the last time.

  She stepped around the crumpled heap of flesh and metal on the stage. With the gun in her hand, she walked up the center aisle and through the double doors at the back of the hall. The lobby blazed with light, but no one was there. One of the elevator doors dinged open. Her heart jumped into her throat, but she stepped inside and pressed the button for the top floor.

  When the elevator door opened, Vick stepped into the elegant outer office Maurice had so meticulously decorated. The scene that confronted her was otherworldly in its horror. Maurice stood by his assistant’s desk. The eviscerated woman was clearly dead. Blood stained the gray in Maurice’s beard a vivid scarlet. With odd detachment, Vick realized he was chewing.

  For no reason she would ever be able to fathom later, Vick said, “Good evening, Maurice.”

  Her husband’s lips curled back in a feral smile revealing perfectly even, blood-stained teeth.

  Vick raised the pistol and put three bullets into his chest, enjoying the satisfying sound of his body falling back against the wall. He slid downward to a sitting position, leaving a trail of smeared blood glistening on the expensive paneling.

  Killing Maurice Eidson was one of the easiest things she’d ever done in her life.

  The door to his office stood ajar. Cold dread filled her. She knew what she was likely to find on the other side.

  Julie was watching the fireworks, her small frame silhouetted against the massive picture window. Vick stopped at the threshold and just looked at her daughter’s perfect profile. “She has Mama’s jawline,” Vick thought absently, noticing that Julie had tied her hair back that night.

  The girl raised her head and sniffed the air. When Vick saw her eyes, all hope died. She had failed. She was too late. Julie’s life was over. The dream of the future shattered against the hard surface of intractable reality, sending razor-sharp shards through Vick's heart. From this, she could not save her child.

  With a snarl, Julie started forward, but her father’s massive desk was in the way. Temporarily confused, she strained against the barrier, growling in frustration.

  Vick felt her eyes well with tears. “Baby, it’s me,” she said soothingly. “It’s Mom. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  The girl answered with a hiss, baring her teeth.

  Vick held the gun up flat in one hand, showing the empty palm of the other. “Shhh, baby, please. Just calm down. See? Mommy won’t hurt you.”

  Julie let out a howl of frustration and shoved at her father’s desk chair. It crashed into an end table, sending a lamp and a pile of books tumbling to the floor. She stumbled toward the sound and finally understood how to get around the desk.

  Vick circled away from the approaching figure, still talking soothingly, tears pouring down her face. “Julie, baby, please listen to me. Just stop. Please baby, just stop.”

  But the girl didn’t stop. In fact, she picked up speed. Vick felt her back hit the wall and everything began to blur in her vision. The familiar panic rose in her throat like bile. Trapped. She was trapped. A buzzing filled her ears and time slowed to a thick, leaden crawl. She gasped for air, disoriented by the lurid bursts of light filling the room from the now random and erratic explosions of fireworks over the river. She had to get out! She had to get away! She had to move!

  In that instant time stopped and Vick could have sworn she heard the firing pin strike the shell in the chamber.

  Click.

  And then came the deafening sound of the shot. As Vick watched in horror, Julie’s body jerked backward. For just a second before the light died, their eyes met. It would haunt her in the years to come, but Vick was positive her daughter recognized her killer in that moment. And although she would tell herself a million times she imagined it, she thought her daughter’s lips moved. She thought Julie said, “Why?”

  The next sound Vick heard was a cultured voice saying, “Victoria, you need to give me that gun, please.”

  The voice came from a far distance and penetrated the painful fog in Vick’s mind in slow static bursts. She was still in the corner, but Ju
lie was in her arms, the child’s head cradled against her shoulder. They were both covered in a solid, ugly mass of drying blood. The gun was still in Vick’s right hand, cocked.

  “Please, Victoria. We don’t have time. We have to go. She’s gone. Please come with me”

  Vick looked up dumbly. “Who are you?”

  “Victoria, it’s Quentin. Quentin Smythe.”

  “Quentin?” she mumbled.

  “Yes, Victoria. You’ve known me all your life.”

  Vick blinked a couple of times as if clearing her vision, and then said in a distant, automatic voice, “Good evening, Quentin. I’m going to be with Julie now. I think you should leave.”

  “No, Victoria. You have to come with me. You can’t go with her.”

  “But I have to,” she said logically. “I’m her mother. Mothers go with their little girls.”

  The slightly-built old man knelt on the floor beside her and laid his hand over the gun. When Vick started to resist, he said simply, “Don’t.”

  Her hand went limp and he took the gun from her. “Are there still bullets in this?” he asked.

  Vick’s eyes moved restlessly. Count your shots, the instructor had said. Always count your shots. Three in Maurice. One in . . . nine in the clip.

  “Five,” she said, sounding like a child who had just worked a sum.

  “Is it in a condition to fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do I prevent it from doing so, please? I am not familiar with automatic weapons.”

  Vick struggled to think. “You put on the safety.”

  “Is that the switch on the left side of the barrel?”

  “Yes.”

  Holding the gun carefully away from himself, Quentin engaged the safety, and then gingerly deposited the weapon in a leather book bag on the floor beside him. “We must go now.”

  “I’m not leaving Julie.”

  “Julie is not here, Victoria. You must know that what she became was not your child.”

  “She asked me why,” Vick mumbled against the girl’s hair. “My baby asked me why I was killing her.”

  The little man gently stroked her arm. “Tomorrow, Victoria, we will return for her and we will attend to her properly. She will be undisturbed here tonight. She is at rest and we must get you someplace safe.”

  “We’ll come back tomorrow?” Vick asked uncertainly.

  “Yes, we will.”

  Reluctantly Vick allowed him to ease Julie’s body from her arms. He gently arranged the child on the floor, taking off his jacket and covering her head. When he stood and held out his arms, Vick rose awkwardly to her feet, falling against him.

  “There, there,” Quentin said softly, holding her loosely. “My office is only a couple of blocks away. Come now.”

  Vick allowed herself to be led out of the room. At the door, she paused and looked back at the figure of her daughter lying on the rug. “I shot her, Quentin,” she said. “Why did I shoot her?”

  “You had no choice,” he answered, putting an arm around her waist and ushering her toward the elevator.

  At the doors she stopped and looked at him. “What do I do now, Quentin?”

  “You survive, my dear.”

  January 2015: The Cabin

  Abbott sat looking out the window when Vick finished speaking. She waited, watching him chew on the stem of his pipe, apparently lost in thought. "How do you live with that?" he asked finally. "With what you had to do to your daughter?"

  The words surprised her. "I don't know," she answered with quiet, painful honesty. "At first I didn't want to go on at all. Sometimes I still don't."

  "Did you try to kill yourself?" he asked, turning to look at her.

  "After a fashion," she said. "I took increasingly foolish risks, almost dared those things to kill me. And then I found Lucy in that alley and everything changed. I couldn't leave her alone, so I had to go on."

  He turned and looked at her with sad and knowing eyes. "I understand something about that," he said. "I'm sorry you had to live through that."

  "Thank you," she said simply. "So do you believe us now? Do you believe what we're telling you?"

  "In as much as it is possible to believe something so insane, yes."

  "Can we stay here until the spring?" Vick asked.

  He looked surprised. "There was never any question but that you would stay. Did you think you had to ask?"

  "You've lived alone by choice for many years, and now there are four extra people in your house."

  He smiled. "I like you all," he said simply. "It was the maddening crowd I didn't like. You are perfectly welcome here for as long as you wish to stay. I do, however, have one request."

  "What's that?" she asked.

  "Will you play chess with me?"

  Chapter Seven

  Abbott proved to be not only a congenial host, but an inventive one. In the coming days, he transformed his home on their behalf. With tarps to serve as curtains, he created a "room" for Hettie and Beth, claiming the kitchen corner for himself. By virtue of her injury, Vick continued to sleep in the narrow bed, and Lucy occupied a corner of the same room on a makeshift pallet.

  The weather was so bitter, only Abbott left the cabin to bring in more firewood or to retrieve supplies from the nearby shed. On days when it wasn't snowing, he hunted, but he was always careful to clean his kills far away from the cabin so Beth wouldn't see. His attitude toward the child grew increasingly grandfatherly. She delighted in his attentions, as did Hettie, to whom Abbott directed a kind of courtly regard that both Lucy and Vick found gentle and endearing.

  Although Vick's wound was healing well, she remained weak and exhausted, admitting only to herself that she'd been running on empty for months, maybe years. Her slow recuperation had as much to do with long-term exhaustion as the gunshot itself. Because she dozed at odd hours, she often found herself awake late at night when the others were asleep.

  One afternoon, Abbott came into her room with a book in his hand. "I thought you might like to have this," he said, holding out the leather-bound volume. It was handmade, a strap holding the flap in place. When Vick untied it, she found the book was a blank journal. She looked at him questioningly.

  "Introspection is my vice," he said, putting a box of pencils on the table by the bed. "When I decided to leave the world, I commissioned a book binder to make these journals for me. I was prepared to live as a hermit, but I was not prepared to be without the ability to write." Seeing the indecision in her eyes, he added, "Please. It isn't the last. I'd like you to have it. You're not sleeping at night. I know, from long experience, that a journal can be a good companion, a confidante, if you will."

  That night, Vick found herself staring at a crisp white page surprised at the longing it engendered in her soul. On a whim, she sketched a musical symbol. Fermata. The grand pause. Was that what they were doing? In this place? During this winter? Had they reached the place where a breathe was being taken?

  If so, this might be the only chance she ever had to record all that had happened. Perhaps no one would ever read it, but that didn’t lessen her need to grant them all some tenuous chance of being remembered.

  Vick turned the page and wrote, “My old life ended the night of July 4, 2010. Eleven months later, I went back to the concert hall, because that's where I wanted to die . . . . . .

  On that night in July when everything she cared about disappeared, Vick, like the undead creatures around her, had gone on moving.

  Someone she respected told her to survive, so she did, abandoning the apartment in the city and returning to her childhood home in Maine. She found a vehicle big enough and strong enough to protect her from those creatures as she traveled north. She packed it with everything she thought she’d need and she started out — only to be stopped by, of all things, a toll booth.

  Looking back, she thought how ridiculous it was that she’d been digging in her purse for change when she realized that the woman in the booth was dead. The creature was
wearing so much make-up, it took a minute for Vick to realize she was one of “them.” Her name tag said “Thelma,” and someone had locked her in the booth.

  Vick started to put Thelma down, and then she stopped. She’d seen enough killing in the last few days to last her for the rest of her life. She couldn’t pull that trigger again. Maybe the next time she came into the city, if Thelma was still there, she’d do it then. Instead, Vick spotted the button she knew would open the toll gate and triggered it with a broom handle while Thelma growled and hissed.

  The first evening back at the home she loved so much, Vick walked the smooth sand of the beach and felt the cold spray off the Atlantic. Here it was easy to forget the upside-down world she’d left behind in the city. It would never be easy to forget who she left behind there. Survive, he’d said. So she set about surviving.

  The house was already a strong haven from the elements, outfitted with high-security hurricane shutters and wired for alternative energy. It wasn’t hard to evade the dead wandering around York and get the other things she needed. There were already two freezers in the basement, which she proceeded to fill before all the perishables in the stores rotted like the people who used to shop there.

  Everything Vick did in those days was tinged with an Escher-like surrealism. A personal highlight for her was the day she dealt with a dead stock clerk in the grocery store. He was shuffling through a littered sea of Jello boxes. She shot him, and then calmly took some of the mix, which, appropriately, was red. She used to think the awful stuff was fun when she was a little girl. It almost felt like a reward for once again prevailing against one of them.

  Vick filled the hours with the assignment she’d been given. Survive. The hours turned into days, and at first the solitude was fine. She was an only child. She liked having her own space. She preferred not having to share, ruefully admitting to herself that the lowest marks she ever earned on a report card were for her failure to “play well with others.”