Vick smiled and said, “Something like that.” Then she gestured for Lucy to join her, moving over on the bench at the same time. When Lucy sat down, she handed her a CD.
Lucy studied the cover. Vick, in an elegant black evening dress, her hair long and elaborately styled. “Chopin Nocturnes - Victoria Ellingsworth-Eidson.”
“You look beautiful,” Lucy said quietly, after taking a minute to absorb what she was seeing.
Vick rested her hand over Lucy’s. “You’re a good soul, Lucy. I know I’m very difficult sometimes.”
“I wouldn’t say very,” Lucy said, turning her hand and clasping Vick's fingers.
“You bring out the best in me,” Vick said, smiling.
"Tell me what's going on, Vick," Lucky said. Their hands were still clasped and she realized her friend was trembling. "Who's Julie?"
Vick squeezed Lucy's hand and tried twice to speak before she was able to get the words out. “I think she’s my daughter,” she said. “The daughter I killed.”
The Cabin, 2016
"But I don't understand," Abbott said. "You told me that you were forced to shoot your daughter in self-defense."
When Vick didn't answer, Lucy said, "We can do this another night. I think Vick's had enough."
"No," the other woman said, her face drawn in the flickering light of the fire. "I did shoot my daughter," she said, "but I never went back to that office to verify that she was there. I thought I shot her in the head. That's how I remembered it, but I couldn't be sure, and after what Beth said, the doubt was killing me."
"I didn't know about Julie until that night," Lucy said. "That was also the first time Vick and I really talked about the strange things we'd starting seeing the dead do. It was because of Beth that we found Hettie."
York, Maine 2012
Lucy listened with tears in her eyes as Vick told the story of that first night at the concert hall. When she described the scene in Maurice’s office, grotesquely lit by the fireworks outside the window, her voice cracked and she looked away, overcome by the memories.
Finally she whispered, “I tried to make her listen, Lucy, but she was too far gone. If I hadn’t been in the corner, maybe . . . " Vick sounded very small when she added, “You know I don’t do well in corners.”
“I know, Vick.”
“I’ve wondered so many times if I decided to do it,” she said, her voice reed thin. “Am I a woman who decided to kill her child?”
“She was already dead, Vick. She would have killed you. You were just trying to survive.”
“I’ve told myself over and over that what I did was some instinct. Some horror at the thought that I’d just stand there and be killed. But there is no escaping the truth. I shot her. I shot my baby.”
Lucy laid her hand on Vick’s arm. “It’s simply not possible that the Julie that Beth is talking about is your Julie, honey. It's just not possible.”
Vick's eyes tracked restlessly as she worked to control herself. “She sang like an angel, Lucy,” she said. “Julie adored children so much that she volunteered in childrens’ wards in hospitals. She'd hold those little sick kids in her lap and give them so much love. They all called her 'Miss Julie.' She always taught them that song, Mairzey Doats. I sang it to her when she was little.”
“It’s a horrible coincidence, nothing more.”
She looked up with haunted eyes. “But what if it’s not? What if . . . what if they . . . recover . . . or reform . . . or resurrect . . . again? We don’t even know what caused all of this in the first place. We never do anything with the bodies, Lucy. Did you ever wonder where the bodies go?”
“Actually, Vick,” Lucy said seriously, “I try really hard not to think about that. But, yes, I have wondered.”
“What if she’s out there, Lucy?” The tears that Vick had been holding back spilled out of her eyes. “What if I didn’t kill her?”
“You have to let this go, Vick. You’ve been tearing yourself up all these years over killing her, and now you’re tearing yourself up with the idea that you didn’t. You have to stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Can I tell you what I think?” Lucy asked.
“Always.”
Lucy paused for a minute, and said, “Until that day in the bank, I thought they were all like bad toner cartridges.”
Vick raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I worked in a copy store right out of high school. We could always tell when the toner was going bad. The pages had big long streaks and gaps and stuff. You know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, sometimes in a pinch, you can take the cartridge out, shake it really hard, and get a few more good copies.”
“I’m not following,” Vick said, frowning.
“Maybe that’s because I’m just thinking out loud,” Lucy admitted. “I guess what I’m saying is that all those people didn’t die exactly the same way, so maybe they don’t all come back the same way. Some of them may have a little more toner left than the others.”
Vick considered that. “Do you think it’s possible that some of them might have actually recovered? Survived the original illness?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Lucy said honestly. “Bruce and I never even sneezed.”
“Me either,” Vick said. “I never catch anything.”
“Where did you shoot Julie?” Lucy asked quietly.
A perplexed look crossed Vick’s face. Her eyes lost focus as she tried to go back to that moment. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Did you go back to the office that next day?”
Vick shook her head. “No. The streets were full of the dead by morning and I was . . . I wasn’t well,” she faltered.
“Who was Quentin?”
She smiled. “He served with Papa — my grandfather — in World War II. They worked on a project doing research in acoustic weapons. Quentin went on to be a professor of piano at the New England Conservatory. He and my father were working on a book when Daddy died suddenly. Quentin was the facilitator for the guest artists series at the Conservatory. I was a featured soloist at Jordan Hall several times.”
“What happened to him?”
Vick looked away and Lucy saw her swallow before she spoke. “He didn’t make it,” she said simply.
“So you don’t really know about . . .," Lucy hesitated.
“No. I don’t really know if Julie is still lying on the floor of her father’s office or not,” Vick said. "Which is clearly the first thing I have to find out."
The Cabin, 2016
Vick looked over at Lucy. "You were not happy with me when I said that."
"No, I wasn't," Lucy grumbled. "Just like I'm not happy with most of your bright ideas."
Abbott chuckled in spite of the seriousness of the conversation.
"When you hear what she decided to do, you'll understand why I wasn't happy," Lucy said defensively.
"Oh, I know exactly what she did," Abbott said. "She made you stay at the house with the child while she went into Boston alone. Am I right?"
"Completely right," Vick said. "But I didn't come back alone."
York, Maine 2012
“Please don’t do this,” Lucy pleaded. “Wait until we can figure out a way for me to come with you.”
“We can’t wait,” Vick said, methodically putting extra clips of ammunition in the small gear bag she used for day trips into the city.
“You mean you can’t wait,” Lucy shot back.
Vick looked up at her. “If she were your daughter, could you?”
Lucy threw her hands up in sheer frustration. “Damn it, Vick! That’s not fair.”
“It may not be, but answer the question anyway.”
“Okay, fine. Damn it all to hell, fine. But get in and get out. What’s this nonsense about a trip to the library?”
Vick zipped the bag shut and swiveled her chair around to face Lucy. “Because after we talked last night, I couldn’t sleep, and now t
here are a lot of things that are really bothering me.”
“Like what?”
“There really is nothing new in the world,” Vick said. “After Quentin was killed, when I wasn’t reading survivalist handbooks, I was pouring over medical texts, infectious disease studies. I was trying to understand what could have possibly caused the dead to rise. But I stayed purely in the confines of hard science.”
Lucy stared at her. “Are you telling me you actually understood all that stuff? “
“No,” Vick admitted. “When I decided to leave the city and come here, I found the SUV, and started collecting supplies, including the books. The reading made me feel like I was trying to do something.”
“And here I thought all concert pianists had to go through apocalypse survival training," Lucy said sardonically.
"Very funny," Vick said. "You know how it was in those first days. You were either running for your life or spending hours cooped up alone going crazy. The books helped me focus on something."
"I remember," Lucy said. "So what are you planning on reading now that's so important?”
Vick hesitated for a second and then said, “Books on the paranormal.”
“Holy Mother of God,” Lucy snapped, throwing her hands up again. “Don't you think that going into a city filled with walking corpses is paranormal enough? What could you possibly think is going to help us in books full of ghosts and goblins?”
“Now, do your speedy utmost, Meg, And beat them to the key-stone of the bridge; There, you may toss your tail at them, A running stream they dare not cross!”
“Well thanks, Vick,” Lucy said, plopping down on the sagging old sofa in the basement. “That cleared everything right up for me.”
“The dead won’t cross running water,” Vick said. "You've seen it, too."
“Of course I've seen it,” Lucy said, “I’m the one who goes out there and tests the water pump every week.”
“Those lines I just quoted are from a poem Robert Burns wrote in 1790 called ‘Tam o' Shanter,’" Vick said. "It’s about a man who rides as hard as he can to cross a bridge ahead of a witch chasing him. He knows he'll be safe if he gets across the bridge because witches can't cross running water.”
“A witch?” Lucy leaned her head back and groaned. “I'd say we have plenty of monsters to deal with already. We don't need any new ones.”
“I don't disagree with that,” Vick said, “but we have monsters that won’t cross water and a 223-year-old reference to the same idea.”
“But, Vick," Lucy said, her frustration getting the better of her. "Honestly? Witches?”
“All folklore contains elements of the truth,” Vick said. "That's a proven fact."
“Now you sound like a PBS documentary.”
Vick sighed. “Damn," she said mournfully. "I miss PBS.”
As she had intended, Lucy cracked up. She also got up and went to the gun cabinet in the corner to take out her shotgun. “You’re taking Mabel,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument.
Vick accepted the gun and the bandolero of shells Lucy was holding out. “Show her a good time and don’t keep her out late,” Lucy said, and then she took hold of Vick’s shoulders. “If you are so much as five minutes late, I’m coming after you.”
She met Lucy’s gaze squarely. “I’ll be back, Lucy. I’m not going to get myself killed and leave you alone. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Damn straight you’re not,” Lucy said. “I have no intention of dealing with a three year old by myself.”
With mock gravity, Vick said, “Come to think of it, maybe dealing with the dead isn't so bad after all.”
Chapter Three
Vick took a chance and sat in the rose garden. It wouldn’t take 5 minutes to walk to Symphony Hall. Maybe 5 more to climb the stairs to that office. Finding Julie there would be for the best, wouldn’t it?
She’d lied to Lucy, a fact that bothered her more than she’d thought possible. Vick hadn’t so much as blinked when she’d assured her friend this was an errand to retrieve books only.
In fact, Vick had promised she wouldn’t go to Maurice’s office alone, but that was exactly what she intended to do — after she sat here long enough to screw up her courage.
Vick had no frame of reference to prepare herself to look at the body of her daughter after it had been lying dead for three years. The thought of it immobilized her, so she had come to the rose garden.
A lonely bird singing high in a branch over her head made Vick look up. In spite of herself, she smiled. She used to come here, to this very bench on fall mornings. She’d have a latte, maybe a sandwich, go over a score or read a book -- in a different life that was lived in a different world.
She never heard the city around her back then. Now her ears strained for any sound. She closed her eyes and felt the sun on her skin. It was absurd really. Absurd that she, of all people, survived.
Lost in her musings, Vick didn't hear him, until he was almost standing in front of her. When she opened her eyes and saw him there, she went very still. She could tell that he had been dead almost since the beginning. It was not an issue of being able to reach her gun, she could do that easily. She wanted to see what he would do.
“Hi,” she said, “you come here often?”
The man cocked his head to one side and listened to her, looking for all the world like a big mouldering dog. She tried again.
‘’Do you actually understand me? Because if you do, you’re gonna make us rethink an awful lot of assumptions.”
The dead man seemed to be sniffing the air, trying to figure out what she was, but he made no move to approach her.
“You’ve been out of action a long time, haven’t you, pal?” Vick asked conversationally. “Did you not read the instructions? You’re supposed to be trying to rip my brains out right about now.”
The corpse standing in front of her blinked, almost as if he was growing annoyed with the taunting. Vick noticed that one of his eyes was missing its lid.
“So how do you keep a contact in that eye, buddy?” she asked.
The man let out a low, rattling growl and bared his teeth. He had something caught on one of the canines and Vick categorically did not want to know what it was.
“Now you’re getting warmed up,” Vick said, slowly sliding her hand across her body to rest on the butt of the automatic snugged in the shoulder holster under her left arm. “You wanna play?”
At that the dead man lunged with far more speed than Vick was anticipating. She just managed to get the gun clear and shoot him when he was less than a foot in front of her. He fell to his knees, still staring at her, and that’s when the truly awful thing happened. His eyes cleared. The white film drew back like some eerie second lid and she saw complete comprehension, and something very like pleading in those brown depths.
Before she could shoot him again, the man fell at her feet, the fingers of his left hand coming to rest on top of her boot. Vick sat there immobile, her chest heaving as cold, leaden blood thudded through her veins. Had she imagined the clarity she had seen in those ruined eyes?
As she looked down at the shrunken form in the dirty, tattered jacket, she saw something sticking out of his pocket. Reaching down, she extracted a black notebook held together by an elastic band. Inside, a stub of a pencil was stuck in the spine.
With a growing sense of dread, she flipped through the pages. At first there were just meandering smudges, clumsy worms that crossed over the lines with impunity, straying into the margins and screaming off the edges.
On the next page, however, she was startled to see something that might well have been a letter. Was it an “m?” She kept turning pages and the ice in her veins began to freeze into horrible, solid realization.
My . . .
Name . . .
My name . . .
My name i . . . .
My name s . . .
My name is . . .
S . . . A. . . M
And there it was. C
omplete on the final page in the handwriting of a clumsy child. “My name is Sam.”
Vick didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there numbly staring at the page when she detected a hint of movement at her feet. Had she imagined that the hand resting on her shoe twitched? No. There it was again.
She put the notebook down, carefully eased her foot back, and edged off the bench. Rapidly scanning the area, she saw an abandoned food truck about 50 yards away. She sprinted the distance, drawing her gun before she threw open the door, which was hanging slightly ajar. The truck was empty. Vick hurriedly stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and threw the latch.
She moved forward to the cabin, which was facing the bench where she’d been sitting. She squatted down between the captain’s chairs to reduce her visibility and looked at her watch.
It was late afternoon. Symphony Hall was out of the question now, but she could make it to the library before dark and find some secure place to spend the night. Lucy would be out of her mind with worry, but Vick had to see what she thought was about to happen.
Resting back on her heels, she unzipped her gear bag and felt around until she found a small pair of binoculars. Training them on the crumpled figure in front of the bench, she waited. Through the lenses she could still see the man’s hand jerking, but now there were tremors in his legs as well. He looked for all the world like someone had attached jumper cables to his nerves and was sending jolts of electricity through his muscles.
“Jump start a dead man. Now there’s a nice Frankenstein homage,” she thought sardonically.
Fifteen minutes passed, and Vick shifted restlessly to keep her feet from falling asleep. She could see the corpse’s movements were becoming more pronounced, but she still gasped when he suddenly sat upright at the waist.
The man was looking more or less in her direction, and through the binoculars Vick could plainly see the bullet hole between his eyes. Her bullet hole. As she watched, the bullet slowly worked its way out of the wound and fell into the man’s lap. Then, the mottled gray skin reformed into a single smooth mass.
Fermata: The Spring: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series (The Fermata Series: Four Post-Apocalyptic Novellas Book 2) Page 2