Fermata: The Winter: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series (The Fermata Series: Four Post-Apocalyptic Novellas Book 1) (2 page)

“I honestly don’t know where to start,” she said. “So much has happened since July 4.”

“July 4?” he asked, puffing to bring his tobacco to full life.

“July 4, 2010.”

“My dear, I’ve lived alone in this cabin for more than two decades.”

Realization dawned on Lucy. He wasn't being cavalier. He didn't know. "That's why you haven't built any defenses," she said. "Why this place is so open and why you don't stand guard at night. You really don’t know what’s happened to the world, do you?”

His eyebrows arched in surprise. "Defenses? Against what?"

"Them."

“I left the world to its own devices many years ago,” he said. “I have no use for people. Unless you're talking about the Russians, I have no idea what 'them' you mean.”

It was Lucy's turn to be confused. "The Russians?"

"The Cold War," he said. "Is that what's happened? Have they finally done it? Did one side or another drop the atomic bomb?"

"Dear God," she said, chuckling in spite of herself, "nuclear war would have been a hell of a lot easier than what we did get." When she saw his puzzled look, she said, "The Cold War ended."

“Who won?” he asked.

She frowned, "I don't think anyone did. I think it just kind of ended."

"And that sort of foolishness," he said, puffing on his pipe, "is why I had my fill of the world."

“And yet you took us in.”

He smiled, “I’m a recluse, not a heartless old troll living in the forest.”

“Lucy,” she said. “My name is Lucy.” The wind whistled in the chimney and she shivered against the sound.

“Abbott.”

“Thank you for everything you’ve done, Mr. Abbott.”

“No mister, just Abbott,” he said, patting her knee. “Now, dear Lucy, we have nothing but time on a night like this. So tell me what has happened to the world that makes you laugh at the prospect of nuclear holocaust.”

July 2010: Boston, Massachusetts, Lucy

I don’t know the right word to use for what they became — the ones who caught the fever and died. Or at least we thought they died. If they did, they came back, which sounds ridiculous, but I’ve seen it happen. There’s a part of me, that even now doesn’t believe it. Bruce on the other hand, jumped right on the resurrection band wagon and put his usual idiot spin on things.
 

Right now, today? I wouldn’t give Bruce the time of day. When this all started, we were playing house in Southie and talking about getting married. Then everything fell apart and Bruce decided he was on a mission from God. You see, Bruce thought they could be “reformed.” I wasn’t seeing that as an option. Since they killed Bruce, I’m thinking I was right.

First, we heard that whole neighborhoods and communities were sick. The news reports broadcast vague stories about a "flu-like" illness, complete with long shots of the CDC building and notices about quarantines. They obviously weren't showing us everything. I began to get seriously creeped out when the anchors looked too scared to read the teleprompters.

For me, personally, it started with Mrs. Gonzales, the old woman who lived upstairs. She came down with the “flu-like” illness and Bruce took food to her every day. He was actually a soft-hearted, nice guy. When he came back to our place with tears in his eyes, I knew what happened before he said, “Lucy, she’s passed.”

I called the police because she had no family. The cops said they were busy, which in retrospect may be the great-granddaddy of all understatements. The dispatcher said we should cover the body and secure the apartment. They’d be there when they could. I didn’t like the sound of that. It was July and an unusually warm summer. But we went upstairs and did as we were told.

While I was looking for a blanket to cover the body, Bruce dug through the piled up mail hoping to find the name of someone we could contact. When he let out a piercing scream, I whirled around to find dead Mrs. Gonzales on her feet. She put Bruce up against the wall, snapping at his throat like an elderly pitbull.

I grabbed the first thing I saw, a vase, and cracked her over the head. All I managed to do was get her attention. She backed me into the kitchen and straight up against a better weapon — a cast iron skillet sitting on the stove.

In the movies, smashing someone's head in looks easy. It’s not. The force almost broke my arms, but she was still coming, so I drew back and hit her again. On the second blow, her skull made a soft, squishing sound. She went down, a pool of dark blood pouring out of the wound.

Mrs. Gonzales was my first. I have no idea how many there have been since. For the record, she’s the only one I ever took out with a skillet.

Bruce and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. We went back downstairs and locked the door to our apartment. Hell, we shoved my grandma’s china cabinet in front of it just to be sure. For the next three days, we cowered in that living room glued to the TV. All the reports conflicted. We kept trying to piece together the “official” statements, but nothing made sense. It was all just spin to hold down the panic. From the sounds coming from the street, it wasn’t working.

We locked ourselves in on July 1, 2010. The evening of July 4, we witnessed a full-scale massacre in the park — in living color — on the flat screen, the one we were still paying off. The signal wasn’t a newscast. The images came from an abandoned camera lying on a gravel path.

It was hard to deny what we were seeing. So hard, in fact, that when I looked up, Bruce was wedged between the sofa and the wall clutching his rosary beads and mumbling one “Hail Mary” after another. By this time, I was losing patience with him.

With no disrespect to the Blessed Virgin, I wasn’t interested in anyone offering prayers at the hour of my death. I was not ready for that bell to toll. I had already made up my mind that whatever was happening, I intended to go down fighting. If I lived, it would be a better story. If I died, it would be a better death than what I was watching on that TV.

What happened next made us pack our bags and leave the “safety” of the apartment.

Dead Mrs. Gonzales started moving around upstairs.

Chapter Three

January 2015: The Cabin

Abbott scratched his whiskers thoughtfully. “I’m not doubting your word, but in my experience, the dead don’t get up and walk around.”

Lucy turned haunted eyes toward him. “If moving around was all they did, we could have handled it.”

“What did they do?”

“They attacked anything living that got in their way.”

“Why?”

“For food.”

The old man’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “Are you telling me that the dead rose from their graves to consume the living?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the stuff of cheap horror movies, Lucy.”

“It was horrible,” she agreed, “but it was no movie. And it hasn't been cheap. We've all paid dearly.”

“How many people did you lose?” he asked gently.

Lucy’s lower lip trembled, but her voice was strong. “My parents, my brothers, Bruce. Pretty much everyone I knew.”

“You don’t have to tell me this,” he said, laying a hand on her knee.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Because if I don’t tell it, it’s like they never existed.”

June 2011: Boston, Lucy

I thought Bruce was going to die the night we heard Mrs. Gonzales. But eleven months later we were both still alive. But not because Bruce didn’t try to get us killed every chance he got. Mr. Genius’ first idea was to go to Castle Island because it’s a fort. I shot that one down real quick.

We survived by moving from building to building across the city, staying ahead of the dead. They walked a lot in those days. Every sound brought them right to you. So we didn't make any sounds.

Bruce began to slowly lose his mind, retreating farther and farther into superstitious faith. I can still see him praying, on his knees in a shaft of dusty sunlight. We were in a basement with a high window. Bruce knew better than to make any noise, but his lips moved as he stared earnestly up into the light. I guess he thought if he kept trying, God would listen.

I knew we were on our own. If there was a God, He was doing something else. But I didn't say that to Bruce. He needed there to be a God. He needed to believe we were going to be saved. Gradually an idea formed in his mind. He became obsessed with the new “calling” to lay hands on the “lost” and “return them to the fold.” So one night he answered the call. He put out one of those hands and drew back a nub.

In typical Bruce fashion, he picked a dead biker covered in tattoos. Alive, this guy would have had Bruce for lunch. Dead, he just took one massive, decaying paw and snapped Bruce’s hand clean off at the wrist.

Bruce just stood there staring at the dripping stump. I hope being that dumb was a painkiller. The dead biker ripped Bruce’s throat out. I watched from my hiding place.

It all happened on Huntington Avenue. We were scavenging in the abandoned restaurants. The dead biker was out in front of a trashed Starbucks. There was nothing I could do to help Bruce. I ducked down some stairs leading to a lower level and stayed out of sight. I had my own plan for personal salvation — staying alive.

Two hours later, Bruce rose from the dead. That’s when I made my mistake. I tried to put him down. I wasn’t in love with Bruce anymore, but we’d been through a lot. I didn’t want to leave him like that, but I didn’t count on how many new friends he had. Six of them backed me down an alley. My only weapon was a tire iron.

When my back hit the brick wall, I knew I was going to die. Then, I did talk to God. I asked him to let me kill Bruce on my way out. Why? I was pissed. For the past 11 months I had desperately needed this guy to man up. What did I get? Terrified religious gibberish.

She came out of nowhere. One minute I’m trapped, and the next, the alley erupted in gunfire. The six dead guys went down one at a time. Behind them stood a little woman holding a big gun. She said, “Are you coming or not?”

January 2015: The Cabin

Abbott glanced over his shoulder. “That woman who saved you in the alley was her? She doesn’t look capable of doing anything like that.”

In spite of everything, Lucy chuckled. “Don’t ever make the mistake of underestimating Vick.”

“She is the leader of your little group?”

“Yes. She’s kept us alive all this time.”

“You can’t possibly have been on the run for five years,” he said.

“We haven’t been,” Lucy said. “Back then, we had a pretty good handle on things. We were doing okay.”

June 2011: Boston, Lucy

The woman walked out of the alley. I looked down at Bruce. She'd shot out one of his eyes. His throat was just a tangle of raw tissue. Around him slick, wet things covered the pavement. I didn't know who she was, but I couldn't stay there and I didn't have any place else to go. I followed her. It was the best decision I’ve ever made in what would otherwise have been a very short life.

She got into a banged up, seriously high-end SUV. I climbed in the passenger seat and said, “I’m Lucy.”

“Vick,” she said, starting the engine.

She pulled into the empty street. We rode in silence until I asked. “Where are we going?”

“My place,” she answered, steering around a shuffling dead man in a crosswalk.

“Why not just plow him down?” I asked curiously.

“They get caught in the wheel wells,” she explained. “It’s a real pain to clean the mess out.”

“Oh,” I said, blinking a couple of times. “Um. Where’s your place again?”

“York, Maine.”

“But that’s in another state!” I protested.

She glanced over. “And exactly what’s keeping you in Massachusetts?”

It wasn't so much that anything was keeping me there. It was just that I'd never counted on anything taking me away. I figured I'd live and die six blocks from my folks right there in Southie. We had their wakes at the L Street Tavern. If everything hadn't gone to hell, mine would have been there someday, too. But that was all in another world. There wasn't anything to say, so I just stared out the window. She kept driving.

We came to a toll booth. To my surprise, Vick stopped and lowered her window. I looked past her and saw a dead attendant still at her post. The woman wore garish earrings that dangled under the fraying edges of a crooked blond wig stuck on her rotting head.

“Hiya Thelma,” Vick said pleasantly. “You’re working late.”

The corpse hissed and lunged. I shrank back against my door.

“Don’t worry about Thelma,” Vick said, reaching behind the seat and bringing out some kind of collapsible pole. “She’s stuck in there.”

I craned my neck around to look. A piece of rebar wedged in the door handle kept the woman from escaping. “Who shut her in like that?” I asked

“I have no idea. I found her the first time I headed north out of the city,” Vick said, guiding the pole into the booth and bumping the switch.

“And you just left her there?” I asked incredulously.

“She stayed at her post while the world was ending,” Vick answered, putting the pole away. “I like that about her. Bye, Thelma,” she added. “See you next time.”