Fermata: The Winter: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series (The Fermata Series: Four Post-Apocalyptic Novellas Book 1) by Juliette Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

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.”
    She delineated time as “before” and “now.” Back in the days of “before,” Vick never sought out noise to fill the background of her life. She had loved silence, until the world fell silent and still. So still, that every movement was a signal of potential threat. The slightest flutter of a leaf could send her heart pounding in her chest.