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 B
Authors: Juliette Harper
The stress of her growing hyper-vigilance felt at times as if it would crush her.
Vick came to crave the very sounds she had once avoided, but she didn’t dare introduce them into her life now. Noise was no longer a matter of choice. The creatures were drawn to sound. An iPod and a set of headphones became the only thing standing between her and utter madness. She couldn’t use them when she was out of the house, but at night, when the shutters were down and the perimeter secure, Vick lived in those headphones. Television and radio were a thing of the past, the Internet died after a month, but her iPod lived, all 64 gbs of it.
In fact, it became her most prized possession, to the point that she locked the device and the extra battery pack she kept charged at all times in a fireproof box when she left the house. That tiny technological brick held the last sounds of the world she had known. Music, videos, podcasts, books, and emails.
She hadn’t realized the wifi on the iPod was on that night in July and that it picked up the last messages she would ever receive. When she turned the wireless off, the email lived on in the iPod’s memory. She waited almost 10 months to read one message in particular. One dated from that night. July 4, 2010.
When she did read it and watched the video attached to it, she calmly loaded her 9 mm automatic, got in the car, drove to Boston, and went to Symphony Hall to commit suicide.
They didn’t make it easy, the omnipresent dead. She had to put down a cellist and an oboe player in the lobby. She knew them both. Or had known them when they were alive. They didn’t get the chance to take her out though. That trigger was hers to pull, and there was only one spot in the building where she planned to pull it.
And then she heard the screams and the very clear profanity floating up through the deserted city streets. The voice was a woman’s, and judging from her vocabulary and the terror in her curses, she was very much alive. Vick tried not to move toward the sound. She tried to go ahead with her plan, but she hadn’t succeeded in exorcising the humanity from her soul in those months of isolation.
Even when she thought mankind was extinct, or morphed out of any coherent recognition, Vick remained human. She ran toward the sound and found Lucy, back up against the wall, trying to stand down six of the creatures with a tire iron. Vick took them out one at a time, and then she took Lucy home with her, and everything changed.
Vick had assumed that she would be alone for the rest of her life and she, and only, she would write the definition of “rest.” And then there was Lucy in that alley. Afterwards Vick told herself she went on living because she was responsible for another person. The truth was that she went on living because — for no reason that she could fathom — she wanted to again.
The fact of Lucy’s existence gave her a convenient excuse, and the actuality of the other woman’s presence gave her someone to talk to. Before Vick knew it, they had built a life in the ruins, and she had come to love her improbable friend. After that suicide was out of the question, because it was not a thing she would ever do to Lucy.
Once their life together became an established matter, Vick simply assumed they would continue with it for whatever amount of time they had because there was nothing else to precipitate change. The facts were simple. They were alive, the dead weren’t. In her own way, she gradually came to feel safe. A kind of predictable routine returned to their day-to-day existence, a dangerous predictable routine, but a routine all the same.
Chapter Eight
The cracking of a log in the main room broke Vick’s reverie. Her thoughts had wandered far into the future from that first night. She stared at the page and started to write again . . .
“You survive, my dear.”
With that simple instruction, Quentin ushered her into the elevator. They rode in silence down to the
Vick came to crave the very sounds she had once avoided, but she didn’t dare introduce them into her life now. Noise was no longer a matter of choice. The creatures were drawn to sound. An iPod and a set of headphones became the only thing standing between her and utter madness. She couldn’t use them when she was out of the house, but at night, when the shutters were down and the perimeter secure, Vick lived in those headphones. Television and radio were a thing of the past, the Internet died after a month, but her iPod lived, all 64 gbs of it.
In fact, it became her most prized possession, to the point that she locked the device and the extra battery pack she kept charged at all times in a fireproof box when she left the house. That tiny technological brick held the last sounds of the world she had known. Music, videos, podcasts, books, and emails.
She hadn’t realized the wifi on the iPod was on that night in July and that it picked up the last messages she would ever receive. When she turned the wireless off, the email lived on in the iPod’s memory. She waited almost 10 months to read one message in particular. One dated from that night. July 4, 2010.
When she did read it and watched the video attached to it, she calmly loaded her 9 mm automatic, got in the car, drove to Boston, and went to Symphony Hall to commit suicide.
They didn’t make it easy, the omnipresent dead. She had to put down a cellist and an oboe player in the lobby. She knew them both. Or had known them when they were alive. They didn’t get the chance to take her out though. That trigger was hers to pull, and there was only one spot in the building where she planned to pull it.
And then she heard the screams and the very clear profanity floating up through the deserted city streets. The voice was a woman’s, and judging from her vocabulary and the terror in her curses, she was very much alive. Vick tried not to move toward the sound. She tried to go ahead with her plan, but she hadn’t succeeded in exorcising the humanity from her soul in those months of isolation.
Even when she thought mankind was extinct, or morphed out of any coherent recognition, Vick remained human. She ran toward the sound and found Lucy, back up against the wall, trying to stand down six of the creatures with a tire iron. Vick took them out one at a time, and then she took Lucy home with her, and everything changed.
Vick had assumed that she would be alone for the rest of her life and she, and only, she would write the definition of “rest.” And then there was Lucy in that alley. Afterwards Vick told herself she went on living because she was responsible for another person. The truth was that she went on living because — for no reason that she could fathom — she wanted to again.
The fact of Lucy’s existence gave her a convenient excuse, and the actuality of the other woman’s presence gave her someone to talk to. Before Vick knew it, they had built a life in the ruins, and she had come to love her improbable friend. After that suicide was out of the question, because it was not a thing she would ever do to Lucy.
Once their life together became an established matter, Vick simply assumed they would continue with it for whatever amount of time they had because there was nothing else to precipitate change. The facts were simple. They were alive, the dead weren’t. In her own way, she gradually came to feel safe. A kind of predictable routine returned to their day-to-day existence, a dangerous predictable routine, but a routine all the same.
Chapter Eight
The cracking of a log in the main room broke Vick’s reverie. Her thoughts had wandered far into the future from that first night. She stared at the page and started to write again . . .
“You survive, my dear.”
With that simple instruction, Quentin ushered her into the elevator. They rode in silence down to the
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