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

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