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

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.”
    “Lady,” I said, “you are seriously crazy.”
    “Lot of that going around.” She accelerated into the night. I looked over my shoulder at Boston. Even knowing that walking horrors filled the city, I felt sick to my stomach leaving it behind.
    We made good time. Every few miles the headlights picked up one or two of the dead on the side of the road. Vick steered around wrecked cars with practiced ease. I gave in to my exhaustion and drifted off, waking only when she pulled the SUV into a garage.
    I followed her out into the moonlight, but other than hearing the ocean to my right, I couldn't tell much about where we were. The real shock hit me when we went inside. Vick turned on a light switch. I just stood there staring stupidly at the fixture.
    “What’s the matter?” Vick asked.
    “I haven’t seen a light on in months,” I answered numbly.
    “Come in the kitchen,” she said. “I need something to eat.”
    While I watched, she made coffee. Honest to God coffee. It smelled incredible. The machine transfixed me like a caffeinated lava lamp. When Vick put the warm cup in my hand, everything hit me at once. I was sitting at a table. The house was clean. There was electric light. I started babbling about that Will Smith movie, I Am Legend . A scene just jumped into my mind. The woman he finds cooks some bacon he’d been saving. He loses his temper and scares the little kid.
    My hands began to shake. I stuttered out a rapid fire staccato of incoherent words. Images of Bruce fired across my consciousness, that one sad eye looking up from the pavement. By the time she slipped a blanket around my shoulders, I was well on the road to an hysterical breakdown.
    She knelt beside me and said, “Stop it.”
    I looked at her fearfully, but she wasn’t angry. Compassion filled her eyes. She repeated, "Stop it.” And added, "Don't give them your power. We’re alive. I plan to stay that way. You want to stay alive with me?”
    When I nodded, she smiled and patted my knee. “How do you like your powdered eggs?”
    That night the dead chased me down the dim corridors of restless sleep until I awakened sobbing. She was there, soothing me with quiet words, telling me I was safe. Hours earlier, this same gentle woman slaughtered half a dozen monsters in an alley. In the coming weeks I came to appreciate the deep goodness she buried beneath a contained economy of style.
    Vick held the ragged world together for us both, hiding what I soon recognized was bone-deep pain.
    Somehow she stays human in a world where humanity is in short supply. She's my friend and I love her, but I