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

York, Maine 2012

Vick had intended for the conversation about the "safe place" to be a closed subject, but Lucy refused to let it drop. A few days after they brought Beth back from Boston, Lucy cornered Vick in the basement where she was cleaning her automatic and insisted they talk about the things the child was saying.

“Lucy,” Vick said in a voice that was far too even and dangerously patient, “there is no way a child this young is going to be able to tell us how to find this hypothetical ‘safe’ place and I really do not want to have this discussion with you again. Drop it.”

“Honestly, Vick. I’m not suggesting that she’s going to run Google Earth for us, I’m only saying you should stop scaring her half to death and listen to her. Some of what she says is interesting.”

“Such as?”

“She talks about other kids, older ones teaching younger ones in a ‘kin-dy garden.’ She went on and on about ‘da teacher lady.’ And then there was some stuff I didn’t catch about ‘doting oats,’ but anyway, then she said . . .”

Vick’s head snapped up from the workbench. “What did she say? About the doting oats. Exactly.”

Lucy thought for a minute and said, “I think it was ‘mares dote on oats.’”

Without a word, Vick put down her tools, took off her shoulder holster and walked upstairs to the kitchen. Beth was sitting in the middle of the floor coloring. Vick sat down cross-legged and said, “Hi, Beth. Can I color, too?”

Beth’s eyes grew wide and she scooted back a little, looking to Lucy for guidance.

“It’s okay, Beth. Vick won’t hurt you,” Lucy said, leaning against the frame of the basement door. “I’m right here.”

The child thought about it for a minute and then held out a yellow Crayola like a peace offering.

Vick took the crayon, retrieved a coloring book from the stack Lucy had brought home, and pretended to study the pictures looking for just the right one.

“Lucy said you’re a big girl. Do you go to school?”

The little girl nodded.

“Where do you go to school?” Vick asked, trying to get the child to start talking.

In a small voice, Beth said, “I go to the big room,” and then after a pause she added, “with Miss Julie.”

Lucy saw all the color drain out of Vick’s face, but her voice sounded perfectly normal when she asked, “Did Miss Julie teach you any songs?”

“Yes!” Beth squealed. “Miss Julie has a beautiful voice. She sings all the time.”

Without any prelude Vick sang, “Marezy doats and doezy doats . . . “

Beth squealed again, “an little lambzies divey!”

“A kiddley divey too,” Vick answered.

“Wouldn’t you?!" the little girl cried, clapping her hands before she threw her arms around Vick’s neck. “You knows Miss Julie’s song!!”

To Lucy’s astonishment, Vick wrapped her arms around the child and held her. “Yes, baby, I know the song,” she said softly, and then closed her eyes and looked as if her heart would break. When Vick opened her eyes, Lucy saw they were bright with unshed tears.
 

“Vick, are you alright?” Lucy asked softly.

“Fine, Lucy, thank you. Would you please put Beth to bed and then come join me in the study?”

Chapter Two

When Lucy walked into the study, Vick was sitting on the bench in front of the grand piano. In two years, Lucy had never seen the keys of the piano because the cover was always down. Now, Vick was lightly running her fingers over the keys, almost caressing them. She looked up at the sound of Lucy’s step on the hardwood floor.

“You never asked,” she said.

Lucy sat on the back of the couch facing Vick and frowned. “I never asked about what?”

“Who I was.”

“You mean before all this happened?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think you’d tell me,” Lucy said honestly.

“I wouldn’t have,” Vick agreed, as her long fingers struck a chord on the instrument. Lucy could tell the piano was a little flat, but it was still playable. She watched as Vick’s left hand came up to join her right.

Lucy didn’t know she was listening to the Chopin passage from Schumann’s “Carnival,” but the moody quality of the music touched her all the same, and she knew instantly that Vick wasn’t just any piano player.

Something changed in the woman as she played, the way she held herself. Lucy had seen those hands do many things. Some things she really didn’t want to think about. But it was all she could do not to let her mouth hang open as she listened to Vick play.

When the piece was done, Vick said simply, “That’s who I was.”

“And I’m betting you weren’t the church organist?” Lucy said.

"No," Vick laughed, "although I did do my time in the choir loft as a young woman. I was a concert pianist.”

Lucy frowned. “You mean like with the Pops?”

Vick smiled and said, “Something like that.” Then she gestured for Lucy to join her, moving over on the bench at the same time. When Lucy sat down, she handed her a CD.

Lucy studied the cover. Vick, in an elegant black evening dress, her hair long and elaborately styled. “Chopin Nocturnes - Victoria Ellingsworth-Eidson.”

“You look beautiful,” Lucy said quietly, after taking a minute to absorb what she was seeing.

Vick rested her hand over Lucy’s. “You’re a good soul, Lucy. I know I’m very difficult sometimes.”

“I wouldn’t say
very
,” Lucy said, turning her hand and clasping Vick's fingers.

“You bring out the best in me,” Vick said, smiling.

"Tell me what's going on, Vick," Lucky said. Their hands were still clasped and she realized her friend was trembling. "Who's Julie?"

Vick squeezed Lucy's hand and tried twice to speak before she was able to get the words out. “I think she’s my daughter,” she said. “The daughter I killed.”

The Cabin, 2016

"But I don't understand," Abbott said. "You told me that you were forced to shoot your daughter in self-defense."

When Vick didn't answer, Lucy said, "We can do this another night. I think Vick's had enough."

"No," the other woman said, her face drawn in the flickering light of the fire. "I did shoot my daughter," she said, "but I never went back to that office to verify that she was there. I thought I shot her in the head. That's how I remembered it, but I couldn't be sure, and after what Beth said, the doubt was killing me."

"I didn't know about Julie until that night," Lucy said. "That was also the first time Vick and I really talked about the strange things we'd starting seeing the dead do. It was because of Beth that we found Hettie."

York, Maine 2012

Lucy listened with tears in her eyes as Vick told the story of that first night at the concert hall. When she described the scene in Maurice’s office, grotesquely lit by the fireworks outside the window, her voice cracked and she looked away, overcome by the memories.

Finally she whispered, “I tried to make her listen, Lucy, but she was too far gone. If I hadn’t been in the corner, maybe . . . " Vick sounded very small when she added, “You know I don’t do well in corners.”

“I know, Vick.”

“I’ve wondered so many times if I decided to do it,” she said, her voice reed thin. “Am I a woman who decided to kill her child?”

“She was already dead, Vick. She would have killed you. You were just trying to survive.”

“I’ve told myself over and over that what I did was some instinct. Some horror at the thought that I’d just stand there and be killed. But there is no escaping the truth. I shot her. I shot my baby.”

Lucy laid her hand on Vick’s arm. “It’s simply not possible that the Julie that Beth is talking about is your Julie, honey. It's just not possible.”

Vick's eyes tracked restlessly as she worked to control herself. “She sang like an angel, Lucy,” she said. “Julie adored children so much that she volunteered in childrens’ wards in hospitals. She'd hold those little sick kids in her lap and give them so much love. They all called her 'Miss Julie.' She always taught them that song, Mairzey Doats. I sang it to her when she was little.”

“It’s a horrible coincidence, nothing more.”

She looked up with haunted eyes. “But what if it’s not? What if . . . what if they . . . recover . . . or reform . . . or resurrect . . . again? We don’t even know what caused all of this in the first place. We never do anything with the bodies, Lucy. Did you ever wonder where the bodies go?”

“Actually, Vick,” Lucy said seriously, “I try really hard not to think about that. But, yes, I have wondered.”

“What if she’s out there, Lucy?” The tears that Vick had been holding back spilled out of her eyes. “What if I didn’t kill her?”

“You have to let this go, Vick. You’ve been tearing yourself up all these years over killing her, and now you’re tearing yourself up with the idea that you didn’t. You have to stop.”

“I can’t.”

“Can I tell you what I think?” Lucy asked.

“Always.”

Lucy paused for a minute, and said, “Until that day in the bank, I thought they were all like bad toner cartridges.”

Vick raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I worked in a copy store right out of high school. We could always tell when the toner was going bad. The pages had big long streaks and gaps and stuff. You know?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sometimes in a pinch, you can take the cartridge out, shake it really hard, and get a few more good copies.”

“I’m not following,” Vick said, frowning.

“Maybe that’s because I’m just thinking out loud,” Lucy admitted. “I guess what I’m saying is that all those people didn’t die exactly the same way, so maybe they don’t all come back the same way. Some of them may have a little more toner left than the others.”

Vick considered that. “Do you think it’s possible that some of them might have actually recovered? Survived the original illness?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said honestly. “Bruce and I never even sneezed.”

“Me either,” Vick said. “I never catch anything.”

“Where did you shoot Julie?” Lucy asked quietly.

A perplexed look crossed Vick’s face. Her eyes lost focus as she tried to go back to that moment. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Did you go back to the office that next day?”

Vick shook her head. “No. The streets were full of the dead by morning and I was . . . I wasn’t well,” she faltered.

“Who was Quentin?”

She smiled. “He served with Papa — my grandfather — in World War II. They worked on a project doing research in acoustic weapons. Quentin went on to be a professor of piano at the New England Conservatory. He and my father were working on a book when Daddy died suddenly. Quentin was the facilitator for the guest artists series at the Conservatory. I was a featured soloist at Jordan Hall several times.”

“What happened to him?”

Vick looked away and Lucy saw her swallow before she spoke. “He didn’t make it,” she said simply.

“So you don’t really know about . . .," Lucy hesitated.

“No. I don’t really know if Julie is still lying on the floor of her father’s office or not,” Vick said. "Which is clearly the first thing I have to find out."

The Cabin, 2016

Vick looked over at Lucy. "You were not happy with me when I said that."

"No, I wasn't," Lucy grumbled. "Just like I'm not happy with most of your bright ideas."

Abbott chuckled
 
in spite of the seriousness of the conversation.

"When you hear what she decided to do, you'll understand why I wasn't happy," Lucy said defensively.

"Oh, I know exactly what she did," Abbott said. "She made you stay at the house with the child while she went into Boston alone. Am I right?"

"Completely right," Vick said. "But I didn't come back alone."

York, Maine 2012

“Please don’t do this,” Lucy pleaded. “Wait until we can figure out a way for me to come with you.”

“We can’t wait,” Vick said, methodically putting extra clips of ammunition in the small gear bag she used for day trips into the city.

“You mean
you
can’t wait,” Lucy shot back.

Vick looked up at her. “If she were your daughter, could you?”

Lucy threw her hands up in sheer frustration. “Damn it, Vick! That’s not fair.”

“It may not be, but answer the question anyway.”

“Okay, fine. Damn it all to hell, fine. But get in and get out. What’s this nonsense about a trip to the library?”

Vick zipped the bag shut and swiveled her chair around to face Lucy. “Because after we talked last night, I couldn’t sleep, and now there are a lot of things that are really bothering me.”

“Like what?”

“There really is nothing new in the world,” Vick said. “After Quentin was killed, when I wasn’t reading survivalist handbooks, I was pouring over medical texts, infectious disease studies. I was trying to understand what could have possibly caused the dead to rise. But I stayed purely in the confines of hard science.”