Free Fermata: The Spring: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series (The Fermata Series: Four Post-Apocalyptic Novellas Book 2) by Juliette Harper Page B

watched, Vick filled it four times, downing each shot without flinching. There was a picture in a frame sitting in the middle of the desk, but Lucy couldn’t make out the image.
    What unnerved her most was the way Vick’s hands were shaking. She looked for all the world like a junkie in need of a fix. In the two years they’d been at the house, Lucy had never even been able to get her friend to have a beer with her.
    Vick always said the same thing. “Drinking leads to thinking.” Instead of alcohol, Vick drank coffee – one endless cup after another. It was no mystery to Lucy why the woman didn’t sleep. Lucy secretly dreaded the day when they couldn’t find any more coffee to salvage from the ruins of the stores where they “shopped.”
    Lucy stood there and quietly watched her friend suffer. Vick was a take-no-prisoners kind of woman. Lucy knew with complete certainty that Vick had her back. She had no doubt that Vick cared for her. But she also knew she couldn’t walk into that room.
    Instead, she stood there and watched as Vick put her head in her hands and began to sob. There is no lonelier sound in the world than listening to someone you love cry and having to let them do it.
    Tears spilled out of Lucy’s own eyes as she sat down, put her back against the wall, and just stayed there in case Vick needed her. She knew that a survival instinct as strong as Vick’s wasn’t drawn from a shallow well. It was pulled up from the bottom of an ocean of pain. In those moments, Lucy didn’t know the depths of that ocean, but she was soon to find out.

    “Lucy. Lucy! Wake up!”
    Groggy eyes blinked into focus. “Don’t shout, honey. You’ll wake the baby,” she mumbled.
    In spite of herself, the corners of Vick’s mouth threatened a smile. “Very funny. Would you like to tell me what you’re doing asleep on the floor outside my study?”
    “I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
    “Interrupt me at what?” she asked suspiciously.
    Honest eyes met hers and Lucy said, “I saw that you were reading, and I know you don’t get a chance to enjoy your books much anymore. I didn’t want to bother you.”
    Vick stared down at the younger woman and swallowed the sudden lump that came into her throat. She knew Lucy was lying, and Lucy knew she knew she was lying. Lucy had seen, and she just sat down outside the door like the faithful soul she was. Even with most of a bottle of brandy in her, it took all Vick had to say, “Thank you.”
    “For what?”
    “Just take the thank you, Lucy. Did you want to ask me something?”
    Looking visibly relieved, Lucy got up off the floor. It still seemed odd to her that she was so much taller than Vick when Vick cast a much longer shadow.
    “While I was bathing Beth, she started talking about wanting to go to the ‘safe place’ to find her Mom. I think we should try to get some information out of her. Maybe we need to know what this ‘safe place’ is all about.”
    Vick’s expression hardened. “There’s no such thing as a safe place, Lucy. There never has been. Good night.”

    The Cabin, 2016

    "Beth was the first person you found alive after Lucy?" Abbott asked.
    "Yes," Vick said, "and it made no sense to either one of us. She couldn't have been more than 2 or 3 when the epidemic hit. So even though I didn't believe what she was saying about a safe place, it was clear that someone had to have been taking care of her."
    "It was more than that," Lucy said. "Beth wasn't nearly traumatized enough to have been living on the streets for long, and she wasn't hungry enough. She's never been able to tell us exactly how she came to be in that store, but she definitely wanted to go back to what she thought of as home."
    Abbott chewed at the end of his pipe. "Did you look for her home?" he asked.
    Lucy and Vick exchanged another long look. Vick swallowed hard and shook her head, a cue for Lucy to answer. "In time we did," she said, "but not until we found out something about Beth