Fermata: The Spring: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series (The Fermata Series: Four Post-Apocalyptic Novellas Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

straining to be set free. She could not afford to go chasing after either one or to let them loose to eat her alive.
    But here, in this moonlit perch above a crumbling city with a half-mad, but wholly sweet woman watching from her rocking chair, humming as she stared at the rooftops through a high, vaulted window, Vick fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. In the morning, the smell of percolating coffee awakened her. Opening her eyes, she discovered that in the night Hettie had covered her with a plaid blanket.
    Pale morning light was filtering in the high windows and Hettie was fussing around her make-shift kitchen talking to herself. Vick noticed a leather satchel on the work table and realized the woman had quietly packed up all her work tools. She had apparently made up her mind to come along without any further argument because a second, smaller bag sat on the floor under the table.
    "It's rude to watch someone without saying good morning," Hettie chirped, turning toward Vick with a cup in her hand.
    " Great ," Vick thought to herself, " one of those librarians with eyes in the back of her head .” But what she said aloud was, "Good morning, Hettie. I was just waking up a little."
    "Perhaps this will help," she said, bustling over. "I'm afraid I don't have cream, but there's sugar if you want it."
    Vick sat up and realized the room was chilly. Fall was coming on fast. She let the blanket stay over her legs as she accepted the cup. "I take it black, thank you."
    "You'll need to bring that over here by the window," Hettie said. "The promenade will be coming by shortly. I've set up a telescope for you as well."
    Pushing the blanket aside, Vick stood up and walked over to the window where Hettie had carefully arranged two telescopes and two chairs, and apparently rather precisely aimed them to look down the street. Vick sat down and put the cup on the floor beside her. She bent to look through the eyepiece and was startled at the scope's power. It was trained all the way toward the end of the long boulevard that approached the library from the west and dead-ended at the front steps.
    "The promenade has to flow around the library to pick up the street on the other side and continue toward the ocean," Hettie said, sitting down on her own chair and peered at an old wind-up ladies’ watch pinned to her sweater. "They will be visible at the end of the street in less than a minute."
    "They're that punctual?" Vick asked, adjusting the focus on the device slightly. But no sooner had she spoken than she saw them, walking as a group, not in step, but coordinated enough to maintain loose lines and files. They were coming up the boulevard slowly, and as they walked, other figures emerged from the buildings and fell in with them, so their numbers grew with each block they passed. It took about 20 minutes for them to come roughly eight blocks, and by that time Vick guessed there were more than 100 of them stumbling along.
    As they neared the library, she took her eye away from the scope and just watched. They seemed to have come from every walk of life. There was a fireman, wearing his bunker gear, streaked with dried blood in a long trail from the neck to the hem. A nurse in a uniform that had once been white and was now tattered and gray. There were men in fraying business suits and one woman incongruously weaving along wearing only one high-heel on her left foot. Up she bobbed and down again in a well-developed rhythm, oblivious to the obvious solution to her problem.
    Without missing a ragged step, the front line made the left turn in front of the library, and the whole group began to move around the side of the building. Vick stood up and moved with them, going from window to window, fascinated by what she was seeing.
    On the far side of the library, she had a clear view of their course down to the seawall that protected the city on the east. The whole matter had been the cause of great policy debate in the months before the mystery