Desolation Boulevard (18 page)

Gabby kept gazing out of the front
windscreen as Matt slowed down to negotiate a hairpin bend in the
road.

“
It’s not beautiful.
There’s something bad out there,” she said.

“
No sweetie. There’s
nothing bad out there, just birds and animals. It’s really pretty.
Look”.

“
No. It’s bad. I don’t like
it here.”

Matt could see that Gabby was upset. “It’s
okay honey. We’ll be out of here soon and back in the sun. Then
before you know it we’ll be home having dinner. You didn’t tell me
what you wanted me to cook”.

“
Can you really cook?” she
asked, looking up at him.

“
Sure. What do you feel
like?”

“
Can you make
hamburgers?”

Matt laughed. “Are you kidding? I make
awesome hamburgers. You can help if you like.”

“
Okay,” she said, eyes
returning to the road ahead.

Gabby’s fear of the forest seemed to have
abated somewhat as they swung into the final descent. After this
bend, they would be out in the open again and on a straight run
home to Millfield through farmland. Matt relaxed and opened up the
throttle in anticipation of being home before it got dark. He
smiled and glanced at Montana, “Won’t be long now.”

As his eyes returned to the road, though, he
was forced to jam his foot hard on the brake as they skidded
headlong towards a fallen tree. The girls screamed as Matt fought
with the steering wheel in an attempt to control the truck as they
skidded towards the obstacle. He felt the rear tyres sliding
sideways, and head-on crash seemed inevitable, but at the last
second, they gripped the bitumen, and Matt was able to steer his
truck through the tree’s foliage and into a shallow culvert at the
edge of the road. Despite their speed being slowed considerably,
Matt, Gabby and Montana jolted forward hard onto their seatbelts at
the moment of impact and Matt heard Elvis yelp as he was thrown
forward into the window behind them. He looked around
desperately.

“
Is everyone
okay?”

Montana, shocked, was silently nodding her
head in agreement and Gabby was crying, but Matt thought everybody
looked okay. As Montana consoled Gabby, Matt hopped out of the
truck to check on Elvis. He lifted him out of the tray and placed
him on the ground to check for obvious injuries like broken bones
but, apart from a limp, the dog seemed to have survived his ordeal
intact, and was already marking his territory by urinating on a
nearby tree. The three crash survivors gathered on the road by the
huge fallen eucalypt and looked around. Nobody wanted to say
anything, but the sun had slipped a little further behind the trees
and it was getting gloomy in the forest.

“
That could have been a lot
worse,” Matt stated rather obviously. He crouched down and held
Gabby by the shoulders. “Are you okay honey?”

“
That was scary. Who put
the tree there?”

Matt smiled. “Nobody put it there,
sweetheart. It just got pushed over in a storm. When the ground
gets really wet, these big trees sometimes just fall over on their
own.”

“
What are we going to do?”
she asked.

“
Yes Matt,” Montana asked.
“What are we going to do? Can we go around it?”

Matt had already made his mind up about that
particular question. “No way. It’s too big. Even if I had a
chainsaw it would take hours to cut it up enough to move it.”

“
Well, can we get in the
car and go back and find a different way to Millfield?”

“
This road only goes
straight back to Carswell. Do you want to go there in the dark?
Besides, my car’s not coming out of that ditch unless someone tows
it out.”

“
Well what do you suggest?
We can’t stay here can we?”

“
I’m not sure,” he
replied.

Matt looked down at Gabby and sensed that
she was more frightened than at any time since this ordeal started.
She returned his gaze and spoke. “This place is bad. We have to go
before it gets dark. Something’s here.”

“
Nothing’s here Gabby. You
don’t need to worry, okay. We’ll look after you. Montana, take her
over and put her in the car with Elvis.”

Montana called Elvis and took him over to
the ute with Gabby, put them in together, and closed the door. Then
she went back over to Matt, who was looking down the road in the
direction of the rapidly fading sun. “Do you have a plan?” she
asked.

“
I think we only have one
option.”

“
That can’t be good. What
is it?”

Matt grimaced, knowing that she would hate
his suggestion. “We stay in the truck for the night.”

“
You have got to be
kidding! Stay out here with those things everywhere?”

“
Wait. Listen to me,” he
said, trying to sound far more reasonable than he actually felt.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere in a National Park. I don’t think
anybody lives around here. The chance that feeders are way out here
is really unlikely. We just lock ourselves in the truck and wait
for the sun to come up tomorrow morning, and then we’ll walk until
we find a car and then we go home; and I have my shotgun if a
feeder shows up anyway. What do you say?”

“
I say it sounds horrible,
but I can’t see a better alternative, so I guess we have no choice.
I’ll go tell Gabby,” she spat, giving him a dark look as she
wheeled away towards the truck.

Matt stood and surveyed the gloomy forest.
Gabby was right. This place was creepy. It seemed ancient, timeless
and malevolent all at once. He tried to rationalise his fear, but
nothing worked. He didn’t like it here, full stop. Instead of being
at home in his warm house cooking hamburgers, he was going to be
spending a cold, hungry night in a cramped truck trying to protect
two girls he had met only today. What had happened to his life?

He went to the back of his truck and opened
the toolbox where he kept his shotgun. He sat on the trunk of the
fallen tree and watched Montana talking to Gabby inside the truck.
She was probably telling the girl what a dick he was for getting
them all into such a mess. Maybe he was a dick, he thought
bitterly. This was all too hard for a boy who just wanted to go to
school and eventually become a farmer. Why did he have to take
responsibility for other people all of a sudden? It just didn’t
seem fair!

He was about to get up and go over to check
on the girls, when he had the strangest sensation that he was being
watched. He peered into the gloomy forest, but could see nothing
but a sea of dark green vegetation. Maybe he was just jumpy after
the experiences of the last few days. He stood up and started to
walk over to the truck. Surely there would be no danger this far
from town, he was thinking, but the feeling of being watched was
persistent. He scanned the trees once more and was almost convinced
that his paranoia was simply a manifestation of his fear, when the
almost naked figure of a male feeder pushed through the scrub and
into the open just one hundred metres from where he was standing.
Matt stopped and stared at it, scarcely believing his eyes. He
watched as the feeder stepped onto the road and paused, before
looking around with its nose in the air. Matt could see the girls
still talking to each other in his truck, illuminated by the
interior light and he motioned with his free arm, but couldn’t
attract their attention. He just had to hope they wouldn’t leave
the safety of the vehicle until he had a chance to kill this
creature. Matt was pretty sure it hadn’t spotted him yet, but he
knew it was only a matter of time. He didn’t understand why one of
them would be this far from a populated area, but he somehow knew
that somehow it had sensed their presence was here to feed on them.
All of these thoughts occurred to Matt in just a second or two and
by the time he had formulated them, the creature had looked up and
seen him, at almost the same time that Matt raised his gun. He
risked a glance at the cab of the truck and saw that Montana was
now watching this new threat with wide eyes, while Gabby was
nowhere to be seen, presumably hiding on the floor of the truck
once more.

Suddenly and shockingly, the creature made
its move, and raced down the middle of the shadowy road towards
Matt with bloodlust in its eyes. He took a deep breath, aimed down
the shotgun barrel at the creature’s chest and pulled the trigger.
He knew right away that he had missed. He was out of practice and
the recoil sent the shot high and to the right. The feeder was
halfway to Matt now, yet somehow he registered, through his fear,
that this one was older than most of others he’d seen, maybe even
as old as sixty. The weird thing was, though, it was running like a
twenty year old, and had covered almost half the distance to Matt
in just a handful of seconds. He took aim once more, this time more
prepared for the recoil and confident that he could take this thing
down just before it reached him and ripped his throat out. Then,
when the filthy, bloodstained beast was about thirty metres out,
Matt very deliberately squeezed the trigger and waited for the shot
to ring out. Instead, the hammer clicked down on the second shell
with a dull metallic click, and Matt realised with absolute clarity
of mind that he was totally fucked.

From the truck he could hear Montana
screaming.

Chapter 33

Extract From Sally’s Journal:

“Where do I start?
Dylan’s “zombie” hunting expedition didn’t go quite as smoothly as
I would have liked. It was terrifying enough while the damn things
were sleeping, but when one of them woke up and chased Dylan I
thought I was going to die, either from fright or zombie attack
(now I’m calling them zombies, which they’re not - they haven’t
come back from the dead, which I actually think makes them worse).
Anyway, he managed to fight it off, but in the process got bitten
on the leg. Somehow we were able to scramble into the back of an
office supplies van where I bandaged him up and stopped the
bleeding, (but I’m worried now that the wound might get infected
despite starting a course of antibiotics since we got back). We
were trapped in that truck for over an hour with I don’t know how
many zombies trying to get in, but they didn’t, thank god! After a
while the thumps on the truck stopped and we risked opening the
door to see if they had gone. Dylan was right; they must have gone
back to their nests to sleep because the car park was empty. (He
thinks that they really need that downtime to rejuvenate, even
though it seems like they can come out of it for a while if they
are in danger). Even with Dylan limping along on his injured leg,
we got out of that basement pretty damn fast and headed out into
the sunshine. The warmth on my face felt amazing. (By the way, if
these creatures could handle the daylight, we would be royally
screwed. Owning the daytime is our only salvation).

As we walked home
holding hands Dylan didn’t talk much. I guess because he was in a
lot of pain. I had this emotional knot in my stomach and wanted to
talk about what happened in the van between us this morning, but I
didn’t want to scare him off either because I know what babies men
can be when it comes to commitment (hi dad!). Let’s just say what
happened was one of the most moving moments of my life, and I’ll
never forget it, but maybe he doesn’t feel the same way? Despite my
excitement, I’m going to play it cool and see what happens. We have
time, after all.

I saw my first
marauders on the way back to St Jude’s today too. We were two
blocks from home when we heard people talking loudly nearby. When
the voices got closer, Dylan dragged me into the nearest building
(a fashion boutique) and we hid behind the counter. The marauders
were in daylight and we were in the shadows, so it was safe to peek
over the top to check them out. There were a group of four men
(although they were more like animals to me) of various sizes and
ages wandering down the middle of the road, looking like characters
out of some “Road Warrior” movie. They were bristling with weapons
and off their faces on god knows what! Booze, pills, crack? Maybe
all three. Let’s face it, if that’s your thing, you just have to
walk into a chemist and help yourself; there’s plenty to go around
and no law to stop you. They were laughing manically about nothing
in particular and obviously looking for trouble. As they went past
the window I could see that the last one was dragging a long piece
of orange nylon rope behind him and I expected to see a savage dog
come into view, but I was wrong. As the four moved out of our line
of sight I saw that the rope was attached to a large spiky dog
collar, which was secured around the neck of a naked girl. I
thought I had become unshockable, but that rocked me badly. I
looked at Dylan, desperate for him to do something, but he just
looked at me sadly and shook his head. Any attempt to save her
would have probably ended in one or both us being killed. He told
me later if his leg hadn’t been injured he might have been able to
do something. Who knows? Maybe next time we’ll be in a better
position to help. There is a crushing guilt,
though.

When we got back to the
church, Jo quickly arranged medical treatment for Dylan’s leg from
Kathy, who used to be a nurse. She put a few stitches in and
congratulated me on my improvised bandage. She said he should be
fine if he kept taking the antibiotics and changed the dressing
each day. After we’d cleaned up and had something to eat I went to
talk to Mr Ash about the marauders and asked him how dangerous they
were for us. He said the groups so far were only small and that we
had them outnumbered, but who knows how long that will last. At the
moment anyone who tries to get into St Jude’s has to give up their
weapons and submit to our rules. The guards are very cautious and
so far that’s been enough to deter the bad element. Mr Ash said if
there was any doubt, they would shoot first and ask questions later
- something he never got to do as a high school teacher (ha ha). I
told him about the girl tied to the rope and he said he would send
a group out with automatic weapons to see if there was something
they could do for her, but he didn’t seem confident. “These are bad
times,” he said.