Desolation Boulevard (3 page)

“
Hello”?

No response.

Speaking louder this time.

“
Hello? Is anyone
there”?

The silence inside the building was even
more profound than the nothingness outside. What should she do? Her
fear was creeping up on her now, like a tiger stalking a deer. She
was struggling to maintain her self-control.  “This is what
people feel like just before they go mad”, she thought to herself.
If she had someone else with her she knew she would be coping much
better, but on her own, the loneliness and fear were so crushing
that she almost turned around and went home. She knew in her heart
that this would be the easiest option - go home, lock the door,
climb into bed and wait. But she couldn’t. That was too submissive.
She needed to exercise some semblance of control to stay sane, and
by checking further inside the Police Station, she figured she
would get back some of that control.

Chapter 5

Matt screamed and fell backwards as the
animal jumped from beneath the bed. With his eyes closed tightly,
he flailed his arms around to protect his face from a savage
attack, as he hit the carpeted bedroom floor. The animal pounced on
him as he tried to punch it away with his unprotected fists. He
braced himself as he waited for the beast to sink its teeth into
his bare throat. In his terrified state it took Matt a couple of
seconds to realise that he was only in danger of receiving a severe
smooching from a large frightened Labrador.

“
Shit!  Elvis boy! You
nearly gave me a friggin’ heart attack.”

Matt cuddled the hysterical dog and
scratched him behind the ears until he started to calm down.
“Elvis, where is everyone boy? What’s going on?” The dog just
wagged its tail as the pair looked at each other. Matt certainly
felt a lot better about having a companion now, even if it was only
the neighbour’s dog, but he still had to solve the problem of where
everybody had gone. He knew that he needed to check that last
bedroom before he left the house, if only to satisfy himself that
he wasn’t scared. Matt stepped out into the hallway.

“
C’mon Elvis, let’s go,” he
coaxed.

But the dog remained in the doorway, staring
towards the closed bedroom door. Matt grabbed Elvis by the collar
and tried to gently pull him along, but even then dog wouldn’t
budge. “Looks like I am doing this on my own,” he thought, as he
walked toward the last door. He looked back at Elvis, who was now
peeking sheepishly around the doorway, and took a deep breath. He
had always thought of himself as a reasonably brave person, but
this day was doing its best to ruin that illusion. He had almost
wet his pants when the Labrador almost killed him with affection,
and now he was having second thoughts about opening this damned
door. Maybe he didn’t need to. After all, this was not his house
and he really had no right to be poking around in here when the
owners weren’t home. But while it was within his power to turn
around, walk out of the house, and go home to wait for his parents,
Matt knew that it was never going to happen. Something was wrong,
and he had to prove to himself that he was no coward, despite being
scared stupid by an overfriendly Labrador three minutes earlier. He
had made his decision. He turned the doorknob, pushed the door open
and took one step into the Thompson’s bedroom and looked around.
There was nobody in the room, and the only thing that seemed
unusual to Matt was the unmade bed, because he’d heard his mum say
that Mrs Thompson was tidiness freak - the bed should have been
made by now. He went over to it and sat down to think.

As he looked at himself in the full-length
mirrored wardrobe opposite the bed, he realised that he needed to
head into town to try to find out what was happening. The
Thompson’s house had been a bust. Matt was about to stand up and
leave the room, when he saw a movement out of the corner of his
eye. Elvis had crept quietly up to the bedroom door and was now
prostrate on the floor, head down on the carpet staring at the bed.
Matt walked to the dog, which was now emitting a high-pitched
whining sound as it continued to stare at the bed.

“
What is it boy? What’s the
matter? Is there a cat under the bed?”

Matt knew there was no cat under the bed, as
much as that would have been his preferred choice. He crouched
down, from the safety of the doorway, next to the dog, with the
side of his face flat on the carpet. The bedspread reached almost
to the floor, and in the small gap underneath he could see only
darkness. Damn! He was going to have to look under another bed!

Matt edged into the room as Elvis’s whining
became more frantic. Many thoughts were going through his mind as
he attempted to work up the courage to lift the bedspread and peer
beneath it, all of them unpleasant. He knew that he just needed to
get it over with, and get out of that house as quickly as he could.
But this time he wouldn’t be caught unawares. His plan was to
quickly pull the bedspread off the bed, then jump backwards out of
the way to avoid any potential shocks. He inched toward the bed,
grabbed a handful of the cover and yanked it off the bed as he
leapt backwards toward the doorway. But nothing jumped out at him,
and he realised he was still okay, despite his heart thumping like
it was going to burst. At the door Elvis continued to whine, but
Matt knew that he still needed to look under the bed. From his
position alongside the dog in the doorway he crouched down on all
fours and peered into the gloomy space once more.

For a second Matt thought his eyes were
deceiving him. Mr Thompson was lying on his back under the bed, as
if he were dead! Without taking time to think, Matt moved to the
motionless form and began to shake him and call his name. When
there was no response, he grabbed the man by the arm and, with
considerable effort, dragged him out into the open, while Elvis
whined frantically in the background. Matt’s head was spinning from
shock. Then, as he bent over Mr Thompson’s seemingly lifeless form
to try to feel a heartbeat, he noticed, to his horror, another body
under the bed. He didn’t need to look closely to realise it was Mrs
Thompson. He lay down on his stomach, grabbed her by the wrist and
dragged her out, until she was lying alongside her husband.

Now Matt was not only totally confused, but
also extremely panicky. He needed to act. Luckily, his farming
background had given him an excellent understanding of first aid
practices, and he decided to use them now. He ripped open Mr
Thompson’s shirt and put his ear to the big man’s chest, and was
relieved to find that there was a very faint, but slightly
irregular heartbeat. Clearly he was alive. He quickly checked Mrs
Thompson and found that she was in a similar condition to that of
her husband. Deciding that he needed some kind of medical
assistance, he ran downstairs to the phone to call for help. Elvis
followed. Matt picked up the phone in the kitchen and put it to his
ear. It was dead. He ran his hands through his hair as he tried to
work out what to do. He realised that he had very few options. He
knew there was nothing he could do for the Thompsons other than
monitor them, but he also needed to go into town to try to find out
where his parents were. Was it right to leave them alone? As he
thought this through, he knew that it was really his only option,
given the crazy circumstances he found himself in. He would feel
bad leaving them upstairs alone, but he knew he had no choice. As
Matt ran to the car he realised that Elvis was right behind him. As
he opened the door and climbed into the cab of the ute, the dog
jumped up and over his lap into the passenger seat. He closed the
door, pulled onto the gravel driveway and headed into town.

Chapter 6

As Matt drove he tried to think. His head
was a complete mess since he had found the Thompsons’ comatose
bodies under the bed. He couldn’t rationalise the experience.
 His mind ran through one scenario after another, but they
made no sense. He considered, and then ruled out suicide, illness,
assault, robbery, and even mental health issues, but none of those
explanations held enough water for him to really believe in them.
He had a nauseating feeling in his stomach that this was something
radically new and, worst of all, somehow connected to his missing
parents. If Matt had found Mr and Mrs Thompson lying on their
lounge room floor, instead of under their bed, he may have assumed
something like a failed suicide pact, but the fact that they were
hidden (hiding themselves?) under the bed, made Matt’s skin
crawl.

He slowed down as he approached the
outskirts of town. Immediately he knew that his worst fears were
being realised. He could not see a single person on the streets and
there was no traffic. He shivered despite the warmth of the
afternoon. He parked his car in the centre of town and climbed out
as his eyes darted around. Nobody. The shops and pubs, which would
usually be pretty busy at lunchtime on a Saturday, were deserted.
In a small town like Millfield, the pub was the social hub of the
town, and even in an emergency like a flood or a bushfire people
still came to find out the latest news. The Criterion Hotel was an
imposing, two-storey timber building with wide shady awnings over
the footpath, and a veranda upstairs. When Matt was younger, he had
spent quite a few afternoons in the beer garden out the back, while
his parents drank with friends. Now the pub looked silent and
menacing. He instructed Elvis to stay in the car as he headed into
the front bar.

The similarities to the Thompsons’ house
were remarkable - there was absolutely no sign of human activity,
other than the detritus of the previous evening’s partying.
Half-empty glasses and bottles littered the bar, which suggested to
Matt that something bizarre had happened not long before the pub
would have closed (3 am on a Saturday), but he really couldn’t
imagine what that might be. What really terrified Matt now, though,
was the likelihood that his parents might be laying somewhere in
town, in the same vulnerable state as the Thompsons. He didn’t want
to wait to find out. He guessed that if the pub’s customers from
the previous night had developed some weird disorder that was
forcing them to hide away before falling unconscious, the most
obvious place would be down in the keg cellar. Thinking about what
he might find down there, Matt decided to check the other areas of
the pub first. As he wandered through the dank and musty interior
of the hotel, he tried to remain upbeat, despite his fear. He
reasoned that even if everyone in town has been struck down by
whatever had caused the Thompsons’ to go into a state of
unconsciousness, it was quite likely temporary, and in time
everyone would recover. The alternatives were just too disturbing
to consider.

He found no surprise on the ground floor.
The bistro was empty (meals half eaten on tables), the lounge bar
was empty, and the office, where he found a very heavy-duty
flashlight, was also empty. On the first floor there were six rooms
available for accommodation. Every door was and he could see that
they were empty. He considered the possibility that the tenants
might be unconscious under the beds, like his neighbours, but the
open doors suggested that they had chosen a more secluded spot for
their “sleep”. He headed downstairs once more.

As Matt descended the stairs into the beer
cellar, the flashlight illuminated each step, and when he reached
the bottom he swung the flashlight beam back and forth around the
pitch-black space. The light bounced off stacks of aluminium beer
kegs and shelves that were loaded with crates full of supplies for
the bar and restaurant. For a moment he couldn’t see anything out
of the ordinary, but just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything,
he needed to check the recess at the back of the cellar, behind the
kegs. As he moved slowly towards the space, his heart began to beat
faster and his breathing became shallow. He paused and listened.
Matt wasn’t sure if he was imagining things or not but he felt that
there was an almost imperceptible sound back there somewhere, more
felt than heard. Or maybe it was his subconscious mind inventing
something that wasn’t really there. Matt knew that he just needed
to take a couple of steps forward, and peer around behind the kegs
to find out; but he struggled to find the strength to make his legs
propel him into what may be a new and disturbing future. As he
stood in the silence he heard the creaking of the old building as
the afternoon air began to cool. Something about the thought of the
shadows lengthening outside and the onset of night made Matt’s mind
up for him, and he felt himself moving toward the darkest recess of
the cellar, his legs working almost independently from his brain.
He shone his flashlight into the gloom, and there, on the concrete
floor, huddled together like corpses in a morgue, laid the bodies
of the pub’s customers. Matt stared, unable to move. He tried to
count them, but had to start over a couple of times because his
brain didn’t want to work rationally. He counted at least fourteen
bodies, but he wasn’t sure because they were packed in so tightly,
and some of the smaller ones (children, he realised with horror)
were actually on top of the others. As Matt played the beam of
light across faces he recognised most of them - John Smith, the
butcher; Mrs Emerson who worked at the supermarket; a young couple
whose names he didn’t know, but recognised from around town;
Manfred, the publican; Billy the bartender; and others.

Matt’s mind reeled, and his legs felt too
weak to stand on. This was far worse than finding the Thompsons’
under their double bed, because this gruesome discovery made him
realise that he was probably all alone in Millfield. But why? What
could have caused this to happen? Why had everyone congregated in
dark places? Would they ever wake up? Then, in contrast to the
macabre serenity of the scene before him, Matt noticed an almost
imperceptible movement from the corner of his eye. He hurriedly
jerked the flashlight towards it, and illuminated a large, brown
cockroach, crawling slowly over the neck of Billy the cook. Matt
was initially mesmerised, as he watched the insect gently exploring
the man’s motionless form, before crawling onto his face. Matt
couldn’t move. There was something primal and disturbing about the
vision that kept Matt entranced, until Billy’s hand moved rapidly
to brush the cockroach away. Matt jumped. “Billy!” he blurted. But
the chef’s arm had already gone back to its original position, and
he was motionless once more.