Desolation Boulevard (37 page)

Halfway back, he saw Montana and Gabby climb
out of the passenger’s side of the car and walk around to wait at
the front of the car. His panicky gunshot had probably woken the
little girl, but standing there in the early dawn light, Matt
thought she looked okay, and didn’t seem to be suffering any ill
effects from her abduction. When he reached the girls, he hugged
them both and said, “Sorry, I freaked out a bit there. It was just
a crow. Bill’s dead.”

Montana looked at him, concern written all
over her face. “I’ve changed my mind, can we just go home now
please? I don’t want to go to Carswell any more.”

He smiled at her. “Absolutely, I’ll tell you
about it later, when we’re back at Two Hills.”

They climbed tiredly into the car and sat
Gabby up between them. As Montana was buckling up her seatbelt Matt
held a finger up and cocked his head. They all heard it at once.
Matt wound down his window, and Montana followed suit immediately.
She looked at him worriedly.

“
That’s a car!”

“
Yes,” said Matt. “Coming
from Carswell!”

They all looked through the windscreen, down
the straight stretch of road where an engine droned somewhere out
of sight. For a few tantalising seconds time seemed to stand still
as they waited for the vehicle to appear. Then on the horizon, like
an apparition, a single dot grew in size, and became larger as it
drew closer to the exposed trio.

“
What will we do?” asked
Montana, now nervous again.

Matt looked around. There was nowhere to
hide, and no time for that anyway. The car continued to speed
towards them.

“
Get down on the floor!” he
barked, as he picked up his gun and stepped out of the
car.

The sound of the vehicle was louder now, and
Matt knew that it would only be half a minute or so before it
reached them. He cocked his weapon and let it hang, unthreateningly
by his side, as he took a deep breath and waited in the middle of
the road.

Chapter 59

“
Let’s just shoot them and
get out of here!” exclaimed Bonnie.

Dylan didn’t respond, but instead peered
into the metal cage where the two creatures were sleeping.

Sally squeezed his hand and pleaded, “Please
Dylan, I don’t want to be this close! They’re dangerous! Let’s
go!”

He snatched his hand away from hers and
snarled, “I am not leaving here until I’ve killed those
things!”

Sally moved away, surprised and upset by his
outburst.

Bonnie had been watching the exchange, and
now tried to calm Dylan’s mood. "Okay. That’s fine. Let’s kill
them. But can we do it quickly please. I need to find Gabby. We’re
so close now!”

Dylan turned around and gave the two women a
confused look, as if just noticing them for the first time.

“
What?” he
asked.

“
I said, let’s get out of
here. Hurry up and shoot them so we can go find Gabby.”

“
Oh. Sure.”

Sally spoke, “Dylan, what’s wrong? Are you
okay?”

“
Yeah I guess so. It’s just
that we have these things in captivity and seems like a waste to
just kill them.”

“
What the fuck are you
talking about?” asked Bonnie, incredulously. “A waste? Who cares?
What do you want to do? Keep one as a pet?”

Dylan looked at Bonnie, who was staring him
down, hands on hips. He still seemed confused, but continued, “No,
of course not. I just feel like we could learn something about them
while they’re alive. Maybe we could wait until they wake up and
follow them. We could maybe track them to their lair and wipe out
thousands of them at once.”

Bonnie snorted then replied, as if she were
explaining something to a small child. “Okay Dylan honey, listen
carefully. I know you’re really upset about losing your daughter.
As a mother I understand that, and my heart aches for you, but my
daughter’s still alive, and I need to get to her. Also, if we open
that cage and wait for those things to wake up tonight, they’ll
just attack us and we’ll have to shoot them anyway. So why don’t we
just shoot them now, while they’re asleep, and we can study their
dead bodies really quickly, then we can go find Gabby. What do you
say?”

For a moment Sally thought that Dylan was
going to explode, as he held his breath and stared at Bonnie.
Instead he smiled and said, “You’re right. That’s what we should do
- kill them, then go find Gabby.”

Sally breathed a huge sigh of relief as
Dylan picked up his gun that had been leaning against the outside
of the cage. She was concerned, though, that his moods seemed to
change so quickly lately. There was an anger that seemed to be
bubbling away under the surface and that scared her. She knew that
he was suffering intensely from the death of his daughter, but that
was little comfort to her in moments when he seemed barely able to
control his fury. With concern on her face, she looked on as he
smashed the lock that secured the cage.

“
They might wake up
remember?” said Sally, thinking about the incident in the car park,
where Dylan had injured his leg.

“
Yeah. I’ll be ready for
them this time,” he said, as he opened the gate.

Dylan stepped into the enclosure and stood
still. There was no movement from inside the dark kennel, where the
creatures were lying, but he could see that Bonnie and Sally were
anxious nonetheless. He moved forward. Now he was standing only a
metre or so from the chest-high opening, and he immediately noticed
that the stench from the beasts was much stronger here. He trained
the gun into the darkness and crouched down as he took another pace
forward. He was at the entrance to the kennel and, as he waited for
his eyes to adjust, he listened for any sound that would indicate
that the zombies had woken up. He heard nothing. After a minute or
so, his eyes became accustomed to the low light inside the kennel
and he was able to make out the vague shapes of the creatures on
the floor. He marvelled at how pale they had become; almost like
corpses. They had also become much thinner than an average human.
He realised they were changing somehow, and as he studied the
creatures more closely, he almost forgot why he was there. It was
only when Bonnie hissed at him from outside the cage, that he
snapped back to reality and pointed his gun at the closest beast.
That’s right, he thought absently, they needed to be killed. This
time, unlike the warehouse, there was no drama. Dylan fired a
bullet into the head of the first zombie, and as the other one
roused from its hibernation, he shot accurately once more and
without hesitation, thereby releasing the creature from the hell of
its own pointless existence.

A couple of minutes later the three
travellers stood in the long grass, beneath a brilliant blue sky
with the bodies of the two zombies at their feet. Dylan had dragged
them out from their lair unceremoniously while Sally and Bonnie
watched on in disgust from a distance. They had expected to see
some changes in the creatures based on what they had learned
already, but were surprised by the pace of the transformation that
was overcoming them. The most obvious change was their skin colour,
which had changed from soft and human into something much more
rugged and heavily textured.

“
That’s crazy,” exclaimed
Sally. “How do you go from human skin to whatever that is in such a
short time?”

“
I don’t know,” answered
Dylan, “But it looks really tough, doesn’t it? Almost like
leather.”

“
Yeah,” added Bonnie. “And
what about those fingernails? They’re scary! They’re becoming like
lizard claws or something.”

“
They’re not human any more
are they?” asked Sally.

“
No. And you know what
else?” Dylan added. “They’re really cold. When I pulled them out of
the cage their ankles weren’t warm at all. They felt as cold as
snakes. Touch one.”

“
No thanks!” said Bonnie,
“But that’s scary news all the same.”

“
Why?” asked
Sally.

“
Because it means their
whole physiology is changing. They’re evolving.
Quickly.”

“
Bullshit! That’s not
possible surely,” Dylan challenged.

Bonnie smiled, “I think anything’s possible
now, don’t you?”

Nobody answered.

Chapter 60

Matt stood in the middle of the road, with
his gun by his side, as the vehicle approached from the east. He
figured that the car coming towards them probably belonged to
survivors heading away from the city, but after his experience with
Bill, it seemed wise to exercise extreme caution.

As the car approached, Matt waved his left
arm above his head to signal his presence and waited as the vehicle
came to a stop about fifty metres from his position. His heart was
beating faster now as he realised how vulnerable he was, standing
there under the sapphire-blue sky, exposed to whoever was hidden in
the car. If they were looking for trouble, Matt knew that a
well-placed bullet could end his life right at that moment, and the
girls would be left to defend themselves. The only sound Matt could
hear now was the ticking of his ute’s engine as it cooled and the
sullen cry of a crow somewhere in the distance. For almost a minute
the standoff continued, as both parties waited for the other to
make a move. Frustrated by waiting, and in an attempt to show that
he meant no harm, Matt squatted down and laid his gun on the warm
bitumen of the road. It was a risk, but he felt that whoever was in
the car ahead, would have shown their aggression by now, if that
was their intention. He stood erect and looked straight ahead with
his arms slightly away from his side, palms toward the car, showing
that he was unarmed, in one final statement of goodwill. Perhaps
spurred on by Matt’s gesture, the driver’s door of the vehicle
slowly swung open with a metallic squeal that pierced the silence
like the cry of a banshee. Then, without warning, Matt heard a
click behind him, and jerked his head around to see that Gabby was
getting out.

“
Gabby! No! Get back in the
car!” he screamed, as he reached down to pick up his
gun.

She paid him no attention, however, and
instead began running as fast as she could toward the car stopped
on the road up ahead.

Suddenly things were happening in a blur, as
Montana sprang from the back seat and sprinted after the little
girl, not far behind Matt. At the car up ahead it was all action
now too, as three figures, silhouetted by the rising sun leapt from
the vehicle and began sprinting towards the girl frantically.

“
They want Gabby!” yelled
Montana, as Matt raised his gun and aimed it at the closest figure.
He was about to pull the trigger and shoot, when he heard a female
voice call Gabby’s name in an anguished cry that seemed to come
from a place that was deep and timeless. Then, just before firing,
at the point where things could have gone really bad, really
quickly, Matt released his finger from the trigger of the gun,
thereby ensuring that Gabby and her mother might have the
opportunity to become a family once more.

-

As Bonnie ran down the road towards her
daughter, she registered somewhere deep in the back of her mind
that a young man was pointing a gun at her. She also knew that
sudden death was absolutely the only thing that would stop her from
reaching her child as quickly as possible. Bonnie screamed Gabby’s
name and waited for the bullet that would take her life, but there
are times when things happen as they should, based on nothing more
than the right person being a split second away from making one
decision or another. So Matt didn’t fire his weapon, and this
turned out to be one of those times.

Bonnie was on her knees in the middle of the
road, welded to Gabby as they cried together, too emotional for
words. Matt and Montana stood side by side watching the moving
reunion, as they were joined by another girl about Montana’s age,
and an older male, dressed in black, who was limping towards them
with his hand held out towards the pair.

“
Hello. I’m Dylan. This is
Sally.” He pointed at Bonnie. “I’m guessing you’ve worked out who
that is.”

As Matt shook their hands and introduced
himself and Montana, he realised that he was trembling quite
noticeably. “I nearly shot her,” he whispered. “I could have killed
Gabby’s mother!”

Dylan clasped Matt’s shoulder. “But you
didn’t. So it’s all good, right?”

“
I guess so,” said Matt,
still upset.

Bonnie was standing now with her back
towards Matt, Gabby still in her arms, as Matt walked over to her.
He was troubled by his willingness to kill somebody who was no
threat to him. He needed to speak to her - to make it right,
somehow. The woman was whispering into Gabby’s ear, but Matt
couldn’t hear what was being said. He touched her on the shoulder,
and she turned to him.

“
I’m Matt, “ he said. “I
thought you were going to take her. I was going to shoot you. I’m
so sorry. I was scared.”

“
Has my daughter been with
you?”

“
Yes. With Montana and me,”
he replied, cautiously.

Bonnie was silent, as she stroked Gabby’s
hair. Her face gave away nothing as she considered the two young
people who had taken her daughter into their custody since the
event. A smile creased the corner of her mouth as she put Gabby
down on the road.

“
You’ve done a good job,”
she stated, before taking both of them into her arms and hugging
them in a way that said more than a thousand words ever
could.