Desolation Boulevard (55 page)

Chapter
81

The road out of Carswell was deserted, and
there was no sign of either marauders or travellers on the road
west. Nobody spoke about the carnage that had occurred at the high
school, but it was at the forefront of Matt and Dylan’s thoughts,
as the car began its descent down the mountain. Matt knew that
Dylan was right. Whether The Doctor was alive or not was almost
irrelevant. Evil would find a way, and while ever there was
anarchy, it had every opportunity to thrive. People with malice in
their hearts would find each other, and unscrupulous leaders would
organise them to fight for their perverted beliefs. It would be the
responsibility of good men and women all over the world, thought
Matt, to resist. All of a sudden, he realised that individual
freedom was an impossible ideal in this new world. After the
horrors and cruelty he had witnessed, he knew that his life would
never be his own again. Personal ambition would need to be
sacrificed for the good of the many. The implications of such
thoughts, however, were almost suffocating, so he tried to think of
more pleasant things, such as home and friends.

“
We’ll be back by
lunchtime,” he said, as Montana stirred from her nap in the back
seat.

“
I just had the worst
dream,” she said, stretching and yawning. “It was really vivid
too.”

“
Yeah? What was it
about?”

“
Umm, how far are we from
Kate’s house?”

“
Really?” queried Matt.
“You dreamt about Kate?”

“
More like a nightmare than
a dream, actually. I’m worried about her now.”

“
Kate?” asked Dylan. “Is
that the woman who rescued you guys when her zombie ex-husband
attacked you near here?”

“
Now there’s a sentence I
never thought I’d hear in my lifetime,” Matt said drily. “But yes.
She’s the one,” answered Matt. “Her turnoff is only twenty minutes
away.”

“
Can we stop?” asked
Montana.

“
Why?” challenged Dylan.
“Because you had a bad dream?”

“
It was more like a call
for help than a dream. It was so real! Matt? Please?”

“
Look Dylan, we have plenty
of daylight left, and I’d like to make sure Kate’s okay. It’ll only
add an hour to our trip at the most.”

“
Hey man, you’re the boss.
Besides, she sounds like a pretty wild woman and I wouldn’t mind
meeting her. We can spare an hour.”

There it was again, thought Matt - that
compulsion to do the right thing, even when your heart was telling
you to do something else. He pushed his foot slightly harder on the
accelerator as the car wound down the mountain. Home would have to
wait.

-

At first Matt missed the turnoff to Kate’s
house because everything had become so overgrown, but after
stopping the car and reversing a couple of hundred metres, they
found the muddy tracks that marked the old fire trail. He pulled
the car off the main road and they began the slow climb, through
the rainforest, to the top of the hill. Without regular
maintenance, the path had deteriorated considerably since they had
spent the night at Kate’s house a few months ago, and a couple of
times Dylan needed to get out and move fallen logs from the track,
but at least it was still drivable.

“
She hasn’t left the house
in a while, by the look of this road,” Dylan said, as he climbed
back into the car, after moving a branch from the road.

“
No. I hope that’s by
choice,” said Matt, as Montana leaned over the back of the seat so
that she could see the way ahead more clearly.

“
We should have come to
visit before this,” she said. “We promised her.”

“
Yes, we should have, but
it’s too late for regrets now. We’ve been so busy with other
things, and leaving the farm at any time is dangerous. I’m sure
she’ll understand.”

“
I can’t wait to see Elvis.
I miss him.”

“
Yeah, he’s a good
dog.”

After around twenty minutes, Matt realised
they must be getting close, and as the car pushed through a dense
patch of wattle trees Montana yelled, “Look! There’s her
house!”

Matt stopped the car as close as he could,
and they all climbed out eagerly.

“
Wait a second,” he said.
“Why isn’t she out here to meet us? She would have heard the car
coming up the road, wouldn’t she?”

“
Definitely,” confirmed
Dylan, leaning back into the car and pulling out a pistol from the
car’s glove compartment.

“
Something’s wrong,” said
Montana nervously, as they started walking cautiously towards the
house.

They had reached the bottom of the stairs,
and were taking things slowly, when a loud woof from inside the
house saw them abandon all instincts for self-preservation and bolt
up the wooden stairs and in through the front door, which was
standing open. Matt was the first inside, but it was difficult to
see anything because all of the blinds were drawn.

“
Elvis?” he
called.

A deep “woof” was the response from further
inside the house, and Matt headed straight for the sound of the
dog’s distressed bark. He raced down the short hallway to Kate’s
bedroom, and despite its gloomy interior, he thought he could just
make out the shadowy figure of the dog sitting by the bed staring
at a figure that was lying on top of the quilt, unmoving in the
gloom. Montana and Dylan arrived at the doorway as Matt was moving
across to the bed. He knelt down beside Elvis, who was whining now,
and could see Kate lying on her back, fully clothed and breathing
irregularly.

“
Kate!” he whispered, as
Dylan pulled the blinds open to let some light into the
room.

“
Oh my god!” exclaimed
Montana, noticing Kate’s bloodstained jeans and quilt.

Matt was putting his fingers on Kate’s
neck.

“
I think I feel a pulse,”
he said.

“
I’ll get a bandage,” said
Dylan, rushing out of the bedroom.

“
She’s trying to talk!”
cried Montana, as she crouched down beside Matt, and began to
stroke Kate’s forehead.

Kate’s voice was barely more than a faint
murmur, but Matt and Montana leaned forward as close as they were
able.

“
What is it?” asked Matt
gently, as Dylan came back into the room with a first aid
kit.

Kate opened her eyes and tried to smile.
“You never visit,” she whispered, through the weakest of
smiles.

Dylan had taken a pair of scissors out of
the first aid kit, and began cutting off the blood soaked jeans, as
Matt and Montana tried to comfort the woman who was dying before
their eyes. Matt smiled sadly. “Kate, what happened?”

She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and
Matt thought she had passed out, but she opened them again and
whispered, “Feeder. Yesterday morning ... a straggler ... Elvis
scared ... away.” Her eyes closed again.

Matt turned to Dylan. “How’s her leg?”

Dylan looked at Matt and shook his head. The
flesh on the upper part of Kate’s thigh was beyond repair -
shredded to pieces by sharp teeth - and as they watched, blood
pooled quickly in the deeper wounds as it flowed from a damaged
artery. The mattress was completely soaked, and there was no way
that Kate would survive without a blood transfusion, even if they
could stop the bleeding. Dylan wrapped a new bandage around her
thigh as firmly as he could, but it was clear that Kate’s life was
ebbing away as each drop of blood leaked from her frail body.
Montana was sobbing as Kate opened her eyes again.

“
How’s Gabby?” she
murmured.

“
Oh, Gabby’s good, Kate,”
replied Matt, holding her frail hand. “She’s getting more beautiful
every day.”

Kate smiled. “Special girl ... but ...they
... want her.”

Her eyes closed again. Then, when Matt
thought that the woman might have actually passed away, her eyes
sprung open, fearful and urgent, “You must take her west!
Hurry!”

“
Why?” asked Matt, as
Montana cried beside him and Dylan watched from the end of the
bed.

But she had closed her eyes again, this time
forever, as Matt leaned over and listened to her last words,
delivered as a final, fragile breath.

-

An hour and a half later, Matt, Dylan and
Montana were standing beside Kate’s grave with Elvis, as the winter
sun shone down, warming their faces. Montana’s eyes were red from
crying and everybody was slick with sweat from the digging, but
they wanted to honour this brave, intelligent woman before heading
home. The only sound was the whispering of the leaves in the
treetops and the forlorn call of a crow as it passed overhead. They
bowed their heads as Matt began to speak.

“
Kate saved my life,” he
said, as Montana sniffled beside him. “She ... um ... she ... was a
good person.”

He paused, frustrated because he was unable
to find the right words - the words that would do her life some
kind of justice.

“
She had a rich
life.”

Matt stopped and shook his head, angry with
himself because he was unable communicate the strong feelings he
had for Kate.

“
She deserved to have more
people here to say goodbye,” he stated finally, brushing away tears
with a mud-spattered hand. “She deserved better. That’s
all.”

“
I loved you Kate,” said
Montana, as they turned away and headed to the car.

-

They were about five kilometres from
Millfield, and Montana was driving. Matt stared dejectedly at the
road ahead, while Dylan and Elvis got to know each other in the
back seat. The excitement of escaping the marauders at Carswell and
returning home had been soured by Kate’s death, but they knew that
Bonnie, Gabby and Sally would be hugely relieved to see them alive.
At least they would have time to recuperate from their emotional
scars in the peace and quiet of the farm, with only their closest
friends to support them. Matt tried to find some solace in that
idea as Montana broke his train of thought.

“
Hey Matt, what do you
think Kate meant when she said to take Gabby west?”

“
Who knows? She probably
wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

“
Oh. I thought she seemed
pretty lucid, actually.”

“
Oh, really? Do you think
it makes sense to leave the farm and head west?”

“
I don’t know - it just
seemed like a warning. Maybe we should consider it.”

“
Maybe, but I really don’t
want to leave the farm unless we have to. There are no feeders,
it’s peaceful, and we have plenty of resources. It’s my
home.”

“
Mm. Okay,
then.”

Montana slowed down, as she approached a
burned out bus that was blocking half of the road.

“
That wasn’t there when we
went to the caves.”

“
No it wasn’t,” agreed
Matt, looking a little concerned.

“
Hey, can I ask you one
more thing?”

“
Sure,” said Matt, as he
and Dylan swung around to watch the blackened shell of the vehicle
receding into the distance.

“
What did Kate say to you?
You know, before she died.”

Matt smiled.

“
She said life was worth
it.”

Chapter 82

“
Look at that,” said
Sally.

“
It’s remarkable, isn’t
it?” replied Bonnie. “You wouldn’t think anything was
wrong.”

They were sitting in the sun on the front
porch watching Gabby, as she ran and played with a small group of
children on the grass in front of the house. Over an hour ago,
after Gabby’s emotional meeting with her followers, Bonnie had
decided to leave the gate open, as a sign of friendship and unity.
She wasn’t sure how the people outside the fence would respond, but
she hoped that it wouldn’t turn out to be a poor decision. After a
few minutes, however, she knew she had done the right thing. At
first, Gabby’s followers had simply carried about their normal
routine - the children playing games together, while adults hung
out washing, prepared food, read, or just chatted to each other.
Then, almost apologetically, a boy about Gabby’s age, wearing a
woollen beanie and clothes that were a little too large for him,
stepped tentatively through the open gate, and stood gazing up
towards the house. After a couple of minutes, he became confident
enough to walk up to the porch where Bonnie was reading to Gabby.
He paused at the bottom of the porch stairs and stared at his feet.
Then he looked at Bonnie shyly and asked, “Can Gabby come
play?”

Gabby looked up at her mother, her face full
of hope and anticipation, while Bonnie looked at Sally for advice,
but she simply shrugged and smiled. Bonnie looked down at her
daughter, and felt a slight tug in her heart as she replied, “Go
and play, but stay inside the fence.”

“
Yay!” said Gabby, as she
ran down the stairs, taking the boy by the hand as they ran
squealing happily towards the pepper tree.

Sally looked over at Bonnie. “Are you
crying?” she asked, not entirely understanding her friend’s
reaction.

Bonnie wiped a tear from her eye while she
watched Gabby and the boy running around and around the old tree
together, laughing when one of them fell over its gnarled old
roots. Her heart was in turmoil because she felt as if she had just
given her daughter a beautiful gift, but in doing so had also
released a small part of her, to forces beyond her that she
couldn’t control.