Desolation Boulevard

Desolation

Boulevard

Mark
Gordon

Copyright 2012
Mark Gordon

Smashwords
Edition

Chapter
1

The sound of Elvis barking in the distance
hammered away at Matt’s sleep until his eyes flickered open like a
couple of lethargic butterflies. On a Saturday morning? Really?
That’s just not fair, he thought, as he sat on the edge of his bed
trying to convince himself that he was actually awake. He picked up
his phone to find that it was only 7:15. He tried to go back to
sleep but Elvis continued to punctuate the early morning silence
with a non-stop loop of short, aggressive barks. Matt wondered what
could be upsetting the neighbour’s dog so early in the day. The
Thompsons lived a kilometre away, and their Labrador was usually as
meek as a kitten. Oh well, it was no concern of his, he thought, as
he begrudgingly climbed out of bed.

He dressed himself in jeans and a T-shirt
from the floor, before heading to the bathroom to pee and wash his
face. He stared at himself in the mirror, as the morning sun leaked
in through the window. A pimple had sprouted on his chin, but other
than that, he thought he looked okay. He wasn’t a supermodel, but
he knew a few of the girls at school thought he was pretty cute,
and that was enough for him. He headed out to the kitchen thinking
that bacon and eggs would be a nice start to the day. There was no
sign of his parents being out of bed yet, which meant that they had
come home from their party in town much later than expected, and
would be trying to sleep late too. Elvis’s barking obviously wasn’t
bothering them.

Matt flicked on the kitchen light, but there
was no response. He toggled the switch up and down a few times,
before giving up on it. He would need to change the globe. Then he
noticed the clock on the old stove. It had stopped at 3:11 in the
morning, which meant that the power was out. He went to the front
porch and checked the fuse box, but no fuses had blown, so he put
on his shoes and headed out to the shed where the backup generator
was kept. He topped up the fuel tank, and then hit the starter
button, waiting a few seconds to make sure that it was running
smoothly, before heading back into the house. The kitchen light was
on now, he noticed, and the red second hand on the stove clock was
whirring around the dial steadily. It was odd that the power should
be off for such a long time, especially since they hadn’t been
victims of a bad thunderstorm overnight. Maybe he could find some
information about the blackout on the local news. He turned on the
radio in the kitchen, and dialled through the bands, until he
realised that he was wasting his time - there wasn’t a single
station on the air. That was really odd. He reached into his pocket
and pulled out his cell phone. No service? That wasn’t quite so
unusual, though, out here in the country where coverage could be
very patchy. He went over to the phone that sat on the bench beside
dad’s pile of loose change and lifted the handset from the cradle.
He paused, for a just a split second, before holding it to his ear.
Nothing. Not even a dial tone. Matt considered waking his parents,
but he knew they wouldn’t be happy about being disturbed,
especially if dad was nursing one of his hangovers. He went back to
his bedroom, reached under his bed and dragged out his MacBook.

As it powered up, he walked with it out onto
the front veranda and listened. Elvis had stopped barking now, and
the only sounds he could hear were those of birds and the
mechanical whirr of the windmill behind the house, as the morning
breeze gave it life. Where were the cars?  There should be one
or two heading into town, surely? He looked at the computer screen
as it finished booting up. If this didn’t work he thought he might
have to wake his parents to tell them about the power outage. Dad
would probably want to know, hangover or not. He clicked on the
Firefox icon and waited. “The Internet address is not available.
Try again later”. He clicked on a couple of his bookmarked websites
just to be sure, but they wouldn’t load, so he gave up. No Internet
either? Given that the phones were down, that made sense. He headed
to his parents bedroom.

He knocked on the door and waited for a
response. Silence. He rapped on the door once more, harder this
time. Still nothing. He turned the handle and pushed the door open
slightly, “Dad? Mum?”

Even before Matt stepped into their bedroom,
he sensed that his parents weren’t there. It was too silent. The
immaculately made-up bed confirmed his suspicion. They hadn’t come
home last night. He sat down on the bed and tried to think. What
was going on here? The power and phones had gone out. Yes, that was
unusual, but not outside the realms of possibility. What about the
radio stations? Perhaps their ability to transmit had been affected
by the power cut? Okay, that made sense. What about his parents
then? Where were they? Then he remembered! Mum had said that if
they were going to be too late, they would sleep over at the party.
Matt checked his phone for messages, but there was nothing after
11:28 - a text message with an attached photo of dad grinning at
the camera, with a bottle of beer in one hand. Okay then. That was
the answer. Dad had too much to drink last night, and they decided
to stay in town. He relaxed a little. Once they woke up and had
breakfast with their friends, they would come home and Matt would
realise how silly he had been to worry. It would be nice to be able
to text them, though, he thought, as he headed to the kitchen.

After frying up and eating his bacon and
eggs, Matt decided to keep himself busy until his parents returned
home. On a farm, even a relatively small one like “Two Hills”,
there was always work to be done, so he got started, knowing that
if he worked hard, the time would pass more quickly. He let the
chickens out of their coop to forage around the house for worms,
collected the eggs then filled their food and water troughs. Then
he took the ride-on mower out of the small shed and cut the grass
around the house, which was beginning to get a little overgrown.
While the farm itself was a couple of hundred hectares for grazing,
mum liked to have a nicely cultivated garden around the house, and
part of that meant that the grass needed to be cut regularly. This
time of year, midway through autumn, the weather was getting cooler
and after cutting the grass today, Matt knew that he wouldn’t need
to do it again for a couple of weeks. After he had put the mower
back in the shed, Matt surveyed his work. Mum would be pleased. The
freshly mown grass gave the little weatherboard cottage a tidy,
cosy look. The white paint, wraparound veranda and patches of
colour from potted flowers were picturesque, and in the background
were the two blue-tinged hills that gave the farm its name. His
father and mother loved this house, and while he would never say it
out loud to them, he did too.

Matt looked at his watch and was surprised
to see that it was almost 11:30. He really expected them to be home
by now, and he was genuinely beginning to worry. However, he had
one more task he wanted to finish before his parents arrived home,
and he decided that if they weren’t home by the time that chore was
finished, he would go into town to look for them. He took the
all-terrain four-wheeled motorbike from the big shed so that he
could ride up to the top paddock and open a gate so that the cattle
would have access to more feed in an adjacent field. It was his
favourite spot on the whole farm.

When he arrived at the top of the hill, the
small herd of Angus beef cattle was waiting for him to open the
gate. They knew that the sound of the bike coming up the hill meant
fresh grass. He unlatched the hook to allow them access to their
fresh paddock. When they had all made their way through the old
steel gate he closed it and looked around. From this position he
could look down and see the farmhouse and most of their land. It
looked like a child’s model. He could see the dirt road that led
from his house as far as the town road, but that was where the view
stopped. He knew, though, that if he rode five minutes further up
the hill he would have an almost three hundred and sixty degree
view of Millfield and its surrounds. He climbed onto the bike.

When he reached the very top of the hill,
the view was even more magnificent. He could see all the way to his
house, and as far away as the town, and then some. It was a
beautiful afternoon and the sky was a pure, flat blue with just a
few small, white clouds drifting by on the light breeze. Mountain
Pass Road ran like a grey ribbon past the farm towards town, and
then on as far the Great Dividing Range, which was nothing more
than a smudged line on the horizon. It was this mountain range that
separated the country towns in the west of the state from the
suburbs and city sprawl of the east coast. It had proven a
formidable barrier for the early explorers and even today was a
symbolic border between city and country. Matt loved the way the
town looked from this vantage point. He could see the layout of the
streets and even the cars parked in the road like little tin toys.
Today the only movement he could see, though, was an almost
straight plume of smoke rising from somewhere near the centre of
town. Matt looked more closely.  Something was weird.  On
a Saturday morning, the sunlight should have been glinting off
quite a few cars as they trundled around town on their errands, but
Matt could see no movement. Another peculiar thing was that fire,
which was continuing to send up a dark column of smoke into the
sky. It wasn’t cold enough for anyone to have lit a fire for warmth
today, and council had banned the lighting of open fires years ago.
So why would one be burning in the centre of town? A fire that
seemed to be generating more smoke every second. For the first time
today Matt felt that something might really be wrong. He needed to
find out for sure.

Matt walked a little faster than usual to
his bike, jumped on, and headed back down the hill to the house,
where he grabbed the keys to his dad’s truck. At sixteen he wasn’t
a fully licensed driver yet, but on farms most kids drove from an
early age because there were plenty of open spaces to learn safely.
He climbed into the cab of the Ford, pulled the door closed and put
the key in the ignition. Much later, when Matt looked back, he
would realise that this was that moment when his new life
began.

He pulled onto the gravel road and headed
towards town.

Chapter
2

Sally rolled over and checked her phone.
Damned battery! She really needed to replace it. She was sick of
charging it constantly. She threw it on the bed and headed to the
kitchen. As she passed her mother’s bedroom, she noticed that the
door was closed, which probably meant that a male “friend” had
slept over. Her mother, Bridget, was a good person, but she didn’t
really embrace parenthood like some of Sally’s friends’ mothers
did. She had a good job in the city, but lived for partying in the
pubs and bars in their local neighbourhood. Sally never felt
neglected, but neither did she feel a strong parental bond. Bridget
had always provided for her daughter financially and encouraged her
to be respectful and honest, but she always allowed her lots of
freedom. Sally knew it was convenient for her mother, because then
she had her own freedom too.

Some teenagers in Sally’s situation would
have self-destructed by now and ended up as social misfits. 
Sally hadn’t. She was popular at school and was infamous for her
quirky sense of humour and good nature. Boys found her attractive
and she’d gone out with a few of them, but no serious relationships
had developed. So while her mother was out partying, Sally used her
time to read, draw or play the guitar. Her mother often said that
her bedroom resembled a second-hand bookshop and that was fine with
Sally. She had read somewhere that every piece of information you
learn is useful because it connects to something else that you
already know, and helps your understanding of the world, no matter
how trivial the information may appear to be at first. She liked
that idea. She imagined her brain as a separate entity that
constantly made connections between all of the things that she’d
read. Like most teenagers, she had a laptop, but only used it
occasionally for doing homework or downloading music. She certainly
wasn’t interested in social networking online - she found the
unfiltered conversations of other teenagers to be bitchy, banal and
boring, and even though she had never met her father (a one-night
stand who was never informed of the pregnancy), Sally thought of
herself as a reasonably intelligent, well-adjusted seventeen year
old.