Desolation Boulevard (11 page)

When the sun was high enough in the sky
Sally began walking the streets. The eye contact she’d made with
the creature last night had shaken her badly and she decided that
she didn’t want to be alone any longer. Eventually those creatures
would be looking further afield for their meals and she didn’t want
to end up trapped in her apartment with hordes of the creatures
waiting for her in the street below. Thinking about how their
behaviour had already changed over just a couple of days, she knew
there was also a possibility that they would get smart enough to
find a way into her building, which would give her no chance at
all. She also couldn’t be sure that they would stay creatures of
the night forever. At the moment they didn’t venture out during the
daytime, but there was no guarantee that their habits wouldn’t
change over time as they became more comfortable with their new,
savage personas and the environment that they now ruled.

As she walked through the deserted streets
she considered calling out for help, but the regular sound of
gunshots in the distance discouraged that idea. If she encountered
other survivors like herself, she hoped to spy on them and make a
character judgement before making herself known to them. She knew
that her instant psychological assessment wouldn’t be foolproof,
but she had to take as many precautions as she could because in
this dangerous new world, she would pay a heavy price for any error
in judgement.

Trudging through the streets was becoming a
very unpleasant experience, and Sally tried to keep a reasonable
distance from the ever-present corpses, as they began to decompose
and putrefy. She’d wrapped a red bandanna, sprayed with perfume,
around her face to help with the smell, but she could do nothing
about the hideous sight of them. By now the rats had realised that
there was a feast available on the streets and were becoming
bolder. They didn’t need to hide in the night any longer it seemed,
although the cats may eventually have something to say about that.
A nasty rat bite was the last thing Sally needed so, deciding that
some type of personal protection may be prudent, she entered a
sporting goods store and armed herself with a dangerous looking
knife, which she holstered to her belt, and a baseball bat, which
she stuffed into her partially unzipped backpack. She experimented
before leaving the store and found that she could reach behind her
head, grab the handle of the bat and have it poised to strike
pretty quickly if she needed to. She hoped that she would only ever
use it to protect herself from rats.

As Sally headed further away from her hotel,
she found herself becoming more panic-stricken. If there were other
people unaffected by the “virus”, why hadn’t she seen them? Since
the “event” it seemed that the only people left in the city were
herself, the crazy guy she saw on day one, and whoever was
responsible for the gunshots she’d been hearing for the last couple
of days. Sally looked at her watch and she was shocked to see that
it was almost 1:30! That meant she had been walking almost non-stop
for three hours and had seen no one. She decided it was time to
find somewhere shady to eat lunch and have a drink before beginning
the long journey back to her hotel. Sally starting walking towards
a tree studded park that she noticed earlier down at the end of the
street.

She was very aware of how motionless the
city was now was now. Without the hustle and bustle of people and
traffic, the only movement was from the occasional roaming animal,
pieces of litter blowing through the streets or trees swaying in
the breeze. And that was how she first noticed him. If her brain
hadn’t become so attuned to the smallest of movements in her deadly
new environment, she may not have seen the brief flash in the
hotel, as the man inside raised a beer bottle to his mouth. She
stood at the big window and stared into the gloomy front bar. He
was sitting with his back to her, wearing black jeans, a tight
fitting black t-shirt and heavy-duty elastic-sided boots. His
muscular arms were covered in intricate tattoos and his short, dark
hair had that ruffled on purpose look that young men seemed to like
so much. Lying on the bar in front of him was some kind a big gun.
Not a pistol though; it was a rifle or a shotgun. Sally didn’t
really know the difference, but, whatever it was called, it looked
pretty serious all the same. The man didn’t move as Sally stared at
him, until he took another swig from the beer bottle. She was torn.
This was the first person she had seen since the first day and she
was desperate for company, but his body language was giving her no
clues at all. He might be a gentle, caring soul who was as scared
as she was, or a crazy serial killer who would rape her and leave
her for dead, if given half a chance. The tattoos and black outfit
meant nothing. Every second boy wanted to look like a rock star
these days. She looked around. Nobody was going to help her with
this decision. She had only two choices - take a chance and make
herself known to him, or flee and pretend she’d never seen him.
What to do? The problematic decision was made for her, however,
when the man turned around and stared straight at her.

Terrified and fearing the worst, Sally
prepared to take flight and run away as fast as she could. But even
as this thought was racing through her mind the object of her fear
motioned for her to come inside, with a non-threatening wave of his
hand. Indecisively, she stood rooted to the spot as she pondered
her course of action. Again, the man tried to coax her inside with
a little “come here” gesture, without moving from his barstool.
Sally still didn’t move. Her desire to be with another human being
was being cancelled out by her fear of being trapped inside the pub
with a complete stranger and his gun. Finally the man lost
patience. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on
Sally, returning his attention to his drink once more. Sally
frowned, confused. “Is he ignoring me? We’ll see about that!” she
thought crankily, as she snatched the baseball bat from her
backpack and headed inside to confront him.

Chapter 22

Last night’s storm had passed and the sky
was a flawless blue. Matt was in the garden, going from shrub to
shrub, delicately snipping flowers with his mother’s gardening
shears. Elvis sat on the front veranda watching him, with his head
resting on his paws. Matt wondered if this would be the last time
anybody would tend this beautiful, well-loved space that his mother
had created from scratch. The boy thought that from now on beauty
might be a luxury that he could barely afford. The events of last
night had changed him, made his soul hard, like a piece of volcanic
glass. He looked inside himself, trying to glimpse the positive,
happy boy he’d been just a few days ago, but that person seemed to
have gone somewhere else. In his place now was a man who had seen
too much and, out of necessity, done things that no son should ever
be expected to do.

After Matt had shot his father, he carried
the body back to the house. The mud, rain and blood made the body
slippery, and it was an extremely difficult undertaking, but after
a few attempts the boy managed to get his father’s lifeless shell
out of the deluge and deliver it onto the dry front porch. He felt
something in his mind slip when his father’s head clunked
tonelessly against the worn timber boards, but somehow he managed
to keep himself together and carry on. He walked to the shed and
pulled a heavy canvas tarpaulin from an ancient tractor, and then
took a piece of coiled nylon rope that was hanging on the wall,
before returning to the front veranda, where Elvis was patiently
maintaining a vigil, beside the body. Matt laid the tarp out flat
on the floor, and then went inside to the linen cupboard, where he
found one of his mother’s best towels, which he used to clean up
his father’s face and wipe down the body as best he could. He then
carefully removed the shredded shirt and replaced it with a clean
one from his father’s closet. When he was satisfied that he had
restored a little dignity to his mentor and guardian, he dragged
the body onto the canvas tarp and wrapped him as tightly as he was
able. Finally he used the nylon rope to secure the makeshift
shroud, so that by the time he was finished his father looked like
he was ready for a burial at sea. With the first part of the task
complete, Matt slumped down on his mother’s favourite rattan chair
and wondered why he wasn’t crying. Within seconds he was
asleep.

When Matt woke the first light of dawn was
colouring the sky and the magpies were warbling to each other in
the eucalypt trees. He rubbed his eyes and stood up. Falling asleep
outdoors had been stupid! He had been unprotected from the feeders
and he owed his survival to nothing more than sheer good luck. A
more religious person might have said that the spirit of his father
protected him while he slept, but Matt was a realist, and knew that
the only way his father lived on now was through the genes he had
passed on, the practical skills he had taught the boy and the
values he had endowed him with. Matt scratched Elvis behind his
floppy ears and went into the kitchen to find the dog something to
eat. While Elvis ate a microwave-defrosted steak from the freezer
Matt forced himself to eat two bananas and drink the last of the
milk from the fridge. He was going to need all of his energy
today.

The spot he chose for the burial was a shady
corner of mum’s garden beside a bench where she had loved to sit
and read. The rain had made the ground considerably softer near the
surface, but about half a metre down, rocks made the going
difficult. It was almost ten o’clock before he was satisfied with
the size of the pit and was ready to bring this latest in a bizarre
chain of events to a close. He walked to the shed and hitched the
trailer to the all-terrain vehicle, which he then towed to the
front veranda where his father’s body laid. He gently positioned
the shrouded figure on the vehicle’s tray then rode slowly back to
the spot in the garden where his father’s remains would be
committed to the earth. He slid the body as carefully as he was
able onto the ground beside the hole and climbed down into the
cool, dark space. He slid his arms under his father’s back, braced
himself and, with immense effort, picked him up. With the body
securely in his arms, he kneeled down onto the damp soil and placed
his father reverently into the bottom of the hole. Wearily, Matt
climbed out and diligently began filling in the grave of the man he
loved. The man he had killed. Still there were no tears.

Now Matt stood beside the burial plot with a
large bunch of his mother’s flowers clutched in his right hand. The
rocks that had made digging so difficult were now placed on top of
the grave in a tidy rectangular mound to mark the spot and ensure
that the loose soil would not be washed away in a heavy downpour of
rain. Matt bent over and placed the flowers neatly on top of the
rocks. He tried to think of something profound and meaningful to
say but his mind was blank. Then, out of the blue, a memory came,
like a piece of flotsam bobbing to the surface after a shipwreck.
It was Christmas Day two years ago. The three of them had finished
breakfast and mum was passing out the Christmas gifts to Matt and
his father. Without ceremony Matt’s father suddenly handed him a
clumsily wrapped gift, which was unusual because it was always his
mother who distributed the presents on Christmas morning. He
thanked him and unwrapped the gift to discover a very nondescript
triple-pack of woollen work socks. “Gee Dad, thanks. They’re
great,” he had said, forcing a smile.

“
That’s okay son,” his
father replied, beaming. “They’re the same ones I wear. They’re
really comfortable”.

And that was that. Mum went back to handing
out the gifts and the normal Christmas routine resumed. It was only
later that night that Matt realised how special that moment had
been. His father - the tough, rugged, independent farmer - had gone
into a store, chosen a gift, then wrapped it himself and given it
to his son because he thought that’s what he would want. And his
dad had been right- they were really comfortable socks. Matt
smiled. Then the tears came.

-

An hour later, after a shower and a change
of clothes, Matt was back in the truck with Elvis heading to
Carswell. Surely there would be a survivor or two there. To get to
Carswell he would need to pass through Millfield, which was not
something he was particularly looking forward to. He knew that the
human remains littering the streets (and inside some houses, he
supposed) would be decomposing and the smell would be bad, but he
had no choice because, despite his misgivings, he needed to
reassure himself that there were no other survivors. He had no
plans to stop in Millfield today, though. He would cruise through
the town slowly, make observations, and then drive to Carswell to
see how the “event” had impacted on the larger town.

The first thing that Matt noticed as he
Millfield was a relatively small number of fresh corpses. There had
obviously been less feeding last night, which made him wonder about
the habits of the creatures. Would they just continue to feed on
each other until their population was so small as to be
unsustainable, or would they adapt, finding new food sources such
as livestock or even vegetable crops? It was only common sense that
any species of living thing could not feed just on itself without
eventually becoming extinct, no matter how appealing that idea was
to him. Matt knew that it was too early to be able to answer these
questions with any accuracy so, for the time being anyway, he put
them out of his mind and concentrated on the road ahead.

As Matt reached the eastern outskirts of
Millfield he put his foot to the accelerator and was beginning to
pick up speed when something in the front yard of a little white
cottage caused him to slam his foot down on the brakes and stare
incredulously through his side window. Surely, this had to be his
tired mind playing tricks on him! As he slowly opened his door and
stepped out of the car, Elvis leaped across the seat and ran, tail
wagging furiously, towards the little girl who was rocking back and
forth on a swing in the front yard.