Desolation Boulevard (20 page)

“
Watch out for marauders,”
said Sally, giving him another hug.

“
I’ll be very cautious. See
you back here in a couple of hours.”

As they watched him walking away, down a
rain-swept Celebration Boulevard, Bonnie turned to Sally and said,
“Right, we’ve got a lot to do. Let’s get moving!”

It was less than two hours before Dylan
returned to St Jude’s, and the rain had stopped. Sally and Bonnie
were standing on the footpath outside the fence with neatly stacked
piles of essential supplies, ready to load into the vehicle that
Dylan had chosen. It was a black, late model Toyota Landcruiser
with a heavy-duty bull-bar, roof racks and a winch on the front
that would be useful if they found their way blocked by other cars
or trees. There was ample storage space in the back and it would
give them a comfortable ride combined with reliability and off-road
capabilities if needed. Sally looked at the car and joked, “I had a
felling you’d choose black. Call it intuition.”

“
Ha ha. It was the only
colour they had, actually, but it is kind of cool anyway. Did you
get everything?”

“
Yes, and if we think of
anything else we can grab it on the way. Let’s get this stuff in
the car,” said Bonnie, desperate to begin the quest to find her
daughter.

As they loaded up the car, a few onlookers,
including Mr Ash gathered around to observe. Nobody tried to talk
them out of their difficult mission, but it was clear that most
thought they were wasting their time. When Bonnie suggested to the
spectators that helping them to load the car might be a better use
of their time than just gawking, they drifted away moodily, heading
back into the church and their supposed salvation. Mr Ash stayed,
though, and helped them put the last few things into the back.

“
Don’t judge them too
harshly,” he said. “Everybody here is just hanging on. We’re
huddling together like cavemen, too scared to go out in the dark.
Nobody has a family anymore. I think they are a little jealous that
you have something to aim for, no matter how unlikely to succeed it
may be.” He went over and took Bonnie’s hands. “Do you really think
you have a chance?”

She looked him in the eyes and whispered,
“Gabrielle is alive. Don’t ask me how I know, because I couldn’t
explain it. Maybe only a mother could know. I just hope we can get
to her in time.”

“
Bonnie, we all hope you
find your daughter. It would be the best thing any of us could
imagine.”

Mr Ash hugged Bonnie as Dylan and Sally
looked on silently. When he released her, Bonnie could see that
this strong, compassionate man had been crying. “Thanks,” she said,
smiling as she turned and walked to the car.

-

As they cruised through the empty city
streets, they all noticed that there were more people around than
there had been in the previous few days - certainly not in large
numbers yet, but enough to suggest that many survivors had stayed
inside during the first few days after the event. Now, after almost
a week of soul-destroying fear, they were beginning to venture out
into the world once more. One time, after they’d been travelling
for about twenty minutes, a man waved the car down to ask for help.
Dylan gave him directions to St Jude’s and suggested that he should
get there as quickly as possible. The man thanked him and went on
his way.

After consulting maps in the morning, Dylan
thought the trip to Millfield would have taken around six hours
during normal times (in other words, before the event). Now,
though, it was impossible to tell what obstacles they might face
and how long the journey would take. All they could do was drive
until the sun started to set, then find a safe place to bunk down
for the night. For the first hour the trip was uneventful - they
waved at the occasional survivor and took detours when they found
the road blocked with cars. They did their best to ignore the
corpses littering the streets, but their presence was a constant
reminder of what had happened and how dangerous the world had
become.

As they cruised steadily west, towards the
outskirts of the city, taller buildings started to give way to the
modern malaise that had been suburbia. Out here, an hour from the
city, tens of thousands of homes spread in all directions behind a
procession of petrol stations, fast food outlets and used car
yards. Dylan couldn’t help but ask, “Do you think there are zombies
asleep in all of those homes?”

Sally shuddered, “Probably only the stronger
ones now.”

“
That’s scary,” commented
Bonnie.

“
Yeah. I can’t wait to get
out of the city,” said Dylan. “Surely the country has to be better
than this.” He looked at Bonnie in the rear view mirror. “What’s
Millfield like?”

Bonnie smiled and began to answer, as the
windscreen of the car exploded into a wall of flames before their
eyes.

“
Marauders!” yelled Dylan
as another Molotov cocktail slammed into the passenger window of
the car, turning their world into a reasonable approximation of
hell.

Chapter 36

The spaghetti was very, very good and the
young visitors felt like they were part of a family, for at least
one night anyway. Kate lavished them with extra helpings, and made
a delicious dessert of apple pie and ice cream, which they scoffed
down noisily. After dinner, they moved to the lounge room and sat
on comfy couches and told each other their stories by the warm glow
of the fire. Within minutes Gabby was asleep with her head resting
on Kate’s lap, which meant that Matt and Montana were able to give
Kate a more explicit depiction of the new world beyond her mountain
retreat. The woman’s eyes became sad and teary as Matt described
the changes that had befallen Millfield, and when he described
their encounter with the malevolent Brock in Carswell, Kate went to
Montana and hugged her, before asking her to tell her story.

“
It will help,” she
said.

Montana reluctantly agreed, and began to
describe waking up in a town where everyone had vanished, and how
she was almost delirious with fear. She was roaming the streets in
an aimless panic, and when Brock had lumbered out of a bakery she
had clutched at his companionship as a drowning person would at a
floating paper cup. As Montana continued her story, Kate nodded,
encouraging her to unburden herself of the emotional weight she had
been carrying. Once Montana had finished, it was Matt’s turn and
Kate listened just as attentively as he described the first morning
when he’d found the Thompsons’ under their bed, going on to his
discovery of the feeders in Millfield before reliving the nightmare
of his father’s return to the farm, and the killing that ensued. He
told Kate how he had stumbled across Gabby on his way to explore
Carswell and from that point their stories had merged closely
enough for him to be able to stop. Kate looked at Matt and Montana
and shook her head, “You poor children. I don’t know how you’ve
done it. You’re so inspirational. And the way you’ve looked after
Gabby. Unbelievable. Speaking of which, Matt could you carry her
into my bedroom please? She can sleep in my double bed with
Montana, I’ll sleep in the spare bedroom and you can have the
couch.”

In Kate’s bedroom they all looked down at
the little girl, who was now sleeping peacefully under a fluffy
quilt.

“
Gabby’s very special,
don’t you think?” asked Kate.

“
Absolutely,” Matt replied.
“It’s a miracle I found her. She’s so lucky.”

Kate looked at him and responded quietly,
“No Matt, that’s not what I mean. You think she’s just been lucky.
That she’s somehow fluked survival amongst all this horror. I
actually think she’s really special. Not like the rest of us.
Unique somehow. Can’t you sense it?”

“
I can,” said Montana. “I
got a vibe from her the minute I got in the car with her. Don’t you
feel it Matt?”

He looked at them, wondering if maybe they
were teasing him. “No. I don’t know what you mean. She seems like a
normal kid to me.”

“
Oh well, maybe it’s a
female thing,” said Kate, smiling. “Let’s go back to the fire. She
won’t wake up now. I’ll make you a nice cup of hot
chocolate.”

They were all sitting back around the fire,
when Kate raised the issue of Gabby’s “specialness” once more. Matt
and Montana sipped their steaming mugs of chocolate, as Kate
expressed her opinion over a large glass of red wine.

“
Matt I know you aren’t
aware of anything unusual about Gabby, but how can you explain the
fact that the feeders left her alone for days before you found her.
If they are as violent and aggressive as you say, then surely she
would have been easy prey?”

“
She hid from them at
night. In her bedroom closet.”

Kate levelled her gaze at Matt. “Honey, if
you expect me to believe that this six year old girl somehow
managed to hide from these crazed killers for almost a week, then
you must think I’m older and sillier than I look. Think about it.
If they wanted to, they would have found her and killed her just
like they did with each other.”

Matt looked to Montana for support, but
there was none forthcoming. “She’s right, isn’t she Matt?”

He looked at them, and
considered his response before replying, “I don’t know. Maybe, but
I can’t think of any reason the feeders would spare her. Maybe
she
was
just lucky. Sometimes it’s just your day.”

Kate shook her head. “Matt you described
both Carswell and Millfield as being heavily littered with dead
bodies, yet there were none in Gabby’s street. God, my ex-husband
was probably the first feeder she’d seen! Doesn’t that make you
think these things have been avoiding her deliberately?”

Matt looked unconvinced, but could see the
woman’s point nonetheless. “Okay, let’s assume that for some reason
these feeders don’t like Gabby and won’t go near her. How do you
explain it? What’s the point? That type of behaviour goes against
everything we’ve seen so far.”

“
I don’t know,” said Kate.
“Maybe we don’t even need to know why. Let’s face it; we have no
idea why the world has changed overnight. The rules have changed
and we can’t understand it. That’s okay, though, because the
universe is one huge mystery! How presumptuous and deluded would we
be if they thought we could understand everything! Something has
happened to the world, and maybe we have no more chance of
comprehending that than a cockroach does of grasping the
significance of the subway station it lives in. We just have to
deal with what’s in front of us.”

“
And Gabby is somehow part
of that mystery?”

“
Maybe.”

With that comment the conversation stalled
as each of them pondered the implication of Kate’s theory. The fire
crackled and outside they could hear the sound of rain as it
started to patter on the tin roof. Montana, who had hardly been
involved in the conversation since she finished telling her story,
spoke up.

“
What happens tomorrow?”
she asked.

Kate looked at her new, young friends and
replied with a smile, “That’s going to be the question every night
from now on, isn’t it?”

Later, after Kate had gone to bed, Matt and
Montana sat together on the couch staring at the last dying embers
of the fire.

“
She’s lovely, isn’t she? “
said Montana.

“
Absolutely. I think she
saved all of our lives tonight.”

“
Do you think she should
come to the farm with us? I hate the thought of her being here on
her own.”

Matt scratched his head. “ I don’t know. She
seems pretty attached to this place.”

“
Can we ask her
tomorrow?”

“
Sure,” he said, as Montana
laid her head on his shoulder.

“
Will you hold me,” she
asked.

“
Of course I will,” he
said, as she drifted off to sleep beside him.

Chapter 37

Dylan pushed the car on blindly, despite the
wall of flames that engulfed it. He couldn’t risk stopping and
being ambushed by marauders, but continuing to drive was fanning
the flames and making the heat inside the car unbearable while
increasing the chance of the car exploding. He yelled at Sally and
Bonnie to grab their guns as he wound down his window to search for
an escape route. Through the flames, he could see a side street
about twenty metres on his right. He decided to take a chance, so
he hit the brakes as hard as he could, and swerved into the
street.

As the car screeched to a stop, he yelled at
Sally and Bonnie, “Get out! Get out!”

He yanked open his door and scrambled behind
a parked car, with Sally not far behind him.

“
Where’s Bonnie?” shouted
Sally, looking around.

“
There! Look!” Dylan said,
pointing at the Landcruiser.

They could both see her through the flames,
still in the car, reaching across the back seat, searching for
something in the cargo space.

“
What’s she doing?” asked
Sally.

“
I don’t know,” answered
Dylan, “But she’d better get out soon before the whole car goes
up.”

“
Look!” whispered Dylan,
suddenly looking down the street.

From around the corner came four marauders,
dressed like Los Angeles gangstas, carrying automatic weapons and
looking for victims.

“
Shit! This is really bad,”
spat Dylan, as he looked hopelessly over the hood of the parked
car.