Desolation Boulevard (38 page)

-

It took over an hour for everyone to tell
their tales of survival, and when they were finished a new bond had
been forged between them all, despite their personal sorrows.
Bonnie turned white with fear when Matt told the story about
finding Gabby alone in Millfield, but she hugged her daughter
tighter and tried not to imagine the horrors the little girl had
lived through. The account of Gabby’s abduction by Bill had been
difficult for Matt to retell, but he tried to make it sound less
frightening than it actually had been and he kept the gruesome
details of Bill’s suicide to a minimum, to spare Gabby. He tried to
focus on the positives of their last couple of weeks as much as he
could, including the sanctuary they had created at “Two Hills”, but
as they took turns recounting their own versions of events since
the rise of the feeders, the group became quieter, and their
previously jubilant mood became more subdued, as they relived one
nightmare after another - stories of cities on fire, lairs filled
with sleepers, fathers returning as zombies, planes crashing,
narrow escapes from feeders, a daughter devoured by her mother,
attacks by marauders, psychopaths in country towns, the feeder
migration, the warehouse extermination, and Gabby’s abduction. All
of these things, spoken aloud as a litany of terror, in a landscape
devoid of people, seemed to suggest a future filled with only
hardship, emptiness and fear. Amongst all that negativity,
loneliness and fear, however, there was one small spark of light in
the darkness, and she spoke now, “Can we go home, please? I’m
bored.”

-

Two hours later, everybody was back at “Two
Hills”, and making themselves at home, as much as they could.
Montana invited Sally to share her room, while Bonnie and Gabby
made themselves comfortable in the guest bedroom. Dylan was
disappointed that he wouldn’t be sharing a room with Sally, but he
was also aware that he was living under someone else’s roof, so he
agreed to sleep on the couch in the living room for the time being.
They could work out more intimate sleeping arrangements later, when
everyone got to know each other better.

After Dylan and Sally had brought in some
personal belongings from the car and settled into their new rooms,
they used Matt’s bathroom facilities to clean up a bit, before
gathering in the large kitchen to begin preparing a late lunch.
Nobody had eaten much since the previous evening, and a large
communal meal would give everyone an opportunity to get to know
each other better in a relaxed environment. Matt thawed out
sausages and steaks from the freezer to barbecue, while Montana
showed Sally around the kitchen as they prepared a salad together.
Bonnie was in the bedroom catching up with Gabby, while Dylan
explored the farm. Matt set the table for lunch on the front
veranda, and lit the barbecue so that it would have ten minutes to
get really hot for the steaks.

A little later, while he was wiping down the
hotplate with a sheet of paper towel Dylan come up the front path
from where the cars had been parked, with a beer in each hand. He
climbed the steps and passed one of the bottles to Matt as he
watched him clean the barbecue plate.

“
This is a nice place you
have here. You’ve done well to get that fence up so
quickly.”

“
Thanks. It was hard work,
but I sleep better now. Or I will anyway, now that Gabby’s
back.”

“
The lights are a good idea
too. Sensors?”

“
Yeah, but I think Bill
disabled them. I’ll try to fix them after lunch.”

“
I’ll give you a hand,”
said Dylan.

“
Great,” said Matt as he
balled up the greasy paper towel and threw it into a small bin
beside the barbecue. “It’s really great to have you guys here with
us. I feel much better now that we have people here that I
trust.”

“
Thanks man, it’s really
good to be here. Everybody seems nice. Not like some people I’ve
met since the event.”

Matt laughed. “That’s for sure. People seem
to have gone to one extreme or the other. Look at Bill. I bet he
was just a regular guy before the event. Then, with society in
tatters, he becomes a kidnapper.”

“
Yeah, like the marauders.
Scary.”

Matt threw some sausages on the barbecue
where they sizzled and smoked. As he watched the pink skins begin
to turn brown, he thought about an issue that he wanted to raise
with Dylan while nobody else was around. It was a difficult
question, but one that he felt needed answering, by somebody. He
prodded a sausage absently with the end of a pair of metal tongs
and spoke.

“
Hey Dylan, you’ve seen a
lot more of these feeders than I have.”

Dylan scratched his wounded thigh and nodded
in agreement, “Yes, I suppose I have.”

Matt turned a sausage before continuing,
“What chance of survival do you think we have?”

Dylan took a swig of his beer and considered
his response. Finally he answered Matt’s question with one of his
own, “Do you mean us, or the human species?”

Matt stopped fiddling with the meat on the
barbecue and turned to look his new friend in the eye, “Don’t you
think it’s the same thing?”

Chapter 61

Extract From Sally’s Journal:

“It’s early in the
morning and I’m sitting on the front veranda with my journal, a cup
of coffee and a bowl of muesli (thank goodness for powdered milk).
I haven’t written for a few days because I wanted to give myself
some headspace. These are the first days since the “event” (as we
all call it now) where I’ve had a chance to slow down and consider
my state of mind and what the future might hold for us
survivors

Matt’s farm is
beautiful. It’s called “Two Hills” and is very pretty, like
something from a child’s storybook. Being here has given us a
chance to recuperate from the horrors we’ve endured over the last
week or so, and at times you could almost imagine that outside of
the big fence, everything is normal. Those moments don’t last very
long, however, and it’s not unusual to walk into a room and find
somebody crying on their own as they think of the family and
friends they have lost. It’s weird what can set you off crying now
- things you don’t expect. Like yesterday. I was sitting out on the
front veranda after lunch, daydreaming, and I started to think
about the places I used to visit on the weekends. One of my most
treasured places was the State Art Gallery. Every time there was a
new exhibition I’d catch a train to the city and walk through the
parks to the gallery and check out the new works. Then I’d go to
the rooms that housed the masterpieces and visit old favourites by
artists like Picasso or Monet. Looking at these beautiful works
made me think of the incredible achievements human beings have made
over just a few short millennia, and it made me proud of us as a
species. But then I started to think about what the gallery would
look like now. It has probably become a nesting place for feeders,
which means that it would be filled with rotting corpses, excrement
and filth. The artworks would still be hanging (if they hadn’t been
destroyed to build nests with) and yet it was quite likely that
there would never again be an appreciative audience for them. I
know that is a strange thing to get upset about, given everything
else that’s happened, but I just broke down and sobbed for ages.
Then Dylan came by, and when I told him why I was crying he just
raised his eyebrows and kept going, as if I was being really
stupid.

On the whole, though,
everybody’s getting on with things and we’re relieved to have a few
days where we don’t have to consider that we might actually die.
It’s really touching to see Bonnie and Gabby back together. They
hardly leave each other’s side, and Gabby had great fun showing the
“new arrivals” around the farm. She was especially proud of the
bookmobile classroom and told Bonnie that Montana was her
“teacher”. It was so cute. Matt is a really nice boy and he has
made sure that we all feel at home. I think it’s been good for him
to have another male around the place, because Dylan and him spend
most of their time doing things around the farm that will give us a
reliable and sustainable future (we hope). They spent most of
yesterday making the fence stronger by running barbed wire across
the top and electrifying it, like you would for cattle. But we all
know it’s not to keep cows out! Bonnie is pretty handy too, and she
has taken control of the food situation and the vegetable garden.
She showed Montana and I how to make bread from flour, yeast, and
water and insists that it won’t be long before we’re experts. Every
time I catch myself doing something “farmsy”, like pulling weeds or
feeding the chickens, I have a little chuckle to myself, because
it’s so not me! My self-image has always been as the artsy,
sophisticated, city slicker yet here I am getting around for most
of the day covered in dirt and doing jobs that I didn’t even
realise existed.

Montana is the one who
surprises me the most, though. She’s so strong under pressure. We
had some time alone yesterday, while the boys went into town (more
about that later) and Bonnie was in the classroom with Gabby. We
were picking vegetables for dinner and she told me about the things
she’d been through since the event, and I just got a feeling that
she’s got the skills and attitude to survive this crazy,
post-civilisation world really well. Whatever happens to us, I
think she’ll adapt and find a way to carry on. She comes across as
a bit glamorous (she still puts makeup on every morning), but she’s
really tough and unflappable.

The boys went to town
yesterday morning to get the fencing supplies and came back with
some really interesting news. They encountered a band of survivors
passing through town, who had stopped to fill up their cars with
petrol. Altogether there were six people in two cars. They had left
the city just two days ago, and said that plenty of others were
doing the same. According to them, some survivors were having
really strong dreams about a place out west that was like a
gathering place. They described it to Matt and Dylan and said that
it was as if they were being called, and they had to follow,
regardless of how strange it seemed. They weren’t sure exactly
where they were heading, but they were hoping that their future
dreams would guide them. They said they had nothing to lose,
anyway, because the cities were destroyed and they wanted to start
over somewhere new, somewhere with no memories. They told the boys
that there was no fear in the dreams, just a sense of going to a
place where they would belong. When Matt told us the story he
wondered if the place they were dreaming about was Diamond Creek,
the town that Bill had mentioned. It sounded as if it could be
true, anyway. It’s very strange to think that people are leaving
the old ways behind so quickly, so willingly. I wonder how future
generations will view the remnants of our world? Sometimes I wonder
if there will even be future generations!

The other thing the
travellers told Matt and Dylan was that the feeders are becoming
more active again. They said that people who were not finding
strong places to sleep at night were being killed. The creatures
seem to be getting not only stronger, but also more cunning. The
boys were told stories of creatures breaking into houses to feed on
resting travellers. It seems like the only truly safe place for
survivors now is in the daylight, or strongly fortified buildings.
We haven’t seen any feeders near the farm but we know we can’t take
anything for granted. Last night the lights outside the farm’s
fence were triggered, but when we went out to check, we just found
a small group of kangaroos passing through. Let’s hope that’s all
we have to worry about!

Montana’s just joined
me for breakfast, so I’ll stop now.

It’s almost ten o’clock
now and everybody else is in bed (we rise early in the country!).
I’m writing at the kitchen table while listening to Dylan snore in
the living room. Guess what? We had a visitor this afternoon. It
was a lady by the name of Violet. She was eighty-three years old!
We were all pottering around the farm, doing chores and stuff, when
she just came strolling up the front path like she was dropping in
for a cup of tea and a chat (we don’t lock the big front gate
during the day). I almost dropped my basket of eggs from shock when
I noticed her! She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a baseball
cap that said Funk! She had a backpack on, and looked extremely
weary, but was excited to see us, nevertheless. I made her sit in
the shade of the veranda and went inside to get her a cool drink.
When I came back she had been joined by Montana and the boys who
were listening to her tell her tale. She, too, had experienced “the
dream”, and felt compelled to head west, like the others. She had
walked some of the way (a fit old bird, that’s for sure), but had
accepted lifts also, which was how she ended up in Millfield. Three
travellers who were heading west had picked her up near Carswell,
but she asked them to drop her off at Millfield. When we asked why,
her reply amazed us. She looked at us and simply said, “I wanted to
see the girl.”

The three of us sat
there looking at each other, scarcely comprehending what we had
just heard. Dylan was the first to speak up, “What girl, Violet? We
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She gave Dylan the
sweetest, most beatific smile you could imagine and said, “Nice
try, honey. I understand why you want to protect her, but you don’t
need to worry. I just want to see her once before I continue on.
I’m no danger to her. I couldn’t be this close to her and not try
to meet her.”