Desolation Boulevard (46 page)

“
We’ll be fine,” said Matt.
“Let’s be positive.”

Montana looked at the boys, but from either
the cold or the fear, she was unable to speak. She lifted her
weapon and aimed it at the nearest feeder. Matt and Dylan chose
their targets and levelled their weapons, ready to fire. The
feeders maintained their unnerving vigil, their eyes almost glowing
in the semi-darkness. If they got an opportunity the beasts would
brutally kill and eat the three survivors with ruthless efficiency
so there would be no turning back from this strategy. Failure to
defeat this band of feeder warriors and get to the car would result
in death. Of that they all felt certain.

“
Okay guys, when I get to
three, start shooting.”

The feeders didn’t take their eyes from the
trio, and, despite the fact they had retained some faint traces of
memories from their previous lives as humans, the guns elicited no
recognition in their pallid, malevolent faces.

“
One,” said Dylan, nodding
towards his friends.

“
Two.”

His hand was shaking from the cold as it
drew a bead on his first target.

“
Three!” he yelled, pulling
on the trigger.

The noise in the cave was deafening, as
three pistols boomed out in unison and the heads of two feeders
blew apart, showering the rock wall behind them in a viscous,
purplish splash. The response from the feeders was as quick as
lightning, as the trio continued to fire their weapons at the
group. The creatures that hadn’t been hit were now escaping like
phantoms into the passageway that would lead them out of the cave
and to safety. The plan had worked.

“
Stop shooting!” yelled
Matt, “Stop shooting!” he repeated, as the last of feeders
disappeared into the gloom of the tunnel, leaving their brethren
behind, dead or writhing in mortal anguish on the cave
floor.

“
Let’s get moving!”
screamed Dylan, already wading towards the edge of the pool. “Those
things won’t be scared off for long!”

He was the first to clamber out of the
water, and reached down to help Montana out, before grabbing Matt
by the collar of his shirt, and hoisting him out onto the damp,
cavern floor. While Matt and Montana scrambled to their feet, Dylan
walked over to where the injured feeders were laying and calmly
shot them in the head.

“
Best to be sure,” he spat,
before heading purposefully towards the exit, as the others
followed.

“
I need to have a quick
look around before we step outside,” said Dylan. “But as soon as I
see that the coast is clear, we hightail it to the car,
okay?”

“
Yep,” agreed
Matt.

“
Hurry up then,” urged
Montana, shaking violently.

Dylan held his gun out in front of him as he
moved out into the afternoon sunshine. He checked right and left
for rogue feeders, before quickly scanning the bush that surrounded
the car park like a giant amphitheatre.

“
Looks like we scared them
off,” he said to the others, who were right behind him now, guns
still drawn. “But lets not take any chances okay? Full sprint, then
get straight into the car. I’ll drive. Are you ready?”

Matt and Montana nodded.

“
Let’s go then.”

They all ran as fast as they could towards
the car, while scrutinizing the forest around them for danger.
Their legs were cramped from being immersed in cold water for so
long, and their feet were slipping around awkwardly inside their
wet shoes, but they made it to the car without incident and
scrambled in, pulling the doors behind them frantically. Dylan
turned the key in the ignition and, as Matt and Montana looked back
through the rear window for stray feeders, Dylan hammered the
accelerator and the Landcruiser raced out of the car park, spewing
up a shower of loose gravel behind it.

“
Whoohoooooo!” screeched
Montana, turning back around to the front and smacking Dylan on the
shoulder as they left the car park and joined the road that would
take them out of the valley.

“
We did it! We did it!
Those fuckers won’t know what’s hit them! Beautiful!”

“
Yeah, we did good!” beamed
Dylan. “Now let’s get home for dinner. I’m starving!”

Matt leaned over the back seat and pulled
Montana close, before kissing her with a passion that came from
having survived a close brush with death. She closed her eyes and
cherished the warmth of his mouth, so alive and soft, so full of
promise. She pulled him closer and buried her face into his neck,
treasuring the earthy smell of his sweat, as she whispered, “I love
you Matt.”

He pulled away from her embrace and looked
at her beautiful face, beaming with joy. He opened his mouth to
speak, but was interrupted brutally by Dylan screaming next to him,
“Feeders! Feeders!”

It was another group of warriors, maybe
twenty in total, streaming from a path in the forest and onto the
road in front of their car about forty metres ahead of them.

“
Keep going!” yelled Matt,
“Floor it!”

“
No kidding!” responded
Dylan, as he pushed his foot to the floor. “Buckle up
kids!”

In seconds, the car had reached the gang of
creatures that seemed to have no goal other than to sacrifice
themselves, to stop the car from getting through. They charged
ahead with fury in their eyes and no concern for self-preservation
as the car bore down upon them.

The impact was unavoidable and brutal, and
as the two closest creatures crunched violently into the front of
the car and were crushed under the car’s wheels, a third rolled up
onto the hood of the vehicle, before sliding down onto the road
where it lay twitching like a beached fish. Matt and Montana had
only a split second to register the expressions of loathing and
hatred on the other feeders’ faces, as they slid rapidly by the
car’s windows, before disappearing, like spirits, back into the
bush.

“
Oh shit! They really hate
us don’t they?” cried Montana, as she peered fearfully through the
windows for further signs of danger.

“
That was fucking intense
man! Holy shit! They’re so fucking dumb!” yelled Dylan
triumphantly.

“
Hey, we’re not safe yet,”
Matt reminded them. “Let’s just get out of here and go
home.”

-

Forty minutes later they had reached the
first few houses on the outskirts of Carswell, when Dylan pulled
the car over.

“
What’s wrong?” asked
Matt.

“
The car’s overheating. We
need to check it out.”

Dylan popped the hood, and they all peered
into the engine bay as steam rose ominously from the radiator.

“
Looks like those feeders
we hit got the last laugh,” he stated sourly. “We’ve got a leak
somewhere.”

“
Is it fixable?” asked
Montana.

”
Not in the time we have
before it gets dark. We could refill the water in the radiator, but
we may only make it halfway home if it gets worse. It’s too risky.
I don’t want to be stranded on the side of the road in the middle
of nowhere after dark. We’ll have to try to find another car, or
hole up somewhere safe here for the night.”

“
I don’t like our chances
of finding another car,” said Matt, “Look around”.

“
Shit!” spat Dylan. There
were only four cars visible in the deserted streets around them,
and each one was nothing more than a burnt out shell. “The
marauders have been through Carswell destroying resources, I’d
say.”

“
But why?” asked Montana,
scared now of being stranded once more in the town that held so
many painful memories.

“
Who knows?” Dylan
responded. “Maybe the marauders have a stockpile of vehicles over
at the school, and they want some kind of advantage over travellers
passing through. A lot of people would just be swapping their
vehicle for another one as their fuel runs out or as their car
breaks down. If they try to do it here, and there aren’t any
vehicles to take, then they’re stranded and the marauders can do
whatever they want with them. It’s a really primitive way of
controlling the town. I bet you won’t find much food around the
place either.” He paused, and then added, “Or maybe they’re just
destroying things for fun.”

“
What are we going to do
then?” asked Matt. “We can’t just stand here. It’ll be getting dark
in an hour or so.”

The three friends stood on the road as the
sun moved slowly towards the western horizon. Matt had his arm
around Montana as they stared at their disabled vehicle, almost
willing it to repair itself. Dylan slammed the hood of the car
down. “Okay, we need to get this car out of sight and find
somewhere to stay for the night. Any ideas?”

Neither Matt nor Montana had an opportunity
to answer, however, before the sound of rumbling motorcycles had
them reaching for their pistols as they jumped back into the car to
try to find a place to hide. Dylan quickly started the engine, as
the roar of the bikes grew louder outside. He shifted wildly into
first gear and started to pull away while Matt and Montana screamed
encouragement from the backseat, but even before he had reached top
gear, he had to put his foot on the brake and stop the car, as he
stared in horror through the windscreen. There would be no escape.
Marauders, mostly on motorcycles, swarmed across the road in front
of them as three large SUVs lurched suddenly into the road behind
them from side streets. Perched on the roofs of the marauders’
vehicles, in specially constructed turrets, were thugs aiming large
weapons at them. Dylan, Matt and Montana sat trapped in their car,
paralysed by fear and realising that this was not the place to make
a stand. They could not outrun them, and they could not fight their
way out of this mess.

“
This is not good,” stated
Dylan, somewhat obviously.

“
Not good at all,” agreed
Matt, as three marauders climbed slowly from their choppers and
started to walk towards the Landcruiser.

“
Try not to look nervous,
keep calm, and use your brains. It’s our only chance,” said Matt,
as the first marauder, who was all dirt, hair and leather, stepped
up to the driver’s side door and drove the butt of his shotgun
through the window, showering Dylan with tiny glass
beads.

“
Get out motherfuckers! You
have three seconds! One... Two...”

Chapter 71

Deep in the heart of the Delano Caves, as
the marauders in Carswell were surrounding Matt, Dylan and Montana,
hordes of feeders waited for the return of the night, in a state of
silent, suspended animation. The reflex that compelled them to
return to the dark each day before the sun rose was strong, and
once they were asleep, only the threat of immediate physical danger
could drag them from their slumber. The warrior feeders that had
survived the encounter with the humans earlier in the day had
returned to their lair and lay beside their brethren, sleeping
again, the memory of the battle forgotten.  For this new
breed, life was simple - hibernate during the daylight hours, feed
and copulate at night, and protect the swarm. Always. This simple,
animalistic regime, combined with the physiological changes, that
had made the feeders super-predators, was proving to be an
evolutionary success. So these creatures, incapable of experiencing
a human emotion like confidence, slept as the dead - unable to
imagine that any real harm could befall them. But their sense of
security was misplaced because on four small digital, LCD screens
nearby, red numbers winked methodically in silence, counting down
the seconds to the feeders’ demise.

-

“
Where are you taking us?”
asked Dylan, trying not to show the fear that was creeping up his
spine like a poisonous spider.

The hairy brute in the back seat of the
Hummer looked at him and didn’t say a word. He simply smiled and
went back to staring out of the window. Matt and Montana had been
thrown into the back seat of the SUV in front, and Dylan knew that
they were all being taken to the high school, where their fate
would be determined by a bunch of foul-smelling Neanderthals with
too much time on their hands.

“
Not a chatterbox, eh?”
taunted Dylan. “I thought we would could be buddies.”

Dylan almost hoped that his irreverent
attitude would elicit some reaction from this barbarian, but his
silence was even more unsettling than a punch to the face would
have been. As the car turned into the street where the school was
located, Dylan saw Montana’s panicky face peering through the rear
window of the car in front. Then suddenly a large hand appeared,
whipping her head back around to the front, as the school loomed up
ahead like a ghost ship. As the marauder caravan of choppers and
SUVs reached its destination, a large gate was swung open by one of
the biggest, ugliest men Dylan had ever seen, and the vehicles
rolled into what had once been a car park for teachers.

What happened next was so swift and devoid
of emotion that the three friends barely registered what was
happening. They were dragged from their SUVs unceremoniously by six
marauders, as the rest of the entourage climbed from their
motorbikes and wandered away laughing and chatting. They were
stripped of anything that could be used as a weapon, and marched
inside the front doors of the school together in silence. Dylan
smiled at his friends, in an attempt to give them some confidence,
but it was clear that they were scared out of their wits. Montana
was crying, the tears making tracks down her dirty face, while Matt
had gone the colour of a dead fish. Neither of them returned
Dylan’s smile.