by Mark Gordon
Chapter 24
Gabby
Matt tried to call Elvis back, as the dog ran towards the girl on the swing. He was concerned that he would leap on her out of sheer joy, and injure her, but he needn’t have worried. As Elvis reached her, he stopped and sat, looking at the girl as if waiting for something. Matt climbed out of the car and watched as the girl stopped swinging and then went over to the statue-like dog and hugged him around the neck.
“Hello boy. What’s your name?" she cooed. "I’m Gabby. Aren’t you a beautiful boy?”
“His name’s Elvis?” Matt said, smiling at the tiny figure before him. "He likes you."
She was wearing pink jeans and a yellow SpongeBob t-shirt. Her hair was long, sandy blonde and in need of a good brushing. Matt was totally confused as to how this girl had survived in the town since the rise of the feeders. Who had been looking after her?
“Where are your mummy and daddy honey?” he asked in his friendliest voice.
She turned away from Elvis and looked up at Matt. “Mummy’s gone. Mrs Orton is looking after me ‘til mummy comes home. My daddy is dead. I’m not allowed to talk about him.”
“Where did mummy go sweetheart?” Matt asked, hoping that the girl would say she was in the house baking cookies. Instead, she said, “Sydney. She wants a new job. She says we might have to move. There’s a McDonald’s in Sydney.”
Matt smiled. “There are lots of McDonalds in Sydney sweetheart. What about Mrs Orton? Where does she live?”
The girl pointed to the house next door. “She lives next to us but she’s always asleep now.”
As far as Matt was concerned this whole conversation was getting weirder by the minute. This girl had been left in the care of her neighbour, probably while her mother went to Sydney for a job interview. The babysitter, Mrs Orton was, in all likelihood, a feeder, yet this defenseless girl was alive and didn’t even seem traumatised. Matt looked around the street and noticed that, unlike the rest of the town, there were no mutilated corpses visible anywhere. He studied the little girl more closely and tried again. “Who’s looking after you honey? Where are they?”
She looked at Matt and smiled. “Silly! Nobody can look after me! They’re all asleep. I have to look after myself. I’m six. I can make cornflakes you know, but the milk tastes funny now. I don’t want it any more. Can you get me some new milk?”
“Of course I can. As soon as we see Mrs Orton.” Matt needed to see inside the babysitter’s house. “Gabby honey, can you show me where Mrs Orton’s sleeping?”
“Just go in. She’s under the bed. I think everyone likes under the bed now.”
Matt didn’t need to go inside and see Mrs Orton. He’d seen enough feeders now to know that she had become one. He still couldn’t understand how this girl had been spared from their violence, however.
“Gabby, what happens at night time? Where do you go?”
The girl looked at Matt like he was stupid. “I go to bed silly. I’m not allowed to stay up late. There’s no TV anyway. Do you know my mummy? Is she coming home soon?”
Matt knew that he couldn’t leave the girl alone, so using his most authoritative voice, he said, “Sweetie, lots of people have gotten sick and that’s why they’re asleep. It’s dangerous for you to be alone without grown-ups. I want you to come with Elvis and me until we find mummy, okay?”
“I guess so. Can you really find mummy?”
Matt kneeled down on the grass and took her gently by the shoulders. “Gabby honey, Elvis and I will help you look for your mummy as hard as we can. Until we find her, though, we can be like a little family, okay?”
She looked Matt in the eyes. “Sure. Can Elvis do tricks?”
-
Twenty minutes later they were on the road to Carswell. Gabby was in the passenger seat, so Elvis was relegated to the back of the truck. Matt was worried that the dog would freak out, but he seemed to be enjoying the wind blowing through his coat, as he hung over the edge with his mouth open. After Matt had made the decision to care for the girl he had taken her inside the house and packed an overnight bag with clean clothes, toiletries, snacks, a drink and a collection of her favourite toys. He was astonished by her positive frame of mind and wondered if she’d pushed some disturbing memories into her subconscious. He wasn’t very experienced when it came to relating with small children, but Gabby seemed to have a directness that he liked. Her willingness to allow the teenager the take control of the situation was also making their unusual relationship easier for him to cope with. After he had checked the house to make sure that her mother wasn’t hiding anywhere, he packed her things in the truck and they left for Carswell.
As they coasted down the deserted country road the unlikely couple chatted about ordinary things like favourite foods, movies and her friends at school. It was hard for Matt to pretend that Gabby might see her friends again, but he could see no point in telling her that everyone she had ever loved was lost forever. He didn’t know anything about grief counselling, but it just felt right to protect her from as much of the horror as he could right now. Knowing the truth would take away the one hope she had of seeing her mother and there didn’t seem to be any point in doing that just yet. When they ran out of things to talk about they played eye-spy, and when Gabby said “m” for “moo cows”, Matt wondered if the animals would be a suitable source of sustenance for the feeders. Given the number of cattle farms in the area, he guessed that the creatures would survive for quite a long time if they ever developed a taste for raw beef.
Forty minutes into their journey Matt noticed that his little passenger was getting drowsy so he stopped the car, and covered her with a jacket, before suggesting that she have a little sleep. She smiled at Matt, closed her eyes and was sleeping before the ute was even up to full speed again. He was relieved when she nodded off because he didn’t want her to bear witness to the gruesome sights they would encounter once they entered the city limits of Carswell. He didn’t know what he would do when she woke up, but he figured he would deal with that issue when it arose. Matt looked down at the tiny figure napping peacefully beside him and the weirdest thought popped into his head. “She’s a miracle!” he thought. He shook his head. Where had that come from? The kid had just got lucky, that was all. Against all odds she’d somehow managed to evade the feeders at night. He thought about the lack of corpses in her street. For some unknown reason, the creatures hadn’t been very active in that part of town, and Gabby had survived simply as a statistical fluke. Maybe that was miracle enough.
The girl continued to doze as Matt rolled into the once picturesque town of Carswell. For one hundred and fifty years it had been a prosperous agricultural town, established as a hub for the local farming community. Over the last thirty years, however, it had fallen on hard economic times. Matt thought the town had been looking a little shabby and forlorn the last time he had visited, a few months ago, but the change that had come over the place in the last few days made it look like a scene from a Sam Raimi horror movie. If it was possible, the carnage here seemed to be even more extensive and brutal than the butchery that had occurred in Millfield. For a start, there were more corpses; but Matt had expected that because Carswell had a larger population. No. What shocked him here was the extra element of exuberance that was evident in the way the killings had been performed.
Matt looked at the girl to make sure she was still asleep before analysing the grim picture before him. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but if he had to make a guess he would say that the feeders in this town had derived more enjoyment from their grisly handiwork. While all of the corpses showed the usual evidence of cannibalism, just as the Millfield victims had, there were some extra touches here that were truly disturbing. As he cruised through the streets he witnessed bodies that had been flung into trees and onto shop awnings. On one corner, a grossly overweight, naked man had been impaled on a stop sign, and on another street he saw a line of eleven severed heads staring sightlessly at him from behind the d
isplay window of a butcher shop. Then, as he got closer to the centre of town, he discovered a pile of charred corpses as high as his car, that were now fused together like a gruesome public sculpture.
Suddenly Matt needed to be out of this town. There was a crushing sense of evil in this place that he couldn’t deal with. It wasn’t just the wanton destruction and death that disturbed him - there was something in the atmosphere that was like a black, oily sludge that seemed to coat his mind, making him feel corrupted. He wanted to be back at the farm now more than he had wanted anything in his life. He felt that if he stayed here he would die. It was that simple. He turned the car around as Gabby made a little groaning noise in her sleep. Her jacket-blanket had slipped down during the drive so he reached over to pull it back over her tiny form, but when he looked back up at the road he had to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision. Two figures were standing in the middle of the street pointing shotguns at his face. Gabby began to stir.