Desolation Boulevard

by Mark Gordon

  Chapter 65

  To the Caves

  Sally burrowed in closer to Dylan and put her arm around his waist. “I don’t want you to go tomorrow,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Can’t you let Matt and Montana handle it?”

  “You know I can’t,” he replied. “It was my idea, remember?”

  “Yes, but I’m so scared, especially after what Gabby said about someone not coming home.”

  “Hey, listen Gabby doesn’t read the future. She just has really strong intuition or something. Just because she says something, it doesn’t mean it will come true. Even Bonnie said that.”

  “But it’s still dangerous, isn’t it? The trip to the caves, I mean. Something bad could happen. The feeders aren’t as docile when they’re asleep like they used to be.”

  “Look, we may not even find them. That cave system is huge and we only have one day. It might be a wild goose chase.”

  Sally sat up in bed and stared at Dylan’s face, which was glowing like a ghost in the moonlight.

  “You don’t really believe that do you?”

  “No, not really. I think we’re going to find them.”

  “Dylan, do you love me?”

  “Hey babe, of course I do, but let’s not talk about that now,” he said. “It might bring us bad luck.”

  He reached up and cupped her naked breast. “I think you’re as sexy as hell, come here.”

  Sally embraced him desperately, and they made love in the dark to the sound of dogs howling in the distance beyond the fence. After Dylan went to sleep, Sally lay awake for a long time listening to the house creak and wondering if tonight would be their last together, and if they would ever make love again. She also wondered what Matt was doing in the room opposite, and if he ever thought about her, as she drifted off to sleep.

  -

  The next day everyone except Gabby rose in the dark to prepare for the critical and dangerous day ahead. After a quick breakfast of oats and strong coffee, Matt, Dylan and Montana hugged Bonnie and Sally in the warmth of the farm kitchen, before heading out into the cold morning to begin their journey to the Delano Caves. It had been a clear, still night and the ground was covered in prickly, white frost that crunched under their feet. Matt couldn’t help thinking that it sounded like the crunching of bones, and he thought back to the skeletons of the children he had seen in Millfield the day after the feeders had risen for the first time. Exterminating them as they lay in the caves today would be his way of doing something to avenge many cruel and pointless deaths. When he reached the car he paused for a moment and looked at his two friends, who were breathing out spectral plumes of warm air. “Let’s do this," he said.

  At the Council Depot they loaded the explosives into the back of the Landcruiser, as the sun peeked over the eastern horizon, and light was leeching into the town, illuminating fresh evidence of feeder activity from the night just gone. Not far from the council gates, the mutilated corpse of a traveller was lying on the side of the road, reduced to a chaotic jumble of bones and gore. There was no way to tell if it had been a man or a woman, such was the state of the body; it was obvious, though, that this person had stopped for the night and assumed they would be safe, locked in their car on the road’s verge. But the feeders had found a way to break through the front windscreen and drag the traveller from their sleeping bag, and out of the car. It would not have been a fair fight in any sense, and the creatures certainly wouldn’t have bothered to kill the victim before devouring them on the spot. It was a horrific way to die, thought Matt, as he unlocked the gates of the depot. They would need to exercise extreme caution at the caves today.

  -

  When the trio arrived at the outskirts of Carswell, it was just after eight, and the sun had risen in the eastern sky. They had passed one car heading west ten minutes earlier, but apart from a cursory wave, no contact was made. It seemed like survivors were becoming more cautious with each passing day and strangers were being treated as potential threats as much as prospective comrades. Matt slowed the car down to walking speed, and Dylan and Montana cradled their guns in their laps, in case they encountered marauders. It was strange for Matt to be back in the town where he had first encountered Montana, and it was odd to think that the evil Brock was no longer a presence here, but there was still something about the vibe of this place that felt very wrong.

  “What do you think?” he asked finally, breaking the tense silence.

  “It’s bloody quiet,” offered Dylan. “Maybe the marauders are still sleeping.”

  “That would be okay with me,” said Montana. “This place is creepy. Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Hey Montana,” asked Dylan. “If you had to hole up with a big group of people in this town; somewhere that was safe from feeders, where would you go?”

  “Gee, I’m not sure. Let me think.”

  Matt and Dylan peered left and right as the car cruised through the silent streets, and as they waited for Montana’s answer, it seemed that Carswell had become a virtual ghost town. There was no evidence of activity, other than one very skittish, scrawny dog, and the sound of their own car as it rolled through the streets. Suddenly Montana sparked to life. “Hey! I think I know where I’d go!”

  Matt eased his foot onto the brake and stopped the car. “Where?”

  Montana leaned over the seat between the boys. “The high school! A few years ago they put up a big security fence to keep vandals out. And there’s plenty of space. It would be perfect. There’s no way the feeders could get in.”

  “Okay then,” said Dylan, “let’s check it out.”

  “We’ll almost drive right past it on the way out of town anyway,” said Montana.

  “Cool,” agreed Matt. “It can’t hurt to take a peek. Let’s go.”

  They parked the car in an unlocked garage, two blocks from the school, and started walking. They all agreed that driving right up to the school, when they didn’t know what they would find, would be unnecessarily foolish. Montana had suggested that they approach the school from behind, where there was some vacant land that would provide them with cover from observant marauders.

  “Some of my favourite math lessons were spent in that vacant lot,” she explained with a nervous laugh. “It will also give us a good view of the sunniest part of the playground. If anyone’s staying at the school, and they’re awake, that’s where they’ll be.”

  As they crept through the lot and climbed to the top of the small incline, the school gradually appeared before them through the scrabbly trees. The building had been constructed around the beginning of the twentieth century and was designed to appear grand and important. Now, though, with the early morning sun glinting off the windows, it merely looked blank and utilitarian, like a psychiatric institution. It was obvious that the place was the base for a large group of marauders. The school’s large concrete quadrangle, which was once used as a place for children to congregate with their peers, now looked like a parking lot. Around thirty cars (mostly large SUVs), and almost as many motorcycles were parked inside the fence, and behind them, closer to the main building was a group of around a dozen people sitting in the sun, smoking, laughing and eating.

  “How do we know they’re marauders?” whispered Matt.

  Dylan and Montana simply looked at him and simultaneously raised their eyebrows in disbelief. “See that corpse strung up on the fence?” asked Dylan.

  “Oh. Okay. They’re marauders,” Matt agreed sheepishly.

  “I want to take a closer look,” said Dylan.

  “Why?” challenged Matt, “Let’s just leave them alone. There could be hundreds of them in there. Besides, we need to get to the caves. You know we have to get back to the farm before it gets dark tonight.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” said Dylan, as they all turned to leave. “I just feel like I have some unfinished business with them after I saw what their kind were doing to decent people in the city.”


  He thought back to the young, naked girl he’d seen chained up by the group of marauders in the city and shuddered, “It’s not just the feeders we need to worry about any more is it?”

  Then suddenly, as if to prove his point, the foliage of the trees above their heads exploded in a shower of green, accompanied by the crack of a gunshot from the direction of the school.

  “Run!” cried Matt, as they hared down the hill, ducking tree branches and stumbling over the uneven ground, before emerging back out onto the street. They checked for danger as they entered the street, then put their heads down and raced to their car as quickly as they could. Despite their terror, there were no more shots fired at them, and when they reached the garage that housed their car, they wasted no time in jumping in and speeding out of town, giving the high school the widest possible berth they could manage.

  As Matt sped out of Carswell towards the east, Dylan and Montana looked nervously through Landcruiser’s rear window with their weapons loaded and ready to fire, but their fear was unwarranted. Nobody was behind them.

  “What the fuck?” Matt swore.

  “Why aren’t they chasing us? Why did they stop shooting?” queried Montana, as the sound of the car’s engine roared in her ears, and her heart beat at a hundred miles an hour.

  “I don’t think they care enough about us,” answered Dylan, “That was just a bit of target practice for an early riser. If that bullet had hit one of us, I bet they wouldn’t have even left the compound to check it out. We would have just laid there until the feeders got us later tonight.”

  “Shit!” said Matt. “I hope the girls are okay back at the farm without us. We need to destroy this cave and get back as soon as we can. Everything’s escalating, and I feel like we’re going in the wrong direction. East feels bad. Do you sense that too, or am I just being paranoid?”

  “No, you’re not being paranoid. I feel it,” confided Montana, leaning across the back of the seat. “I think we’re heading into trouble. Every part of me wants you to turn the car around and head home. I’ve never had such a bad feeling about something in my whole life.”

  She sounded terrified, but there was nothing that Matt or Dylan could say to make her feel better, because they were experiencing the same ominous doubts as her. Dylna turned around in the passenger seat and placed his hand over Montana’s.

  “I think we all feel the same. I don’t know why, but west is best, isn’t it? Once we’ve wiped out this nest of feeders, I say we go home and make plans for the future for all of us. Then we should think about going somewhere even safer than 'Two Hills'. Matt, what do you say? Do you feel the same?”

  Matt kept his eye on the road ahead and answered, “No, not really. I don’t care what happens, I’ll be staying at the farm. It’s where I belong. If you guys want to leave I won’t stop you, but I plan on dying at that place.”

  -

  On the front veranda of the farmhouse, Gabby was playing with some of Matt’s old toys in the sunshine while Bonnie and Sally dug weeds from the vegetable garden. It was almost ten o’clock and the air was warming considerably as the sun rose steadily in the sky. Sally had removed her sweater and a few beads of sweat had formed on her brow from the exertion of digging.

  “This would be almost pleasant if we didn’t have to worry about the others,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “I know what you mean. I’m really having second thoughts about them going. It all seemed so abstract and theoretical the other night, but now they’ve actually gone I’m worried sick.”

  “Do you think Gabby was right about someone not coming home?”

  “You’re worried about Dylan, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. And Matt,” Sally replied quietly.

  Bonnie put down her spade and looked at the younger woman. “Sally, are you blushing? Oh my god, have you got feelings for Matt?”

  "I don’t know. Maybe. Matt seems so sweet and caring, different to Dylan somehow. I know Dylan’s been good to me, but there’s a bitterness there, just under the surface, that scares me a little. I know it’s not fair, but every now and then I find myself thinking about Matt for no reason. I think I might be falling in love with him.” She looked into Bonnie’s eyes. “Am I an awful person?”

  Bonnie smiled, “No, of course not. Matt is a gentle, handsome man, but strong too. I understand why you’re attracted to him. But you have Montana to think about. You’ll have to keep your feelings to yourself. We can’t afford to have any tension in our little group, can we?”

  “No I guess not, and I do like Dylan a lot, but really, I don’t think he loves me. I guess in this world you can’t be too fussy though, right? I should be happy.”

  “Honey, my advice for you right now is to take everything one day at a time. Don’t get too hung up relationships just yet. Survival is still our main priority, and will be for a long time yet. If you ever need to talk, though, I’m here for you babe, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks Bonnie. I’m so glad we came to Millfield with you.”

  Bonnie took Sally in her arms and hugged her tightly. “I’m glad you did too sweetheart. We’re family now, and that might just be what gets us through all this.”

  As Sally listened to Bonnie’s wise words, however, all she could think about was Matt, and whether he would return to 'Two Hills'. She buried her face further into Bonnie’s neck and cried.