by Mark Gordon
Chapter 32
Heading Home
As Matt drove into the setting sun towards Millfield, the girls beside him chatted as if they were simply being driven home after a shopping trip. He knew that Montana was purposely keeping the conversation upbeat for Gabby’s sake, but he got the impression that she was also enjoying the simple. The last few days spent with the socially challenged Brock couldn’t have been easy, and Matt dreaded to think what would have happened to Montana’s personality if she were forced to spend any longer in his presence, without the regular perspective that came from normal companions. She may have become as malicious and twisted as her delusional kidnapper. Matt also wondered what Montana had meant when she said that Brock had been “playing with the bodies”. Did she mean like toys, or something more intimate? Either way, the idea disturbed Matt greatly and despite his curiosity, he didn’t want to raise these dark issues with Montana while Gabby was in earshot. He actually wasn’t even sure whether he wanted to know at all. A world with feeders was distressing enough without needing to dwell on the horrors that the human mind was capable of.
Montana turned to Matt. “How long before we get to your place? It’ll be dark soon.”
“Don’t worry,” he responded, squinting into the setting sun. “It’s only another half an hour and I reckon there’s almost an hour of daylight. What do you two feel like for dinner? I’m a pretty good cook.”
“Boys can’t cook!” challenged Gabby.
“Gabby, that’s terrible!” Montana exclaimed, laughing. “Where on earth did you learn such old-fashioned ideas? Men can cook and women can be doctors and truck drivers if they want to.”
The little girl looked sadly down into her lap, thinking she had said something wrong. Montana reached over and gave her a hug. “Honey, don’t be sad. It’s okay, but just remember that girls can do anything boys can do, and boys can do anything that girls can.”
Matt smiled at the exchange between the blonde girl in the “Bitch” t-shirt and the six year old.
“Boys can’t have babies!” stated Gabby, victoriously; as Matt slowed the car down to begin the descent through the National Park forest.
This was the slowest part of the journey, but it was also the most scenic. The road curved through dense, luxuriant rainforest that was dappled in late afternoon sunlight. Montana wound down her window and stuck her head out. “Smell that, Gabby!” she said. “It’s beautiful.”
Gabby gazed straight ahead as Matt slowed down to negotiate a hairpin bend in the road.
“It’s not beautiful. There’s something bad out there,” she said.
“No sweetie. There’s nothing bad out there, just birds and animals. It’s really pretty. Look”.
“No. It’s bad. I don’t like it here.”
Matt could see that Gabby was upset. “It’s okay honey. We’ll be out of here soon and back in the sun. Then before you know it we’ll be home having dinner. You didn’t tell me what you wanted me to cook”.
“Can you really cook?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Sure. What do you feel like?”
“Can you make hamburgers?”
Matt laughed. “Are you kidding? I make awesome hamburgers. You can help if you like.”
“Okay,” she said, eyes returning to the road ahead.
Gabby’s fear of the forest seemed to have abated somewhat as they swung into the final descent. After this bend, they would be out in the open again and on a straight run home to Millfield through cleared farmland. Matt relaxed and opened up the throttle in anticipation of being home before it got dark. He smiled and glanced at Montana, “Won’t be long now.”
As his eyes returned to the road, though, he was forced to jam his foot hard on the brake as they skidded headlong towards a fallen tree. The girls screamed as Matt fought with the steering wheel in an attempt to control the truck as they skidded towards the obstacle. He felt the rear tyres sliding sideways, and a head-on crash seemed inevitable, but at the last second, the rubber gripped the bitumen, and Matt was able to steer his truck through the tree’s foliage and into a shallow culvert at the edge of the road. Despite their speed being slowed considerably, Matt, Gabby and Montana jolted forward hard onto their seatbelts at the moment of impact and Matt heard Elvis yelp as he was thrown forward into the window behind them. He looked around desperately as the car rocked to a stop.
“Is everyone okay?”
Montana, shocked, was silently nodding her head in agreement and Gabby was crying, but Matt thought everybody looked okay. As Montana consoled Gabby, Matt hopped out of the truck to check on Elvis. He lifted him out of the tray and placed him on the ground to check for obvious injuries like broken bones but, apart from a limp, the dog seemed to have survived his ordeal intact, and was already marking his territory by urinating on a nearby tree. The three crash survivors gathered on the road by the huge fallen eucalypt and looked around. Nobody wanted to say anything, but the sun had slipped a little further behind the trees and it was getting gloomy in the forest.
“That could have been a lot worse,” Matt stated rather obviously. He crouched down and held Gabby by the shoulders. “Are you okay honey?”
“That was scary," she said. "Who put the tree there?”
Matt smiled. “Nobody put it there, sweetheart. It just got pushed over in a storm. When the ground gets really wet, these big trees sometimes just fall over on their own.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“Yes Matt,” Montana asked. “What are we going to do? Can we go around it?”
Matt had already made his mind up about that particular question. “No way. It’s too big. Even if I had a chainsaw it would take hours to cut it up enough to move it.”
“Well, can we get in the car and go back and find a different way to Millfield?”
“This road only goes straight back to Carswell. Do you want to go there in the dark? Besides, my car’s not coming out of that ditch unless someone tows it out.”
“Well what do you suggest? We can’t stay here can we?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied.
Matt looked down at Gabby and sensed that she was more frightened than at any time since this ordeal started. She returned his gaze. “This place is bad. We have to go before it gets dark. Something’s here.”
“Nothing’s here Gabby. You don’t need to worry. We’ll look after you. Montana, take her over and put her in the car with Elvis.”
Montana whistled for Elvis and took him over to the ute with Gabby, put them in together, and closed the door. Then she went back over to Matt, who was looking down the road in the direction of the rapidly fading sun. “Do you have a plan?” she asked.
“I think we only have one option.”
“That can’t be good. What is it?”
Matt grimaced, knowing that she would hate his suggestion. “We stay in the truck for the night.”
“You have got to be kidding! Stay out here with those things everywhere?”
“Wait. Listen to me,” he said, trying to sound far more reasonable than he actually felt. “We’re in the middle of nowhere in a National Park. I don’t think anybody lives around here. The chance that feeders are way out here is really unlikely. We just lock ourselves in the truck and wait for the sun to come up tomorrow morning, and then we’ll walk until we find a car and then we go home. I have my shotgun if a feeder shows up. What do you say?”
“I say it sounds horrible, but I can’t see a better alternative, so I guess we have no choice. I’ll go tell Gabby,” she spat, giving him a dark look as she wheeled away towards the truck.
Matt stood and surveyed the gloomy forest. Gabby was right. This place was creepy. It seemed ancient, timeless and malevolent all at once. He tried to rationalise his fear, but nothing worked. He didn’t like it here, full stop. Instead of being at home in his warm house cooking hamburgers, he was going to be spending a cold, hungry night in a cramped truck trying to protect two girls he had met only to
day. What had happened to his life?
He went to the back of his ute and opened the toolbox where he kept his shotgun. He sat on the trunk of the fallen tree and watched Montana talking to Gabby inside the truck. She was probably telling the girl what a dick he was for getting them all into such a mess. 'Maybe I am a dick', he thought bitterly. This was all too hard for a boy who just wanted to go to school and eventually become a farmer. Why did he have to take responsibility for other people all of a sudden? It just didn’t seem fair!
He was about to get up and check on the girls, when he had the strangest sensation that he was being watched. He peered into the gloomy forest, but saw nothing but a sea of dark green vegetation. Maybe he was just jumpy after the experiences of the last few days. Surely there would be no danger this far from town, but the feeling of being watched persisted. He scanned the trees again and had almost convinced himself that his paranoia was simply a manifestation of his fear, when the naked figure of a male feeder pushed through the scrub just one hundred metres from where he was standing. Matt stared, scarcely believing his eyes. He watched as the feeder stepped onto the road and paused, before looking around with its nose in the air. Matt could see the girls still talking to each other in his truck, illuminated by the interior light, but when he motioned with his free arm, he couldn’t attract their attention. He just had to hope that they wouldn’t leave the safety of the vehicle until he had a chance to kill this creature. Matt was pretty sure it hadn’t spotted him yet, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He didn’t understand why one of them would be this far from a populated area, but he knew that somehow it had sensed their presence and was here to feed on them. All of these thoughts occurred to Matt in just a second or two, and by the time he had formulated them, the creature had looked up and seen him, just as Matt was raising his gun. He risked a glance at the cab of the truck and saw that Montana was now watching this new threat with wide eyes, while Gabby was nowhere to be seen, presumably hiding on the floor of the truck once more.
The creature made its move, and raced down the middle of the shadowy road towards Matt with bloodlust in its eyes. He took a deep breath, aimed down the shotgun barrel at the creature’s chest and pulled the trigger. He knew right away that he had missed. He was out of practice and the recoil sent the shot high and to the right. The feeder was halfway to Matt now, yet somehow he registered through his fear, that this one was older than most of others he’d seen, maybe even as old as sixty. The weird thing was, though, it was running like a twenty year old, and had covered almost half the distance to Matt in just a handful of seconds. He took aim once more, this time more prepared for the recoil and confident that he could take this thing down just before it reached him and ripped his throat out. Then, when the filthy, bloodstained beast was about thirty metres out, Matt very deliberately squeezed the trigger and waited for the shot to ring out. Instead, the hammer clicked down on the second shell with a dull metallic click, and Matt realised with absolute clarity of mind that he was totally fucked.
From the truck he heard Montana screaming.
