Desolation Boulevard

by Mark Gordon

  Chapter 47

  The Burning

  Dylan had parked the Post Office van hard up against the broken roller door, and they stood in front of the warehouse with three Molotov cocktails at their feet, ready to roll into the feeders’ lair. A long piece of fuel-soaked bed sheet snaked from the van’s petrol tank, waiting to be lit, as a thousand or more zombies lay sleeping inside the old brick building, just moments from a painful, merciless death.

  They had discussed the logistics of carrying out the gruesome task in the safest and most efficient way, and eventually decided on a group effort to get the conflagration started. Dylan would light the fuse to the van’s petrol tank, then run back up the ramp, where they would each take one of the petrol-filled Molotovs by the neck and fling it down the ramp, under the van and into the warehouse, where it would shatter, causing a small explosion. As soon as each of them had flung their mini-bomb, they would retreat as fast as they could to the end of the street, where the car was parked, and monitor the success of their operation in relative safety.

  As they stood in readiness, breathing heavily with anxiety and dread, there was a realisation that if this action went wrong their lives would be at risk. Sally and Dylan had seen first-hand the violence of the zombies when threatened, and could only hope that the car-park incident in the city was not repeated here. Minutes earlier Dylan had done one last sweep around the building and was confident that there were no escape routes.

  Bonnie looked at her younger companions, “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  Sally replied with a nervous laugh, “Absolutely not.”

  Dylan was more resolute, however, and walked down the ramp towards the parked van. 

  “Let’s do this,” he barked.

  He reached the bottom of the ramp, turned and gave his final instructions to Sally and Bonnie, who were waiting nervously.

  “As soon as I light the fuse, be ready to light and throw your bottles. Don’t wait until I’m at the top of the ramp, okay? Like we talked about remember; a big underarm throw. Make sure you slide it under the truck!”

  They nodded seriously.

  Dylan took a deep breath and reached into the front pocket of his black jeans for the cigarette lighter he’d obtained earlier for just this purpose. He glanced at the sheet hanging from the fuel tank, and then nodded one last time at the women, before flicking the lighter on. He held the naked flame at arms length, and then paused for just a second, before touching it to the fuse, where it whooshed into life. With the bed sheet smoking, and flames snaking towards the petrol tank, Dylan turned and sprinted up the ramp as fast as he could, where Bonnie and Sally were now lighting their own fuses.

  “Go! Go!” Dylan screamed as he reached them.

  He crouched to light the fuse for his Molotov, and saw Sally take three paces down the ramp before bowling her device toward the warehouse. The bottle skittered down the concrete incline before slamming into the rear tyre of the van where it lay, unbroken with the wick still alight. Dylan was screaming at Bonnie, “Throw! Throw!” and she did with a strength and accuracy that surprised them all. Her bottle slid down the ramp with astonishing speed, past Sally’s still-burning effort, between the wheels of the truck, and into the belly of the warehouse. Dylan’s bomb followed Bonnie’s as if by remote control and within a split second the sound of shattering glass told them that at least one of the devices had fulfilled its’ destiny. Only a few seconds had passed since Dylan had lit the fuse on the van, but it was as if time were standing still as they raced up the concrete incline, and away from the explosion that was as inevitable as it would be devastating.

  With the warehouse beginning to burn, and an unexploded bomb in the shape of a Post Office van behind them, they ran to the far end of the street, and safety. Just as they reached the corner an almighty explosion pounded their eardrums, and they scrabbled around the corner and threw themselves onto the ground as shards of glass and pieces of razor-sharp, metal fragments whistled past the edge of the building.

  “Shit!” yelled Dylan, grinning manically, “That was way too close! Is everyone okay?”

  Bonnie and Sally were slumped on the ground sucking in big breaths. They ignored his question and looked at each other in disbelief as the roar of the fire resonated in their ears. Finally, Bonnie spoke as she stared angrily at Dylan. “Did you know that would go up so quick?”

  He looked at her warily, unsure exactly of how much trouble he was in. “No. I thought we’d have a bit longer than that.”

  “That’s a relief, because we were about one second away from death you idiot! From now on no more vigilante bullshit! Okay?”

  Dylan realised that his personal vendetta against the zombies had almost cost the lives of the only people in the world he cared about. He went over and sat down beside them as another small explosion was heard around the corner and said, “Okay. I’m sorry. From now on we mind our own business, and let the zombies sleep; until we find your daughter anyway.”

  As Sally watched Bonnie’s face she felt sure that the older woman was going to give Dylan a good tongue-lashing. Instead, she shook her head tiredly and said, “Fine. I guess that will have to do. My daughter’s name is Gabby, by the way.”

  “Yes. Until we find Gabby.”

  Dylan stood up and went to the edge of the building and listened before cautiously poking his head around the corner.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” asked Sally, throwing Bonnie a concerned glance.

  “Hey, come and check this out!” Dylan ordered, as the women pulled themselves wearily to their feet.

  The heat from the blaze warmed their faces as they peered around the corner of the building. It seemed their strategy had worked perfectly. The building was burning savagely from the ground floor and it was clear that the entire building, and its’ occupants, would be consumed within minutes. When they were confident there would be no more explosions, they moved from cover and watched from a safe distance. At one point Sally asked if they could hear screaming under the roar of the fire, but neither Bonnie nor Dylan could confirm her notion. After a minute or so watching the funeral pyre, they were about to leave when Sally grabbed Bonnie’s arm. “Look!”

  She was pointing to one of the boarded-up windows on the first floor of the warehouse. A large piece of plywood that had been screwed onto the window to keep vandals out was vibrating as if something or someone behind it was beating on it like drum.

  “Could they get up there?” Dylan asked.

  “There must have been stairs we didn’t notice,” said Sally. “Let’s get out of here just in case.”

  “No, let’s just watch for a minute. I’ll get my gun.”

  The fire became more intense, and when Dylan had returned with his gun, a corner of the board in the first floor window was being forced away from the frame. The trapped feeders were pushing on it, from inside as they attempted to preserve their abominable lives. The piece of plywood flexed acutely, and it was obvious that it would only take one or two more shoves for it to break from its’ anchors and plummet to the street below.

  “Be ready to run for the car,” Dylan ordered as they waited for the drama to unfold.

  Then the piece of ply finally gave way as the zombies heaved with one final effort, sending the makeshift window and three of the creatures flying headlong into the pavement below. Sally, Bonnie and Dylan didn’t hear the thud of their skulls as they collided with the unforgiving concrete, but thick streamers of blood squirted extravagantly as the zombies’ heads popped like overripe watermelons. In the window, silhouetted against the raging furnace behind them, scores of creatures crammed, searching for fresh air and a possible escape route. It only took a couple of seconds for the inevitable to occur, however, when the crush of zombies became too much, and the closest to the opening were forced out, falling to their death on the street below.

  The first few creatures that hit the ground died immediately from the impact, but once there was a pile of six or
seven bodies under the window, sudden death became less certain. The next few that jumped (or were pushed) received a softer landing and lay twitching on top of the pile with brain or spinal injuries, while others threw themselves around grotesquely as they tried to stand and run away on broken legs. Dylan had to shoot two of the creatures when it looked as if they might escape the bedlam, but after there a significant pile of dead zombies on the ground below the window (the last few covered with blackened, blistered skin) the flood stopped as fire consumed the structure, sending dark plumes of smoke high into the midday sky.  Nobody mentioned the smell, which reminded them of an afternoon barbecue.

  They walked away from the destruction and climbed into the car. Dylan started the engine as Bonnie and Sally swigged from their water bottles. He pulled away from the holocaust and started to shift up through the gears; grateful to be leaving the horrors of the zombie massacre behind him. As he turned the corner back into the main street, however, he was forced to a stop by a group of around ten people who were standing in the middle of the road, about forty metres in front of the car.

  “Shit!” said Sally, who was in the seat beside Dylan. “Marauders?”

  “No,” he replied. “I don’t think so.”

  Bonnie and Sally looked at the unexpected crowd ahead, as Dylan slowly drove forward until he was about ten metres away from them. He eased his foot onto the brake and turned off the ignition. As he wound down his window, he heard Bonnie clicking the safety of her gun off and nodded in silent approval. They studied the group, and it was obvious that they were not marauders. They stood in the middle of the road, expressionless and unmoving, as their leader, a man in his fifties, with a scruffy beard and dark circles under his eyes, approached the car. He stopped a couple of paces away and addressed Dylan, who had remained in the car.

  “What happened over there?” he asked, motioning toward the warehouse.

  Dylan looked at the crowd, who hadn’t moved, then back at the man before answering. “We found a nest of zombies in a warehouse. We set fire to it and killed them.”

  The man looked behind him towards his party and nodded his head. There was no reaction from the group, except perhaps for a shuffling of feet from a few of them.

  “We knew about them,” the man said quietly as he turned his attention back to Dylan.

  “Oh.”

  “We think it’s best to leave them alone. They seem to be on their way somewhere. It’s safer to just let them go.”

  “Well, they’re dead now, so no problem, right?” said Dylan, with a slightly a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Maybe,” the man replied, as he turned his back on the car and walked slowly back to his ragged group of followers.

  Dylan, Bonnie and Sally watched him walk away and then looked at each other in disbelief.

  ”What a bunch of weirdos!” Sally blurted.

  “Absolutely”, agreed Dylan. “Let’s get out of here.”

  As Dylan started the ignition, the group split into two as he drove slowly between them, and away from the town of Dennington.

  “I don’t even want to think what that was about,” he said.

  “We are living in very interesting times,” said Sally, shaking her head.