Desolation Boulevard

by Mark Gordon

  Chapter 50

  The Watcher

  Matt woke up, and realised that Montana wasn’t in the bed beside him. As the sun began to stream through his window, he lay on his back and considered what had happened the night before when Montana had crawled into bed with him. At first he couldn't move and stared at the window for what seemed like hours. Having such a beautiful girl in bed with him had aroused him, and his desire to make love to her right then was as intense as a heart attack. On the other hand, if she only wanted companionship, Matt didn’t want to spoil their relationship by making a clumsy and unwanted sexual advance. After a while, though, he finally worked up the courage to turn around and make his move, but realised that she was sound asleep. Oh well, he thought, it must have been companionship she had wanted after all. He rolled back towards the window and tried to sleep.

  The girls were already cleaning up their breakfast dishes when he got to the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” he said to them, as he tried to read Montana’s mood.

  “Good afternoon, more like it,” she laughed good-naturedly. “Gabby and I have been up for hours, haven’t we?”

  “Yes Matt,” Gabby chided.

  “Well, I had a big day yesterday. I was really tired.”

  “That’s why Montana said not to wake you up. She said you’d need your beauty sleep.”

  The girls looked at each other and tried to suppress their giggles, as Matt attempted to keep a straight face.

  “Oh, it’s like that is it?” he asked. “The girls ganging up on the only boy in the house?”

  “Yes,” said Montana. “We have you outnumbered so don’t forget it.”

  “Yes,” echoed Gabby. “Outnumbered.”

  ”Oh well then, I guess I’d better be on my best behaviour. I don’t want to get into trouble.”

  After breakfast Matt went out to work on the fence while the girls went to the bookmobile to do some schoolwork. The arc lights had switched themselves off automatically when the sun started to rise but Matt knew he would need to check the fuel levels again before it was dark tonight. If he got the fencing finished in time he would rig up some motion sensors so that the lights would switch on automatically if triggered. It would save fuel and they wouldn’t need to put up with the noise of the generators. As he walked the perimeter of his new fence line, he tested the strength of the metal posts by grabbing each one in both hands and trying to wiggle them loose from their concrete pads. They were all rock-solid, and Matt knew that once the wire was up, the fence would provide them with a formidable barrier. He got to work unrolling the large bundles of fencing wire.

  A couple of hours later, after he’d attached almost half of the wire to the posts, Gabby came running to him with a cool bottle of water and a sandwich. He took them from her little hands and walked over to the shade of the pepper tree to eat. Gabby sat beside him and watched.

  “Would you like to share my snack?” he asked, as he sat down on the grass.

  “No thanks. Montana gave me a cookie.”

  “Okay then,” he said, as he took the sandwich out its plastic wrap and began to eat.

  As they sat there together, silent and happy, Matt realised that in a strange way, he had a family again. His initial fear of being responsible for others had given way to something more positive, more desirable. He actually felt pleased that he had someone to care for now, and he felt proud that he was enough of a man to take on the responsibility without resentment or self-pity. He looked at Gabby, who was making daisy chains from flowers in the garden, and wondered what her future held. What would the world be like by the time she became an adult? Would humans still be living in fear of the feeders, or would the people who had turned into crazies overnight simply become a bizarre footnote in the history of humanity? Matt shook his head and realised that he was wasting valuable time with these thoughts. His mother used to call it 'wool gathering' when she caught him daydreaming, and ask him what he was thinking about. A lot of the time, he didn’t even know! That was the past, though, and it was time to get back to work on the fence. As he stood up he heard the screen door bang and looked up to see Montana heading down the path towards him.

  “How was your sandwich?”

  “Very good, thank you. I was really hungry, actually.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it because that was the last of the bread from the freezer. From now on, if we want bread, we’re going to have to make it ourselves.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard, but I guess we’ll need to stockpile things like flour and sugar before the mice and bugs get into everything in town. There’s so much work to do.”

  “Yes, it would be nice if we had a little more help around here. We need to be prepared for anything, don’t we?”

  “Absolutely. One thing I wasn’t prepared for was your … um, visit last night.”

  “Oh god, Matt, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to embarrass you, but I felt so lonely and scared, and you’re such a nice person. Any other boys I’ve been out with would have taken advantage of our situation by now, but you haven’t. Everything’s so mixed up since the feeders. I honestly don’t know how I feel about anything anymore. I think something’s wrong with me.”

  Matt looked at her and could see tears welling up in her eyes. He stepped forward and hugged her.

  “Hey. It’s okay. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Everybody that survived this nightmare is going through the same thing. We’re the lucky ones, though. We found each other. Imagine the people out there on their own, or the ones who found the wrong people. We’re going to be okay. We have Gabby and we have some skills and resources to help us survive. God only knows what it must have been like for people in the cities.”

  He held her by the shoulders at arm’s length and looked into her sad, blue eyes. “We’re okay. And by the way, I loved having you with me last night. It felt wonderful, and I was kind of disappointed when you fell asleep.”

  She looked at him and he could see a slight smile breaking through on her tear-stained face.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  Montana hugged him and buried her soft face into his grimy neck as Gabby ran up and threw her arms around their waists, “Group hug! Group hug!”

  For the briefest of moments they were genuinely happy.

  -

  It was late in the day when Matt finished his fencing project. The construction of a functional gate, which could be locked, took up most of the afternoon, but when he closed it and he secured the chain with a padlock he felt a great sense of satisfaction. He had worked solidly for two days and he could feel the effects of the exertion crying out in every single muscle of his body. Usually on a job like this he would have worked closely with his father, and it would almost have been fun. This job, however, was pure drudgery, borne out of necessity and extreme circumstances. Montana had helped occasionally, when two pairs of hands were required, but it had mostly been a solo effort. He stood and looked at the foreboding metal construction that now circled the house. His mother would have loathed it, and it made Matt feel as though he was a prisoner, but he knew that they would feel more secure now, especially at night when the feeders were awake. As he walked up onto the veranda, the girls came out to view the fruits of his labour. Montana put her arm around his waist.

  “Awesome job. You must be exhausted.”

  “Exhausted, but satisfied. And starving. What’s for dinner?”

  Montana gave him a surprised expression, “I don’t know. What are you cooking?”

  “Ha-ha. I can cook you know, but I think I smell something delicious coming from the kitchen. Gabby must have cooked it while you weren’t looking!”

  “No Matt!” yelled Gabby. “We both did! It’s chicken. I helped peel the potatoes.”

  “You can cook tomorrow night,” said Montana playfully, as she steered him into the house. “But first you need a bath. You smell really, really bad!”

  -

  Two hundre
d metres from the house, hidden amongst a dense patch of foliage near the road, a lone figure watched through binoculars as Matt put the finishing touches on his fence. When he joined the girls on the porch the figure felt a wave of jealousy flooding him. He found their happiness abhorrent. Since the event, there had been no joy for him, had there? He was living like an animal; hiding at night, scared out of his wits by the crazies, foraging for food wherever he could find it, talking to himself like a mad man, and constantly wondering whether life was even worth clinging to. And, to rub salt into his wounds, he had discovered that there were people in the world like that boy on the veranda who was receiving the affection and companionship of not one, but two people. The planet had become a stinking cesspit of violence and chaos, but this farm boy had created something good for himself, and then, out of pure greed and selfishness, had built a fence around it, so nobody else could share. It just wasn’t fair and if it weren’t for the girl, he knew he wouldn’t be this patient. They wanted her, and he would take her to them! He looked across at the sun, as it began to set behind the trees. Soon they would be out to feed. It was time to leave. He slunk away in the shadows to the spot where his bicycle waited. He climbed on and began pedalling back into town.