Desolation Boulevard

by Mark Gordon

  Chapter 56

  Extract From Sally’s Journal:

  “I’m absolutely exhausted right now, but I’m forcing myself to write this stuff down because I think that if I leave it too long, I’ll forget some of the details, or remember it differently, or not at all. It’s almost ten o’clock; Dylan and Bonnie are sleeping but I can’t, so I’ll write. Today was a crazy day. Another crazy day, I should say. Dylan could have been killed, and an irrational, oversized psychopath tried to take Bonnie and I captive.

  We stopped for fuel in a little town called Carswell, and that’s when everything went wrong. Dylan went to investigate something he’d found out the back of a used car yard (more about that later), and while we were waiting for him to come back, a big fat nerd with a gun snuck up on us, and forced us to go back to his “lair”, which turned out to be an old bank. (I know! We were stupid! I’m so cranky with us, for getting caught like that!) Anyway, this guy was a fruitcake! He kept going on about his “ex-girlfriend” and asking us if we knew some farm boy from Millfield. I don’t know how he knew them, or what they had done to him, but somehow they’d really pissed him off! If I ever meet them, I’ll congratulate them.

  Anyway, when Dylan came back into the car yard and saw that we were missing he freaked! Luckily, though, he caught a glimpse of us going into the bank and waited for his chance. He got it when fatso went to do some “chores”. Dylan followed him back to the car yard, and this is where it gets really, really weird! We found out later that this freak had somehow managed to capture some zombies and he was keeping them like pets. (We don’t know why he did it, or what his plans for them were, but tomorrow, when the sun comes up Dylan insists that we have a closer look at them, before heading to Millfield). So while the freak was out, looking after his pets, Dylan raced back to the bank to try and get us out of the vault, but fatty came back and hit Dylan with a baseball bat and knocked him out.

  He then made us get out of the vault and when I saw Dylan lying there unconscious, my heart almost broke. I didn’t think I could feel that way about anybody. I fell apart. I didn’t know how badly he was hurt, so I imagined the worst.  I honestly couldn’t function. Then he locked Dylan and me in the vault without Bonnie, and I honestly thought it would end up being our tomb. Without medical treatment I thought that my saviour might die, and then I would have to kill myself too. That sounds melodramatic, but I really felt that low. I’ve never felt so alone or scared! I hugged his unconscious body and I cried. I could see no way out of our situation. Then, without warning, he started to regain consciousness. He was groggy and had a headache, but seemed like he might be okay. He smiled and my mood changed immediately. I wasn’t alone any more. I wanted to get out and kill the fat fuck that had done this to my man. In the end I didn’t need to, though. Bonnie had taken care of that for me.

  When the vault door swung open I expected to see our kidnapper standing there with his gun, but instead it was Bonnie. The amazing, beautiful, strong Bonnie! Somehow she’d overpowered him and clubbed him to death with the baseball bat! We all hugged like crazy in that vault for about five minutes, then we got out of there. Fatso’s body was lying on the floor, just outside the vault, with blood pooling on the concrete floor from a savage indentation in the top of his skull. It wasn’t pretty, but you know what? It wasn’t even close to being the worst thing I’d seen since this all started.

  After we got Dylan some painkillers and made him lay down on one of the beds, we dragged the dead body (very slowly and with a few rest stops) into the vault and locked the door, so it did become a tomb for somebody, after all. Then I climbed onto the bed with Dylan while Bonnie lay on the other single bed, with a big sigh. For about ten minutes nobody spoke. We were shattered, to be quite honest, and pretty grateful that we could just lie there, doing nothing. It wasn’t long before Dylan was asleep and Bonnie and I started to chat. I asked her about Gabby. I was really curious to find out if she really believed that her daughter was alive, or if she was just being optimistic, living in hope. Her answer wasn’t what I expected at all. I don’t know if she’d told Dylan any of it, but she really opened up and told me a lot of things she hadn’t mentioned before. She said that somebody needed to know, in case something happened to her – she didn’t want the information to be lost. So she told me.

  Before Gabby was born, Bonnie was happily married to a man named Brant. He worked in a local bank (probably a bit like the one we’re in now) and was the perfect husband. They were in love, when Bonnie fell pregnant they were extremely excited. They’d always wanted a child, and loved their life together in Millfield.  The pregnancy was boringly normal and Gabby was born healthy. The problems started when they brought Gabby home from the hospital, when John didn’t seem very interested in the new baby, despite his previous anticipation about the birth. Bonnie put his attitude down to “first-time father” nerves and stress at work, and assumed that he would become closer to Gabby in time. After a few months, though, it was clear to Bonnie that something was wrong. John seemed to be doing anything he could to avoid spending time with his new daughter, and whenever Bonnie tried to talk to him about it, he would storm out of the house and stay out all night. Within six months, it had all become too difficult, and after a particular vicious argument, John left and never returned.

  Dylan was snoring beside us, and I was finding Bonnie’s story pretty interesting, but I couldn’t really see what was so unique about it. It certainly wasn’t any worse than my family situation, and I knew that stories like this (about deadbeat dads) were common. When I mentioned this to Bonnie, she just said, “Hang on. I haven’t got to the interesting part yet.” Beside me, Dylan made a grunting sound in his sleep and rolled over onto his side.

  When Bonnie’s husband moved out, he didn’t just leave his family, he left town altogether. It was as if he couldn’t get far enough away from Gabby. He quit his job and Bonnie heard nothing about him until two years later when two police officers - detectives - knocked on her door. They had found John’s body in a shack on a remote farm, a thousand kilometres away, in Tasmania. He’d been living “off the grid” since he left Millfield. There was no paper trail and he was surviving by doing odd jobs for cash. The detectives told Bonnie he looked like a hobo when they found him - skinny with a long beard, and filthy clothes. They also told her that he’d killed himself - thrown himself head first onto an upturned gardening fork. Bonnie was getting upset as she was telling this part of the story and I asked her if she wanted to stop, but she insisted on finishing “so someone else would know about Gabby”. I have to be honest here; Bonnie’s story was starting to give me the creeps. Dylan was still asleep and there wasn’t a sound in the world, except for his breathing. It was a very weird atmosphere.

  Anyway, it seemed as if there was a bit more to Bonnie’s ex-husband than anybody realised. He was a bad man and always had been. When the police started investigating his death, they found a lot of very disturbing facts about him. He was a paedophile, even while he was married, but he somehow managed to hide it from everybody. He was involved with a little group of perverts who convinced each other that what they were doing was normal. Business trips were just excuses to get together and indulge their filthy tendencies, and there was also violence involved and embezzlement of funds from the bank. The detectives outlined the evidence for Bonnie, but I don’t need to repeat the sordid details here, it’s too unpleasant for me to think about. The point is that John was a very bad man.

  When Bonnie got to this part of the story I asked her why she was telling me. I was confused. Why was it relevant to our situation now? What did it have to do with Gabby? And I remember the next thing she said. Exactly. She said, “That’s why John left. Gabby has a quality that repels evil.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this, to be honest. I thought it was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. I must have been staring at Bonnie with my mouth open or something, because she actually laughed at me. She said, “Listen Sally, you’re a smart kid.
I know how ridiculous it sounds, but it’s true. There were incidents over the years that convinced me. I had this babysitter booked one time, so I could go to the movies with a girlfriend. She literally wouldn’t set foot into my house. I found out later she got caught being cruel to the children in her care. Pinching them, burning them with cigarette lighters, pretending they were accidents. She’s in prison now. There have been other examples too. It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, because I know it’s true”.

  I asked, “Are you saying that people with evil ... souls, or whatever, literally cannot stand to be around Gabby?”

  She nodded in silent agreement and all of a sudden it hit me. “That’s why you think she’s still alive!” I said, “You don’t think the zombies will go near her because they’re evil!”

  She smiled and said; “Now you know, and I feel better that I’ve told someone”.

  I sat on the edge of the single bed, listening to Dylan snore quietly beside me. There wasn’t a sound from the world outside, and I realised that if what Bonnie was saying was true, then Gabby is precious beyond imagining. She is perhaps the key to a brighter future for all of us.