by Mark Gordon
Chapter 60
A Car Approaches
Matt stood with his gun by his side in the middle of the road, as the vehicle approached from the east. It was probably survivors heading away from the city, but after his experience with Bill, it seemed wise to exercise extreme caution. He waved his left arm above his head to signal his presence and watched as the vehicle came to a stop about fifty metres from his position. His heart was beating faster, and he realised how vulnerable he was, standing there alone, exposed to whoever was hidden in the car. If they were looking for trouble, Matt knew that a well-placed bullet could end his life at that moment, and the girls would be left to defend themselves. The only sound Matt could hear was the ticking of his ute’s engine as it cooled and the sullen cry of a crow somewhere in the distance. For almost a minute the standoff continued, as both parties waited for the other to make a move. Frustrated by waiting, and in an attempt to show that he meant no harm, Matt squatted down and laid his gun on the warm bitumen of the road. It was a risk, but he felt that whoever was in the car, would have shown their aggression by now, if that was their intention. He stood erect and looked straight ahead with his arms slightly away from his side, palms toward the car, showing that he was unarmed, in one final statement of goodwill. Perhaps spurred on by Matt’s gesture, the driver’s door of the vehicle swung open with a metallic squeal that pierced the silence like the cry of a banshee. Then, without warning, Matt heard a click behind him, and jerked his head around to see Gabby getting out.
“Gabby! No! Get back in the car!” he screamed, as he reached down to pick up his gun.
She paid him no attention, however, and began running as fast as she could toward the car stopped on the road up ahead.
Suddenly things were happening in a blur, as Montana sprang from the back seat and sprinted after the little girl, not far behind Matt. To the east, three figures, silhouetted by the rising sun, leapt from their vehicle and began sprinting towards the girl frantically.
“They want Gabby!” yelled Montana, as Matt raised his gun, aiming it at the closest figure. He was about to pull the trigger and shoot, when he heard a female voice call Gabby’s name in an anguished cry that seemed to come from a place that was deep and timeless. Then, just before firing, at the point where things could have gone bad, very quickly, Matt released his finger from the trigger of the gun, thereby ensuring that Gabby and her mother might have the opportunity to become a family once more.
-
As Bonnie ran down the road towards her daughter, she registered somewhere deep in the back of her mind that a young man was pointing a gun at her. She also knew that sudden death was the only thing that would stop her from reaching her child as quickly as possible. Bonnie screamed Gabby’s name and waited for the bullet that would take her life, but there are times when things happen as they should, based on nothing more than the a person being a split second away from making one decision or another. So Matt didn’t fire his weapon, and this turned out to be one of those times.
Bonnie was on her knees in the middle of the road, welded to Gabby as they cried together. Matt and Montana stood side by side watching the moving reunion. A girl walked over to them, and an older male, dressed in black, who was limping towards them with his hand held out towards the pair.
“Hello. I’m Dylan. This is Sally.” He pointed at Bonnie. “I’m guessing you’ve worked out who that is.”
Matt shook their hands and introduced himself and Montana. “I nearly shot her,” he whispered. “I could have killed Gabby’s mother!”
Dylan clasped Matt’s shoulder. “But you didn’t. So it’s all good, right?”
“I guess so,” said Matt, still upset.
Bonnie was still hugging Gabby, went Matt went over to her. He was troubled by his willingness to kill somebody who was no threat to him and needed to speak to her - to make it right, somehow. The woman was whispering into Gabby’s ear, but Matt couldn’t hear what was being said. He touched her on the shoulder, and she turned to him.
“I’m Matt, “ he said. “I thought you were going to take her. I was going to shoot you. I’m sorry. I was scared.”
“Has my daughter been with you?”
“Yes. With Montana and me,” he replied, cautiously.
Bonnie was silent, as she stroked Gabby’s hair. Her face gave away nothing as she considered the two young people who had taken her daughter into their custody since the event. A smile creased the corner of her mouth as she put Gabby down on the road.
“You’ve done a good job,” she stated, before taking both of them into her arms and hugging them in a way that said more than a thousand words ever could.
-
It took over an hour for everyone to tell their tales of survival, and when they were finished new bonds had been forged, despite their personal sorrows. Bonnie turned white with fear when Matt told the story of finding Gabby alone in Millfield, but she hugged her daughter tighter and tried not to imagine the horrors she had endured. The account of Gabby’s abduction by Bill had been difficult for Matt to retell, but he tried to make it sound less frightening than it had been and kept the gruesome details of Bill’s suicide to a minimum, to spare Gabby. He tried to focus on the positives of their last couple of weeks as much as he could, including the sanctuary they had created at 'Two Hills', but as they took turns recounting their versions of events since the rise of the feeders, the group became quieter, and their previously jubilant mood became more subdued, as they relived one nightmare after another - stories of cities on fire, lairs filled with sleepers, fathers returning as zombies, planes crashing, narrow escapes from feeders, a daughter devoured by her mother, attacks by marauders, psychopaths in country towns, the feeder migration, the warehouse extermination, and Gabby’s abduction. All of these things, spoken aloud as a litany of terror, in a landscape devoid of people, seemed to suggest a future filled with only hardship, emptiness and fear. Amongst all that negativity, loneliness and fear, however, there was one small spark of light in the darkness, and she spoke now. “Can we go home, please? I’m bored.”
-
Two hours later, everybody was back at 'Two Hills', and making themselves at home, as much as they could. Montana invited Sally to share her room, while Bonnie and Gabby made themselves comfortable in the guest bedroom. Dylan was disappointed that he wouldn’t be sharing a room with Sally, but understood that he was living under someone else’s roof, so he agreed to sleep on the couch in the living room. They could work out more intimate sleeping arrangements later, when everyone got to know each other better.
Dylan and Sally brought in some personal belongings from the car and after they had settled into their new rooms, cleaned up a bit, they gathered in the large kitchen to prepare a late lunch. Nobody had eaten much since the previous evening, and a large communal meal would give everyone an opportunity to relax and get to know each other. Matt thawed out sausages and steaks to barbecue, while Montana showed Sally around the kitchen as they prepared a salad together. Bonnie was in the bedroom catching up with Gabby, while Dylan explored the farm. Matt set the table for lunch on the front veranda, and lit the barbecue so that it would have ten minutes to get really hot for the steaks.
A little later, while he was wiping down the hotplate with a sheet of paper towel Dylan come up the front path from where the cars had been parked, with a beer in each hand. He climbed the steps and passed one of the bottles to Matt as he watched him clean the barbecue plate.
“This is a nice place you have here. You’ve done well to get that fence up so quickly.”
“Thanks. It was hard work, but I sleep better now. Or I will anyway, now that Gabby’s back.”
“The lights are a good idea too. Sensors?”
“Yeah, but I think Bill disabled them. I’ll try to fix them after lunch.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” said Dylan.
“Great,” said Matt as he balled up the greasy paper towel and threw it into a small bin beside the barbecue. “It�
�s really great to have you guys here with us. I feel much better now we have people here that I trust.”
“Thanks man, it’s really good to be here. Everybody seems nice. Not like some people I’ve met since the event.”
Matt laughed. “That’s for sure. People seem to have gone to one extreme or the other. Look at Bill. I bet he was just a regular guy before the event. Then, with society in tatters, he becomes a kidnapper.”
“Yeah, like the marauders. Scary.”
Matt threw some sausages on the barbecue where they sizzled and smoked. As he watched the pink skins begin to turn brown, he thought about an issue that he wanted to raise with Dylan while nobody else was around. It was a difficult question, but one that he felt needed answering, by somebody. He prodded a sausage absently with the end of a pair of metal tongs and spoke.
“Hey Dylan, you’ve seen a lot more of these feeders than I have.”
Dylan scratched his wounded thigh and nodded in agreement, “Yes, I suppose I have.”
Matt turned a sausage before continuing, “What chance of survival do you think we have?”
Dylan took a swig of his beer and considered his response. Finally he answered Matt’s question with one of his own, “Do you mean us, or the human species?”
Matt stopped fiddling with the meat on the barbecue and turned to look his new friend in the eye, “Don’t you think it’s the same thing?”
