Desolation Boulevard

"It is a story worth telling - and in our current inundated book market, that's very hard to find." - Matthew Keith, author of Sway.

  Desolation

  Boulevard

  Mark Gordon

  Copyright 2012 Mark Gordon

  This book is dedicated to my beautiful wife and children.

  "Each night we surrender ourselves to sleep,

  not knowing what morning may bring."

  Sal the Judicious - "The Feeder Chronicles"

  Chapter 1

  The Silence

  The sound of barking hammered away until Matt's eyes flickered open lethargically. On a Saturday morning? Really? That wasn't fair. He sat up and tried to convince himself that he was awake as Elvis continued to shatter the early morning silence with a non-stop loop of short, aggressive woofs. Matt wondered what could be upsetting the neighbour’s dog so early, then put it out of his mind, figuring it it was no concern of his. He begrudgingly climbed out of bed.

  He dressed himself in jeans and a T-shirt from the floor, before heading to the bathroom to pee and wash his face. He stared at himself in the mirror as the morning sun leaked in, and noticed that pimple had sprouted on his chin. Otherwise, he looked okay. He wasn’t a supermodel, but he knew that a few of the girls at school thought he was cute, and that was enough for him. He headed out to the kitchen thinking that bacon and eggs would be a nice start to the day. There was no sign of his parents being out of bed yet, which meant that they had come home from their party much later than expected and would be hoping to sleep late. Elvis’s barking obviously wasn’t bothering them.

  Matt flicked on the kitchen light, but there was no response. He toggled the switch up and down a few times, before giving up. Then he noticed the clock on the old stove. It had stopped at 3:11 in the morning, which meant that the power was out. He went to the front porch and checked the fuse box, but no fuses had blown, so he put on his shoes and headed out to the shed where the backup generator was kept. He topped up the fuel tank, and then hit the starter button, waiting a few seconds to make sure that it was running smoothly, before heading back into the house. The kitchen light was on now, he noticed, and the red second hand on the stove clock was whirring around the dial steadily. It was odd that the power should be off for such a long time, especially since they hadn’t been victims of a bad thunderstorm overnight. Maybe he could find some information about the blackout on the local news. He turned on the radio in the kitchen, and dialled through the bands, but realised he was wasting his time - there wasn’t a single station on the air. That was odd. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. No service? That wasn’t quite so unusual, though, out here in the country where coverage could be patchy. He went over to the phone that sat on the bench beside his dad’s pile of loose change and lifted the handset from the cradle. He paused, and then held it to his ear. Nothing. Not even a dial tone.

  Matt considered waking his parents, but he knew they wouldn’t be happy about being disturbed, especially if dad was nursing one of his hangovers. He went back to his bedroom, reached under his bed, and dragged out his MacBook. As it powered up, he walked out onto the front veranda. Elvis had stopped barking now, and the only sounds he could hear were those of birds and the mechanical whirr of the windmill behind the house, as the morning breeze gave it life. Where were the cars?  There should be one or two heading into town, surely? He looked at the computer screen as it finished booting up. If this didn’t work he thought he might have to wake his parents to tell them about the power problem. Dad would probably want to know, hangover or not. He clicked the Firefox icon and waited. “The Internet address is not available. Try again later”. He clicked on a couple of his bookmarked websites just to be sure, but they wouldn’t load, so he gave up. No Internet either? Given that the phones were down, that made sense. He headed to his parents bedroom.

  He knocked on the door and waited for a response. Silence. He rapped on the door once more, harder this time. Still nothing. He turned the handle and pushed the door open slightly, “Dad? Mum?”

  Even before Matt stepped into their bedroom, he sensed that his parents weren’t there. It was too silent. The immaculately made-up bed confirmed his suspicion. They hadn’t come home last night. He sat down on the bed and tried to think. What was going on here? The power and phones had gone out. Yes, that was unusual, but not outside the realms of possibility. What about the radio stations? Perhaps their ability to transmit had been affected by the power cut? Okay, that made sense. What about his parents then? Where were they? Then he remembered! Mum had said that if they were going to be too late, they would sleep over at the party. Matt checked his phone for messages, but there was nothing after 11:28 - a text message from dad, grinning at the camera, with a bottle of beer in one hand. Okay then. That was the answer. Dad had too much to drink last night, and they decided to stay in town. He relaxed a little.

  After frying up and eating his bacon and eggs, Matt decided to keep himself busy until his parents returned home. On a farm, even a relatively small one like 'Two Hills', there was always work to be done. He got started, knowing that if he worked hard, the time would pass more quickly. He let the chickens out of their coop to forage around the house for worms, collected the eggs then filled their food and water troughs. Then he took the ride-on mower out of the small shed and cut the grass around the house, which was beginning to get a little overgrown. While the farm itself was a couple of hundred unkempt hectares mainly used for cattle grazing, mum liked to have a nicely cultivated garden around the house, and part of that meant that the grass needed to be cut regularly. This time of year, midway through autumn, the weather was getting cooler and after cutting the grass today, Matt knew that he wouldn’t need to do it again for a couple of weeks. After he had put the mower back in the shed, Matt surveyed his work. Mum would be pleased. The freshly mown grass gave the little weatherboard cottage a cosy look. The white paint, wraparound veranda and patches of colour from potted flowers were picturesque, and in the background were the two blue-tinged hills that gave the farm its name. His father and mother loved this house, and while he would never say it out loud to them, he did too.

  Matt looked at his watch and was surprised to see that it was almost 11:30. He really expected them to be home by now, and he was genuinely beginning to worry. He had one more task that he wanted to finish before his parents arrived, however, and he decided that if they weren’t home by the time that chore was finished, he would go into town to look for them. He took the all-terrain quad-bike from the big shed so that he could ride up to the top paddock and open a gate so that the cattle would have access to fresh feed in an adjacent field. It was his favourite spot on the whole farm.

  When he arrived at the top of the hill, the small herd of Angus cattle was waiting for him to open the gate. They knew that the sound of the bike coming up the hill meant fresh grass. He unlatched the hook on the old, steel gate and let them into their fresh paddock, and when they had made their way through he closed it and looked around. From this position he could look down and see the farmhouse and most of their land. It looked like a child’s model. He could see the dirt road that led from his house as far as the road to town, but that was where the view stopped. He knew, though, that if he rode five minutes further up the hill he would have an almost three hundred and sixty degree view of Millfield and its surrounds. He climbed onto the bike.

  At the very top of the hill, the view was even more magnificent. He could see as far away as the town, and then some. It was a beautiful afternoon and the sky was a pure, flat blue with just a few small, white clouds drifting by on a light breeze. Mountain Pass Road ran like a grey ribbon past the farm towards town, and then on to the Great Dividing Range, which was nothing
more than a smudged line on the horizon. It was this mountain range that separated the country towns in the west of the state from the suburbs and city sprawl of the east coast. It had proven a formidable barrier for the early explorers and even today was a symbolic border between city and country. Matt loved the way the town looked from here. He could see the layout of the streets and even the cars parked in the road like little tin toys. Today the only movement, though, was an almost straight plume of smoke rising from somewhere near the centre of Millfield. Something was off-kilter.  On a Saturday morning, the sunlight should have been glinting off cars as they trundled around town on their errands, but there was no movement. Another peculiar thing was that fire, which continued to send up a dark column of smoke into the sky. It wasn’t cold enough for anyone to have lit a fire for warmth today, and council had banned the lighting of open fires years ago. So why would one be burning in the centre of town? A fire that seemed to be generating more smoke every second. For the first time today Matt felt that something might really be wrong. He needed to find out for sure.

  He jumped on his bike and headed back down the hill to the house, where he grabbed the keys to his dad’s truck. At sixteen he wasn’t a fully licensed driver yet, but on farms most kids drove from an early age because there were plenty of open spaces to learn safely. He climbed into the cab of the Ford, pulled the door closed and put the key in the ignition. Much later, when Matt looked back on things, he would realise that this was that moment his new life began.

  He pulled onto the gravel road and headed towards town.