10 Minutes From Home | Book 1 | 10 Minutes From Home

by Howard, Bill

  "The phone, it must have fallen out." I said in an unusually high voice.

  Isabel and Thom let go of each other and looked at me, then started looking around on the lawn. I looked up to the porch and into the front foyer but saw nothing. Isabel shouted out a loud 'got it', and I ran over to her. She handed the phone to me, even though I am sure she would have liked to use it herself. I dialed the number again and let it ring. On the third ring this time, it clicked again. I spoke Diane's name again and listened carefully for any feedback. A small voice spoke on the other end.

  "Denny?"

  It was small, and it was quiet, but it was Diane.

  "Oh my God honey. Are you okay? Is Jordan okay? I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I've been trying to call you, the world has gone insane, there are these crazy people, animals…"

  Diane cut me off.

  "Denny. It's everywhere. I picked up Jordan from daycare and got her home; she's in bed, frightened out of her mind. So am I. I watched the news but they don't seem to know what's going on either, everyone just seems to have gone mad. I boarded up all the windows and doors as best I could and I'm just trying to stay quiet. The power went out at about seven this morning; I’m on the landline right now. God Denny, I am so scared, but I thought I would never hear your voice again. Are you coming home?"

  "Yes, baby yes. I am still with Thom, and a girl named Isabel. We’re trying to get home. We have a car now, and I hope it won't be much longer. Just stay inside and stay quiet; I'll be home soon baby, I swear to God. I love you so much, just give Jordan a kiss for me, and as soon as I can call you again, I will."

  "Okay. I love you too. Please be careful. I need you to come home. I love you."

  After a few more tear-muffled I love you's, I hit the hang up button, and it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. Isabel used the phone next to call her mother in Toronto, and she got through on the first try. She talked to her mother for a minute or so and found out she had barricaded herself in her apartment. As Isabel was just starting to show signs of relief, her face deepened.

  "Mom? Are you still there?"

  Isabel put the phone on speaker.

  A hushed voice spoke back.

  "Yes, I'm here. I just heard something. Out on the balcony."

  "Mom, you have to block the patio doors, you have to do it now!" Isabel was breathing heavily, sweating.

  "Don't worry dear, I’m on the 23rd floor, I really don't think that anything could…"

  Then all you could hear was a loud crash of glass over the phone, followed by phlegmy barks in the background.

  Isabel's mother whispered very calmly into the phone.

  "I love you sweetie. With everything I am, I love you. Keep safe, take care of yourself, and get through this. We'll be together again someday, God as my witness."

  Then there was a loud roar followed by a very sharp scream before the phone line went dead. Isabel dropped the handset and slumped to the floor, sobbing. Thom walked over, picked up the phone and set it back onto its cradle. Then he got down on his knees, wrapped his arms around Isabel, and held her.

  CHAPTER 11:

  ISABEL LUCINDA HAWKINS

  Isabel Lucinda Hawkins was born April 13, 1990, in Georgetown, DC, while her parents were on a business trip. Jonathan and Chantal Hawkins worked and lived together in Toronto, where Jonathan was a renowned heart surgeon and Chantal was his personal assistant. When Chantal was 8 months pregnant they attended a lecture that Jonathan was giving at Georgetown University in DC. They figured they had plenty of time to get the lecture in and get home for the weeks leading up to their daughter's birth. It seemed Isabel had decided she liked Georgetown, and that night in their hotel after the lecture, Chantal started having contractions. 2 hours later at Georgetown University Hospital, Isabel Lucinda Hawkins was born.

  After returning home to Kingston, Chantal and Jonathan lived a blissful life with their new daughter. As the years went by, Isabel grew, and she was a good child. She was well-mannered, well-behaved, and a beauty to behold. When Isabel was 12, her father was diagnosed with lung cancer even though he had never smoked a day in his life. This came as a huge shock to everyone, but especially to Jonathan himself. It turned out that even though he lived a very healthy lifestyle, he had gotten lung cancer from Radon exposure, a gas that can seep in through the foundation of your house. He went through the usual treatments, and after a year or so, his condition seemed to be improving. Even so, he didn’t go back to performing surgeries right away. His recovery was slow, hampered by a string of viruses that he caught while his immune system was in repair. Over the course of the next 2 years, Jonathan suffered many relapses, each one seeming to break him down a little more. Early in 2004, Jonathan started showing more signs of improvement, he was eating better, looking healthier, and his attitude had improved. Best of all, the cancer seemed to have gone into remission. But a few months later, after consulting with his own doctor, it was discovered that the cancer was now manifesting as fluid build-up in his lungs and around his heart. Even though he wasn’t in any pain, they kept him in the hospital for observation. On April 10, 2004, Jonathan’s blood pressure began to drop and just kept dropping. Chantal was at his side as he quietly passed away in the hospital bed, telling Chantal how much he loved her before drifting off into an eternal sleep. Isabel was at home with a sitter, still asleep, and the next time Isabel saw her father was at the viewing 3 days later. She was very composed for a girl who had to mourn her father on her 14th birthday. She kissed him gently on the cheek and barely left her mother’s arms for the next week.

  After graduating high school, Isabel told her mother she wanted to find her own way and make it on her own. With her mother's blessing, she moved to Scarborough and started a course in Police Sciences. She lived in a small apartment with her cat, Rizzo, who was named after the rat from the Muppets. She got a job at a pub waitressing through a friend of hers, Meagan, who was also a server there. Her mother was helping her with tuition so Isabel took the pub job more as a means to keep her mind busy than to pay bills. She liked it very much though; she liked the interactions with people, the busyness of it. She did well in Police Sciences; she had always had a passion for science in general, and always knew she wanted to do something that helped people. She visited her mother in Kingston every chance she had, and they would just sit over coffee, laugh, and reminisce about Isabel’s father. They both missed him so much, but Isabel had reached a place in her life where she was happy and she knew her father would be proud of her.

  CHAPTER 12:

  THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY

  After recovering from the heart wrenching business of making phone calls, I thought we should try to get some information on what was happening. After all, it had been over 24 hours since we left the cinema, there had to be news. I walked into the living room again, and sat on the couch, flipping over magazines on the coffee table looking for a remote. I found it beside the seat cushion. I clicked on the TV, which was a little older and took a few seconds to warm up. Once on, we got a nice clear shot of static. I hit the channel up button a few times, but got nothing. As I let out a defeated sigh, Thom piped up.

  "Denny, look. She has a PVR. "

  Sure enough, sitting under the TV was a black box that just might contain some answers. I put the TV on AUX and turned on the PVR. The menu sprung to life, a list containing a few episodes of American Idol and Grey's Anatomy, but also had one listing named 'news'. It was a long recording, some 3 hours or so. I looked over to Thom and Isabel, and they looked as pensive as I felt. I selected the news and pressed play. For the next 3 hours, we sat riveted to a newscast that didn’t seem to be real. I felt like I was dreaming, the world was going hazy and surreal. It seems that the outbreak started around the time we went into the first movie, and when it hit, it hit hard. For the first couple of hours, they speculated on many causes, from the ridiculous--rabies--to the scary--terrorist viral attacks. In the third hour, they seemed to get some
information that the source of the infection might be a vaccine. In particular, the swine flu vaccine. An expert on the news who had his face obscured claimed that the vaccine was rushed out to satisfy public and government demand when the swine flu hit, and that it never went through the proper channels of testing. But of course, they never thought it could do anything like this. They figured there could maybe be some side effects, but not a full blown, fast acting, contagious viral strain. It had manifested first in hospitals and clinics, and then, in a terrifying announcement, daycares. As soon as that word reached my ears, I broke into a dizzying sweat and thought of Jordan. Had anyone at her daycare been infected? Diane mentioned Jordan had a cough the previous morning, but she didn't say anything on the phone about her getting worse. Surely she would have shown signs by then. The report continued, saying that the military was called in to secure towns and cities, mainly to ensure people were not travelling to loved ones, and therefore increasing the risk of the virus spreading. The military were also confiscating and/or immobilizing all unauthorized vehicles so that people wouldn't try to get to family members and take the virus with them, spreading it like wildfire. That would make our journey difficult. In the footage shown on the newscast, the military seemed to be rounding up anyone found outside of their homes, putting them into controlled safe houses. I had to make sure I didn't end up in one of those, at least not until after I got home.

  I got up and reached for the phone again when we all heard an engine roar to life outside. It had been so quiet but for the newscast that it startled us. I rushed to the window to see three men getting into our car. I yelled as Thom ran out the front door with his gun out. Thom's exit from the front door was greeted by a gunshot shattering the wooden doorframe to his right, spraying shards of wood into his face. He ducked reactively, and backed up into the house again. The car kicked up dirt and started to pull away, Thom leaned out of the door and fired two random shots at the car, but they just flew through the air over the fields.

  "What the fuck are we supposed to do now?" Thom screamed.

  I walked over to him and put my hands on his shoulders.

  "Calm down, it’s okay. We can just walk for a while, I'm sure we’ll come across another farm soon, and we’re bound to find another car."

  I wasn't sure I believed my own words, but Thom seemed to, as did Isabel. I tried calling Diane again, but just got a busy signal. We stuck around for another hour, but I couldn't get through. We searched the whole house again, hoping to find a cell phone to bring with us, but came up empty handed. I brought the cordless phone anyway, figuring I would keep trying until it got out of range, which wouldn't take long, and we continued down the road heading east. It was getting late in the day now, and I was hoping we would find some sort of shelter before dark. None of us really wanted to be walking in pitch-blackness in this infected world, that much was certain.

  CHAPTER 13:

  THE GREEN MILES

  We spent nearly two days walking through the countryside. We saw nothing but fields upon fields for days, stopping in assorted farmhouses for supplies, food, and shelter. Every night around sunset, we would settle into some barn or house, somewhere we could rest safely. Strangely, we never saw a single vehicle on the road or on any properties. We found one more gun, a shotgun, in the basement of a farmhouse, but we could only find five shells for it. I took over the handgun and Thom took the heavier-duty shotgun, since he had some hunting experience. We found a hunting knife for Isabel, but neither Thom nor I ever planned on anything getting close enough to her that she would need to use it.

  On the third night, we stopped in a home that seemed to be close to a city center. We could see from the front of the house that it was situated high on a hill about a mile from town. It was already dark, so we decided to stay the night, get some rest, and head into the city in the morning. We could only assume it was either Scarborough or Pickering. We kept our fingers crossed that it was Pickering, one step closer to home, but the way things had been so far, it was difficult to gauge how far we had come.

  Once dawn cracked above the horizon, we went to the second story windows to get a good look out at the city in front of us. It appeared to be Scarborough. We could see a business area to the left, and a large mall to the right. Isabel took out a pair of binoculars we had acquired the night before, and looked out over the city. As she scanned the area, there was one thing of note that lay in the lenses. There seemed to be a large military presence moving its way into Scarborough. Some streets had checkpoints going into the city, and sandbagged checkpoints with gun mounts were being set up all over the place. To the south, where the mall was, the military presence didn't seem to be as heavy--not yet anyway. They seemed to have concentrated their efforts north of the 401 highway. We had a pow wow over a container of homemade cookies we had found in the same house as the binoculars, and decided the best course of action was to make our way in through the mall and out the far end, which would give us access to the myriad of apartment buildings on the other side. It would at least give us a good amount of cover to gain some ground, and we could gather some extra supplies.

  We made our way down the hill to the south, and crept along some fields in surrounding farmland so we could get close enough to the mall to get up to a loading dock. Once at the dock, we stuck to the walls and made our way around the building until we found an entrance on the lowest level by the bus terminal. We took a chance and smashed the lower glass panel of a door to get in. Once in, we walked down a darkened hallway until we reached the sun-drenched interior of the mall. Once out of the service hallway, we all stopped and took in the scene before us. It wasn't too often you got to see a mall completely empty. With all the bright colors from the vast array of merchandise, light coming through every window and skylight, refracting off all the glass displays everywhere and the silence of the place, it almost took on the appearance of a vast commercial cathedral. Which kind of made sense, most of us did like to kneel and pray before the almighty clearance signs, the altar of the discount rack. Take our daily bread from the creepy red clown or the fried chicken deity dressed all in white. Romero wasn't that far off when he thought we would all come here after we died. We just got here a little early.

  An abandoned mall was a very strange sight indeed. What was the point of all this consumerism with no consumers? Isabel turned to me with a smirk and a tilted head.

  "What?" I asked.

  "It just occurred to me," Isabel dryly replied. "Our world is overrun by zombie-like creatures, and we went to a mall? Just a little predictable isn't it?"

  We had a bit of a laugh over that, but it did make sense. If we were going to find anything we needed, it would be at the mall. We walked around for a while, taking stock of what we might need for the rest of the journey home. We got some flashlights, some prepared foods, knives, and a few cell phones, even though the ones we tried didn't seem to have any service whatsoever at this point. After our spree, we sat down in the food court and laid out our plan of action. Isabel had initially come with us to get to Kingston and to her mother, but obviously that was not a possibility anymore. I think she just wanted to be with someone, doing something. Our plan was to stop by Thom's house to get a couple of personal items, then to make it to Diane and Jordan in Oshawa. Maybe the military would be an option to help us at that point, but I wasn't about to sacrifice getting to Diane and Jordan just to be quarantined by the military. God knows when/if I would make it back home if I were detained by them. So this was our plan. I thanked them both repeatedly for wanting to come with me, especially since they probably would have been safer holed up somewhere. They dismissed my gratitude and said they wouldn’t have it any other way.

  We decided to try to find some sort of security office, thinking that if they had surveillance cameras, we could double check the area outside the mall before making our next move. Isabel seemed to be fairly familiar with the layout of the mall, so she led us in the general direction of where she thought it would be, and w
ithin a few minutes, we had found it. The glass windows of the office had been smashed out, and the door appeared to have been ripped off its hinges; it lay broken and twisted on the floor halfway through the doorframe. We stepped over it and into the office; there were papers and files everywhere, and furniture was haphazardly strewn all over the room. I walked behind the desk to the access door leading into the back office. That door was intact, but open. With my handgun drawn in front of me, I entered the back room, where it seemed the supervisor’s offices were, along with a few holding cells. I walked past the first cell, which was really nothing more than a reinforced closet with a steel door. I peered inside the thick meshed glass window into the cell. Darkness and nothing more. I stepped up to the second one, pressed my nose to the glass, and was greeted by a face thrown in front of mine, slamming into the glass and leaving a thick mucousy splat on it. I jumped back and the thing inside freaked out spasmodically, banging against the door like a rabid dog at a pound. Thom and Isabel had come into the room by now, and seemed a little amused by the fact that I had been startled. I paid them no mind and walked to the third cell more cautiously, looking inside. A man was slumped on the floor, seemingly not moving. As my face in the window cast a shadow over him, his head spun around, and he looked right at me. I momentarily jumped again, but this one did not leap at me, it stood up and looked out, staring into my eyes. I could hear a voice from the other side of the door.