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

by Howard, Bill

  He worked for a few years with a label producing underground hip-hop music, which is where he met Nicole. Nicole was an assistant to one of the artists Thom was working with and they hit it off instantly. After dating for about 6 months, they moved in together. After only 3 months of living together, Thom proposed to Nicole by playing a song he wrote for her over dinner that he recorded with Kelvin Mercer of De La Soul, who was a longtime friend of Thom's. Needless to say, it won her over and she said yes.

  Thom and Nicole (who were often teased about the Cruise/Kidman connection) moved into a cozy house in Pickering and they started up their own small hip-hop label, Clarity Records. It was quite successful and afforded them a comfortable life. In the summer of 2001, Nicole announced nonchalantly over some late night work that she was pregnant. The next time I saw Thom, he beamed as I had never seen him do before. Their daughter, Samantha (or Sam, for short), was born on March 15, 2002, and was the joy of their lives. They were the picture perfect family, right out of the pages of a magazine--or a baby food commercial. They were all so happy and content with their lives and their good fortune. Fortune is a funny thing though, as for some bizarre, unexplainable reason, it always tends to have a short shelf life.

  On December 11, 2008, Thom, Nicole, and Sam were visiting family in Oshawa, just east of Pickering. The weather had turned bad that day as they visited Nicole's parents, planning the Christmas ahead, and letting the grandparents have some fawning time over their precious granddaughter.

  As it was time to leave, they had to decide whether to stay the night or brave the storm. Thom opted to tackle the storm. Having lived in Ontario most of his life, he had seen some doozy's in the snowstorm department, and this one didn't look all that bad. Plus, it was only about a 40-minute drive home. They bundled up and headed out, blowing drifts circling around them as they loaded into the car. Thom liked to stay clear of the busier roads in weather like this; the panic of other drivers on the road seemed much worse to contend with than the snow itself.

  He took Winchester Road most of the way westbound into Ajax, the last town before Pickering. Winchester ran through some remote woods and farms, but it was a well-used and reliable road. As Thom drove cautiously over a small bridge and up over a hill he had traveled many times, he normally would have been alerted by headlamps as they beamed up into the falling snow, and he could have edged over to the right shoulder for safety. However, on that particular night, a 17-year-old boy named Caleb Martin thought it would be fun to go out with his friend and do donuts in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Sure enough, they had fun, but when he thought it would be just as much fun to turn off his headlights and cut the ignition on the way home, just to give his friend Dennis a fright on the near-abandoned Winchester Road, the evening took a turn for the worse. As Caleb hit the bottom of the first hill after turning off the lights, his car careened off to the left, fishtailing and then spinning 90 degrees, sliding sideways straight up the next hill. Caleb panicked and Dennis screamed. Caleb turned the ignition back on as the car slid up the hill, but by that time it was too late. All Thom saw was a bright flash of headlights burst off to his right onto the trees, and his eyes instinctively followed that light. When his vision switched back to the road, there was only enough time to see the passenger door of Caleb’s car slam into the front of his own car. The crash was thunderous, bashing Caleb's car violently back and off the road into the tree-lined ditch. Thom's car skidded forward and to the left, the trunk of the car swinging out towards the trees on the opposite side of the road. Thom's car was now moving with great momentum sideways and downhill. The sides of the tires pushed through the snow until they could push no more, and just stopped. The rest of Thom's car wasn’t finished moving yet, so it just rolled the rest of the way down the hill, a total of six times, until the bumper caught a pothole under the snow and pitched the car trunk over hood until it finally came to a stop upside down in the valley between the two hills. It took about 13 minutes before another car finally came down that road and saw the carnage that the collision had caused. 911 was called, and the paramedics from the fire department arrived on scene first. The two teenage boys were dead on the scene, still in their seats with their seatbelts fastened, Caleb with a massive head wound from contact with the doorframe and Dennis with a punctured heart and lung from his ribs collapsing after the case of beer on his lap met the airbag.

  When the first paramedic glanced into the overturned driver's window of Thom's car, he saw Thom looking about, his eyes frantically blinking, trying to get the blood out of them. He had just awoken from his blackout, and his hands frantically searched out in front of him, feeling the dash, the steering wheel, and finally the passenger seat. He couldn’t turn his head, as being upside down had forced him out of his seat, his cheek was pressed against the ceiling of the car interior and bent towards the onlooking paramedic. His hand searched blindly, but he could only feel the seat itself. He started shrieking to the medic, asking about Nicole and Sam. The blood on his face was now mixing with tears of hysteria, watering down his hairline as they streamed up his forehead. The paramedic looked past Thom, but there was no one in the passenger seat, only a dangling seat belt. Thom watched the medic's face as he turned to look behind Thom and into the back seat. The expression on the medic’s face blanched, his pupils dilated and his skin paled. He turned back towards Thom and assured him he would be alright. Thom started to sob deeply, not knowing what had happened or the state of his lovely girls. After a while, they managed to cut Thom's door off and cut through his seatbelt, sliding him out of the car and onto one of those trauma stretchers, putting a neck brace on him and immobilizing him onto the narrow board. As they lifted the stretcher and turned Thom towards the helicopter that had landed in a field by the road, he noticed a pale orange emergency blanket about 60 yards from the car, in the grass off to the side and about 5 feet from a tree. The blanket was covering something, someone. He could tell from the length of the shape that it had to be Nicole. His heart emptied and his sobs echoed throughout the now hollow chamber in his chest. He wouldn't find out for another hour that Sam was still in the car, but the cervical spine at the base of her skull had been shattered. She had died on impact. Upon hearing the news, Thom wished he had too.

  CHAPTER 10:

  IN COUNTRY

  We had been driving straight for about 15 minutes, and figured we must be somewhere on the outskirts of Toronto, heading towards Scarborough. We hadn't seen a living thing for the duration of the drive. Thom had moved into the back seat, and was using an emergency first aid kit that was stowed with the spare tire to clean up Isabel's wounds as best he could. We were driving through a lightly wooded area; the summer foliage was so thick you could only see in about 3 or 4 trees deep into the forest. Ever since we got away from that last pack of infected, my thoughts had turned back to Diane. Had she gotten Jordan out of daycare? Were they even at home? Did this thing spread outside of the city limits? I had to find out soon, it was driving me mad. We whizzed past a dirt driveway with a white mailbox posted at the end of it. I slammed on the brakes, causing Thom and Isabel to lurch into the backs of the front seats. They both looked at me with annoyed expressions.

  "There's a house there, back about 30 feet. I'm going crazy; I have to see if they have a phone and if it works. It’s getting late, and we’re going to have to stop for the night, it’s too risky to travel in the dark and I have to find out about Diane and Jordan. It might be my last chance for a while. "

  Thom's face softened, as did Isabel's, and they agreed to go to the house to see if there was anyone there. I pulled the car off to the side of the road, locked it, and we set off up the unpaved driveway.

  The house was small, tidy brick bungalow probably from built around 1950s. A weathered white-painted porch wrapped around the front and one side of it, and there was an old screen door on the front. Thom veered off to the left side of the porch, peering in through the windows. He motioned that he didn’t see anything. I walked up to the front d
oor with Isabel, and pulled open the screen door with an unusually loud screech. I tightened my fist inches from the wood surface of the old, wooden front door, and looked at Isabel. She shrugged, gave a nod towards the door, and tightened her grip on the tire iron that she found with the first aid kit in the car. I rapped my knuckles against the door three times, not too hard, but hard enough to be heard throughout the house. We waited a few minutes, but there was no answer. I tried the doorknob and it clicked in my hand, the door popping ajar. Thom rejoined us at the front and we stepped into the foyer.

  A dark wooden staircase ascended right in front of us, and to the left was a large living room. It appeared that straight down the hallway was a kitchen at the back of the house. We walked towards the living room, leaning into the space without fully entering the room. Thom called out for a response, but there was no reply. The room was tidy, it looked lived in, but not a soul to be found. There was a small side table with a cordless phone on it, which I snapped up pretty damn fast. I hit the talk button and listened. There was a dial tone. I dialed my home number and waited. One ring. Two. A click, then silence.

  "Hello? Diane?" My voice trembled.

  No one responded. Then I got a cut off signal, that annoying fast-repeating tone. I put the phone in my back pocket.

  "Let’s check the rest of the house, and then I'll try again."

  We lined back up and proceeded to the kitchen at the back. There was a plate with a half-eaten sandwich on it, and an untouched glass of milk. I felt the glass, it was not cold anymore, but the milk didn't smell spoiled, so it couldn't have been there too long. I didn't remember seeing any vehicles out front, so maybe the occupants left. Isabel stayed in the kitchen, looking through the cupboards for some food, while Thom and I went upstairs. The old wooden stairs creaked as we went up, the old carpet runner doing nothing to quell the noise. When we reached the hallway at the top of the stairs, we saw three doors, all of them opened to varying degrees. The first one we came upon was a bathroom. I opened the door and peered inside. Like the downstairs, it seemed undisturbed, but upon closer examination, there were small drops of red in the sink. They looked to be the consistency of blood, but it was not a large amount. It looked almost as if someone had cut themselves shaving. I glanced at Thom, who stepped beside me to examine the drops. He shrugged. I turned around, pulled back the shower curtain, and jumped back, banging into Thom and knocking us both into the bathroom vanity. There was a woman, maybe in her 60s, lying in the tub. There was no water in the tub, and she was fully dressed. She didn't appear to have any signs of trauma; there was no blood, and her clothes were intact. Her face was frozen in a creepy stare, but how else are you going to look when you're dead in a tub? As I turned back to Thom, I noticed something on the floor between the vanity and the toilet. I bent over and came back up with a straight razor. It had a small line of blood along its blade. Thom and I studied it, but we were both puzzled. I bent back over the tub and looked over the woman more carefully. I looked around her face, her neck, and finally at her hands. There was a grey smudge in the crook of her thumb on the right hand, and on the left wrist was a small cut, maybe an inch, and not very deep. I grabbed hold of her shoulder and lifted it off the bottom of the tub. We heard the rattle of something small and plastic hit the surface of the tub, and Thom had to reach in under her to find it while I held her up. His hand came back from the drain of the tub with a small orange pill bottle. It was empty. It was pretty easy to put the pieces together at that point, and we thought we should look around the rest of the house.

  The next room was a bedroom. It was nice, clean, and very sparse. The bed was made with hospital corners, and everything seemed in its place. We went back out into the hall, gave a shout downstairs to make sure all was kosher with Isabel, who responded in kind, then we went to the last room. Before the door was even open, we knew it was a child's room, mainly from the sparkly, handmade crayon-written sign that read "Jason". Once we had opened the door, we wished we had stopped the search at the first bedroom. A small boy who we could only presume to be Jason was lying face down in the bed, with a large peacock-like spatter of blood on the pillows and wall above him. Lying on the floor next to the bed was a Colt 45 automatic handgun. I only knew it was a Colt from the vast amount of times I’ve seen them used in movies. The whole picture of what had happened here flashed through my mind, and it wasn’t one I particularly cared to see. I covered up the boy and picked up the handgun, giving it to Thom, who reluctantly took it. We left the room, closing the door behind us.

  Once back downstairs, we told Isabel about Jason's room and the bathroom, after which Isabel had to sit down for a moment to comprehend it.

  When we went into the kitchen we noticed that Isabel had found lots of food and had assembled a makeshift meal on the table. Three bowls of Beefaroni, a plate of buttered bread, and three cold glasses of milk. A small bowl of apples accompanied the feast. After eating the meal in record time, we packed up a few food items in a knapsack we found in the hall closet, as well as a box of bullets for the gun, which we had found in the bedroom. As we sat around the table discussing what to do next, we heard a bang over our heads. We all looked up at once, staring at the ceiling. It seemed we stared for an hour. Another bang, followed by a scraping sound, and, finally, a scuffle across the floor. We all jumped up from our chairs, Thom’s gun already drawn.

  "What the fuck was that?" Thom muttered, his voice cracking a bit.

  "Let's just go." Isabel replied quickly.

  We gathered up our things and started moving down the hallway towards the front door, all of our heads turned with eyes focused on the top of the stairs. Just as my hand touched the doorknob, we heard a high-pitched screech from upstairs, and the sound of a door smashing against a wall. I turned the knob fast, and before I had the door open, there it was. The little boy we had seen on his bed with his head blown open was standing hunched at the top of the stairs, red foam dripping from his chin. His head moved in jerky, sudden movements, like a bird. We all froze. The head snapped and turned, and its eyes locked on us. Its mouth opened so wide, the chin almost touched its chest, and it let out the loudest, most piercing cry my ears have ever heard. I flung the door open as the thing leapt up on the banister and its tongue flicked out, spraying the foam out into the air over the foyer. As the door cracked against the wall behind it, we started moving out and the thing launched itself off the banister with powerful legs, throwing itself into the air between the stairs and us. Thom was the last one out, and as he stepped down the front porch stairs, he turned around and raised the gun, leveling it at the hole where the front door was. He turned just in time to see the thing land on the old floor in the foyer, dust puffing up between the floorboards from the force of its impact. Almost immediately, it was up on all fours, crawling like an animal, running towards us. Thom had the gun pointed right at it, but he didn’t fire. His hand shook. We were about 10 feet ahead of Thom when the thing jumped off the porch and right into Thom's torso, both of them hitting the ground and rolling together in a ball of arms and legs. Isabel and I both stopped and turned back, our feet taking us towards the Thom/thing in the dirt. The gun had flung from Thom's hand and onto the lawn, so Isabel made a run for it as I approached Thom. I didn’t know how to react, what to do. They were rolling around like fighting dogs, yelps and squeals coming from the thing, grunts from Thom. I reached in to the flurry and grabbed the thing by the hair, pulling its head up from the mess. Its face was stained red and yellow, its eyes wild. Once it looked up at me, I kicked my foot right into its face, knocking it backwards off Thom. Its nails were holding Thom on the shoulders so tight that when I kicked it, it tore Thom's shirt through and ripped flesh from his shoulder blades. At least it let go of him and tumbled head over heels past Thom's feet. Thom scrambled up fast, and moved in behind me, blood soaking the back of his shirt. The thing flailed for a moment like an insect on its back, and then righted itself. Again, its arms and legs went out in all directions, solidifying i
ts stance in the dirt. It belched out a rough, gravelly roar and moved forward again. I stuck out my arm behind me to the side of Thom, and pushed us both to the left, where we fell on our sides. The thing flew right past us and skidded into the driveway, spinning as it stopped, and facing us once more. A loud crack echoed through the air as the side mirror of the car exploded, the pieces flying in all directions. Thom and I both looked over, startled. Isabel was kneeling in the lawn aiming the gun at the thing, smoke lazily creeping skyward from the barrel. The thing’s head jerked towards Isabel, and in an instant, it was headed her way. I jumped up and started towards it as it ran, but my feet slid under the loose gravel and I fell forward, my face planting into the rocky driveway. As my slide came to a stop, a foot slammed into the dirt in front of my face, kicking dust up into my eyes. I pulled my head back and wiped my eyes, just in time to see Thom, who had hurdled over me, chasing down the wild boy. Another shot rang out when the thing was only about 8 feet from Isabel; the bullet caught it on the left side of the abdomen, forcing the boy into a grotesque pirouette, thumping onto its side on the ground just in front of Isabel. Thom dropped onto it as it fell, pushing its head into the lawn, jaws snapping. Its arms shot out, looking for something to grab, and found Isabel's ankle. As soon as its fingers felt flesh, it pulled, dropping Isabel to the ground. The gun fell out of her hand and into the grass again. Isabel turned and tried to crawl away, but the thing’s grip was too strong; in fact, it began to pull her towards itself. Thom saw the hand around Isabel's ankle, as well as the look of fear in Isabel's eyes as they welled up with tears. He looked down at the thing, gazed into the large wound on the back of its head, and saw it for the first time as a thing, and not as a young boy. He knew if it got Isabel, it would kill her. He reached down under the things chin with both hands, and while sitting on its back, threw all of his weight in the opposite direction, pulling its chin up and around until it met its own back. The crack was like that of a thick tree branch breaking under a great weight. Finally it stopped moving, and its grip on Isabel loosened. Its once-wild eyes now looked empty staring up at Thom from above its back. Thom stood up and stepped over it, reaching out for Isabel. She took his hand and clumsily got to her feet, falling into his tight embrace as soon as she was up. Thom reciprocated the hug, and they stood there for a moment together. By that time I was back on my feet, and I just stood there, catching my breath, wondering what the hell just happened. Then I remembered the phone. My hand went to my back pocket, but it was empty.