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

by Howard, Bill

  “We should get going. We have a lot of ground to cover today.”

  Ellie nodded and we went back upstairs. I gathered some clothes Ellie gave me that had belonged to her ex-husband and went to the second bathroom to have a hot shower, Ellie getting ready in the en suite. I felt better after the shower, the first one I had in days. We gathered our packs, Ellie leashed up Max, and we left the house, heading back into the woods, and back on track to get home to Diane and Jordan.

  CHAPTER 26:

  ELEANOR SUZANNA CROFT

  Eleanor Suzanna Croft was born in Rouen, France, on November 30, 1962. Her parents, Bernard and Sylvie Bergeron were native Parisians, Bernard a carpenter and house painter and Sylvie a research scientist. Rouen was a quaint town that had been around since medieval times and still had many historic buildings to show for it. It was also famous for being the place where Joan of Arc was executed, although the tourism industry spun a more positive approach by offering many tourists information on the life of Joan of Arc instead of focusing on the execution. Eleanor had six brothers, and was the youngest of all the Bergeron children. She excelled in all her years of school, and was brought up a tough and independent girl by her six protective brothers. She was quite domineering as a teenager and didn’t usually hang on to boyfriends too long, whether it was because her brothers scared them off, or because they were overwhelmed by her independence and leave of their own accord. But while attending Paris Descartes University doing pharmaceutical research, she met Jeremy Croft, a Canadian student studying Mathematics. Jeremy seemed to not be put off by Ellie’s strong personality; in fact, it gelled quite well with his own sensibilities. Ellie and Jeremy dated for the entire length of their educations at Descartes, and upon graduation decided to get married.

  They got married in the Church of St. Ouen, a beautiful, gothic, medieval church in Rouen. After their wedding ceremony and an extended honeymoon in Spain, Ellie and Jeremy decided to move to Canada, where Jeremy had a position waiting for him at the University of Toronto. They bought a large farm with a beautiful, century-old home north of Scarborough, where Jeremy commuted to Toronto to the University, and Ellie mostly stayed home to raise their three kids. She also did some work from home, writing medical papers and travelling now and then to do research and attend conferences. Near the end of 2006, Jeremy had confronted Ellie and confessed to an affair he had with a fellow professor at the university. The affair had been short-lived and had since ended, but Jeremy felt the need to divulge the truth to Ellie. After the initial turmoil that arose from the news, Ellie and Jeremy talked things out and decided it would be best if Jeremy moved out. Shortly after this decision, Jeremy’s affair was also found out at the University, and before things got any worse, he voluntarily left his position and took another job at a private school in Whitby. He moved to a small house north of Oshawa in the town of Brooklin. The kids stayed with Ellie on the farm and had regular visits and extended stays with their father. Ellie eventually met someone else, Nate, whom she came to care for very much. Nate got along great with the kids, but they took their relationship very slow for everyone’s sake. Ellie still had a very good relationship with Jeremy, and they still cared deeply about one another. They handled their lives with dignity and maturity, and made sure that the well-being of their children was their first priority. In the end, Ellie was happy living in her farmhouse with her beautiful kids, and finding love again with Nate was the cherry on top. It was just unfortunate that Ellie happened to be alone on the night when the infection hit.

  CHAPTER 27:

  WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE

  Ellie and I walked through the dense woods of Scarborough for a few hours, talking and swapping stories of our kids, our childhoods, and marriage. After all the chaos, it was nice to be away from anything that wanted to kill us. I started to felt guilty after a while though; it didn’t seem right to be walking through the woods with a woman, talking and laughing, when I didn’t even know the fate of my own wife and daughter. But I kept telling myself that if we didn’t distract ourselves with light conversation, we would be overcome by the need to talk about how there may be no hope for any of us, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. After a while, we came to a dead-end at a random chain-link security fence, right in the middle of the woods. It didn’t seem to be behind a house or any kind of dwelling; in fact, there didn’t seem to be anything on the other side of it. Just a chain link fence about six feet tall, with barbed wire on top, stretching as far as we could see in each direction, smack in the middle of the woods. We were quite puzzled by its existence, but we had to keep going, so we helped each other over it, using some extra shirts from our packs to throw over the barbed wire and safely drop to the other side. It was no treat trying to get Max over the fence, but somehow we managed to get him up and over it without harming him. After we hopped the fence we continued on for about 500 meters until we came to a paved road. Only it was more of a path than a road. There were no markings, no curbs, no buildings, just a paved path. We decided to follow it and after another short jaunt, we came across a corrugated metal building, almost the sort you would see housing farm equipment or supplies. We approached it carefully, our guns drawn and ready. We each took a side and circled the building, going around it until we met up again at the front where we stood on either side of a single door. I motioned for Ellie to cover me and I turned the door handle and opened the door. I stepped inside with my handgun out, and saw three golf cart type vehicles parked inside. There were also various supplies and tools. Rakes, shovels, garbage bags, and the like. I walked around one of the dark green carts to the front and looked at the logo on the bumper. It was of a stylized deer head with large antlers. I recognized it immediately from seeing it hundreds of times throughout my life. We were in the Toronto Zoo. I went back out and told Ellie and then we both had a giggle. It was kind of cool that we had inadvertently snuck into the zoo. Anyone who grew up in this area of Ontario was a frequent visitor; it was practically a pre-requisite to living here. Although we thought it would be fun to commandeer a cart, we opted to keep walking, just to ensure we didn’t draw any attention to ourselves. We came across a larger building made mostly of concrete, and went inside. It seemed to be a medical and feed building. There were a few incubator rooms, some operating rooms, and various medical supplies. There were also large sorting rooms, where every manner of meal was prepared for the animals, from large steaks and fish to flash-frozen mice and rodents, to insects and plants. We rustled up a bowl of food for Max, then filled up our water bottles and headed back out. After leaving the building, we continued on through the zoo. There didn’t seem to be anyone here, but most of the animals were still in their environments, and most didn’t seem to notice anything was out of the ordinary. We eventually reached the different continental pavilions--the zoo was laid out by continental groupings, Africa, Eurasia, The Americas, etc. The Americas pavilion was the first we encountered. We decided against going inside it, as we didn’t know what kind of access we would have to get back out should the main door not be an option.

  When we got to the African pavilion area, we stood in shock for a second. It looked like a war had occurred here. There were bodies everywhere. They were scattered about so randomly it seemed as if just as crowds were running out of the area, a bomb was dropped on them. People were torn apart, there was blood all over everything, and limbs were scattered everywhere. Near the African restaurant, all the outdoor tables and chairs had been knocked over; the small pizza kiosk was smashed to hell. Bodies were littered everywhere, many of them mangled beyond imagination. It was a total bloodbath. This was much more extreme than anything else either one of us had seen so far since the outbreak.

  We cautiously walked through the sea of corpses; in some places, the blood was as deep as the soles of our shoes. We reached the other side of the pavilion and started downhill towards the zoo entrance. Once out of the bloody massacre and just outside of the African area, we reached a long, winding, elevated walkway.
It snaked around a few cages so that you could walk along it and look at the animals enclosed from different angles. The terrain in the area was steep, so it seemed to be our best bet to get to the entrance and back on track. We started down the planked walkway with our guns out, each of us taking a different side to guard. Max went with Ellie. He seemed quite tense; the hair on his haunches rose. The enclosures were for the tigers, and I could see one on my side walking the length of the enclosure, pacing from one end to the other right up along the fence. I wondered what would happen if no one could get in to feed the animals now that the place had been abandoned. Then I stopped myself from thinking about it. It was the kind of thing that could drive you mad in a situation like this. Wondering about all the people, the animals, everything. I just couldn’t go there. We had to concentrate on the task at hand--get home, alive.

  About midway down the walkway, we heard a thumping on the old wooden boards beneath our feet. We both stopped, hearing it at the same time, and looked down. The thumping moved, and then split in opposite directions. Max took a steady stance and began a low warning growl. The noise went on ahead of us and out to each side. We started to step backwards, slowly, trying not to let the wooden boards betray our presence. After a moment or two of silence, we saw a hand reach up from the left side of the walkway, grasp the railing, and haul up its attached body. It was an infected man, very grey in the skin now, his clothes filthy, dried blood caking his face. He pulled himself up onto the walkway, but did not acknowledge our presence. Then the same scenario happened on the other side, a hand, followed by an infected male. Once they were both up, they raised their heads slightly and sniffed the air, bodies hunched over and rail thin. One of them approached the other and let out small raspy barks. It was like watching a National Geographic special on the behavior of infected humans. Ellie tightened her grip on Max’s leash, keeping the dog from making any noise. The infected got in close to each other and sniffed, then they let out a few more barks and there was some snapping of jaws.

  Suddenly, the tiger in the cage below let out a low growl, barely audible, but you could feel the rumbling of it, like a subwoofer. The infected men turned in unison and went to the railing, looking over and into the enclosure that contained the tiger. They continued sniffing, and started pushing each other, nails tearing at each other’s skin. Then one of them lashed out hard, scraping flesh right off the first one’s face. The both lowered onto defensive poses, almost crouching on all fours. They started biting at each other like wild dogs. The sound was loud, and we started getting paranoid that this was going to attract other infected to our suspended, impossible to get off of, walkway. We backtracked and moved as slowly and silently as we could, walking in reverse. As we moved backwards, my back nudged up against something and I turned. The fact that a meaty, six-foot-six man around 350 lbs could even be one of the infected was astounding to behold. As soon as my eyes met his, I ducked down as his arms swung over my head. While I was low, I held my gun to his kneecap and fired. His kneecap shattered and the leg actually split apart, toppling him onto his left side. The shot startled Ellie and Max, and they both turned in our direction. She only caught sight of me for a moment as the huge man fell into her line of sight, blocking me from her line of vision. She raised her gun to the man, but, as her attention was diverted to us, she missed the fact that the original two wild infected were now running in our direction. I caught their movement out of the corner of my eye and fired my pistol again, catching one of them on the left side of its chest, making him lose his footing for a second, but he quickly regained it. The large man now turned over, the wooden planks creaking under his weight. As he reached up, Ellie fired a shot into the top of his head with her shotgun. The shot thrust his entire frame across the walkway and up against the side wall. He actually slid right past me. Once he hit the wall, he slumped to the boards, blood oozing out of the massive wound in his head. The other two were upon Ellie and Max now, and Ellie swung around and pulled her trigger. The quiet click was not the sound either of us wanted to hear. Ellie’s old shotgun was a two-barrel side-by-side, and there had only been one shell left in it, used on the big man. Ellie looked at me with her eyes the size of saucers. I raised myself into a crouch, steadying on one knee and took aim at the one closest to Ellie. I squeezed the trigger just as a large hand grabbed my foot and I was dragged back to the wooden floor by my ankles. The shot went stray into the woods. The massive infected man was not dead, in fact he seemed quite spritely in his eagerness to pull me into his clutches. He grabbed my pants by the belt and started to drag me to him, blood running in endless streams down his whole head. I quickly looked back at Ellie and saw her and one of the infected playing tug of war with her shotgun, each of them with a firm grip pulling back and forth. Max had a firm jaw lock on one of its legs and was trying to tug it off Ellie. I couldn’t see where the second one was. I turned back to the Jolly Grey Giant and turned my gun on him, placing it against his forehead. Like a flash one of his hands wrapped around mine, the size of his hand covering mine and the gun in its grip. I pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. I pulled on my arm, trying to pull my hand back out of his, but it didn’t budge. He had me in close to him now, my chest to his, my face directly under his chin. I could smell dirt and sweat on him. He opened his huge jaw and angled his head down towards mine, looking like he was about to swallow my entire head whole. A scream broke through the grunting and he stopped, raising his head to see what the noise was about. I could only see over his right shoulder, and something flew through the air right over it and into the woods behind him. A deep, thundering roar came from behind me, a much deeper and more resonant roar than I had heard from any of the infected so far. The man holding me loosened his grip and literally threw me aside; I could feel the wood splintering into my shoulder as I slid a solid ten feet up the walkway. Once I had come to a stop I turned around and looked back. Ellie was on the ground with one of the infected on top of her, but it was distracted now too and looking the other way. Max had been barking and taking bites out of the thing’s leg, but even he had stopped and was barking in the other direction now. I turned my head and could feel my body instantly break out into a cold sweat. Standing in the middle of the walkway, and taking up almost every inch of it, was a massive silverback gorilla. In one of its huge hands it held a human head that had belonged to one of the infected, dragging it against the floor of the deck. Its teeth were bared as the large man who had almost eaten me charged it. The gorilla stood its ground, and once the man was within arm’s reach, the gorilla struck out and grabbed the man, the its hand covering the infected giant’s whole face, its fingers on the back of his head. It forced the man downwards, smashing a hole in the deck, and crushing the giant’s head. The man’s body went instantly limp. The first infected man was already off Ellie and running towards the gorilla, leaping through the air and landing on its back. It immediately sunk its teeth through the black hair and into the gorillas shoulder, but the gorilla barely reacted. Ellie got back up and ran to me with Max in tow. The gorilla let go of the large man’s head, and also of the detached head in the other hand. It reached up over its shoulder, grabbed the infected man by the right arm, and yanked him off, throwing him to the ground. The gorilla then raised its massive head and roared.

  And then we saw its shockingly yellow eyes, and a great wave of fear sunk in our guts. As this was going on, we heard the sound of shots being fired from the bottom of the walkway. We couldn’t see who was there from where we stood, but we were a little apprehensive about running into anyone else who had a gun. The gorilla briefly turned towards the sound, and then returned to his pummeling of the infected men. We turned to run back in the direction we had come from. As I turned my head back as we ran, I saw that the gorilla had the infected man in both hands and was tearing at his torso with its huge jaws. The guy was practically bitten in half and still he was flailing wildly. We continued to run at full hilt, keeping to the left side of the walkway, hoping the gorilla would
n’t even notice us while he was having his snack. We weren’t so lucky. As we ran up the walkway on the other side, we were directly across from the gorilla now, and its head spun to watch us running. The gorilla reared up on its legs, making it seem like it was a hundred feet tall. It roared out and beat its chest, and I don’t think I have ever run faster than I did then. It turned in our direction and started to dash on its arms and legs, and I suddenly felt like I was watching a King Kong movie, but much more terrifying. A hoard of infected had appeared behind the gorilla and were throwing themselves at it, latching on like lionesses on a zebra. It must have looked like a mighty fine meal to them, because they drew to it like flies to road kill. One moment later the gorilla was covered in a coat of biting, spewing infected, and it stopped mid-run to pick a few off of him, flinging them far into the woods, ripping others in half. We came around to the top of the walkway, running full steam and headed straight for the African Pavilion. The idea of being indoors didn’t seem too appealing, but at least it would get us out of sight, and that was crucial at this point.

  We flung open the heavy glass doors and ran into the damp humidity of the African environment. There were large, leafy green plants everywhere, trees and ponds, small birds and various other creatures loose in the simulated jungle. Some long-necked bird with a bright blue head swooped by my head as I entered. The interior of the pavilion was massive. There were various glass housings and open, concrete-encased enclosures for many different types of animals. The larger enclosures seemed to have various methods to keep the animals so onlookers could see the animals without the obstruction of ugly fences and the sort. Many had moats that ran around the environment to prevent the animal from getting out. We passed a pygmy hippo, which basically looked like a full-sized hippo but it was about the size of a large dog. We also passed a python laid out in a tree-lined glass enclosure; the sheer size of the snake was impressive to say the least. We got to the center of the building and went up a concrete ramp to the highest point. Here there was a small seating area with three windows looking into an area that I assume was used for segregating animals that might be ill, as well as an observation point where you could see out over an earthy grass environment; large trees populated the dirt hill, there were big stones for climbing, and a rope netting attached to high lookouts atop tall poles. It seemed to be some sort of monkey habitat. We walked slowly across the observation area, but we couldn’t see any movement anywhere. The thick smell of animals lingered in the air, especially with the humidity in the building; it produced a musk that you could feel through your clothes. We made it to the opposite side of the walkway when we heard something coming from the dirt hill. We ducked into a corner by a large swinging door, which afforded us a view of the area through a glass display window designed for kids to interact with the animals. We saw nothing at first, and then there was movement beyond one of the large rocks. A woman stumbled out, tripping a little on the loose earth. She was clearly infected, as evidenced by her dirty, ripped clothes and blood-smeared face. We couldn’t make out her eyes from where we were, but we had no doubt. She walked along, seemingly very weak, dragging her feet in the dirt. She stopped, her head raising and sniffing the air, her eyes constantly scanning the area. She spun around suddenly, turning towards one of the large poles with the nets attached. A small monkey, looking like the monkey from Raiders of the Lost Ark, was sitting high atop the pole, swaying slightly from side-to-side. The infected woman looked up at it and barked out a few hoarse belches, the usual pink foam dripping off her chin. The monkey leaned forward and screeched out a couple warnings of its own. The infected woman started banging on the pole, agitating the monkey. They kept up their exchange for a few minutes until the monkey leapt off the pole and onto the woman’s head, scratching and clawing at her face. She coughed out a rough scream as she grasped at the literal monkey on her back. The woman continued to give off the infected equivalent of a scream as another monkey appeared out of nowhere and landed on her back, also commencing with scratching the hell out of her. We just watched in amazement; we should have been running, but we were spellbound. Within another three minutes, there was a massive grouping of monkeys covering the woman from head to toe, all clawing and ripping at her flesh. At this point we couldn’t even see the woman anymore, just a woman-sized tower of brown and black fur. She eventually fell over, giving in to the pressure of the primates tearing her open. Once she fell, the monkeys tore into her torso, pulling out whatever they could get their opposable thumbs on. They plucked out her eyes, ripped the hair from her scalp. I leaned back and motioned for Ellie to start moving through the doors, and she leaned over and grabbed the handle. With a very slight tug, she pulled the door open and a piercing cry from the old door hinges cut through the damp air. I quickly looked back at the monkeys, cringing. They were still all over the corpse of the infected woman, but every single monkey head was looking in our direction. And along with every little head, there was a pair of bright yellow eyes to go with it. I think I actually yelled ‘run’ to Ellie, even though we were both already moving through the door. The monkeys started leaping up off the body and onto the poles. I figured we had to be pretty safe; these areas were made to contain animals after all. After a second, I looked back, and I couldn’t see one monkey anywhere. With my hand on Ellie’s shoulder, I slowed us both down to take stock of whatever was happening. We looked all over the tropical area we were now in. While we could still see the monkey hill through the upper glass partition in this room, there were no monkeys. Then I heard a faint squeaking sound coming from above us. I looked up to see that a window in the all-glass ceiling had been smashed open, and the leaves on the tops of the trees in here were swaying back and forth near the opening. Something had just come in or gone out through that hole. We prayed it was the latter. The quick chirping sounds and the rustling of leaves in the treetops led us to believe we were not going to be that Lucky. I looked into the leafy canopy and squinted my eyes, trying to make out the movement that I could hear but not see. Just as an image in a camera comes into focus with the twisting of the lens, multiple sets of yellow eyes came into view amongst the leaves. Ellie and I took off towards the opposite side of the room as groups of infected spider monkeys followed along in the treetops, leaping from branch to branch and all letting out deafening shrieks. We reached the outer door just as the monkeys descended from the foliage, dropping on us like oversized hairy raindrops. Most missed us and hit the floor, but two landed on my back and one dropped onto Ellie’s shoulder. The sudden force of the primates on us buckled our knees and we fell to the concrete floor. The monkeys scratched and clawed at us, and we desperately tried to hold their heads away from us to keep the long eyeteeth at a distance. The strength of the little monkeys was overwhelming. Just as I managed to throw one off, another would jump on. Ellie was having the same problem, with more monkeys seemingly appearing out of nowhere every second. Max barked and snapped at the monkeys, but they were too fast for him to keep up. I reached for the door, thinking that if we could at least get outside we might be able to trap some of them in. I grabbed hold of the handle with one hand, my other hand clamped over the face of one particularly angry beast, the teeth scraping against my palm. I flung the door open and yelled for Ellie to go through. She did so even though she had three monkeys hanging off her; Max had practically dragged her. I followed immediately behind her, shoving a tree branch through the handles as we worked to pry the monkeys off of us once we were outside. The monkeys inside the pavilion were climbing up the glass doors in frenetic fits, trying to get at us. We managed to get a few off us, but they just seemed to scurry right back, and we were getting exhausted and starting to lose the fight. Just as my arms were starting to give out from holding the foaming, snapping jaws at bay, a loud boom crackled through the air behind us, echoing throughout the entire zoo. The monkeys all startled and jumped off us, running into the bushes and up over the buildings. Ellie, Max, and I were just as alarmed; my shoulders were still hunched ove
r as we turned around. If I thought I was shocked to see infected primates today, to say I was more surprised to see Clive and Thom standing there would have been an understatement.