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 centre. 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 within 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 plat 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.
"Good God, thank you. My name is John, please, I locked myself in here, the keys are over there on the floor, please let me out..."
He looked and sounded sane, there was nothing raving about him. I turned where he had indicated and sure enough, a large round key ring was on the floor with a dozen or so keys on it. I picked it up and held it to the window. He motioned for me to open the door. I felt it would be okay, he wasn't acting anything like any of the things we had encountered. Thom and Isabel agreed so I opened the cell door. John practically fell out of the room, taking a deep breath of non-holding-cell air. After drinking a bottle of water we had given him, he proceeded to explain to us that they were overrun with hoards of the infected, mostly stemming from a flu clinic that was located in the mall. When the proverbial "shit" hit the fan, he locked himself in the cell, even though he knew he could not get out unless someone got him out. I supposed he was right, it is preferable to being torn apart or eaten alive. We updated John on all we knew, about the military setting up across the highway, and our plan as to where we were headed and why. John said he had a brother in Lindsey, and he would be grateful if he could accompany us as far as we were going, safety in numbers and all. We agreed. John led us to the back of the security office, to a small room that hosted a bank of surveillance monitors. The room seemed completely intact, but John said no one was in it at the time of the outbreak, so I guess there was no reason for one of those things to go in if there was nothing to eat. We looked over all the screens, surveying the entire mall from the strange oscillating eye of the various cameras situated all over the property. No one in sporting goods; no one in the movie theatre. Not your typical busy day at the mall. One camera was on the bare storefront that housed the clinic, which had all of its windows papered over, as it was an abandoned unit and waiting to be leased. It seems that after a mob of infected started running amok, some mall security officers locked up the clinic doors, trapping the remaining dozen or so infected inside the store. In another camera view inside the clinic we saw dozens of infected still there, lying around barely moving. We could see small movements, but most of them were just sitting still; some were rocking back and forth. One small boy sat in the middle of the room, stoic as a statue, staring at the lens of the camera, at us. it sent a cold shiver down each of our spines.
