Sean looked through the glass in the door. “The street’s empty—how dangerous can an empty street be?”
“Okay.” She squeezed his hand. “But if anyone appears, we come right back in, kids. Okay? And we absolutely don’t touch anyone or anything.”
Ella and Oscar were already pushing against the door while Sean was trying to pull it in. They showed no signs of having heard her. Zac appeared at the end of the hall, somehow aware despite his headphones that something was going on.
And there they were, lined up along the veranda for no good reason, Oscar’s chin just reaching the top of the porch brick wall. Last time he was out here, she’d had to hold him up. Ella stood next to him, jumping up and down to try to see over. She swung herself to the opening in the wall in front of the door, holding on to the safety of the bricks with one hand. Zac lounged with one arm rested on Oscar’s head.
Hannah watched them as much as she watched the street. It was like freewheeling downhill for the first time, unconvinced the brakes would work. Thrilling and seductive.
“Hey.” Sean held an arm out to her. “Relax. There’s five of us, if anyone comes along we can take them. Ella can nibble their knees.”
She squeezed in between Zac and Sean. “So this is what the world is like now.” She looked around. “Not much different.”
The house with the broken front door, unkempt lawns. Plastic shopping bags of garbage tied at the top punctuated the footpath, like secret cairns marking hidden occupation. No visible people, no audible voices, only the sweet, pervasive smell of decay and the hint of movement around the bags of garbage in her peripheral vision. A tiny shock reminded her that it didn’t used to look like this.
The outsideness kept their interest. It would be theirs again, they would inhabit this world, they just had to wait. For the time being, they held the battlements of her fortress and her keep. Before she knew it, they would reclaim the street as well.
“I’m done.” Sean stretched. “Fascinating as this is, time to go in.”
“Oh, Dad, go on, Dad, just five minutes more,” Oscar pleaded. It was as if the air was sweeter. Ella looked mournful.
“I’ll look after them. I won’t let them do anything stupid. You can go in.” Zac looked every second of his fourteen years.
Hannah didn’t have to consider. “No, not today. In we go.”
“There’s no one on the street,” Sean cajoled, as if she were an irrational toddler. “They can be inside the second they see someone. You’ll come inside the second you see someone, won’t you, kids?”
The two little ones sang “yes” in chorus while Zac looked on as though the question were beneath reply.
“And you’ll do everything Zac tells you to without arguing?”
“Yes.”
They left the kids, faces into the breeze, arranged like three bears—little Ella, medium-sized Oscar, and Zac at the end. The living room felt bigger. They had the whole sofa to themselves. Without standing up, they could pick up the phone, switch on the television, or open the laptop. They could turn the world on and off.
As Sean flicked between channels—news from overseas, sitcoms—roaming for something, he didn’t know what, Hannah turned away. Eventually she would have to surrender her sheltered ignorance, but not yet. She traced new lines on his face, the weariness and tension that had become habit. He saw her looking at him and smiled. She ran her finger down the vein on his temple. “Can this be over now?”
The tightness, the weariness, evaporated. “We just have to be a bit more patient.”
“I wish the world could stay out there.” She shrugged. “I still haven’t checked my email. I don’t know if I’ll have lots of messages or none at all. Which would be worse? Nobody wanting me, or too many people wanting me?”
“I want you. I need you.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. I could be your least favorite person in the world and right now you’d still need me.” She lay her head down on the back of the sofa. It hung between them, the thought that if they never checked their email, they would never have to know if some of their friends were permanently silent.
“Yeah.” He wasn’t really listening, and she was left free to watch the internal mechanisms of his mind play out on his face. She saw his thoughts change track again. “Do you reckon they’d be delivering chocolate biscuits yet?”
The front grille opened and closed with a slam. Two sets of small feet scampered down the hallway. Oscar reached the door first. “There’s something in the street. Zac said you have to come.”
“He said it’s Mr. Whippy. Can we have an ice cream?”
“It’s not Mr. Whippy.”
“That’s what Zac said.”
“Mr. Whippy has a song.”
“Can we have an ice cream?”
Hannah was already halfway down the hall before Sean got himself reluctantly off the sofa. He called from behind, “It’s not going to be Mr. Whippy. It’ll only be a truck, guys.” He caught up with them and swung Ella up into his arms. “Let’s have a look, but there won’t be any ice cream.”
Zac was out on the porch, leaning over the wall, his feet off the ground. “I heard it just before. You have to be quiet. I think it’s going away.”
“Your dad says we can’t have ice cream. He says it’s not Mr. Whippy.”
“I said they had food, not ice cream.”
“Who had food, Zac? You’re not making a lot of sense.”
“I could barely hear it, it came from that way.” He pointed towards the intersection in the direction of Lily’s shop. “I heard a voice on a loudspeaker and a truck.”
“We didn’t hear anything.”
“You were in the house. But they said something about food. We have to go. We have to have a look.”
Hannah was pretty sure that if she said no, he’d vault the fence and go anyway. “Look, Zac, you’ve got no idea what’s out there.”
“Here’s the plan.” Sean cut her off. “We go together. Everyone holds someone’s hand and the instant I say, you run straight home. Promise?”
Oscar and Ella nodded solemnly and said, “Promise.” Zac muttered, “Sure.”
“No. Just no.” The voice inside, the one that says, How will this sound when you have to explain it to someone else? kicked in. “You don’t wander off into the middle of an epidemic. You don’t spend six weeks inside, then risk being exposed.”
“But the graph, Mum, my graph.”
“A graph won’t keep you safe. A graph is only statistics. It doesn’t say anything about us.”
“Dad, my graph.”
“He’s got a point.”
“You have got to be kidding me. You cannot think this is acceptable.”
“We can look, only look.”
“You trust Ella and Oscar not to touch? And what are you going to do if they slip? Give them a good dose of statistics? Treat them with Who’d have thought that would happen? No one takes a step off the porch.”
“To the corner and no further.”
“No. No. No.”
Sean already had ahold of Ella with one hand and Oscar with the other. Hannah was marooned at the front door, with no way to anchor them. Even if she could convince Sean, in the few seconds before he hit the stairs, not to go, Zac was almost certainly beyond her persuasion. She could stand firm and lose all control or mitigate what was going to happen with or without her. “No one goes anywhere unless they have a mask and gloves.”
“Are you serious, Mum? They’ll be gone.”
She stamped her foot. “A second. I’ll be a second.” She looked fiercely at Sean. “Promise me you won’t let them go until I get back. Or everyone goes inside right now.”
Hannah grabbed a handful each from the box of gloves and the pile of masks on the hallway table. She put the oversized gloves and mask on Ella while Sean helped Oscar with his.
“Pull it tight, Zac, or it’ll slip off and it won’t keep the contamination out.”
“I know.”
>
As soon as Zac had them on, he headed down the steps.
“Wait for the rest of us, Zac. I mean it. And you hold my hand or we don’t go.”
“No way.”
“Okay then, you don’t have to hold my hand.” Although Hannah felt a little scorned. “Hold Oscar’s hand, he can hold my hand. And you’re responsible for him too.”
“Yeah, fine. Hurry up.” Zac was down the stairs, grabbing Oscar’s hand on the way. “Walk faster. They’ll be gone.”
Hannah jogged, clutching for the free hand flapping behind Oscar. The farther from home they went, the faster Zac moved. Sean brought up the rear, with Ella riding piggyback.
“They were up this way. I heard them.”
“This is as far as I agreed to go. Now we go back.”
But Zac didn’t slacken his pace, and Hannah could do nothing but keep up. The instant they rounded the corner, everything felt wrong. The shops were never this quiet. Even at night, there was always someone at Lily’s looking for milk, a tin of cat food, or a late-night tub of ice cream. Lily’s shattered front window spilled into the gutter, light glittering on the shards of glass.
Zac slowed his tug on the towline of Oscar and Hannah as they came to the shop front. The safety glass lay as four large pieces in rough proximity to each other. Someone had jimmied the expanding grille that was supposed to protect the door. The window had been smashed out from the inside. All the shops had been vandalized—only the pharmacy escaped. It was protected by a metal roller door, now covered in large dents.
Lily’s cheap white melamine shelves were empty. They looked small and badly made without their rows of tins and packets. The door to the fridge was open, and an empty plastic jug lay in front of it in a pool of milk. Even from outside, the rank, sour smell made Hannah gag. Someone had played a game of cricket with the packets of flour. The floor was littered with their exploded paper shells, haloed by circular white flour spatter patterns. Underneath, a dark, dirty dusting of biscuit crumbs had congealed in starbursts of broken eggs. A pile of Mars Bar wrappers sat next to a clean person-sized patch on the floor and an empty shelf. Toilet paper festooned the fluorescent lights.
“Shhh. I hear something.” Zac stood like a meerkat in the intersection.
Sean pulled up straight. “It’s a loudspeaker.”
“Like I said.”
“That way.”
Sean jogged up a side street to the left, Ella bouncing up and down on his back. Every few steps he wheezed, “Lean in, hold on.” Zac followed right behind him. Hannah had to run hard to keep up and not let Oscar be dragged between them. His legs couldn’t cover the ground and every few steps she had to lift and swing him. No further than the corner. That’s what Sean promised. She had believed him.
The voice was getting louder. She couldn’t make out words over the pounding of their feet, her pulse in her ears, the sound of her breathing pulling and pushing at the mask.
Sean swerved halfway up the street, towards the voice, and as they rounded the next corner, they ran into a wall of sound. Oscar stopped dead, pulling on her hand like an anchor. Ella pushed her face into Sean’s shirt. Silence had been excised. A dense throng gathered in the middle of the street. Rising from it, she could hear individual voices layered on top of one another, distressed shouts, pleading—men, women, wailing children. A woman broke away from the group and passed them, a package clutched to her chest. She eyed them with tired suspicion, looking back as she turned into the next street, as if expecting to be followed.
Over the hiss of people, the voice they had been chasing rang clear. A man with a megaphone stood in the high-sided, open bed of a truck. “Do not approach without a mask. If you do not have one, masks, gloves, and disinfectant are provided at the front of the truck. If you need any of these items for home use, go to the front of the truck. This district is still quarantined. You will be informed that quarantine has been lifted once your district is declared safe. Until that time, do not leave your house, do not have contact with anyone outside your house. If you require rations, take only enough for your personal use for three days.” When he finished the message, he started again.
They held hands, the excitement evaporating off them. Day-trippers at a disaster. Hannah said softly, “Sean, we’ve seen. Time to go home.” But no one moved.
Three or four rows of people leaned on the backs of those in front, a forest of arms trying to reach the food. At the edge of the tailgate, a masked young woman held tight to the side of the truck. Avoiding eye contact, she wove between the grasping hands, delivering a food parcel to her target. Another sat a little back from the edge. Above the mask, her eyes looked scared. She held a box between her knees like a shield and threw packages at the crowd as fast as she could. The third crouched at the back, watching the upturned faces. At best, her eyes were businesslike but Hannah felt they hid distaste. Her ease was unnerving.
Oscar pulled back hard, slipped his hand out of Hannah’s, and circled around behind her. Sean had deposited Ella on the ground and she scuttled the two steps to Oscar.
A pair of hands seized the arm of one of the women on the truck. She waved a parcel as she lurched forward. The woman behind her holding the box lunged at her and caught the other arm.
Parcels exploded upward, spawning scuffles where they fell. High-pitched, angry swearing streamed out of the young woman pulled between the sea of hands and her colleague on the truck. A man with a thin face and dirty hair was pushed over by a woman beating him to a package on the ground. Hannah recognized him with a shock. When she used to walk to school with Oscar, she had seen him waiting for the city bus, in a jacket and tie, carrying a leather briefcase.
People were pushing, tripping over a tangle of fallen bodies. The man with the megaphone was shouting. “Move back from the truck. Clear a space, move back.” But they surged forward. The third woman joined the tug-of-war and pulled the first onto the truck. They fell backwards as if yanked. The attacker followed, grabbing boxes and throwing them to his companions.
The megaphone voice became more strident. “Move back or people will get hurt.” Hannah could hear panic in his voice and so could the crowd. “Move back. Move back. No one will get anything if you don’t move back.” He dropped his megaphone and flung the boxes behind him, out of reach. The disdainful young woman shoved her foot into the interloper’s chest, tipping him off the truck.
The pack howled outrage at the mistreatment of the food liberator. A wave of people engulfed the truck. Hannah jumped at the bang of a car backfiring. Desperate people scattered like a shoal of fish. Another bang. It took her a moment to connect the sound with the object that megaphone man held above his head.
“Sean.” Her voice couldn’t reach him over the sound of panic.
The mob spread out to form a front crashing towards them and she was already running before thought had time to catch up. The kids. She had no sense of where the kids were. She looked behind her, to the side.
Ella lay in the shadow of a front fence, squashing herself into the bricks, screaming as Sean attempted to pick her up. He carried her in his arms, her flailing limbs tipping her out again. At last, he held her by her middle, like a sack. Oscar was running erratically on his little legs. Zac pelted diagonally across the street and scooped him up. She saw his legs strain to outrun the front.
The crowd kept coming, not towards them, just running. She was scared of these people, although each one of them had no more intention of hurting her than the water molecules of a breaking wave.
“Zac!” she screamed. “Zac!” She beat an arc to Sean, pushing him down the driveway between two houses, into the sudden quiet.
Zac ripped off his mask and dropped to the ground next to Sean, his throat rasping. Oscar tumbled out of his arms. Hannah trembled, her body cold from clammy sweat. She heard the memory of a gunshot. She saw a window, some curtains, Sean spread out on his back, ferns, a garden tap, Ella curled in a ball, Oscar’s mouth open in a silent cry, the pebbles on the driv
e, blood on Oscar’s shirt.
“Breathe out.” She filled her voice with command. “Breathe out.” Oscar started to cry. She stripped off his fleece and pulled at his blood dappled T-shirt, looking for a hole.
“It’s all right.” Zac was white and shaking and his eyes were on Oscar. “It’s me. I banged a wall.” A scrape covered almost the length of his forearm.
She wiped at the trickle with her sleeve. Blood on her shirt, his shirt, Oscar’s shirt. Zac wobbled as he tried to stand.
“Zac, kiddo, you have to sit down.” Zac obeyed his dad’s voice. He cradled his arm in front of him. “Put your head down.”
“I’m okay.”
Sean gently eased Zac’s head forward so it touched his knees. “You’re good. You got Oscar.” Sean stopped to swallow and blink. “That’s more than okay.”
Hannah wrapped her arms around Oscar, pulling him back a little to give Zac space to breathe. “Don’t you have a great brother?”
“I want to be with Zac.”
She held him tighter for Zac as well. “You could do something for him.”
“What?”
“I need your shirt.”
She bandaged Zac’s arm with it. Speckles of blood slowly oozed through. It was more psychological comfort than physical, but they both felt better having done something.
Sean moved to the front of the drive. He looked both ways down the street they had come from, beyond Hannah’s sight line. “Time to go,” he called back to them, in a voice that was trying to simulate certainty.
She stepped closer, pretending to herself that somehow it would make their conversation private. “We can’t take the kids back that way.”
“I’ll go and check around the corner, but the truck’s gone.”
“No, Daddy, no.” Oscar threw himself at Sean, entangling himself in Sean’s legs. “Don’t go out there. We can stay here.”
“You can carry Oscar, I can carry Ella, but we’ll be slow and Zac’s still shaky.” She needed to get them home, and for that she needed them to stay calm. The kids could hear every word they were saying—there was no way to avoid that. The road would only terrify them, as would talking about why. “I think we should stay hidden. Out there is too dangerous.”
Before This Is Over Page 32