An Ordinary Epidemic (14 page)

Hannah turned her back to the window, watching Sean's rhythms as he drove. His eyes flicked from windscreen to dashboard to mirrors and then started around again. At the end of one cycle, he glanced over at Hannah. She gave him a small smile before he turned his eyes back to the road. Sean's eyes took another circuit, seemingly hypnotised by the road, the dashboard, the mirrors.

Hannah looked out the windscreen. The bitumen was as dark grey as always, the concrete of the sound barriers as white. They could be on any stretch of highway, she had no sense of how far they had to go. She glanced at the clock. For nine on a Monday, it didn't look like peak hour. ‘What makes you think they are closing the roads?' Sean broke the pattern to look over at her again.

‘I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep. People were tweeting about trucks moving those plastic barriers. It seems a bit pointless now. Three more people died overnight. That's as many as we've had so far. And they were all in Sydney. Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.'

‘So why will they let us through?'

‘I'm hoping it takes a while to set up a roadblock.'

‘You woke me up on a hunch that the government is incompetent?'

‘There's a chance.'

Oscar's voice broke in from the back. ‘When will we get there?'

Hannah twisted herself around to look at him. ‘It's going to be a while.'

‘Oh.' Muted electronic sounds came repetitively from the back seat. ‘When will we have lunch?'

Sean answered impatiently. ‘I don't know, there's food in the backpack if you're hungry.'

‘I'm not hungry.' The sound from the game stopped. ‘I need to do a wee.'

‘Didn't you go before we left?'

‘I need to go again.'

Sean was scowling. ‘Can you hang on?'

‘No.'

‘Damn.' He stared at his mirror, as if it was the fault of the car behind. ‘I'll pull off at the next exit, we can find a petrol station. I could do with a coffee and we can get petrol.'

Hannah couldn't believe Sean would even consider it. ‘He can't go into a petrol station toilet.' She turned back to Oscar. ‘You'll have to go by the side of the road.'

Oscar's face clouded over. ‘People will see me.'

‘No one will look.'

‘People will see me.'

‘If you need to go, that's what you have to do.'

Hannah scanned the side of the road for a suitable spot while Sean kept driving. Oscar wailed from the back, ‘I need to go now.'

‘Hang on, hang on.' Sean pulled over near a clump of slightly thicker roadside planting. ‘Out you get.'

‘You'd better go with him.'

Sean held the car door open. ‘Come on Oscar, no one will see you. You can go behind one of the bushes and the car's in the way.' Oscar stayed in his seat, looking defiant and crestfallen. ‘I'll stand between you and the traffic, with my back to you. And the cars are going so fast anyway, they won't see you.' Oscar forced himself deeper into the seat, and looked at Hannah with a silent appeal on his face. She restrained herself. Sean was dealing with this.

Sean started to close Oscar's door. ‘Fine. You can hang on until you burst.' Oscar unclicked his belt, pouting.

They were parked at the apex of a long curve with a wide tree-filled divider hiding the other half of the road, cutting Hannah's view to a few hundred empty metres forward and back. A car passed them at highway speed. Nothing remarkable, although she couldn't see into the back window over a stack of belongings. An old red sedan drove by, slightly slower and she found this time she could examine the occupants. They were all so young. The driver couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen. The windows were rolled down, releasing the bass beat of music but there was something about the way they looked, a stillness, a realisation. The red car was eclipsed by a rental truck. She thought she saw a man and woman in the front, possibly the top of a child's head and expressions of grim resolve.

Time was escaping, everyone was moving except them. She could just make out Oscar's bared bottom and straddled legs behind Sean, who was standing, feet apart, arms crossed, like a bouncer at a nightclub and just as formidable. He pulled a face at her and she pulled one back. She saw his shoulders shake as he tried not to laugh. Oscar walked back to him, hands held out from his body. She saw Sean bend down to his level, listening attentively. They both turned to the car and came to her window.

‘Oscar and I have discussed the hand washing situation and we may have a problem. I don't recall packing any wipes.'

‘Didn't you just. As it happens, I picked up the hand wash.' She passed it out the window.

‘Hand wash it is then. That will do, won't it Oscar.' Oscar nodded seriously as Sean squeezed the pump pack for him. ‘And we've decided that he'd better not need to do doodoo, otherwise we're in deep doodoo.' Oscar snickered.

Sean indicated and pulled out into the sweeping curve.
Around the bend, the road became a long straight. In the distance, orange witches hats dotted across the fast lane, choking the road and, behind those, an electronic sign flashed alternately ‘SLOW DOWN' and ‘PREPARE TO STOP'. As they came close, a policeman with a lighted baton waved them into the single lane. A few car lengths on, the witches hats dotted back the other way, opening up the road again until it was cut by two police cars parked across the traffic flow.

The truck was pulled up at the narrowest point of the shoulder and behind it sat the red car. A man stood in front of the truck, gesticulating angrily at a policewoman. In the front seat, a woman looked out rigidly over the top of the scene, as if she saw Canberra in the distance. Her daughter was a ball of clothing with two pigtails sticking out, huddled into her side.

Four of the five teenagers were standing around the back of their car, looking lost. One of the girls was wiping at her eyes, the boy next to her was standing close, slightly turned away, as if unsure of how he could give comfort. The young driver was standing near the open door of the car looking serious and attentive, while a policeman, not much older than him, gave him instructions.

A third policeman sauntered around the car to Sean's window. Sean leant out and spoke a little too genially. ‘So, what's happening?'

‘The road's closed. Where are you from today?'

‘We came from the city, we're only picking up our son, he's on a school camp in Canberra.'

‘You're not going through now. The road's closed.'

‘For how long?'

‘It won't be open today. There's no point waiting, you should go home.'

The policeman raised his voice over the escalating anger of the man at the truck but continued without otherwise acknowledging the commotion. Hannah kept her eyes on their
policeman, although it made her uncomfortable to have her back to the ruckus.

‘If you drive on, sir, there's an emergency vehicle turning bay before you get to the patrol cars. You can make a U-turn there and you'll be back the other side of the freeway. Have a safe trip home.' The policeman nodded to Hannah and Oscar.

Sean rolled up the window and put the car into gear.

‘Is that it?' Hannah shook his arm.

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘We came all this way and that's it? You got us up in the wee hours, drove us all the way here and we leave Zac by himself in Canberra?'

‘What do you want me to do? Ram the police cars? I don't think that will work.'

‘I want you to fix this. I want you to get Zac. Go back.' She had her hand on the door handle. She could make him stop if she opened it. ‘
Go back.'

Sean's face was closed, as if he was watching the road but not seeing it. As they pulled around the teenagers, the one angry voice was suddenly joined by three or four others. Hannah looked to the noise and caught the gesticulating man's fist meeting the policewoman's face. The other two police had their guns drawn, pointed at the man. Hannah was thrown forward as Sean braked suddenly. He was transfixed by the scene and she said quietly, calmly, ‘Sean, we need to keep going.'

He broke his gaze from the guns and looked at her. ‘What?'

She tilted her head back. ‘He hasn't noticed.' Oscar was hunched over his game. ‘Being here isn't helping anyone.'

The concentration was clear on Sean's face. The car eased forward, she held her breath, willing him to bring the clutch up slowly, not to jump the car. Anything to avoid bring attention to themselves.

Hannah kept her eyes on the group. ‘You just watch the road, I've got them.' Her voice came out soft and breathy.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him pivot to face the front.

‘Keep going.' Her nerves were jumping, but she kept her voice soft and normal. ‘Keep going.' She was nearly facing all the way back. Twenty, thirty more metres to the ‘Emergency vehicles only' sign. He took the rough gravel track between the two sides of the freeway more smoothly than she imagined possible. Halfway around the curve, Hannah pirouetted in her seat to keep the tableau in view. They only had a few hundred metres to retrace until they reach the bend and the trees again. The guns, the police, the truck, the red car and whatever was about to happen would be out of sight.

She saw the teenage driver walk slowly towards the circle of police, his hands up in front of him, a barrier and a plea for peace. In his elongated, languorous movements, he reminded her of Zac. She hoped that he was moved by a nascent sense of right not yet stifled by fear, that Zac would be that boy one day, that ‘one day' was not much sooner than she expected.

‘I beat the boss.' Oscar's voice made Hannah jump, she had blocked out the trilling from the back, forgotten Oscar playing there. The spectacle at the truck was rapidly becoming an ordinary scene, the tension had gone out of the figures. Hannah felt safe to swing her eyes to look at Oscar. ‘What's that, Mouse?'

‘I beat the boss. He's really hard.'

‘Good for you.' They had reached the bend. This boy in the backseat was hers, and that's all that mattered. Whatever happened at the roadblock wasn't her concern. She couldn't see it, she couldn't do anything about it, it had nothing to do with her now.

Oscar's face glowed back at her. ‘I'm going to show Zac when we get there.'

‘Was he tough?'

‘I had to keep doing it. You have to shoot all the spikes off
his side, but he kept whacking me with his tail and I died. But I got him.'

‘Good for you.' She smiled at him. Marbled with a bubbly feeling of happiness was the disquieting knowledge that Zac was stranded and they had failed him.

Sean turned the car sharply into a side road so small Hannah hadn't seen it. The bitumen gave way to corrugated dirt and Oscar let out a long vocal breath which vibrated with the bumps.

Not far down the road, two men stood on what looked like a rough track into a property, one leaning on a large metal swinging gate. Sean pulled the car in, across the road from them. The one on the gate swung it closed, turned and, looking at the powdery dust around his boots, rubbed his nose before moving lazily across to the car door. As he reached Sean's open window, he was paying more attention to the fencing running into the distance than to them.

Sean leant out. ‘Is there a road to Canberra?'

The man looked at him with a raise of the eyebrow that might have been surprise. ‘That'd be back that way.' He thumbed in the direction of the highway.

‘If we didn't want to take the main road, is there another way?'

‘You could go through town, but it'll only take you back to the highway thirty clicks on.'

‘Is there a police station in town?'

‘There's a cop shop, yeah.'

‘Could we get back to the road without going through town?'

‘Well you could, but I can't see why the fuck you'd want to. Turn your head around and you can see the road to Canberra. The town's not much and the back road's nothing at all.'

‘I just want directions.'

‘You're not something to do with drugs are ya? Cause that's
not right with the young fella in there.'

‘We need to get to Canberra, to our other boy. The highway's closed.'

‘Yeah, you'll never find the road on your own. I'm going that way anyway, I'll grab a ride.' He lifted his hand without turning around and the man in the distance echoed the gesture before turning back to the paddock.

Hannah was about to object, tell him that he was putting himself at risk, for all he knew they were infected. Or he was infected. Every first case comes from somewhere. But he'd already opened the back door and settled himself in. ‘How are ya?' He nodded to Oscar as if they were two blokes at a pub.

‘Fine', Oscar said, without commitment. Hannah kept her eyes on him in the mirror.

They drove the narrow dirt roads. No one spoke except their guide and then only to give terse directions. ‘Left in twenty.' ‘Watch the ditch.' He wound the window down and rested his arm on the sill. The dirt track was not more than a car and a half wide, and Sean tried to hug the side, jockeying the wheels along the seam of compacted dirt and weeds. A ute approached from ahead at speed. It sat solidly in the middle of the road and swerved only as it reached them. Their passenger raised the fingers of his hand a millimetre and the hand in the ute did the same.

After half an hour or so, the man leant forward almost congenially. ‘Just pull over at the next gate, that's me.' He jumped out of the car. ‘Go straight for a click, turn left at the T, and that takes you back to the main road. You can't miss it.'

‘Thanks.' Sean called to his back and the man gave the same curt wave.

Hannah watched as he became nothing more than a detail in the pastoral scene reflected in her side mirror. They weren't sick, she knew that, he wasn't walking off to wipe out a whole country town.