An Ordinary Epidemic (31 page)

‘Two hours, genius, they need to have been out at least two hours.'

‘But he gets two computers. He gets the one in the office and his laptop, that's not fair.' Zac was well underway. ‘What's he
going to do with two? It's not fair, we don't have one and he has two.'

‘I don't think he's using them both.' If she didn't look up from her work, Zac would stop. The laptop was a shield.

‘So why did he take them? He could have given us one.'

Daniel stood, as always, just behind him.

‘I don't think the computers were uppermost in his mind. He had other things to think about.'

‘But,' Oscar cut in, a self-satisfied smile on his face, ‘you have a computer, Mum. We could use your computer.'

‘Or I could use my computer. Because it's my computer.'

Zac slumped his shoulders in exaggerated despair, Daniel looked intently sideways to avoid making eye contact. ‘Why?' Zac took a belligerent pose and she could see Daniel shrinking, as if he thought Zac had gone too far.

‘Because I said so, Zac. Give me a break. You're supposed to be big enough to look after yourself, so act like it. You can't possibly be so devoid of imagination that you can't find something to do without the computer for two days. Just don't bother me.'

Oscar nestled into her side, creeping his arms around her waist. He pushed himself under the edge of her laptop, trying to get closer to her, tipping it.

‘I don't want to find something to do. I want to be with you,' he whined.

‘I didn't mean to yell.'

He burrowed in to her and she felt a sharp pain as he dug into the spreading bruise on her ribs. She twisted herself away from it but the ache had reawakened.

‘Will you play something with me?'

‘I have things I have to get done, Oscar. It might seem to you like I have endless time, but there are still occasionally more important things for me to do than play.' She needed time, privacy, peace. ‘Don't look like that, you've got Zac and
Daniel. You've got a room full of games, just don't disturb me.'

‘Don't expect us to babysit him.'

‘Come on Zac, half a day, how hard is it to be nice to each other for half a day? I'm doing it all here, with no help.' She shook her finger at him to drive it home. ‘When I'm done with what I have to do, I'll spend time with you. But not now. Try to show a little maturity.' Oscar sulked, Zac gave her a defiant stare, Daniel looked like he hadn't noticed there was a conversation going on. ‘I'm going to my bedroom. Don't disturb me.'

She stood sharply and marched away, depriving Zac of any chance to retort. At the door to her room, the thought ambushed her that Oscar might take the opportunity to visit Sean. She marched back through the living room to the kitchen, locked the back door and returned with the key in her dressing gown pocket.

The laptop teetered on her knees as she tried to perch on the edge of the bed. The springs wobbled underneath her and typing was a random hunt for the keys. The only stable solution was to lie, teenager-like, on her stomach with the computer in front of her. The stretch down her front made the bruise ache. She pulled up her pyjama top to inspect it, a large burgundy stain spreading away from the blanched impact spot.

She occupied herself with the things that had to be done, like paying bills. There was no excuse, even at the end of the world. The electricity. No matter how dodgy the supply was, she was grateful for the intermittent trickle of electrons. The water. Maybe she shouldn't pay that. What were they going to do, cut the non-existent water off, stop them not flushing the toilet? Thank God for a bucket and the water tank. The phones, the internet, the council rates. She paid them all, pulling down the boxes on the bank page, filling in the amounts, verifying and submitting. Writing all the details on the printed bill. Boring, stupid, grown-up stuff that never went away.

Even when tomorrow seemed an uncertain prospect, the bills still had to be paid. There were times when one thing mattered—keeping yourself alive, getting through chemo, rationing the food, keeping the virus outside—one serious thing. But these draining distractions, these bureaucratic formalities, demanded attention out of proportion to their importance. When you were dying, when you were actually dying as opposed to possibly dying, did they consume your time even when time was almost gone?

She rewarded herself with a bit of net surfing. Or punished herself with exactly what she wanted. She found a website called ‘Not the Government Line'. The front page was a mosaic of stories and she clicked on one at random.

We stopped seeing pine boxes a week ago, now it's all cardboard and we're having trouble getting even them. I rang the factory three times yesterday because my boss won't bury without a box. So we stopped answering the phone in the afternoon because we've got nowhere left to put them. I can't face telling one more person to take them into the street and call the hotline. Just now a woman knocked on the door, crying because her father was laid out in her living room. I told her she can't keep him there, it's not safe. She thinks the government will bury him in a pit with a bulldozer. I didn't know.

If it were Sean or Zac or Oscar... She pushed out of her mind the thought of sitting in the living room with their shells. Clinging onto their empty wrappers, having nothing else left.

Click.

It's all very well for the government to say work from home but who can do that? We're builders. You can't do that from home. The tradies, the factory workers, all of us that actually do something, that make all the stuff for everyone else, we're stuck at home. How am I supposed to pay my subbies? And who's still getting paid? The people who are pushing paper, staring at their computer screens in their own homes, typing
something now and then. It's not like that's real work. Meanwhile the rest of us are going out in it, risking our lives, for what? To keep things going for the nerds. They could all die tomorrow and who would know the difference?

Click again.

We only got here yesterday, but they closed the shelter this morning. Halfway through the night one of the staff told me to move my kids to the other side of the gym and not let them near anyone. In the morning, they tried to keep it quiet, but I saw some bodies lined up on the floor in the hall next door. An ambulance pulled up and I saw a woman begging to be taken to hospital. They said if she could walk, she wasn't sick enough. There's only one other school in walking distance inside the quarantine zone. We didn't go there yesterday because someone said it was already full. Even if it wasn't, now they won't let us leave for two days.

At the bottom of the page was a breakout box. ‘From the Health department website.' A column of dates and beside each a number. The last entry was yesterday—two thousand eight hundred and twenty-six dead, all in Sydney, all in one day. She tried to think about just one person, the one that made six, and wondered how they could be sure there wasn't another one, uncounted, that made seven. If Ella had carried it into the house, if they all died here, who would know? She looked out the window at the row of houses opposite. Were any inhabited by the dead? She felt their threatening presence pushing against the front door.

She shivered. The room was cold but the world outside was colder. She should have been crying but all she felt was a chill.

A window appeared on her screen.

I hoped you might bring breakfast
.

And after a brief pause.

It would have been nice to see you
.

I'm not the one who walked away.

How normal it felt, to be chatting on the computer.

How did you sleep? How's Ella looking?

No temperature, no cough. Slept fine. A bit upset. Then she forgets. Then she remembers. She's three
.

She wanted him to keep typing. It was like getting a note passed in class from a secret crush. Even with the heater, it must have been freezing in the office but he knew better than to expect sympathy. She started to type
I want us to be together
but another line from Sean scrolled up.

Stuart told her to keep her mask on. She may never take it off ag

The cursor sat blinking after the ‘g', waiting for the computer to catch up with the rest of Sean's sentence.

That's fine by me.

Sean's sentence still wasn't complete. She went back to browsing while she waited for him to think. ‘Page not found.' She clicked another tab—‘Page not found.' She clicked, fast, though all the tabs, opened a new page—‘Page not found.' The network icon had a red line through it. She rebooted the machine. Still no network.

She walked back to the living room where the boys had arranged themselves in parallel lines on the floor in front of the TV. Oscar jumped up.

‘Mum, can we...'

‘Just a minute, Oscar, I have to check something.' The phone was dead. She unplugged it from the wall, plugged it back in and rang the home number from her mobile. In her ear, the line rang, but the home phone didn't. She tried Sean's mobile.

He answered before she heard a ring. ‘Something happened to my computer. I'm not seeing the network.'

‘The phone line's not working either.'

‘It might be us. Try ringing Gwen.'

‘I don't want to talk to Gwen.'

‘Just ring it, you'll be able to hear her phone through the wall. You can hang up.'

‘I don't know her phone number.'

‘Look it up in the book.'

‘We don't have a book anymore.'

‘Look her up on the net, then.'

She waited a moment to let that sink in.

‘You could ring anyone we know, they're all stuck at home.'

She rang Kate, counted twenty rings, another twenty, and another. Then Daniel's home number. Again it rang out.

Her mobile rang. Sean. She couldn't wait for pleasantries. ‘What if the phones are working but there's no one to answer?'

‘Take a breath. More likely it's the phone network.'

‘If it's the whole city, people will be blogging about it. Look what you can find on the net.' Her turn to forget. ‘The TV's still working.' She looked at the clock. ‘The news will be on in half an hour.' There was an uneasy silence from the other end. ‘We're safe inside for now. There's nothing we can do and no hurry to do it.'

‘Text if you need me for anything.'

‘I miss you.'

‘I haven't gone anywhere.'

‘I know.'

Zac was standing in front of her, speaking before she'd even hung up. ‘So, Mum, if you're not using your computer, can Daniel and I have a go?'

‘All the games are in the office and you're not going out to get them.'

‘We'll surf the net. Come on, there's nothing else to do.'

‘The net's out.'

‘Aw what?' He was indignant. ‘You can't be serious.'

‘It's not a punishment. It's just life.'

‘And Dad gets the computer and all the software.' Zac muttered loudly as he moved off.

‘Live with it Zac. He didn't cut you off from the computer on purpose. We didn't disconnect the internet to spoil your day. You know what's going on out there, don't you? You've noticed what's happening outside our front door? People are dying, Zac.' She tried to stop herself but her voice kept saying the things that were crowding her head. ‘People are dying, there are people starving to death in the same house as their family because the people who love them are too scared to bring them food. You know what's crappy about losing the internet, Zac?' He looked defiantly at her, raising his eyes though his face was turned down. Stop, she told herself. ‘It's not that you can't flush away the next two hours of your life playing a flash game. That's not what's crappy. What's really crappy, what's terrifyingly crappy, if you stopped to think about it, is that now we have no way of knowing what's going on out there. And when we run out of food, we'll have no way of knowing what's waiting out there.'

He raised his head and looked her full in the face. ‘Gwen and Dad and Ella are out there. You're scared of them.' He sneered the word
scared
but his tone became off-hand, as if he didn't care what she thought anymore. ‘You could ring someone on your mobile.'

‘No one is answering.'

‘You were talking to Dad. Dad answered. On
his
mobile. I bet you didn't ring another mobile. You can't get to the internet because your computer uses the phone lines to get to it. You want to check the internet? It's on your mobile.' As he stalked away, she noticed how tall he had become.