An Ordinary Epidemic (48 page)

She put her arm around him and pulled him close for warmth. As they drank their coffee leaning against each other, they watched the kids running back and forth with aimless energy. The warmth of the coffee spread through her, a tiny
satisfaction with herself and the world for getting them to this moment.

‘They're going to run out of puff soon.' Sean said softly.

‘Well, off you go, organise them into a game.'

‘I made the coffee. Anyway, I'm an old bloke, don't want to do the knees in.'

‘Zac's surgically attached to his computer but we could get him out here. They like it when Zac plays with them.'

‘He wasn't able to interface with the electrons for days. That had to be traumatic for him.' Sean gave her a squeeze around her waist. ‘He's talking to his friends, in the strange digital way they communicate. He's re-experiencing the world.'

Hannah sighed. It was a good sign, a return to normality. She was surprised that, unlike Zac, she felt no compulsion to return to the internet. Beyond confirming what Zac had discovered, that Manba was declining, there was nothing more she felt the need to know. They were going to get to the other side soon, soon.

Ella flopped onto the grass, arms outspread, head turned to one side. Oscar jogged around her in slow contracting circles. A blast of cold air caught Hannah in the back, sending a chill through her. The windbreak of Sean's arm had gone and she saw his eyes roam around the small yard.

‘Come on kids. We're going to look at the world.'

‘They've been on the computer constantly for two days. Oscar's eyes are square. I think his brain will explode if he gets any more input.'

‘No, we're going to look at the
world
.'

Sean led the three of them through the house and she followed with a frisson of excitement, like they were on a dare. The closer they got to the front door, the more she felt the bubble of novelty turn to cold apprehension. It froze her halfway down the hall.

‘What are we doing?' She called from the back of their
small gaggle.

‘We're going to stand on the porch and look at the world.'

‘That's out the door, Dad!'

‘Yes,
Dad
. I'd like to have a word with you about this.'

Sean reached across the top of the small heads and pulled her by the hand. ‘It's a bit of excitement. How unlucky would we have to be, to stand on our own porch and get a bug that's dying out?' The thought of stepping outside, of being able to step outside, was irresistible, no matter how irresponsible. Soon it would be over and they wouldn't think twice. Why wait, why not now? Just to the porch.

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 verandah 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 onto 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.'

A house with a broken front door, unkempt lawns. Plastic shopping bags of garbage tied at the top punctuated the footpath, like secret cairns marking hidden occupation. That was different. 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.

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. Soon, soon 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. They can be inside the second they see someone. You'll come inside the second you see someone, won't you kids?'

The two littlies sang ‘yes' in chorus while Zac looked on, the question 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 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 favourite person in the world and right now you'd still need me.' She lay her head down on the back of the sofa.

‘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 grill 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's only a van, 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 van.'

‘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 do? 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 hold 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 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 further from home they went, the faster Zac moved.

‘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 window spilled into the gutter, filling the same shape as the light from the shop at night. Light glittered on the shards of glass, contrasting with the dark bitumen underneath.

Zac slowed his tug on the towline of Oscar and Hannah as they came to the shopfront. The safety glass lay as four large pieces in rough proximity to each other. Hannah's eye traced the spider's web of impact cracks across the gaps between the laminated fragments. Someone had jemmied the expanding grill that was supposed to protect the door. The window had been smashed out from the inside. All the shops had been vandalised, only the pharmacy escaped a corona of broken glass. It was protected by a roller door, now covered in large dents. The metal bin from Lily's was lying in front, mangled.

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, 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 fluoro 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 hip. 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 intersection, 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 small, 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.