An Ordinary Epidemic (50 page)

I'd trade you a tin of beans for the tuna but I'm not ready to enter the miracle lottery yet.

The sound of Ella's small feet running down the hall broke her concentration. Sean jumped out of his chair. ‘What's up, Ella?' He lifted her up.

‘I hear it!'

‘I didn't hear anything.'

Oscar's heavier feet followed her in. ‘I heard it, I heard it too.'

‘They're back.' Ella squirmed in Sean's arms.

‘It's a bit early for a convoy,' Hannah held up her hands to stop them, ‘even if it is, we don't need anything yet.'

Sean cocked an eyebrow. ‘Eventually, you are going to have to take food parcels and, if it doesn't rain, water. Why not make it today?'

‘Because it
will
rain, because we still have a week's worth of food.'

‘Or, you could take the food parcels now and then you'd have more in the pantry, just in case. Just think, they might enrich our lives with a little variety.'

‘Yum, I like the ones with the extra germy ingredient, they taste good.'

‘You know they don't come with germs.'

‘We could see, we could just watch the trucks.' Ella twisted herself in Sean's arms and pointed to the front of the house.

‘You saw yesterday's. This one will be the same.'

‘I saw guns.'

Zac appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘A convoy's coming.' Ella wriggled out of Sean's arms and tore down the hallway, Oscar right behind her. Hannah didn't catch up with them until the front door. Ella was on her tippy toes trying to reach the lock but Oscar stood back, looking guilty.

‘What do you think you're doing?'

‘But I want to see.'

‘From the bedroom.'

Ella held her hands up to Sean.

‘I guess I'm doing the heavy lifting.'

‘Please can we open the window?' Ella smeared her hands on the glass.

‘Yeah, please Mum.'

‘Come on Mum,' Sean smirked at her, ‘a bit of fresh air.'

She unlocked the windows and swung them back. The air was brisk, she could smell a hint of diesel and hear a soft
rumble. Down past Stuart and Natalie's house, near the corner, a large truck with an open tray lumbered forward, a smaller dull khaki jeep following.

‘Mum, I can't see anything.'

Hannah lifted Oscar up to the sill. He bent himself into a right angle to get his head as far out as he could. They all watched the truck inching slowly towards them.

‘I told you it was a convoy.' Zac stood a little back from the window, feigning indifference. As the engine got slowly louder, she began to hear a voice over the top.

‘Do not approach the truck. We do not have facilities to treat the sick. Do not approach the truck if you are sick. If you are sick, return to your house and call triple 0. We can provide you with limited first aid kits. If you need supplies, signal to the truck and wait where you are for one of the workers to approach you.'

Mr Henderson was out on his lawn, watching the truck, watching them. When he turned his gaze on her, it seemed to be with malevolent suspicion. She told herself off for imagining things and just to prove her courage to herself she held his eye for an instant before she looked away. When she looked back, he was still watching her.

Oscar teetered on the windowsill and she leant out next to him to try to see the other way, past Gwen's wall. Looking up the block, clusters of people stood on three of the front lawns and there could be more watching from inside their houses like they were, behind curtains. Every truck was bound to have an audience—there was nothing else to do. Except watch television. However uneventful watching a truck drive past was, it felt more real than TV.

The further two groups were too far away to make out clearly and the wall limited her view of her side of the road and anything beyond the next intersection. The only group she had a good view of were the family she'd seen leaving and
coming back in the night. The mother and father with their daughter.

The woman was pallid and thin and her husband held her arm as they walked out, holding her up. Yesterday when the truck came around, the girl had sat at her mother's feet, but today she was standing, pulling her mother forward. The woman smiled at her daughter straining away. Their hands, clasped together, were skeletal.

Sean gave Hannah a nudge with his elbow, inclined his head towards the idling truck. Two people sat in the cabin and four more stood on the tray, all of them in fatigues, paper masks hung around their necks. And Ella was right, several of them were conspicuously carrying guns. Big guns. One, a young woman, looked down at something, then towards their house and spoke to the man standing next to her. They jumped down from the tray and headed, with the wide-legged saunter of people in authority wearing baggy pants, in their direction. The woman said something to the man. He laughed in the way he would if he were walking down the street with a colleague at lunchtime. As they walked, Hannah could almost think they were deliberately not looking her way. When they were within ten metres, the man pulled up his mask.

It felt like the whole street was looking. The woman waited at the bottom of Hannah's steps, the man strode up to the window, pulling gloves on as he came.

‘Is this your daughter, sir?'

‘She's our neighbour...'

As Hannah listened to Sean speak, she noticed that both the soldiers were wearing flak jackets.

The man bent down to Ella and talked over the top of Sean. ‘What's your name, sweetheart?'

‘Ella.'

‘Ella what? Is this where you live?'

‘Ella Cope. That's my house.' She pointed. He tried to hide
his glance to the woman, she nodded almost imperceptibly.

‘This child is listed as missing. I'm afraid she has to come with us.'

Hannah jumped in. ‘Who reported her missing? We're hoping to hear from her mum. She works at the hospital.' Hannah noticed how young the man was, not ten years older than Zac. His fatigues, his sidearm, his mouth twisting into a frown, gave him a thin veneer of age. ‘So, who then?'

Sean let Ella slide down from his arms and inside the room. A look of unease came over Oscar as he slid down next to her. Hannah felt Sean take her hand and stand a little closer, a little more defiantly. If she kept her feet on the ground, what could these people do? The guns were for show, they weren't going to fire on them.

‘Her father left her with us.' Sean spoke with a measured calm designed to make an impression on this kid in khaki.

‘Look mate, I understand how you feel. This is happening all over. But I still have to take her into care. This is the contact details of the shelter.' He had a card prepared. ‘If you can show some proof that he intended for you to keep the kid, you might have a chance.'

Ella and Oscar sat on the ground behind them. Zac had his head turned to the view down the street, not looking at the scene unfolding but watching, wary.

‘We've been looking after her. She knows us.'

‘It's not up to me. There are kids all over that don't belong to anyone.' The young man put his hand on Sean's shoulder. ‘I have to take the kiddie. She'll be well-looked after. Lots of other kids. It's like camp in there.'

‘Hang on.' Hannah considered the open window and how quickly she would be able to slam it. Not quickly enough. ‘You're telling everyone to stay at home but you want to take her to a place full of strangers. All those kids, people coming and going. You could', she dropped her voice for the word,
‘
kill
her.'

The woman stepped forward with a nonchalant truculence, broadcasting with a voice the whole street could hear. ‘Don't worry. There's staff there, there's nurses and stuff. They know what's what. If she gets sick, there'll be treatment for her. Not for idiots doing stupid things but for the kids in the shelters, there's enough.'

Sean let go of Hannah's hand, crouched down and took Ella's. He breathed hard a couple of times. ‘Ella.' He breathed in and out again. ‘Ella, you have to go with these people, okay?'

The woman came up the stairs, leant in the window, so close Hannah could hear the crack of the paper mask as it inflated and deflated with her breaths. ‘If you could get a few things for her.' The woman looked Ella up and down with a faint wrinkle of her nose. ‘A clean change of clothes and if she needs a blanket or a toy.'

Hannah recognised the stale smell coming from them all, a smell she had lost awareness of. The woman's pressed uniform drew attention to the grime on Oscar's shirt.

‘Hold on to the rest of her stuff, someone will come and get it when she's sorted out.'

Despite every part of her body urging her to pick up Ella and run, Hannah found herself nodding. It wasn't about the guns. It was about two soldiers, clean and well-fed, right in front of her and four more on the truck. It was about the social agreement of civilisation. It was inevitable and her actions could only make the situation more or less difficult for herself, for Ella, but nothing she could do would stop it.

‘No, Mum, no!' Zac was standing in front of her. ‘You can't. She has to stay here.'

‘I can't do anything about it.'

‘Yes you can.' The edges of his mouth were turned down and trembling. ‘You can say no, don't get her clothes.'

‘Your mum's right...'

Hannah held up her hand to the woman soldier.

The man spoke to Sean with casual authority. ‘Bring the girl out here now, sir.'

Zac grabbed Sean's arm. ‘She lives here. She has to stay here.'

The young soldier ignored Zac. ‘You're not doing her, or your other young one, any favours by making it harder. You'll do the right thing, won't you, mate.'

‘You don't know what it will be like there. It might suck. She'll be alone.' Zac's pleading lost any teenager he had left. ‘Who will look after her? There'll be no one to look after her.'

‘Look, kid.' The man leant into the window, over Zac. ‘She'll be looked after fine. That's their job.' He reached down and swung Ella through the window and onto his hip and called out to the woman soldier. ‘Catch up with the truck when you've got her things.'

Ella hung passively like a sack of potatoes in his arms until he hit the path at the bottom of the steps. A switch flicked and she started to wail and thrash.

Zac looked at Hannah, his mouth open in outrage. She was pinned in place by Ella's screaming.

‘Look, ma'am, I have to get back to the truck. If you don't get her things now, she's going without them. Is that what you want?'

‘No.' She could barely hear her own voice, she cleared her throat and tried again. ‘No.' She kept her eyes down, ashamed, as she pushed past Zac. Sean grasped at Oscar's legs as he scrambled onto the windowsill but he slipped through Sean's hands and down the other side. Oscar bolted down the steps and grabbed the soldier's leg. Ella wailed, Oscar screamed, but the soldier walked on lopsided.

Sean flung open the front door and took the steps in one pace. The soldier stood rock still while Sean prised Oscar off his leg. Sean, his face dark and stony, carried the screaming
Oscar up the steps as Ella was carried, arms flailing, to the truck. At the top of the stairs Sean mumbled, ‘Sorry Zac. That's the way it is.' He kept on going straight through the house. They could hear Oscar shouting all the way to the backyard. The truck drove by, bringing Ella closer again. The guttural rasp of the diesel engine and the fumes could barely cover the sound of her calling between sobs. ‘I want Mum, I want Mum.'

Hannah realised she'd never got around to charging the camera. She didn't have a single photo of Ella.

Hannah washed the few clothes they had brought over for Ella from next door. When they were dry Oscar helped her pack them up, with Ella's teddy bear and a couple of his picture books, into a small backpack. Oscar placed the backpack next to the front door, ready to be collected and stood looking at it, as if it could explain why Ella left.

‘Should we ring Ella again, Mouse?'

Hannah had called the number they had been given for the social worker, in the hopes of talking Ella back to them but it was clear that Ella's uncle could prove who he was. As soon as quarantine was lifted, he was free to pick her up.

When Hannah asked to speak to Ella, the pause on the other end indicated that she had committed a faux pas, but she didn't care. She let the silence hang until the social worker put Ella on the line.

‘Hi Ella, how are you going?'

‘Good.'

‘How's the centre?'

‘Good.'

‘Do you have other kids to play with?'

‘Yes.'

Hannah was running out of things to say. ‘Do you want to
talk to Oscar?'

‘Yes.'

She handed the phone to Oscar.

‘Hi Ella.'

She watched him listening, looking far ahead as if he could see her if he squinted. After a moment, he said ‘okay' and held the phone out to her.