Before This Is Over

by Amanda Hickie

  “What are you doing?”

  “Eating breakfast. Oscar needs something too.”

  “He’s eaten. We’re going now. Bring breakfast with you.” He grabbed the backpack and called Oscar in from the garden. “Go to the toilet. We’re going now.” She was already in the car when she remembered the shopping.

  Sean called after her as she ran back to the house. “What now?”

  “A moment, that’s all,” she yelled back. She fumbled with the key in the lock, pounded down the hall, the joists bouncing underneath her. Gwen was surely awake now, but there was no way she was leaving Oscar. She flung open the kitchen cupboard and grabbed a cooler bag, threw some ice bricks from the freezer into it. Running past Oscar’s room, a crayon on the floor caught her eye. She grabbed it and a piece of paper he had drawn on. At the front door, she leaned the paper against the wall of the porch and wrote in crayon over the top of the printing on the back, “PLEASE LEAVE SHOPPING BEHIND PORCH WALL BEHIND YOU, COLD BAG FOR MILK. THANKS,” and wove the paper in between the bars of the screen door.

  She doubled back, grabbed masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer from the hall table, and sprinted to the car.

  “Burglars can read.”

  “They have eyes to see a pile of shopping on the doorstep too.”

  As Sean backed out into the road, Hannah faced the front door and her note. It seemed easy for someone to pick up flagrantly unattended groceries and a lot more effort to break into the house. Right now, she cared more about the groceries. The engine idled as Sean checked up and down the road, then pulled out in an arc. On the corner, Mr. Henderson was weeding the patch of lawn that made up his front garden. He was a soft-spoken, diffident little man, who seemed to live in that yard. As they drove past, he straightened himself up and gave a wave salute. She waved back. The only noise was the short synthetic chirps from Oscar’s game. Hannah leaned back against the headrest.

  “Are you okay there?”

  She rubbed her face with her balled hand. “Still asleep.”

  As they approached the tunnel under the airport, Sean called out to Oscar to look up and watch for planes landing above them, but it was unsettlingly peaceful—the last moment of interest before the long featureless road. Concrete sound barriers embossed with waratahs and abstract sea patterns were interspersed with warehouses, clusters of shops, and endless rows of open, identical backyards. After an indeterminate time of letting her eyes roam, Hannah broke the silence. “Where do you want to change drivers?”

  “What about Goulburn? That’s about halfway.”

  “Not in the town.”

  “Obviously—round there, outside the town somewhere.”

  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 gaze back to the road. Sean’s eyes took another circuit, seemingly hypnotized.

  Hannah looked out the windscreen. The asphalt was as dark gray 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 eight on a Monday, it didn’t look like peak hour. “What makes you think they’re 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 people died yesterday in Sydney alone. That’s as many as we’ve had so far. 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 backseat. “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 were 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 meters 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 realization. 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 doo-doo—otherwise we’re in deep doo-doo.” Oscar snickered.

  Sean indicated and pulled out into the sweeping curve. Around the bend, the road became a long straight stretch. In the distance, orange traffic cones dotted across the fast lane, choking the road, and behind those, an electronic sign flashed alternately SLOW DOWN and PREPARE TO STOP. As they drove closer, they saw that the rental truck was pulled up at the narrowest point of the shoulder
and behind it sat the red car. A policeman with a lighted baton waved them into the single lane. A few car lengths on, the traffic cones dotted back the other way, opening up the road again until it was cut by two police cars parked across the traffic flow.

  In front of the truck, a man stood and gesticulated 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 red 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 instructions.

  A third policeman sauntered around the car to Sean’s window. Sean leaned 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 officer raised his voice over the escalating anger of the man from 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 on the other side of the freeway. Have a safe trip home.” He 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? 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.”

  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. The younger one looked to his older partner and back to the angry man. He held his gun as if this was not the day that he had prepared for this morning. Hannah’s eyes were drawn to the guns and she was surprised by how calm she felt and how much like toys they looked.

  Sean turned his head to follow her gaze and braked hard. She said quietly, “Sean, I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop.”

  He dragged his eyes back to the road.

  “Sorry.” He broke his gaze and looked at her. “I’ve never seen a gun except on television.”

  She gestured toward the backseat with her head. “And Oscar doesn’t need to.” Oscar was hunched over his game.

  As the car eased forward, she willed him to bring the clutch up slowly, not to jump the car. Twenty, thirty more meters 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—only a few hundred meters to retrace until they reached 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.

  “I beat the boss.” Oscar’s voice made Hannah jump.

  “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.

  Oscar’s face glowed back at her. “I’m going to show Zac when we get there.”

  “Was he tough?”

  “You have to shoot all the spikes off his side, and he kept whacking me with his tail, but I got him.”

  “Well done.” She smiled at him. Marbled with a bubbly feeling of happiness was the sobering knowledge that Zac was stranded and they had failed him.

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

  “Do you know where this goes?”

  “Not a clue. But it’s the only option I can give you that doesn’t involve a confrontation with the law.”

  Hannah pulled out her phone. No signal. For five or ten minutes they passed nothing but fences and dirt access roads blocked by gates. The only break from the monotony was provided by a tractor stopped in a field. As they pulled in front of a rough track into the property, they could make out two figures standing next to it.

  Sean rolled down his window. “Hey!”

  The figures didn’t move.

  He leaned out and yelled. “Excuse me!”

  One of the figures turned around and ambled towards them, head down. He rubbed his nose, examining the powdered dust on his boots as he reached Sean’s open window.

  Sean leaned out. “Is there another way through to Canberra?”

  “Not on this road.” The man was paying more attention to the fencing running into the distance than to them. “The road to Canberra’s 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. And 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.”

  “What about a way that isn’t on the maps?”

  “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. They’ll have closed the road through town too, by now.”

  “You could cut through Davo’s property. I’m done here, I could do with a ride.” He lifted his hand without turning around, and the man in the distance echoed the gesture before turning back to the tractor.

  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 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 earth and weeds. A beat-up station wagon covered in dust 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 millimeter and the hand in the station wagon did the same.

  After half an hour or so, the man leaned 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 de
tail 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. And he hadn’t coughed or sneezed. He looked healthy. That was all the reassurance she had available.

  As they approached the promised T intersection, Sean slowed to a crawl and scanned the road in both directions.

  “What are you looking for?” She tried to follow his eye line.

  “Even if we meet one now, we must be beyond the barrier. Who’s to say we weren’t always here?” He looked at her as if she knew what he meant. “We should get petrol.”

  Hannah gave a resigned shrug. She wasn’t going to carry the load of this decision.

  “Come on, you were happy enough to have the guy in the back. We need petrol.”

  “Not happy.”

  “Well, he was in the back, and there’ll be a station on the outskirts of town.” No answer. “We can’t make it to Canberra and back on what’s in the tank. That’s not me being difficult, it’s reality. This is probably the safest place to get it. So which way am I going? Town or freeway?”

  She glanced at the petrol gauge. Not enough to get home from here, certainly not enough to get to Canberra and back. It was a long way from anywhere, off the trucking route, and there were no reported cases this far out. They were probably the only nonlocals to pass through in weeks. If they had to…and they had to. “Use gloves on the pump and hand wash when you’re done. Pay with cash, and don’t take any change.”

  “If I use gloves, why do I need hand wash?”

  “That’s the deal.”

  Sean took the turn back towards the town, and half a kilometer on, they found it. It had been built for the main road this had once been and in its new circumstances was oversized and sun-faded. Part of the hardstand had been reused for a “fresh produce” stand so long ago that it was empty and broken. They pulled into the wide, potholed drive, built for the trucks and buses that now took the freeway. They were the only car. Hannah looked through her wallet while Sean worked the pump. “You can put in fifty dollars’ worth. After that we’d have to go up by twenty.” Hannah watched the counter turning over by cents as Sean squeezed and released to get to exactly fifty.