Before This Is Over

by Amanda Hickie

  “What about?” He said something that she couldn’t make out. “I can’t hear you.” She turned to the boys, just in case. “Why don’t you go bug Daddy in the office.”

  She swung the door open, stepping well back. The grille was locked and she held the keys in her hand. Its mesh was the only barrier between her and this man and his germs.

  “I’m trying to talk to all my regulars.”

  She’d only ordered once and that had been delivered when they were out. He could be anyone under the paper face mask and gloves, the paper hospital gown.

  “This is my last run and I don’t think they’ll find a replacement.”

  “I guess it’s not safe. Well, thanks for all you’ve done.” Now go away from my front door.

  “I’m going to be driving trucks for the government. Delivering food and coal to the power stations. I don’t have to get out of the cab, so it’s safer, you know.”

  “Uh-huh.” She could see someone looking out from behind a curtain across the road. Drawn by the sound of a car engine.

  “Anyway, I can’t get petrol for my van. The petrol stations are all shut. Reserved for emergency services. I had to drive halfway across Sydney to fill up this morning, from a mate who still had a bit in his tanks, and once that’s gone, I’m done. I’m no use for deliveries without a truck.”

  And just like that, Hannah felt the Internet calling her to see if other supermarkets were still delivering.

  His paper mask hid his mouth, but his gray eyes looked older than his jet-black hair would suggest. There was a sad acceptance in them. “I haven’t been home this week—I wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t put them at risk. Not with all the houses I go to. My wife puts the little ones on the phone every night. It breaks my heart. But if I’m working for the government, they’ll do the right thing by my family. I can look after them this way.”

  “That’s good.” She wondered what his kids looked like, what his wife was doing right now. She hoped he didn’t pull out photos.

  “It’s not going to get better anytime soon.” He talked like they were old friends. “Have you noticed? The number of dead is going up every day. Not so much around here yet. I wouldn’t be going door-to-door if they were. More in the north, but it’s moving. And it’ll break two hundred by the end of the week, for sure. Nice kids, your kids. Course I knew you had kids from your order.”

  He had been through their groceries. It gave her a shiver, to think how much this stranger might know about them. Where they lived, her name and phone number. She felt a strong need to slam the door.

  “Your kids were very polite. I’ve had lots that aren’t, people screaming at me, and I’m bringing them their food. You’d think I was robbing them.” Hannah smiled. A small, unhappy, go-away smile. “You’re doing the right thing by them, staying inside. But I wanted to warn my regulars. If things start getting tight, you might find someone to deliver, but don’t have a grocery van pull up in front of your house. It won’t be too safe. We’ve already stopped delivering to a few areas. Some of our drivers have been mugged for the food in their vans. Police can’t do anything. There’s not enough of them, even for the bad areas.”

  “Sure. I’ll do that.”

  “Oh, and there’s a few things missing—they’ll credit your card. No deliveries coming from interstate.”

  Her stomach lurched. “What’s missing?”

  “They give me a list of what’s in the delivery. You’re supposed to check it off and sign to say it’s all there.”

  “Can you leave it with the groceries? I’m not signing.” Her hand trembled on the grille handle. Two hours out there—she wasn’t going to get it for two hours. She tried to pull herself together. The same things would be missing in two hours. “Is it the rice? Did you see if there was any rice? Turn the plastic bags around—I might be able to see.”

  He shrugged and spun each bag around. “If it’s not here, there’s nothing you can do.”

  “Ha! Rice, there, I can see it. What about the cold things? The milk and the fresh meat. That bag needs to be out of the sun.”

  He looked at his clipboard. “No refrigerated delivery noted.”

  The milk. The meat. “Are you sure? Could you check in your van? Maybe you left something in the van.”

  “It’s on the form. You have to sign it.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not opening the door.”

  “Look.” He pressed the sheet against the grille. “Down at the bottom—no refrigerated delivery.” He slipped it into one of the bags.

  “Wait, wait. I didn’t read it all, bring it back.”

  “I have a full van to deliver. The form will be there when you’re ready to come out.”

  She tried to see into the bags. If she could work out what was missing, she could plan. Curse Gwen and curse Daniel and curse the people who had ordered before her. Curse the two hours when she wouldn’t know for sure.

  Back in his van, checking his clipboard, he was just a stranger who cared about people he knew only through their groceries.

  No meat, no milk. All she had was one face of the bags, frosted images of the groceries through the plastic. She could only see one cube of coffee grounds and no chocolate. As if staring hard enough could give her X-ray vision, she pressed her face against the grille and willed herself to make sense of the diffuse shapes and colors.

  The sound of the delivery van disappearing in the distance was overtaken by another car turning into the street. She hauled herself up from the cold wood floor to get a better view. The silver sedan pulled back into the spot it had left less than two days ago, in the middle of the night before last. The doors opened lethargically. The little girl trudged to the front step and sank down onto it. She watched her parents without interest as her father opened the boot, unpacking the boxes onto the curb. The suitcase, the barbecue, only one cardboard box, nothing sticking out the top. The mother, passing the girl, took her hand and languidly led her to the front door.

  From the kitchen, Hannah could see the boys in the office. Both doors were open and across the small lawn she could hear them serenading Sean. He had his hands over his ears, trying his best to look angry, failing to cover his laughter. Their untuned voices jumbled over each other. Daniel was trying to follow Zac’s lead, with half an eye nervously on Sean, afraid to be left out, afraid to get in trouble, a little at sea. The singing faded in and out, depending on which way they faced. For a few seconds they clicked into staccato unison and she caught “…just like cherry cola.” The inappropriate things she let them learn when it didn’t matter, when they were too young to understand, and how well they remembered. If she was lucky, those were pretty much all the words they knew.

  As the breeze blew the sound away, she heard a rustling from the direction of Natalie and Stuart’s garden. Through the gaps in the paling, she could just make out Stuart in a garden chair. If he wanted to talk he would have said something, but not to acknowledge his presence bordered on rude.

  He moved again.

  “Hi, Stuart, how’s it going?”

  He stood slowly and stiffly. “You know, it’s going. Ella just went down for a nap.” From his face, drained of color, he could do with one himself.

  “Has Natalie come home yet?”

  “She won’t be back till this is over. It spreads like wildfire. You know most of the people who have died so far have been medical staff.”

  “I’m sure she’s careful.”

  He stared into a distance that went all the way to his garage. She knew she was intruding on the only break he got from Ella all day, but she thought it would seem brusque if she walked away. He was nice enough, but if Natalie hadn’t been so personable, if there hadn’t been Ella, if they weren’t neighbors, she wouldn’t have tried.

  Just as she was ready to make her excuses, he broke his silence. “You should get rid of that cat.”

  She looked around for Mr. Moon, but he was off somewhere. “I’ll try to keep him inside if he’s bothering you. But he�
�s not sneezing, he’s not off his food.”

  “He doesn’t need to seem sick. Shut him in or shut him out. I’d be happier if he wasn’t hanging around.”

  She couldn’t keep the cat in— it was like storing mercury in a sieve. “The boys love him. I don’t think they’d understand.”

  “Tell them he ran away.”

  “Oscar’s not that easy to fool anymore, and Zac, well, you know, teenagers.” Zac had that peculiar teenage sensibility to loss, the awful new awareness of permanence.

  “You can’t seriously think a cat is worth the risk.”

  “What makes you think that cats spread it? Did Natalie say so? It’s bats, that’s what I read. They think it’s bats.”

  He gave a condescending laugh. “Maybe they’re wrong about how long it lasts outside the body or how it’s transmitted, because somehow it’s spreading. You can pin your hopes on it being bats, but are you sure your cat doesn’t catch them? When this is over there’s a PhD in there for someone.”

  There were so many rumors on the Internet, more or less outrageous or ignorant. Just contemplating all the possibilities was enough to drive her back to the computer.

  Stuart spoke again. “Not everything you read online is the truth.”

  “Well, that’s no surprise.”

  “I mean the official stuff. There’s no point getting people into a panic about things they can’t change. I don’t think Natalie tells me the truth, either. I know she doesn’t. What could ‘being careful’ possibly mean when you’re standing at the epicenter of the end of the world?” Stuart leaned down and picked up a coffee cup from beside his chair. “Back to it.”

  The street was too big, the distance from the door to the car much greater than it used to be. Walking across her own front yard was the strangest thing she’d done in days. The pools of light under the telegraph poles were large and sinister, and their presence made the shadows and crevices more likely to harbor harm. She should have filled the script when she had the chance last week. Sean thought she should leave it. Today’s news didn’t help—a doctor on a house call, beaten in the street for the medicine samples in her bag. Sean said cancer didn’t come back because you missed a few pills, whereas desperate people hung around isolated pharmacies. But who knows what triggers one little bastard cell to start dividing. Who knows how you tell. Of the two, at least you could see the strangers coming.

  She pushed the petrol cap back into place as she passed. Had they left it open last time they filled?

  The sound of the car door reverberated indiscreetly, the sound of the engine filled the street. She looked around for the twitch of curtains, or shadows at the front doors of her neighbors’ houses. The needle on the petrol gauge still hovered around a quarter of a tank. That didn’t tell her much. It had never been very reliable and she could drive for several days without its moving before it precipitously dropped to empty. She should have listened to Sean and filled up on the way back from Canberra. But even in the unlikely event she saw a petrol station that still had petrol, she’d promised Sean not to stop. If she hadn’t shut the door on him, they’d still be arguing about whether it was safe to go. She winced at the thought of how she’d flounced out, punishing him for disagreeing by refusing to let him shoulder the risk.

  On the main road, she was surprised by how many people were about. The pedestrians were sparser than usual but she didn’t think it was right that anyone at all was out. Riders spilled off a bus that had stopped in front of her, heads down, masks over faces, repelling each other like magnetic poles. Each one stepped sharply to one side to avoid a knot of four men leaning against a storefront. Their lack of masks shocked her, and they were passing cans of beer, pulled from the carton that lay between them, from hand to gloveless hand. The pedestrians kept their eyes to the ground, but from the safety of her car she stared and pushed down the door lock button. One looked straight at her and laughed. She looked around for any police presence, but knew they were already spread too thin.

  For long stretches, the only signs of habitation were lights in the houses, punctuated by thin clusters of people near the shops. Those scenes could pass for a quiet but normal evening if the shops and cafés weren’t almost all shut. The farther she got from home, the more, irrationally, she felt threatened by these islands of activity. Too late to admit Sean was right. She ran the orange at a couple of intersections rather than stop. Or at least she told herself it was orange and not red as she put her foot down, stomping on her well-bred instinct to obey the rules.

  She had no trouble finding the street she was looking for—it was the biggest road, with streetlights and a row of shops running in both directions, empty of people. The storefronts were lit, but dimly, as if the shopkeepers had left one light on only. Up on the left she could see a store that glowed more brightly. She drove along the empty curb and pulled up in front of it.

  Although the pharmacy had all its fluorescent lights blazing, there was no sign of anyone inside. She put on disposable gloves, one pink, one yellow, fished her wallet out from under the passenger seat, took out thirty-five dollars in notes as she’d been instructed, and hid her wallet again. The script lay on the passenger seat.

  She rapped on the shop window and pressed the script against the glass. Inside, a door along the back wall opened a crack. Through it, she could see a young man talking to someone behind him. He came to the window to read the script. After he had examined it, he yelled through the glass, “Push it under the door, with the money.”

  She folded the money and put it inside the script, scrunching it as she shoved it through the narrow gap. The young man unfolded it with the toe of his shoe and squinted. “One minute.”

  She was exposed, lit by the store like the leading lady of the footpath. She should have parked facing the wrong way. As it was, she was going to have to walk all the way around the car to get to the driver’s side. Farther than she would like in an emergency.

  One of the hospital pharmacies might have been a better idea, less isolated. But they would have been crowded by all the people who needed heart medicine, antibiotics, antidepressants, insulin. The very reason they were kept open was for sick people. Here, alone, the dangers were more obvious but less likely.

  She must have rung half the pharmacies in Sydney. Less than one in ten answered, and only after she’d let the phone ring and ring.

  When one of the calls was finally answered, the man on the other end was tired and suspicious and asked for her name. He was only open for regular customers, but Hannah had talked fast and eventually, reluctantly, the man had admitted he could fill the script.

  And here he was, the voice on the phone, coming back out to the glass front, much younger than she’d expected. He came right up to the window to yell again and she instinctively moved back, even though the glass between them blocked everything but the sound. “There’s a planter around the corner, it’s in that.” He scurried to the anonymous safety of the back room.

  No matter how profligate it was to drive ten meters, she couldn’t muster the courage to walk around the corner alone. She did a U-turn, took the corner, and pulled up next to the planter. One hand on the car door, she felt under the plants for the package, threw it on the passenger seat, and took off, her heart pounding.

  She was suddenly a very long way from Sean. Ahead, all she could see was the dark street. She fumbled to plug her phone into the hands-free kit. The ringing of the phone on the other end sounded thin in the metal box of the car.

  “Hello?” He sounded like himself. Warmly, comfortingly like him. She should record him saying just that word, “hello,” and carry it around with her.

  “It all went fine. I’m on my way back.”

  “Oscar’s asleep. Zac and Daniel are in Zac’s room. They’re ready for bed.” Everything he said, the way he said it, was strangely, inexplicably normal.

  “I won’t be long.”

  “I’ll be here.” She could picture him in the light of their living room, watch
ing TV. The whole house would be lit up. She saw it before her, an island of light in the vast threatening dark, and she set her course towards it. She imagined this was how firefighters felt. Lots of nothing happening, waiting for something unlikely but catastrophic. She was twitchy and bored at the same time.

  When she’d been diagnosed with cancer she’d sat in the specialist’s consultation room nodding. Yes, yes, I understand. Her doctor had explained what would happen next, who she would see, what the procedures and outcomes were, and Hannah had listened carefully, academically. The doctor had watched her, Hannah assumed looking for a reaction, but his words had no more weight than air.

  On the way home from the doctor’s it struck her. So this is what I get—it’s not what I was expecting. How had she not noticed that all her life she’d been waiting for the one thing to happen, the one thing that you can’t recover from?

  She was still expecting something. She always expected something. This virus wasn’t it either. Whatever it was wouldn’t be long and drawn out—it would be a sharp axe. A call from school telling her to go to the hospital. A work colleague of Sean’s on the phone with a catch in his voice. She’d spent all her time mentally preparing for things she couldn’t bring herself to think about. If one of the boys died, if Sean died…She couldn’t think beyond that point. This wasn’t it yet, and whatever it was, it was still out there waiting.

  The bright bubble of cleansing light kept them safe for the time being. She couldn’t control school, she couldn’t control Sean’s work, she couldn’t control other drivers on the road, she couldn’t be there when Zac was out with his friends. She could only hope to be in their heads, telling them to take care, not to take risks, that the most important thing was coming home at night—nothing else came close. As she turned on to their street, she could almost see a radiance around the house.