Before This Is Over

by Amanda Hickie

  “That’s what it says—twenty thousand people died in Sydney yesterday. And there were fourteen thousand new cases.”

  “They’ve made a mistake, switched the figures. There were only ten thousand dead the day before. It can’t double in a day. That can’t be possible. Surely. And more people can’t have died than the number who are sick—that makes no sense. It has to be the other way. There have to be more new cases than people dead.”

  “And that makes it better? If it were fourteen thousand dead people that would be acceptable to you?”

  “Check…check somewhere else, the paper or somewhere.”

  “I’m wasting battery. Knowing a number doesn’t matter.”

  Her voice was high and strained. “Just check.”

  He typed with his thumbs, paused for a minute.

  She held out her hand. “Let me see.”

  “It’s still loading.” He handed her the phone. The page filled in, ten by five centimeters of information, a banner, headlines. The text jumped around as the ads loaded but it was there, twenty thousand dead in one day.

  “What are you doing?” Zac stood in the doorway. It was a glass door, for heaven’s sake. How did they not see him coming? “You said we could only turn on the phone once a day.”

  “Look, mate…”

  “Dad, that’s what you said. You don’t let me talk to my friends but you do whatever you want.”

  “There are things that it’s better we do without you, some things you don’t need to see.”

  “What am I, Oscar? I want to use the phone.”

  “Zac.”

  “Give me a turn.”

  Zac lunged at the phone. It shot out of Sean’s hand and, in slow motion, gracefully arced across the room. Zac leaped to catch it, grazed it with his fingertips, turning its arc into a chaotic tumble, head over tail, smack into the window. It ricocheted to the floor and skidded under the couch. Zac dived underneath and backed out slowly, cradling it in his hands like an injured bird. He was ashen, his hands trembled.

  “It’s still working.” Zac looked shocked and relieved. He handed it gingerly to Sean. “I’m sorry.”

  “You broke it, Zac.”

  “The color’s a bit different, but you can read it.”

  “Do you think I can’t see, Zac? I’m looking straight at the screen. It’s smashed.”

  There was a blue tinge over the right-hand side and a crack running across one corner, but the headline “Twenty Thousand Dead in One Day” was still crystal clear. The blue leached across the screen, with a wave of green following behind it. As waves of colors slowly flowed across, the black text began to merge into them. Hannah almost willed the terrible words to be unreadable.

  “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.” He looked from Sean to Hannah and back. The screen was now nothing but the psychedelic rainbow refraction of an oil slick. “You can put the battery in Mum’s phone.”

  “They’re not the same. It’s done.”

  Hannah could see Sean physically swallow his anger.

  “I just wanted to look at the phone. I’m not a kid.”

  “If you’re not a kid, for fuck’s sake take responsibility for what you did. You broke the phone, Zac. It didn’t jump out of my hand.” Sean was holding the darkening screen up in accusation. Zac looked to her to take his side.

  “Bring me your phone, Zac.” She was as calm as she could make herself.

  “Oh, what? But…”

  “Now. No buts. And you don’t get to touch it again.”

  Zac held still, the resentment and sense of injustice written clearly on his face.

  “We have one battery left and no Internet. We can text, that’s all. Bring me your phone now.”

  Zac pushed past her and out the door.

  The house was quiet when Hannah walked through. It wasn’t until she got to Oscar’s room that she heard the murmur of voices. She let her hand rest on the door, enjoying their independence, then pushed.

  “Stay out, stay out!” Oscar was pushing back with all his strength.

  “It’s me, not Dad.” Oscar let go and the door flung wide. All of Oscar’s pencils and markers were spread about the floor. Zac stood over the two younger ones, supervising. Ella had a loose page of a coloring book in front of her, the outline of a princess half scribbled in with purple and red. “See, this is me.” She pointed to the spiky lines haphazardly crossing the black borders.

  Oscar pushed himself in front, impatient for her to finish. “I’m writing a story for Daddy. It’s about when we can go out. Zac writes the words and I draw the pictures.” He held out a large sheet of paper folded in half, on each face a small drawing. “And Zac made Daddy a notebook, but he didn’t write anything in it.” From his frown, she could tell Oscar didn’t think that was much of a present.

  “Where did you get the paper from?”

  The two smaller kids looked to Zac, who dropped his eyes and shifted uncomfortably. “Some of Oscar’s coloring books have an extra page at the back.” He swallowed his words so she nearly couldn’t make out the next sentence. “I tore them out.”

  He was trying so hard to meet all their expectations. He’d come up with ideas, organized the younger ones, but still he expected to be yelled at.

  “Good job, good thinking. You’ll make Sean’s day.” Zac didn’t need her here. The best encouragement she could give him was to leave them alone.

  The only room she hadn’t looked in was their bedroom. She found Sean leaning against the window frame, one hand holding back the curtains, the other a resting place for his forehead against the glass.

  “Hey, happy birthday.”

  Sean replied with a weak smile but didn’t look away from the window.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing—the street, houses.” He stared out as if he could see beyond the nothing, beyond the street, through the houses. “Another patrol came around. You must have heard them.”

  “I heard a truck.”

  Sean nodded. “They didn’t have a PA this time. Most of the time you can’t even tell if they’re men or women. They were all masks and hazmat suits, army caps and boots. And I can’t shake the feeling that they’re young.” He rubbed at his weary eyes. “Who else are you going to send out? Young soldiers who have to do what they’re told. One of them came onto the porch. She had more of those leaflets. She put one on the wall where I could see it, but it blew onto the porch just after she left. I’ve been trying to read it but I can’t get the right angle. All I can see is phone numbers, much good they would do us, and some sort of map. Why do they keep sending them out?” He turned to look at her, his eyes sad. “They don’t bring anything we can use. They don’t have any new information. They’re out there, at risk, for what? How many of them get sick?”

  “They keep the looters away.”

  Sean looked out the window again. “She asked about Gwen and Stuart. I told her Stuart was gone and we were helping Gwen. I told her we don’t need leaflets, we can’t drink leaflets, we can’t eat leaflets. She said all the things we need are at the shelter, and they don’t have the resources to bring them to us. She said it would be safe. She’s the one walking the streets, I guess. She said”—he paused—“she suggested that Gwen should be in the shelter. That she would be better off where she could be looked after.”

  “It would make our food last longer. And we wouldn’t have to leave the house to deliver her meals.”

  “You think we should? We can call and they’ll send someone for her. And Mr. Henderson, if he’s still there. Is that the right thing to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what if it kills her? What if we make the call and they take her to the shelter and she catches it? Is that our fault?”

  “I don’t know.” She moved over to the window and threaded her arms around him. “Not today. Nothing bad happens today.” She gave him a soft kiss. “Happy birthday.”

  Six o’clock and the light was gone. Oscar’s
face glowed expectantly with reflected candlelight. Hannah found his excitement infectious. A little bundle of presents sat on the table, tied with green garden string, its flat plastic strands picking up the flickering light.

  “What have we here?” Sean was a bad pantomime act. “Could these possibly be for me?”

  “They’re presents, Dad.” Oscar looked concerned at having to enlighten his father.

  “Tell me, tell me, which one should I open first?”

  “Mine!” Ella held it out to him. “It’s a picture of me, I colored it.”

  “Thank you, sweetie, that’s great.” Sean unwrapped and examined it carefully. “So you’re a princess and a fairy.” He looked her up and down. “Just so.”

  Oscar had taken ahold of his, rolled up in a checked tea towel. He tentatively held it out. “I couldn’t get you a real present.”

  “This will be better.” Sean unfurled it. He had to hold it close to the candle to make out anything. “I think I need my reading glasses. Maybe you could read it to me after dinner.” Oscar nodded. “And, Zac, my firstborn, what have you brought me?”

  “That one.” Zac poked at a pocket-sized present, folded inside a geometric napkin. Sean pulled the string off one end and the cloth unwrapped itself. The booklet was surprisingly well executed. Zac had taken the covers off a broken Boys’ Own hardback and glued them on either side.

  “My God, paper, something to write on. I am blessed.” Zac looked quizzically at him. “It’s great. I’m very impressed.” He took the last present from Hannah. “So what did you make me?”

  “I’m afraid I bought you something. I’ve had it for a while. If I’d known, I would have got you a tin of coffee or a solar battery. It seems frivolous now.”

  The perfectly shop-wrapped present looked unreal, somehow ostentatious and foppish. She wished its execution was more rustic, more substantial. Inside, a clear plastic clamshell surrounded a pair of headphones that looked like they had rolled off a robotic production line without ever having interacted with anything organic.

  “They’re noise canceling, for the bus to work, so you can be in your own world.”

  He squeezed her arm. “I look forward to using them. I look forward to the time when I can use them.”

  “Soon.”

  “Yes, soon.”

  “Now”—he rubbed his hands together in exaggerated anticipation—“what’s for birthday dinner?”

  Oscar could no longer hold it in. “Mum made spaghetti Bolognese.”

  “We have spaghetti? We have Bolognese?”

  “Well”—Hannah carried a bowl over to the table—“the request I got from everyone was not beans and rice. So…” She whipped the tea towel off the top of the bowl. “Ta-daa!”

  Sean stared bemused at the mound of food, then broke into a deep belly laugh. A thick red sauce smothered the top of a large pile of popcorn.

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  Tears were streaming down his face as he pointed to the food. “Is that mince?”

  “It might not be mince.”

  “Mum.” Oscar looked at her, outraged. “Is that beans?”

  “If one couldn’t get mince, one would most certainly not mush up beans and pretend they were mince. It’s popcorn Bolognese, a special birthday treat. For Sean. Happy birthday.”

  After the pile of food was ladled out and, however incongruous the flavors were, eaten and enjoyed, after the leftovers were fought over among the kids, after a tub delivered to Gwen, after the last glass of wine they had left was split between the two of them, Zac cleared away the plates and Oscar hovered next to him, shadowing him from the table to the sink. Sean pulled Hannah into a bear hug and they kissed in the corner, just outside the circle cast by the candle.

  “Gross,” Zac muttered loudly.

  “You’re a legend.” Only Sean’s smile caught the flickering light, a Cheshire cat. “Best birthday ever.”

  Oscar was hopping up and down next to them. He looked at Hannah, waiting for her sign, but he couldn’t hold it in anymore. “There’s a cake, we made a cake. It’s chocolate but Mum said we didn’t have to use the chocolate for our milk but I said you have to have a chocolate cake.” Ella and Oscar had considered the issue so seriously, she’d been afraid of a hung jury.

  “When he says cake…you know, it’s a loose interpretation of a cake.”

  Sean looked around. “Where are you hiding it?”

  “In the fridge—it’s not like you’d have any reason to look there.”

  She brought it out, a small pile of thick, wobbly rice boiled with powdered milk and cocoa. They’d included anything they could find in the cupboards—the last of the dried fruit, the dusting from an empty packet of shredded coconut. The whole thing was covered with silver dragées and star-shaped sprinkles. On top, they had put the stub ends of birthday candles found at the back of one of the kitchen drawers. Even Zac smiled. But the happiness was bought dearly, she knew. The popcorn, the last tin of tomatoes, the rice, and the milk powder. It was more food than they could afford to eat at one meal.

  Half of what had to be said took place sotto voce in a quiet corner, leaving out all the nouns. The other half they held on to until the kids were in bed. They took whatever opportunities they found. One presented itself as the kids played loud rough-and-tumble on the square of backyard lawn. Hannah and Sean stood under the patio roof with their backs to the garden, leaning against the uprights. Soft voices and unseen lips.

  “So, now it’s not my birthday, what’s for dinner?”

  “I’ll give you half a guess.”

  “We can’t keep doing this.”

  “We have to.”

  “I know you want to think that and I know it’s true as far as it goes, but we have no idea how much longer this will last.” Sean leaned his head a little closer to hers. “Just because we have to doesn’t mean we can.”

  “They’ve been able to look at the thing for weeks, they have to find a vaccine soon. We only have to hold out until that’s available.”

  “Which may or may not work. Thousands are dying every day. We can’t just assume a vaccine will magically arrive on our timetable. There’s no good reason why we get to be the lucky ones.”

  Because they had to be, she thought. But he was right, she’d been relying on hope and self-deception. “And what? You’ve come up with some clever solution that I haven’t thought of?”

  She could see him considering how to put it. He might have a solution, but from the look on his face, whatever it was, she wasn’t going to like it.

  “I think it’s time to consider all the resources at our disposal.”

  They had made full use of all their dwindling resources. They had nothing else. It slowly dawned on her which resources he was referring to. “But they’re not at our disposal.” She couldn’t find the energy to argue over this, not again, not after Lily’s. “A few more days.” She cocked her head in the direction of Stuart’s house. “He might come back.”

  “Not even I believe that.” Sean was staring at the ground, considering. But not, she knew, considering her point. “Someone is going to do it. Every day we wait, it’s more likely that it won’t be us.”

  “It’s wrong. You can make any argument you like, but it’s just plain wrong. It’s not ours.”

  “You’ve got plans and pantries and principles. That stuff is great, but surviving trumps it all. I’m not sure ownership means much right now, and even if it does, we have Ella. It’s her house too.” Sean turned back to the kids. “Zac, can I have you for a moment?” Zac jogged over. Sean dropped his voice again. “I need you to keep the kids indoors for a while.” He looked at Zac as if weighing up how much he needed to know. “We have to do something we’d rather Ella doesn’t see.”

  Zac nodded. “Hey, Oscar, Ella, want to play a board game?”

  “Can I choose? Can we play a game I want?”

  “Sure, Oz, whatever.”

  “Can we play Snakes and Ladders?” Even Oscar knew
it was an ambit claim. Hannah waited for Zac to roll his eyes, but he smiled. “Sure, of course. Ella goes first, ’cause she’s littlest.”

  Stuart’s house looked empty once they got into the backyard, but so did theirs and so did Gwen’s. The only life was a brief glimpse of Mr. Moon on Stuart’s garage, surveying them contemptuously before disappearing down the back of the roof. She would be able to tell Oscar she had seen him and he was all right. Or maybe it would be kinder not to.

  Hannah had brought the kitchen knife with her, just in case. She hoped her bluff wasn’t called. Hoped it was a bluff. In her other hand she had a couple of green shopping bags, as if she were popping up the road. She felt a slight shiver of relief that there were no surprises in the garden, though what she had been dreading, she wasn’t sure.

  Sean’s hand rested on the back door handle. It seemed like a long moment before he started to turn the knob.

  “Hang on.” Something was making her anxious—this was the last chance she had to circumvent whatever came next. “We have no way of knowing if it’s safe to go in.”

  “Ella came over a week ago—five days longer than we need for the virus to be gone.”

  “But what if he didn’t leave right away?”

  “So we have maybe four and a half days’ safety margin. Beans and rice. I’m going in.” Sean turned and pushed. The folding doors trembled in the middle. “How did this get locked?”

  “The same way it got closed.”

  “I guess we were kidding ourselves that the wind blew it shut.”

  Ella couldn’t have climbed over the fence by herself. Stuart must have been there when they were ringing. And he had locked up after himself.

  Sean pumped the handle. When it didn’t irrationally jump open on the fifth try, he stood back and looked flummoxed. “What do we do now?” He banged on the door hard with his fist. “Stuart!” He banged again. “Stuart!”

  “Shhh. The kids will hear.” She looked over their fence, but no one moved. And no one moved in the other half of Stuart’s semi, either. She searched for sounds of people and found none. The quiet seemed to hint at houses filled with unseen listening ears. “If there’s any chance at all he’s still home, we’re not going in.”