“And I think being here’s too dangerous, but we’re here and we have to get home. Via the roads.”
“We’re going through the backyards.”
“It’s less than four blocks to home. Five minutes at most. Being in someone’s backyard is what got me into trouble last time.” His voice rose with exasperation.
“We shouldn’t have come out in the first place and we should have turned back, but we are here and we are staying off the road.” Hannah breathed in deep. “The house over the fence almost faces Lily’s. We only have to jump that one fence and we’re in the street next to ours. If we go through one of the gardens to the back lane that saves another block. We skip two whole blocks and we only have to cross one road.”
“I don’t want to go back up the driveway.” Zac’s voice was quiet but firm.
“You can’t climb the fence with that arm.”
“I can.” He looked less confident than he sounded.
The drive opened up into an overgrown garden. The trees gave them privacy to look over the side fences, size up the area without being seen by anyone but the hopefully absent occupants of the house.
“Once we’re all over, keep moving. If you hear anyone, run straight home. Now, not a sound.” Sean lifted Ella over the fence and began to lower her down the other side. She clung to his shoulders. He tried to disentangle himself but she grabbed and thrashed, clawing her way up his arms and onto his back, raising welts as she went. Sean swore silently. He puffed with pain, then gently twisted himself to put her back down.
Zac spoke softly. “I’ll go over first, Dad. Hand her to me.”
Zac’s arm began to tremble as he put his weight on it, and Hannah placed a steadying hand on his side. Sean delivered Ella into Zac’s arms. Hannah followed, then Oscar, boosted by Sean. Oscar’s fleece rode up, leaving his naked torso goosebumped and shivering.
The garden was quiet, the house was quiet, the street beyond was quiet, the shops were quiet, the back lane was quiet, and so was the house next to Gwen’s where they jumped the fence. The absence of noise, identical to the absence yesterday and the day before, and the knowledge that all those people had come out of all these houses was as unsettling as the noise of the crowd had been.
The days moved slowly, like the beginning of a rainy summer holiday—those first days when six weeks in the same house as the kids felt like a lifetime. But the sun shone through the window and she felt winter through her toes on the wooden floors.
There was not enough room in the house for the unspent energy in her legs. It infected them both. Sean prowled from room to room like a zoo animal, testing that the artificial edges of their territory still held them in. The lines that carried the Internet were too small for her to squeeze her thoughts out to freedom.
From the kitchen she heard Sean open the front door, felt the cool breeze of the outside sweep down the hall and out the gaps around the back door and the windows. Then the sound of the door closing again and Sean’s heavy tread down the hall.
She tried to concentrate on the screen even though the work in front of her, the documents to be read and written, couldn’t hold her interest. All she could see was that the movement of electrons that had up to a few weeks ago seemed full of meaning was in fact pointless and irrelevant.
But the gears of civilization were turning. One by one the markers of an orderly society, the infrastructure she had always assumed was easy and ordinary, were coming back. They had even been promised water within days. There was so little else to distract her that the prospect of turning on a tap was enough to make her heart beat a little faster. She had to believe that the words she read would matter again, that in time she would see the importance of irrelevant trivia. She yearned for boredom, just not this boredom. The boredom of P&C meetings, swimming classes, going to the office, and grocery shopping. The boredom of the ordinary.
Sean came through the hallway door, crossed to the kitchen sink, leaned on the counter, and stared out their window at the sun reflected on the window opposite.
“Can’t you find something to do?”
“Nothing that can’t wait.”
She turned her attention back to the screen.
He slunk to the back door. “I’m just going to check the back of Stuart’s.”
“Nothing has changed.”
She glanced over after a few moments to see him hoisting himself up on the fence. She sprinted out and pulled him down by the belt loops. “Come down, crazy man.” He let himself be towed back to the kitchen. “Aren’t they expecting some work out of you?”
“Whatever I start seems so…” He shrugged.
“Play with the kids.”
“They have the TV and each other. No one really needs me.”
Her laptop beeped at her. “Damn, this will be Kate.”
Hey, babe. I’m so bored I’m going to die. I’ve started talking to my television. It answers me back. My television wants to know how you are all doing.
Hanging in. Desperate for some fresh air.
Here’s a little breath of air if you haven’t seen it.
There was a pause, as if to let her click on the link, and then underneath the lines continued.
I don’t want to hassle you, but do you think you’re going to send me the doc today? I want to get a jump on things before it all starts up again.
Turns out, I have plenty of time on my hands. I’ll get it to you.
The link to the article opened over everything else. Blazoned along the top of the page, “Miracle Girl,” and underneath was a photo of a toddler with a tube coming out of her nose, purple rash on her chest and shoulders, lips parted and a toy elephant lying on the pillow beside her. Hannah skimmed the page looking for the information that counted and there it was, buried at the bottom. A quote from a doctor saying that although it had been effective against the final stage of the disease, the drug-intensive treatment took more days and resources than would make it practical for widespread use. They had pulled off one limited miracle for a disease that had almost run its course.
We could meet for lunch at the café on the corner. I’d be the one with the tin of tuna and the survival rations. It’d be safe. And if it isn’t, we can get ourselves some of that cure.
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 in the day for a convoy.” Hannah held up her hands to stop them. “Even if it is one, 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.”
Ella twisted herself in Sean’s arms and pointed to the front of the house. “Can we see the trucks? I want to see trucks!”
“You saw yesterday’s. This one will be the same.”
“I saw guns.” Ella looked proud of the statement.
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 y
ou’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, and 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 bed 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 zero. 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 vehicles, watching them. When he turned his gaze on her, it seemed to be with accusation. She told herself off for imagining things, and just to prove her courage to herself, she held his eye for an instant before looking away. When she looked back, he was still watching her.
Oscar teetered on the windowsill and she leaned out next to him to try to see the other way, past Gwen’s wall. 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 most distant 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 supported 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 bed, all of them in fatigues, paper masks hanging around their necks. And Ella was right—several of them were conspicuously carrying 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 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 reached her fence, 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 neighbor…”
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 still hope we might hear from her mum. She was working 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.
Sean let Ella slide down from his arms and she darted farther into the room. A look of unease came over Oscar as he slid down and sidled 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 paying attention, 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, leaned 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 recognized 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 civilization. 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 favors 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 leaned 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 pried 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.” The truck was gone, Ella with it, without even Oscar’s purple teddy bear.
Before This Is Over Page 33
