by Alex Burns
The blackouts became more frequent and lasted longer. Each time the power flickered or went out I was scared that it wouldn’t come back on. I had a couple of torches and some candles but nothing like a generator. The internet had turned into a cantankerous teenager. Pages took forever to load. A lot of websites went down completely. It became harder to talk to Tristan. He said things were still relatively normal in the little town his parents lived in, but Vancouver was a mess. At the back of my mind I wondered if each conversation would be our last.
On the tenth day after Quarantine had been announced (or was it the eleventh?) I realised I couldn’t recall when I’d last heard the army loudspeaker. Surely I hadn’t missed the big announcement that it was over? I’d all but given up on checking for information online. It was all completely contradictory and soon became obvious that no-one actually knew what they were talking about. A vlogger got a bit of attention when she claimed she’d been cured by some wonder drug, and loads of people had broken quarantine to try and get some, but it was all a hoax in the end. It didn’t work. Nothing worked.
The street lights flickered. I wondered who was turning them on. Were they automatic? I had no idea. So many things I didn’t know.
I stood in the middle of the street, in front of my house. I could almost fool myself into thinking it was just a quiet night. Cars lined the street waiting patiently where their owners had left them. Maggie snuffled around the base of a power pole. I’d felt sorry for the dog and decided to take her for a walk. We hadn’t left the house since I’d brought her home from Lucy and Alan’s. We’d been so cooped up with only walks around the small backyard to sate the giant dog.
It was late. I figured my chances of bumping into anyone at this time of night were quite slim. I paused, listening, while Maggie sniffed the pole. There was no sign of human life. No sirens, no distant hum of traffic or screech of tyres. I supposed that was to be expected. As far as I knew, we were still under quarantine. I wondered how much trouble I’d be in if I was caught outside. I jumped when a nearby possum let out a warning grown at another possum. A dog barked. The possum started screeching. The dog bark became more insisted. Maggie drew closer to me and leaned against my leg, looking up at me.
“Great guard dog you are,” I muttered. Maggie whined.
Movement caught my eye. It was just another possum, racing up a power pole.
I patted Maggie on the head.
“Come on, let’s stretch our legs.”
We slowly walked to the end of the street, Maggie stopping to sniff something new every metre or so. I rubbed my arms, trying to warm myself.
A car alarm went off a street or two away, making me jump again. A desperate need to see another human being filled me, and I started walking toward the noise, suddenly not caring if I got caught or in trouble for breaking quarantine.
I turned the corner. The street lights flickered again. An expensive looking car sat about fifty metres away, lights pulsing and letting out an ear piercing racket. It was loud enough to wake the whole neighbourhood. A dark shadow hovered near the car.
“Hello?” I called out.
The shadow froze and then disappeared over the nearest fence. I ran forwards, Maggie trotting after me.
“Wait!” I cried. “Please…”
Had I imagined the shadow? Maggie and I walked around the block but we didn’t see anyone else. Was I the last person left?
Chapter Nine
Time passed in bursts. Minutes felt like hours and hours would pass in the blink of an eye. I was restless, impatient, miserable, lonely, heartsore, bored.
My phone rang and I almost dropped it in my eagerness to pick it up. It hadn’t worked properly for the past day or two. Text messages kept being marked as Unsent, and my phone calls weren’t connecting. I glanced at the screen, not even sure who I most wanted it to be.
It was Mum. The connection was terrible and kept dropping in and out.
“How…you?” Are you…” Mum’s voice faintly came through.
“Still not sick,” I said, guessing what she was asking.
“What? Hello?
“I’m not sick!” I said again, and then repeated it to be on the safe side.
“Good. Me either.”
“Have you talked to Sarah?” I hadn’t heard from my sister for days. I had no idea if it was just because the communication systems were so sporadic or it was due to something worse.
“…Sarah?”
“Mum, I can barely hear you.”
“I said, have … from Sarah?”
My heart sank. “No. Have you?”
“No… worried.”
“Me too.”
“What?”
“I said me too.”
“I don’t know if … hear me, Alice. I’ll … later. Love…”
“I love you too, Mum!” I yelled, hoping that somehow she could hear me.
After two weeks of quarantine, a day and a half of no power at all, and two days of my phone not working at all, I lay under a pile of blankets on the couch and willed myself to wake up from this nightmare.
When I’d been stuck in unpleasant situations before, I’d got through them by telling myself that I just had to endure this and I’d be fine on the other side. When I’d gotten temporarily lost in a snow storm near the top of Whistler, my skis had detached after I’d taken a tumble and I couldn’t find my friend, I remember just sitting there in the snow, buried halfway up to my shoulders, cold, wet, kinda hungry, miserable, and thinking that I just needed to get off the mountain, then I’d be able to be warm and safe again.
There was no getting off this mountain. Every morning I woke up hoping that this would be the day that things would start going back to normal. Quarantine would be lifted, a cure had been found, the borders were all reopening and Tristan would be on his way back to me. People would emerge from their houses, we’d assess the damage, grieve our losses, and slowly, ever so slowly, things would go back to as normal as they could be.
Would that morning ever come?
I started crossing off days on the calendar hanging up in the kitchen. I didn’t want to lose track again. On the sixteenth day I ran out of cat food. Gertrude meowed at me from on top of the washing machine. Maggie’s tail thumped the wall rhythmically while I poured her food into the bowl. I grimaced at the cat, and then offered her some of Maggie’s food. She sniffed it once, looked at me with disdain and meowed again.
“All right, all right. I’ll go and get you some food. Well, try. You know it would be helpful if you could actually hunt some food for yourself like a normal cat. I know for a fact we have a healthy population of mice out in the shed. Why don’t you go eat some of them?”
Gertrude meowed again.
“Or how about a nice, juicey bird? That annoying one that goes off at dawn every morning wouldn’t be missed,” I went on, fully aware that I sounded like a crazy person.
Gertrude just meowed again and then head butted me.
“Fine,” I muttered, stroking her back.
The thought of leaving the house again filled me with both dread and anticipation. I wanted to know what was going on, but I also didn’t want to get in trouble. There hadn’t been any announcements for quite a few days. I was scared of what I might find.
Gertrude running after me and meowing plaintively resolved my hesitation. The damn cat was hungry, and if she was hungry for too long she’d turn into a mean cat. She had no qualms about biting me if I hadn’t done what she wanted in a quick enough fashion. I took a deep breath, grabbed my coat and debated whether to drive or walk to the shops. I didn’t really want to carry a big bag of cat food home, but I also feared that I’d be too conspicuous in a car, especially my car with it’s cracked exhaust. You could hear me coming miles away. I had no idea what they would do to people breaking quarantine and I didn’t really want to find out. I studied Maggie, tossing up whether to bring her with me or not. She was big enough that you could kid yourself into thinking she’d be good protectio
n, but I knew the dog too well. She was an utter coward and scared of strange men. She’d be more likely to hide behind me or run away than protect me.
It was going on dusk and the shadows were growing long. Brilliant reds and pinks streaked across the western sky, dancing off the low lying clouds. I paused and just stood there, staring at the beautiful show nature had put on. It felt obscene. My friends were dead, so many people were dead, and yet there I stood, watching a stunning sunset. I shook my head and started walking.
I kept my eyes and ears peeled for any sign of people. Some of the streets smelt worse than they did on garbage collection day. I didn’t want to think about what was causing the rotting smell.
It didn’t take me long to reach the shops, even with pausing on every corner and staring cautiously around. I hesitated on the corner of Ballarat St, looking and listening. It was dark, darker than I’d ever seen the village. None of the lights were on. All I could hear was the wind rustling through the trees and a dog barking somewhere. Slowly, carefully, I walked up the street. My boots crunched on broken glass. The whole front window of the liquor store had been smashed. Shards of glass littered the footpath. I pulled the torch out of my pocket and shone it through the broken window. Most of the shelves were bare, with only a few bottles of wine left. All the spirits were gone. I didn’t want to venture further in to check on the status of the beer fridge.
I shivered and turned around, scanning the street. I felt like I was being watched. I huddled down into my coat, trying to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible, and quickly crossed the street to the supermarket. The doors had been pried open with a branch. I stepped over said branch and paused to listen again. Was that slight rustling real or was I just imagining it?
I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans, told myself to get a grip and go get the damn cat food.
I held the torch up in front of me and let out a gasp. The place was an absolute mess. The floor was littered with discarded packets of food, rotting fruit, and things I couldn’t readily identify. I gingerly stepped through the mess. Thankfully they hadn’t changed the layout of the supermarket in the three years we’d been living in Yarraville; I knew exactly where the pet food aisle was.
I held my breath. The whole place stank. I wasn’t sure if it was the rotting meat, rotting vegetables or the rotting cheese that smelt worse. Probably the meat. I took a shallow breath, covering my mouth with my sleeve. I shone my torch on the shelves, fervently hoping that cat food hadn’t been high on the looters list. My prayers were answered. There was still a couple of large bags of dried cat food, and quite a few tins of wet food. I raced back to the cash registers and grabbed a few plastic bags. I filled them up with as much cat food as I could carry, and threw in a few dog treats for Maggie, and a bunch of toothpaste for myself on the way out. I was tempted to get a bottle of wine or two (god only knew, I could do with a drink), but my arms protested. I was already carrying too much.
The desolation of the once thriving village made this whole mess feel far too real. I shuddered. I didn’t want to come back any time soon.
My phone was on it’s last 5% of battery and the power still hadn’t come back on. I tried to call Tristan, Mum, Sarah, anyone. The same weird dial tone greeted all of my attempts.
I woke up with a jolt. Evidently the smashing sound I’d just heard hadn’t been in my dream. I sat in bed for a moment, disorientated and confused. The sound of glass smashing against the floor and Maggie’s barking made me jump out of bed with my heart hammering. Gertrude dived under the bed. In my confusion I reached out for Tristan.
Adrenaline pulsed through me. I didn’t even feel the cold at first. I paused at the threshold of my bedroom, looking around in vain for some sort of weapon. I didn’t think the laundry basket would be very threatening.
I stood in the hallway, trying to listen around Maggie’s incessant barking. She was down the back of the house, and it sounded like one of the french doors that led to the backyard had been smashed. I grabbed the large umbrella from the hall, figuring it was better than nothing, and tip-toed down the hallway.
It was close to a full moon and the back room was lit up. Maggie was under the table barking at a dark human-like shape that had frozen. Not a human-like shape, I sternly told myself; an actual human. There was an intruder in my home.
My heart felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest. I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm my nerves.
It didn’t work. There was a stranger in my home, in the middle of the night. It didn’t bode well for their intentions. While I stood there covered in shadows, wondering what the hell I should do, the intruder seemed to realise that the dog wasn’t going to attack him. He started towards the kitchen and pulled out a torch. I stood, frozen, holding the umbrella in front of me and probably looking completely ridiculous. The intruder’s torch swept around the kitchen. The light bounced off the pile of dirty dishes, sink full of cups and mugs, and the food I hadn’t put away or cleaned up. I felt absurdly ashamed of my dirty kitchen.
He started opening up cupboards, only stopping when he found the pantry. I watched in shock as he started piling my food in his bag. Nope. Not on. That was MY food.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I growled, hoping to sound menacing. The man froze and then slowly turned around.
“I… I didn’t know anyone was here.” I’d been wrong. It was a woman. A young woman by the sounds of it.
“Well, there is,” I said harshly.
She shone her torch in my face, temporarily blinding me. I raised the umbrella to block the light, and before I knew it the light was gone, as was my intruder. Maggie belatedly found her courage and chased after the stranger. I watched in disbelief as she scrambled over the back fence, Maggie snapping at her heels. I was almost tempted to call out for her to come back, but also relieved that she’d gone without a fight.
I went back in to the kitchen and flicked the light on. Nothing happened. I fumbled around on the bench where I knew I’d left a torch. Once I had some light I examined my pantry. She hadn’t taken much. I tried to remember exactly what had been in there. I seemed to be down a small bag of rice, maybe a few tins of beans and the packet of Tim Tams I’d been saving. I was most annoyed about the Tim Tams.
I closed the pantry door and sank down, sitting on the ground with my back to the pantry, keeping the torch on for the hollow comfort of light. Maggie slunk back in a few moments later and whined. She sat down next to me and licked my face.
“Thanks, Mags.” I slowly wiped the slobber of my cheek. I put an arm around the furry giant and leaned into her for comfort. Gertrude must have realised the coast was clear. Her bell jingled, announcing her imminent arrival. I swung the torch in her direction. The tabby fluff ball swaggered over and then jumped up on the washing machine, standing over her food bowl expectantly.
“Of course, in a time of crisis, you would think about food,” I muttered with a shake of my head.
I sat there in the cold kitchen and wondered what to do. I twirled my engagement ring around my finger. I looked down at it. What would Tristan do? What would we do if he was here and not stuck on the other side of the planet?
The intruder had freaked me out more than I liked. She hadn’t been violent, and she’d scarpered pretty quickly, but… I chewed my lip, worrying. What if the next person was more desperate and less scared? Someone who wouldn’t think twice about hurting a lone woman or taking all my stuff? I didn’t even have a cricket bat to defend myself with, let alone a gun. Besides, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a gun even if I had one. The only guns I’d ever played with were spud guns and water pistols. The only people I knew who owned or used real guns were all from back home, and most of them were farmers. None of my city friends had guns. When I was little, I’d watch my grandfather and uncles getting ready to go rabbit shooting and look at the guns with awe and envy. I’d wanted to go with them. Somewhat amused, Mum had assured me that I didn’t. At the age
of five, I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around the whole concept of the shooting part of rabbit shooting. I probably would have begged Grandpa to take the poor creatures to the vet or something.
Not everyone in the city was law-abiding though. Despite our pretty stringent gun laws, people who shouldn’t have guns still had guns, and those people probably wouldn’t hesitate for more than a second before using one against me if I had something they wanted. In normal times, the criminals seems to be content with just shooting each other for the most part, but it wasn’t exactly normal anymore.
What would I have done if the intruder had been brandishing a gun? Probably lost most of my food. Loosing my food stash wasn’t worth being shot over, not yet. It would be annoying and frustrating, but I thought I’d still be able to scrounge around for more. For now. But the supermarket had pretty slim pickings last time I’d been, and it was only going to get worse the longer this went on.
“I’m willing to concede that Mum might be right, you guys.” I didn’t think I was that crazy, talking to animals. It would be crazy if they replied. “We should go home.”
Chapter Ten
I stared at the small pile of belongings in the middle of the lounge room floor. Was this all my life had come to? I’d already packed up all of the food I had, and squeezed most of my clothes into my biggest suitcase. I was trying to be practical while I walked around our home in the stark light of day. It was cold inside with nothing stopping the wind from coming in through the broken french doors.
I sorted our belongings into three piles: definitely taking, take if there’s room, and don’t bother taking after all. I didn’t need to worry about priceless childhood mementos - Tristan’s were still in a box in his parents garage as far as I knew, and most of mine were in one of Mum’s sheds.
