An Ordinary Epidemic (36 page)

Sean looked to Hannah for the next move. She creaked up from the ground with effort. ‘Let's look again, Mouse.'

‘I looked.'

And he had. Another set of eyes couldn't conjure any hiding among the sparse, well-organised tins. All she could find was the last tissues, a small pocket-sized pack.

She stared at the remaining tins and packets. So much for carefully calculated rations, so much for average consumption multiplied by four. Her self-reproach was interrupted by Sean, peering over her shoulder. It still didn't make any more toilet paper appear. His voice mirrored her own recriminations. ‘We have weeks' worth of hand wash but no toilet paper. I thought you planned this out.'

‘It turns out kids use more toilet paper but wash their hands less. That shouldn't have been a surprise.'

Zac followed them down the side passage. The concrete
was dark, slimy and green from all the rain. Sean stepped over the squelchy towels outside the bathroom window. Before this started, they produced enough waste for a whole bin every week. But now almost all they added was an empty bag and a couple of tins once a day. Sean dived into the recycling bin, digging through the tins to retrieve the last copy of the local paper that, up until a few weeks ago, was left on their door every week. It was still in its plastic sleeve, protected from moisture.

Zac followed them back to the patio table and watched their every move as they tore the newspaper into squares. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Making toilet paper.'

‘I'm not using that to wipe. Gross.'

‘It's this or nothing.'

‘The bits with photos are shiny. That's not going to work.'

‘Then don't use the shiny bits.'

Zac stared at Sean as if he had gone mad.

‘Don't waste it,' Sean waggled his finger at Zac, ‘or you'll have to use the shiny stuff.'

The chime of a text message came from Zac's pocket. He pulled out his phone, gave the message his serious consideration and then turned to Hannah gravely. ‘You don't have Manba.'

‘Your phone told you that?'

‘Sophie's dad.' He spoke matter-of-factly, as if Sophie's dad was the usual source of such knowledge.

‘Who's Sophie?'

‘A kid in my year.'

‘And you rang her dad?'

‘No.' She sensed that he felt his mother was clearly an idiot, even if she wasn't infectious. ‘I texted Simon but his parents didn't know, so he emailed Lachlan because his mum works at the university but she didn't know. But Lachlan used to go
out with Sophie, and her dad's a doctor at the hospital, so he emailed her. And she texted me. Her dad says it gets worse for the first three days at least if you don't treat it. You don't get better overnight and you don't throw up. You have, you know, kind of the opposite.' The phone went off again. ‘He says you ate something bad.'

‘Food poisoning. All that technology and your mother could have told you that.'

‘And you could have searched the internet. You're the one with the smart phone.' He muttered under his breath, ‘They all have smartphones.'

‘How often do you text people?'

‘I don't know. Whenever.'

‘I guess it's not much fun for you now Daniel's gone. Do you text him much?'

Zac shrugged.

As the fog and lethargy of illness left Hannah, it was replaced by a gnawing fear—that their food wasn't safe. She was supposed to be resting on the sofa. Her feet lay, comfortingly, in Sean's lap as he read and her eyes were closed but her mind revolved through possibilities. Although it seemed, in cool reflection, that the men from this morning were more interested in conning their way in than breaking their way in, she kept coming back to the thought that if they abandoned the house, the food was lost. She opened her eyes. Sean was watching her instead of reading.

‘You should be sleeping.'

‘I was.'

He gave her a sceptical look.

‘We have to do something. Maybe a more secure house...'

‘You want to break into someone's house and squat?
Seriously?'

She got and up walked to the pantry, as if staring at it could somehow solve the problem. As she stood there, hugging herself tight, Zac passed on his way from the kitchen. He faltered in his path when he saw his silent sentinel mother then kept going. Hannah felt as if she couldn't leave, as if the very act of not staring at the pantry would put them in danger. She barely registered Sean and Zac pass through. Her trance was only broken when Zac dropped a motley heap of wooden planks at her feet.

Sean and Zac's quiet industriousness was amplified by the din of the cordless drill and the clatter of the hammer. She wouldn't let herself question whether their fortifications would be of any use. It was all they had. And when they were finished, the edges of the pantry doors were haphazardly reinforced with an assortment of planks. At the middle edges, Sean had drilled large holes through both the reinforcing and the doors underneath, threaded through the D-lock from Zac's bike and locked it with a click.

‘You are the official keeper of the key.' Sean handed it to her. ‘No one's getting through that without smashing the doors.'

She wanted to say,
And what if they smash the doors?

‘Go on, Mum, try it.' Zac didn't look as happy as he should.

Hannah looked at Sean. They all knew that they had done what they could. That didn't mean it was enough.

She tried to slide the key in but the angle was awkward. ‘I can't see the slot, could you turn the light on for me?'

Sean flicked the switch. Nothing happened. ‘Damn. Do we have a spare bulb?'

‘Inside the locked pantry. I can probably see well enough.' Hannah tried to tilt her head upside down and sideways to get a better look but was hit by a tired dizziness.

‘You're still a bit wobbly. I'll get you the torch.'

She heard him click the living room switch on his way
through but no light came on. As she stepped into the kitchen, the fridge was forebodingly silent. Ella and Oscar looked up from the jigsaw on the kitchen table. The pieces were too small for Ella's fingers but she was happy perched on a chair, her legs swinging, as long as Oscar was nearby. Hannah pulled open the fridge door, no light there either.

‘It'll be a fuse.' As if she was reassuring the two littlies. They went back to the jigsaw, unalarmed.

Hannah walked back through the house flicking switches. By the time she reached the front door, she couldn't pretend it was just a fuse.

Sean hesitated. ‘We should go around the side. The torch is going to stand out like a sore thumb in the street.'

In the tunnel of the side passage, Sean tugged at the gate, which groaned and protested, swelled by the rain. He wrenched it far enough to squeeze through. Hannah watched the street warily. There was no light from any of the houses, even the street lamps were out. Only the last rays of twilight illuminated the scene. On the other side of the fence, Stuart and Natalie's house was as dark as theirs. No light showed though the closed curtains.

Sean glanced at the street and then back into the fuse box. ‘I think we can be fairly confident it's not a fuse.' As if this hadn't all been for show.

It needed both of them pushing with their shoulders against the gate to get the bolt home. With each heave, she expected to feel someone on the other side pushing back. She didn't feel secure until it was locked again.

Sean marched back up the passage and she was forced to talk to his receding back. ‘The food in the freezer will spoil.' Sean didn't reply. ‘But if we keep the door closed, it should stay cold for a day or two.' He was still silent. ‘So, maybe we should start with anything left in the fridge. And we should turn our phones off too, save the batteries.' There were things
she had to say, things she didn't want the kids to hear. She stopped, hoping he would turn around but he kept walking, leaving her behind.

He reached the corner before he relented. ‘Yeah, all that.'

‘But, and?'

‘Wouldn't solar panels be handy right now?' She wasn't going to answer, however much he made it sound like a passing thought. ‘Like the water tank. Didn't that turn out to be useful?'

‘I never said we shouldn't have a water tank.'

‘But you had to be persuaded.'

‘It's too big. It's still too big. I look out the back every day and it's too big.'

‘Yet it's keeping us safe. And we could have had solar panels, enough to run the freezer, charge the phones.'

‘How were you going to pay for it? We didn't have the money. And there were other priorities. Do you remember how much it all cost? We spent every cent we had on living, remember, take-away food and paying a cleaner. If we had waited a year, maybe then. And even if we had, how much money were you prepared to spend on solar? It was never going to be enough to run the whole house.'

‘The freezer and the phones.'

‘During the day if it's sunny and at night everything defrosts again.'

‘It stays cold if you don't open the door. You just said so.'

‘We don't have them, we don't have them, we don't have them!'

He looked at her the way he looked at Oscar when there was no talking to him.

‘It's my fault, I'll admit to that. It was my fault for being sick and using up all our resources. It's my fault that we didn't hold off the renovation until we could afford it all. My fault. I was the one in a hurry, I was the one that soaked up all our savings.'
Her confession was an accusation.

Hidden by the dark, Zac and Oscar were staring out of the kitchen window. Zac with concern, Oscar with wonder.

‘Get off the bench, Oscar.' Sean roared through the glass and Oscar almost fell backwards.

Hannah pushed past Sean and ran to the kitchen. Ella stood in the middle of the room, looking lost. Oscar was hunched over the jigsaw, staring at a piece in his hand. Zac looked at her defiantly.

‘Get your phone.'

‘What? Why?'

‘Just get it. I'll need yours too, Sean.' She didn't look at him or alter her ‘dealing with a recalcitrant teenager' voice.

The phone screens cast a small sphere of light. She checked the battery icons, hers had the most charge. The other two were less than half. She redirected Sean's and Zac's to hers and turned them all off. ‘We'll check my phone twice a day.'

‘And what happens when you run out of charge and we're all still redirected?' Zac wasn't really asking, he was trying to prove her wrong.

‘Then we swap the SIMs.'

‘But it's my phone. I can use it how I like.'

‘It's not your phone Zac.' Sean broke in, an uneasy ally. ‘It never was your phone. And there won't be any calls. You can send one text each time we turn it on.'

‘That's bullshit.'

‘Live with it. What do you think happened before email? People sent letters, it could take days.'

‘Yeah, I forgot you lived with the dinosaurs when they didn't have telephones.'

‘Watch it, Zac.' Sean glowered at him and then spread his glower around the room. The whole scene appeared to wash over Ella, she was still lost in the shadow. Hannah noticed Oscar wiping at his eyes. She put her arm around his shoulder.

Zac spat contempt at her. ‘He's not a little kid, Mum.'

‘That's just what he is.'

‘Well he should grow up. When I was his age...'

‘When you were his age,' Sean bit, ‘you were an only child who didn't have to worry about anything yet. He's lucky because he has an older brother to help him. That's how life is, the luck of the draw. You want us to make sure that every bad thing that happened to you happens to him?'

Hannah was pinned against the hallway wall by the mattress.

‘Bend it a bit.' Sean pushed the other end, still wedged in Zac's room.

‘Back up and come at a shallower angle.' The top sheet was hanging down, only loosely held by the edge draped over the top and each time she blindly stepped, it caught her feet. Sean repositioned and she pulled herself and the mattress along the wall. Her face pressed into the bedclothes, redolent of teenage boy, a little overpowering but almost warm and comforting. Even if they had electricity, she wouldn't have washed them. It was hard to imagine that Ella could ever care enough to make it worth wasting that much drinking water. They manhandled the mattress around the corner, across the living room. She listed side to side as she walked backwards, hugging it to her, keeping it up by the friction of her arms. Every time she stumbled, Sean piled head first into his end.