Nineteen
We didn’t sleep much. The next day I took to the outside table with the axe and chopped it all up. I was getting good with the axe, efficient. Max stood at the back door and watched, holding a knife. I had no idea what he was going to do with the knife if CSI came back. Can’t say that either of us was very experienced in handling weapons. We lugged all the wood inside and stacked it in the living room.
‘What’ll we burn next?’ Max asked.
‘That.’ I motioned toward the dining suite.
A truck engine.
We were out the door and on the street. It was an army truck coming down the hill. I felt my body loosen with relief, we hadn’t been forgotten. People emerged from the other houses, faces barely visible beneath beanies and scarves. Mr White was one of them, but he avoided eye contact. I was just letting the edge of the idea of more food enter my mind when the truck stopped a few houses up the road, outside the Ketterleys’ place. Two army guys jumped down from the cabin and slammed the doors shut. People moved toward them, but the army guys didn’t even look in their direction, walking straight up the Ketterlys’ driveway. If they were bringing food wouldn’t they carry it in? I waited, watching. A few moments later they came back with Doctor Ketterly, his wife and their two kids. One army guy opened the door at the back of the truck. It was one of those ones with a big canvas cover over the back: a troop carrier. The Ketterlys climbed in, then the army dudes got in and the engine started.
‘Hey!’ someone yelled.
I ran up the road to the truck. I reached it just as they were about to pull away from the kerb. The army guys didn’t seem to see me. I slapped at the window.
‘Hey, stop!’
The driver ignored me and continued to pull away from the kerb.
‘Stop,’ I yelled. ‘Where’s our food? We’ve run out of food!’
Neither of them looked at me. They drove down to the bottom of the hill and did a U-turn. As the truck rumbled up the hill toward us, me and some others, Mr White included, went out and stood in the middle of the road, waving our arms. ‘Stop!’
The bullbar of the truck kept coming toward us, it got closer and closer. It wasn’t going to stop. At the last moment we scattered out of its way.
‘Hey! Hey!’ I tried to run after it, but my feet slipped on the ice. I landed on my hands and knees. Blood leached from the heels of my palms. Orange, like rust, smudged on the ice.
I watched the truck drive away.
Twenty
I saw Mick through the window as he was throwing bags into the back of his ute. I went across the road.
‘We’re off,’ he said.
He’d seen the thing with the army truck and said they didn’t give a crap about us. He swung the last suitcase into the back. Zadie and Zac watched from inside the house. I could see them standing in the window. Zadie was wearing her mittens. She pressed her nose up against the glass and looked at Max and me. I waved to her. She waved back but didn’t smile.
‘I’ve got all the food we have left: flour, sugar, desiccated coconut. All the stuff I never considered before. Been mixing it with water.’ He laughed and shook his head. He looked at me for a moment, then pulled me into a hug. I could feel the xylophone bumps of his rib cage.
‘You fellas take care. You got a plan?’
‘Mum’s in Sydney. I’m thinking we need to get to her.’
‘Yeah. You can’t stay here.’
He pressed something into my hand. A key. He cocked his head toward Ellen’s purple station wagon.
‘Take it when you need it,’ he said. ‘Can you drive?’
‘Not legally.’
‘Ha. That’s the least of your problems.’
We ate the last can of soup. Arnold Wong said to come back when we ran out, didn’t he? Could I go back? If we were going to try to make it to the city, we would need to take supplies.
I wondered how many others were sick. It was easy to forget that anyone else in the world still existed. Was Mrs White sick? Had she died? I wanted to go and see her, but Mr White…
What about her dogs?
Oh God.
‘Max, I’m going to go and find more food. Then we’re going to go find Mum.’
‘What if Dad comes back?’
‘We’ll leave a note.’
I pushed the key into the ignition and started the car. I reversed it carefully onto the road and turned the wheel so the car was facing up the hill. I pressed the accelerator and it moved forward a little before the tyres started to spin on the ice.
‘Shit.’ I hit the steering wheel. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’
Mick hadn’t put chains on the tyres. And even if we did have some in the garage I wouldn’t know what the hell to do with them.
The walk took so long. Every step was merciless. I used to be a good long-distance runner. Reasonably good. I did regionals. The running was good but I really liked the end. I liked the moment when you let your body fall onto the grass and you open up your lungs and your head thuds and you know you’ve really done something. It’s like a free pass to sit on your arse for the rest of the week. I loved that first gulp of cool water in my throat. I loved the relief when it was over.
The walk up the hill felt like the last two hundred metres of a race, after every step I felt that I couldn’t do any more. I stopped halfway up and dry wretched. My guts were protesting, screaming for food
I made it up the hill. I wanted to sit down, but I’d only have to get up again. There were tyre tracks in the snow along Arnold’s street. People must have started to get out, chains or no chains.
There was a small cluster of people standing out in the snow. Men. One saw me and approached. He was about my dad’s age. Beard. But then didn’t everyone have a beard now? Everyone but me, it seemed.
‘You got food, buddy?’
‘No.’
‘Where you going?’
‘A mate’s.’
‘He got food?’
‘No.’ I passed him and somehow found the energy to quicken my pace. He followed me. I went up Arnold Wong’s drive.
‘You sure about that, buddy?’ said the man. I ignored him. I knocked on Arnold’s door.
‘’Cause I got a family,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ I said to Arnold. ‘That guy’s hassling me for food.’
Arnold regarded me sceptically. Suddenly I felt like I was on a boat, the ground shifted. I held the wall to
