The Next One

Content Notice

This story features a pandemic lock-down

It had come two years after Covid. Nobody wore masks the second time round, nobody cared to flatten a curve. By the time people realised what it was, it was too late. Aside from a deep lung infection, Allovirus caused a unique swelling in the head that made the body produce amyloid plaque in the brain. That plaque would thicken, stiffening the connectors of memory. Dulling them. Communicable, incurable, dementia.

It was four months before the World Health Organization figured that one out. By that time forty nine percent of Australians had had it. The onset was sudden. There was a plane that fell out of the sky in Sydney because a pilot forgot he was a pilot. That was the first tragedy. Then came the images of schools and day care centres. Children forgetting parents, parents forgetting children. As it is always, when it came for their kids, then people reacted. Government reacted. Lockdown again. The hysteria was intense. Thousands marched, thousands ignored the law and so Allo spread, and spread. That was a month ago. Things were quieter, yet louder now.

Susan Isherwood coughed. All her coworkers’ heads bolted up. Like gazelles looking for a lion. Susan worked for Statecorp bank. Statecorp had closed for Covid, it’s profits had gone down sixteen point five per annum, so they were staying open for Allo. Susan cleared her throat. Everyone bowed their heads back to their computers. Silence. It was mostly silent these days. Even the latent hum of traffic, silent. It was a dark overcast day, the verge of rain. The fluorescents casting a warm yellow glow. Nobody was coming in. Susan idly checked her reflection in plexiglass barrier between the teller’s desk and the rest of the branch. She was neither thin nor fat. She was young, but old enough to be taken seriously. Her long auburn hair tied up in a firm bun. She wore the black and white uniform of Statecorp with neither pride nor resignation. Susan was on the verge of going to the bathroom when the automatic doors slid open. Because so many of the staff were off sick she was the only teller.

A twenty something woman strode towards the desk. She lined up the usual way.

“My debit card, I uhmn” the woman paused.

Susan held her breath.

The woman tried again “I uhm…”

Susan’s hand slipped to a small button.

“I uhmn need a replacement—it’s slightly embarrassing but it went through the wash. Sorry I’m a little frazzled today my…” The woman trailed off and presented a near white card with the back numbers washed off.

“Account number please?” Susan asked.

The woman recounted her number with accuracy. Susan felt herself unclench. Her hand drifted away from the security button. The woman fumbled through the card under the cough barrier. Susan squirted it with lysol. Lysol didn’t kill Allovirus, but the bank demanded they do it to give the appearance of safety.

“I’ll just send you another, it was seven to fourteen days but with post being what is probably longer.”

The woman sighed “Serves me right, can you just print me the card details? I’m doing all my shopping online.”

The bank had a policy for this, Susan printed a small sheet with the lady’s card details. “Yes, I’ll request a duplicate but won’t cancel the old one, take this.” Susan slipped the sheet back.

“Ah cool, thanks” The woman smiled and left the branch.

She was the only customer that day.

Susan came outside hours later. A light rain fell. The road was sleek. It inclined upwards. She took off her mask, to feel the cold air in her chest instead of the stuffy moist mask. She heard a soft crying, and turned backwards. All small child ran out in the middle of the road Susan stopped.

“Mumma?” The child said, turning.

A large SUV suddenly barreled up the road. Susan jolted, her eyes fixed on the child, she felt her body moving ahead of thought, ahead of social distancing. She swooped on the child, yanking the kid off the road, holding her tight. The car passed, going way too fast. Susan planted the girl on the kerb. The girl stayed close.

“Are you my Mumma?”

Cough. Speckles of spit, on an unmasked face. All thought resumed, all the past year. Horror.

“Are you my Mumma?” The girl looked up at her.

Cough. Susan had to get away. Susan quickly fumbled for her mask, backing away. The girl looked at her, needing Susan to be her Mumma.

“No, no I’m not- where did you come from? Susan asked.

“I don’t know, I’m scared.” The child said.

Then she coughed, a deep phelgmy cough from the lungs. Where Allovirus incubated. The kid didn’t even bother covering her mouth. The thought flashed across Susan’s mind to run, but her feet stayed planted. Susan couldn’t leave. The girl looked just like her niece Izzy.

So she called the police. The man on the phone sounded haggard. She waited two hours. She told the child multiple times to stand away from her. Susan wasn’t sure if the kid was just being a scared child, or that she was forgetting what she was saying. Susan begged that it was the former.

The police officer said as he was collecting the kid “I don’t know where we’re gonna bloody put ‘em all…”

Susan walked home. She saw no one, not even another car. She walked past the IGA which a day ago was bedlam, today quiet even though the door was open and lights on. Susan got home at quarter past six, she immediately changed into her pajamas and poured herself a glass of cheap wine. She pulled out a box of macaroni and cheese that had been sitting in her pantry since Izzy last visited. She was too tired to make anything else…

The sun began to go down. That was when the sounds began. The howling, the screaming. Something about night made the virus worse. It had started four nights ago, every night the sounds became louder, tracking the virus closer and closer to her. Susan turned up her television. She was watching friends for the umpteenth time. The show was a warm blanket in a dark night, making her forget the whole day. The laugh track or Chandler’s sardonic quips were blasting yet the next door neighbour shrieked and Police sirens howled. Her phone vibrated. She was expecting it be Edward, a guy who had ghosted her just before shit got real, he’d been texting late, the last couple nights. Susan texted back yesterday because she was bored. She was considering sending him a photo, depending how bored she got.

It was not Edward, it was the Australian government: “The office of the Prime Minister has a state of national emergency. All travel outside the home is suspended midnight. Unless you are in a A class service provider there is a ten thousand dollar penalty for leaving your home.”

Susan texted her boss, who had no idea what was going on, only that banking was a B-class essential service. Edward texted that he wanted to four-letter word her before midnight. Susan would never be that bored and didn’t respond to him. Instead she responded to her mother who had said her nursing home had finally locked down. Susan’s best friend Amy texted her to say that she had no idea what was going on but had decided to get very drunk. The distant roar of jet engines cut over all the screaming and sirens. She switched the TV from Netflix to the ABC.

A newsreader read, “Police have been instructed to use any force necessary to uphold the order. The Prime Minister has not been seen since this morning and the Deputy Prime Minister signed the public health order. The opposition leader has given no comment and has not been seen in public since Tuesday when he referred to himself in parliament as a minister in the Abbott government and gave a speech he gave as said minister in 2014. The order has…”

The news-feed suddenly cut away. Susan switched to SBS, nothing but dead air. Nine, Seven, all of them dead. After ten minutes she gave up, she could look up what was happening online, but suddenly she was so very tired. She threw herself into bed without brushing her teeth or doing the dishes. She vaguely heard her phone vibrating. The theatre of dreams played, fire and death, children turning into skeletons… The Earth, a great ball of phlegm… Mushroom cloud…

Susan awoke the next day, sweaty. Her skin felt gross. A skein of sweat. She got up and microwaved some left over macaroni. She sat on her lounge, numb. She avoided real social media, she flicked through a dating app, while watching Real Housewives. There were seventeen notifications on her news app. She was going to open that, but not yet. She matched with a few guys, but didn’t intend to talk to any of them, and there were two messages from Edward. She didn’t read them. It was midday when she decided to shower: the warm air filled her lungs… she coughed, and then again. She hacked and spat a large pool of phlegm. It sat pale white, refusing to go into the drain. She stared at it, her heart began to seize. She cried, the water flowed over her, she sat coughing and crying. Did she have it? She interrogated herself silently, making herself recall every last minute of the last few days, searching, searching for any gaps in memory.

She rifled through her medicine cabinet, she didn’t bother wrapping a towel around herself, her hair heavy and wet. She yanked out an expired Covid RAT and threw it in the bin, she kept rummaging. Work had gave her a couple a month ago. She hid it because work told her to keep it a secret, there was a shortage then. She found it wedged behind a box of antacids. KwikTest Allovirus RaVRNA-24 Rapid Antigen Test. She set the tester up, rammed the cotton bud down her nose, pulled it out, mixed it with the test fluid- after a minute pouring it on a test strip, finishing the old ritual. Then she sat down on the toilet, her heart weighing like a brick. She waited. Her phone buzzed on the vanity. She seized it, eager for the distraction, even if it was Edward—It was her sister, Ruth.

Hey Hun, Real bad news, Dyl has it. I’m testing neg and holed up in my room, with Izzy. but Dyl keeps trying to come in—think he’s forgetting he has it. Call me.

Susan looked at her phone and eyed the test—a single line had appeared, negative for now. She stared at it, unable to look away, a watched pot never boils. The second line never came.

Susan dried herself and dressed. She put on a fresh set of pajamas. She then called Ruth. Ruth was hysterical. Her husband Dylan had gotten it from work. Izzy was very scared. Suddenly, and like a bolt of cold lighting Susan realised Ruth was telling the same story twice.

The night was louder than the night before it. Strange sounds. More screaming, more police sirens. Susan found herself watching Friends again. She drank. She emptied the bottle. Ruth texted her things they had talked about on the phone, Susan pretended she was hearing them for the first time. She opened another bottle. Part of her fretted drinking so much when she wanted to be vigilant about her memories, but most of her wanted to forget.

Then midnight, outside like a switch was flicked the sounds grew louder, louder, Susan shut off the television and the lights, and dove under her lounge, The screaming rose like an ocean wave, drawing nearer. Then a staccato puck, puck puck. Each sound resonated, echoed. Then another puck. It was a gunshot. She heard a banging on her door. Then silence. She dare not get up. She lay for hours under the lounge. She only started to crawl out when the screaming and yelling resumed. It was strange normalcy. Susan’s phone glowed, another notification from the news app. Finally she checked it. It was horrific. The acting prime minster and her entire cabinet had it, there was rioting in Sydney. Water and power might be in short supply because there was no one left to operate the plant. In Europe there had also been the largest nuclear power plant meltdown in history.

Susan felt like the walls of her house were closing in. Her social media was somehow sadder. Amy had been arrested for breaking the curfew. Ruth had posted the same update four times, police shot her coworkers dog. Conspiracy theory from her old school friends. She couldn’t look it at anymore. She threw her phone to the floor, it clattered and the screen cracked.

Susan got up the next day. She noticed her alarm clock was flashing. The electricity must have died and come back in the night. She had nineteen unread texts. Mostly from Ruth, two from Edward. She didn’t read his, and blocked him. She checked her front door, to see if the banging had broken it. Through the window she could see a note posted. Timidly she opened her front door, and took the piece of paper

Dear Resident. Power will be terminated at 8:30 PM 3/11/24, Please make appropriate arrangements. Stay in your house, you will be arrested if you try to leave. Do not call triple zero, it is not staffed. Some supplies have been left for your convenience. More will be dropped in a week. Signed Sergeant David Conn, 10 Logistic Corp, Australian Army.

That was tonight. She noticed a small box had been deposited on her patio. It had several satchels of space meals, some antiseptic and bandage. She dragged the box inside and looked out at her street. It was empty, silent, like no one had ever lived there at all. She closed the door and triple checked it was locked.

Twenty minutes a voice rang out from that silent street. “I need to pick my kids up from school!”

Susan slowly, limply moved to her front widow. A woman was yelling at a man in an army uniform and a large gun. Susan vaguely recognised her as a neighbour. She was attempting to get into an SUV. Another man came, they dragged the woman back inside her house. Two children were watching in the window.

Eight thirty came quickly. Susan had tried to charge everything that could be charged in her house, blasted her air conditioner. Cooked everything frozen in her freezer. She had no idea where to put it all. She had an old esky that held only a quarter of it. She at six had checked the news for probably the last time in a while that she would have internet. Radiation from the power plant meltdown had spread across the world. The astronauts on the international space station had been instructed to not come back to Earth for a full year. Other front page articles were gibberish or for things that happened years ago. For all the articles she could read it was not clear who was even running anything anymore.

There was one thing for it in her remaining time: Friends. She was halfway through the episode where Ross declared he he was on a break when the power dropped. She was plunged into twilight. The screaming rose. She lit an aroma candle she had been given at Ruth’s hens. She read an old favourite, The Great Gatsby and ate a whole roast turkey. She lay in bed feeling bloated. No-one sent her messages tonight. She fell asleep swiftly.

She woke up coughing. It was still black out. It was thick. Her throat felt raw. It came painfully, hacking, heaving- she couldn’t stop. She felt phlegm in her chest, she felt it painfully rise, eject. She felt her head. It was sweaty, pulsing, feverish. She had a cold shower. It made the coughing worse, but she had to try to get clean. If she could just scrub it off…

She did not sleep that night, it did not matter as she had nowhere to be in the day. She lay in bed. She finished Gatsby, and a box of stale biscuits. She slept and coughed, slept and coughed. Night returned again when she woke up at nine, her clothes soaked, an odour rising in her sheets. She collapsed back, and in the smell and humidity, somehow falling asleep instantly.

She did not awake till two in afternoon. Her bones were weak, her throat was dry and raw. She dragged herself towards the edge of the bed, because she felt gravity had been turned up on her. After what seemed a while she was able to get to the sink. She filled a large cup and drank, she could feel the water moving down her. She then ate, ferociously. She did not care that the ice in the esky had melted down to tepid water—she ate it’s whole contents, chicken, meat pies, and lamb stew… When she was done, all that was left was the army space food. She was bloated, but sated, and most of all feeling alive. She then with that new strength stripped her bed. She unable to wash her sheets, bunched up threw the sheets out in her backyard.

The sheets fell on a pile. The new white sheets, contrasting with soiled beige ones. Susan stopped. When had she pilled that up? Were the sheets she just threw out clean? Was it exhaustion? Or… She coughed. Not as deeply as she had yesterday. She went back inside. Had a cold shower—and fell asleep again, unwilling to accept the implications of being awake.

Night came.