“Hey.” I waved back. “Get anything good?”
“Chips,” Owen called out. “Just chips.”
“Are you coming up?”
He gave me a thumbs up, and the second they disappeared from view, I went back to watching the news.
The guy with the bullhorn gave the go ahead, and the crowd tightened as they kicked off their march. If all went to plan, they’d finish up outside Parliament House in under half an hour.?
Would he still be with them at the finish line blaring instructions, or would it turn into a free for all? The only thing I could be sure of was that nothing good would come from their efforts.
Varesh appeared on the rooftop, wrapped up in a woollen coat and beanie. “Any luck with Dustin?” he asked, too engrossed in his phone to throw more than a passing glance my way.
“Not yet. He wouldn’t answer the door.” Three days now, and no one had seen him. “Are you watching the protest?”
“Mm. Going back and forth between that and some other videos I should be staying away from.”
The door opened again, and Ellie and Owen came through with their shopping bags.The extra people helped ease my restlessness and pull me out of my own head.
“What other videos?” I asked Varesh, leaning against the boundary wall.
He huffed at whatever he saw on the screen, then tucked his phone into his pocket. “I’m driving Tim crazy,” he said, pulling his coat tighter. “I went down a rabbit hole, and now I’m getting all tangled up in conspiracies. They’re saying virologists and epidemiologists knew from the beginning this would completely wipe us out.”
My heart thudded, and I shot a look at Ellie to gauge her reaction. She was basically still a kid, too young for this kind of talk. We knew it would be worse than Covid—they’d never kept that part secret—but wiping us out?
“You’re talking end-of-the-world stuff?” Owen asked.
Ellie opened a packet of salt-and-vinegar?chips and held the bag out to me. “Are we all going to die?”
Her conversational tone brought a reluctant smile to my face, and I kept my tone light to match hers. “Not all of us.” I refused to believe it, no matter what they said. I reached into the bag and tossed a few chips in my mouth, crunching as tension all but crackled from the television screen.?
Owen stood beside me, linking his hands on top of his head as he tracked the gathering. “Over a thousand people were expected there today,” he said, “but it looks like more. If this kind of thing’s going on all over the world, who knows what impact it’ll have on us. Maybe those virologists are right.”?
“Don’t listen to me,” Varesh said. “We just need to take care of ourselves and stay away from others.” He took a single chip from the offered bag, but it seemed to be more an unconscious response than an interest in food. “I just wish Tim and Sadie would come back, so we know they’re out of harm’s way.”?
Ellie's brows shot up. “How long have they been gone?”
I dusted the salt from my fingers and checked the street again. “Coming up to an hour.”
“Is Tim answering texts?” Owen asked.
Varesh finished the chip and turned his attention toward the small portion of street we could see from up here. “I haven’t messaged him yet,” he said. “I’m trying not to overreact. It’s not going well.”?
“I’ll check in with Sadie.” Ellie slipped her phone from her pocket and tapped out a message at lightning speed.
Varesh blew on his clasped hands and rubbed them together. “Are you worried about them?” he asked me, as if I were the voice of reason determining whether we should be concerned.
“Not at this stage,” I said. “It could just be an issue with payment terminals being down again.”
Still.?I’d seen the fights on the news, and the trip shouldn’t have taken this long, even with a technical problem.
“I’ll give them five more minutes,” he said, “then I’m kicking off a search party.”
I checked my watch as a reflex.
The reporter’s voice rose in volume, commentating on the slow-moving walk as hundreds and hundreds of people chantedWe-did-not-consent-to-prison-and-contempt.People held banners and flags, and although masks were hiding their faces, their body language said it all.
They’d had enough.
