Handling the Undead (12 page)

'Just into town,' Flora said. 'A lift. I've already asked.'

Bernt turned toward the ambulance driver who confirmed this with a nod. Bernt sighed, turned to Elvy. 'If that's all right with you.'

'The girl can do as she likes,' Elvy said. 'I bet she can,' Bernt said.

Flora walked over and hugged Elvy. 'I have to go talk to a friend.'

'Now?'

'Yes. As long as you're going to be OK, that is.'

'I'll be fine.'

Elvy stayed at the gate and watched Flora climb into the back of the ambulance with Bernt. She waved, and thought about the smell. The doors were closed. The ambulance engine started, the flashing lights were turned on for an instant, then immediately switched off. Slowly, the ambulance backed up into the driveway of the house opposite, turned and-

Elvy's fingers splayed, her eyes widened and an ever-intensifying feeling drove through her body like a stake: Tore. She staggered slightly, bracing herself against the fencepost. Tore was here. The same trace impression that had lingered in his room, slowly receding, was in her head at full force. He filled her and in her head she heard his voice:

Mum, help me! I'm stuck ... I don't want to go away ... I want to

stay home, Mummy ...

The ambulance turned out of the driveway.

Mum ... she's coming, she ...

And Tore's voice was on its way out of her, shedding her like a skin. But if his voice had been strong, as if amplified, she could now discern Flora's weaker voice through the din.

Nana ... can you hear it? Are you the one he ...

Elvy perceived physically how the field dissolved and her body became her own again, and only had time to send-

I hear

-before it was gone and she was just Elvy, leaning up against the fencepost. The ambulance accelerated down the street and she only glimpsed it as a white blotch before her head fell down, forced down by the whining of a thousand mosquitoes pressing in through her ears and the headache flaring up like red suns on the inside of her eyelids.

But she had seen it.

She squeezed the post to stop herself from falling to the asphalt. Her head pressed down, she was unable to open her eyes in order to get a better view. She was not allowed to. It was forbidden.

The pain only lasted a few seconds, then disappeared immediately. She lifted her head, looking at the point where the ambulance had been a moment before.

The woman was gone.

But Elvy had seen her. The second before the ambulance had disappeared from her field of vision, she had seen-out of the corner of her eye-a tall slender woman with dark hair, emerge from behind the vehicle and stretch her arms toward it. Then the pain had forced Elvy to look away.

She gazed up the street. The ambulance was just up at the bend by the big road. The woman was gone.

Is she ... inside the ambulance now?

Elvy put her hand against her forehead and thought as hard as she could:

Flora? Flora?

No answer. No contact.

What had the woman actually looked like? How had she been dressed? Elvy was unable to visualise her. When she tried to conjure up the face, the body that she had seen for a split second, her mind could gain no purchase on the image. It was like trying to recapture a memory from early childhood; you could snare a certain detail, something you had latched onto. Everything else lay in shadow.

She could not see the face, the clothes. They were gone. She could only say one thing with any certainty: something had been sticking out between the woman's fingers. Something that gave off a faint reflection in the streetlamp. Something thin, something metallic.

Elvy ran into the house in order to try to reach Flora by conventional means. She dialled her mobile.

'The person you are trying to reach is unavailable .. .'

Racksta 02.35

Mahler was awakened by voices, the clatter of metal.

For a moment he was disoriented. He sat up. There was something in his lap. His body ached. Where, and why?

And then he remembered.

Elias was still lying across his knees, unmoving. The moon had wandered as Mahler sat there, was now more or less obscured by the tops of the spruce trees.

How long? One hour? Two?

There was a squeaking sound as the gates opened and a number of shadows slipped into the open area in front of the chapel. Flashlights were turned on and beams of light danced over the flagstones. Voices.

' ... too early to answer at this stage.'

'

But what will you do if that turns out to be the case?'

'First we'll listen and try to determine how ... widespread it is, then ... '

'Are you planning to open the graves now?'

Mahler thought he recognised the voice of the person asking the uestions. Karl-Erik Ljunghed, one of his colleagues from the paper. He didn't hear the reply. Elias lay still in his arms, as if dead.

As long as they didn't shine their lights toward the wall they wouldn't spot him. He was sitting in almost total darkness. He shook Elias gently. Nothing happened. Terror blossomed in his chest.

All this, and then ...

He found Elias' dry, hard hand, put his index and middle finger in it, and pressed. The hand closed, squeezing his fingers. Five flashlights moved in toward the cemetery, with the shadows in a line.

His body was stiff as a board after this period of sitting, and while he had been unconscious his spine had been replaced with a red-hot iron rod. Why didn't he let his presence be known? KarlErik could have helped him. Why didn't he call out to them?

Because ...

Because he shouldn't. Because it was them. The others.

'Elias .. .Ihave to put you down.'

Elias didn't answer. With a feeling of loss, Mahler drew his fingers out of his grip and softly coaxed him onto the ground. By tensing his back against the wall and only using his thigh muscles, Mahler was able to get to his feet.

The lights were dancing along toward the grave area like excited spirits, and Mahler listened for sounds from new visitors. The only thing he heard was the distant voices of the recent arrivals, and very faintly the sound of 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' from the phone in his car. The hint of a morning blush coloured the sky.

'Elias?'

No reply. The little body lay stretched out on the stonework, a child-shaped condensation of darkness.

Can he hear me? Does he see me? Does he know that it's me?

He crouched down, got his hands in under Elias' knees and neck, stood up and walked toward the car.

'We're going home now, buddy.'

There were now three more cars in the parking lot. An ambulance, an Audi with the newspaper's logo on it as well as a Volvo with a strange licence plate. Yellow numbers on a black background. It took a moment before Mahler made the connection: a military vehicle.

The military? Is it that widespread?

The presence of the military car strengthened him in his belief that he had done the right thing not to reveal himself. When the military comes into the picture, something else goes out the window.

Elias was light, light in his arms. Unnaturally light in view of how .. .large he had become. His stomach protruded so far that the bottom buttons of his pyjamas had been torn off. But Mahler knew that inside there was only gas, created by the decomposition of the intestinal bacteria. Nothing that weighed anything.

He laid Elias carefully in the back seat and laid back the driver's seat as far as it would go so that he could sit with his back outstretched, almost lying down himself, as he drove out from the parking lot. He wound the windows down on both sides.

His apartment was only a couple of kilometres away. He talked to Elias the whole way, but got no answers.

He placed Elias on the couch in the dark living room, leaning over and planting a kiss on his forehead.

'I'll be right back, love. I just have to .. .'

He found three painkillers in the medicine drawer in the kitchen, swallowing them with a gulp of water.

And now ... and now ...

The touch of Elias' forehead was still on his lips. Cool, hard unyielding skin. Like kissing a stone.

He didn't dare turn on the lamps in the living room. Elias was lying absolutely still. The satin material of his pyjamas shimmered in the first light of dawn. Mahler rubbed his hands over his face and thought:

What am I doing?

Yes, what the hell was he doing? Elias was gravely ill. What do you do with an acutely sick child? Carry it home to your apartment?

Wrong. You call an ambulance, you see to it that the child goes to hospital-

morgue

-that it is looked after.

But that was the thing about the morgue. What he had seen there. The dead, held fast, struggling. He didn't want to see Elias in that picture. But what could he do? There was no way for him to care for Elias, to do ... whatever it was that was required.

You think the hospitals can do it?

The pain in his back was starting to let up a little. Reason returned. Of course he would call an ambulance. There was nothing else to do.

The little darling. My darling little boy.

If only the accident had occurred a month later. Yesterday. The day before yesterday. If Elias hadn't had to lie in the earth so long, had escaped what death had changed him into: a desiccated, lizard-like creature with blackened extremities. However much Mahler loved him, his eyes saw that Elias no longer resembled anything human. He looked like something you kept behind glass.

'Buddy, I'm going to call a doctor. Someone who can help you.' His mobile rang.

The display showed the newspaper office number. This time he took the call.

'This is .. .'

Benke sounded close to tears when he interrupted, 'Where have you been? First you get all this shit started and then you go up in a puff of smoke!'

Mahler couldn't help smiling.

'Benke, it wasn't me who "got all this started". I'm completely innocent.'

Benke fell silent. Mahler could hear people speaking in the background, but could not identify their voices.

'Gustav,' Benke said. 'Elias. Is he ... ?'

What clinched it for him was not the fact that he trusted Benkewhich in fact he did-but the realisation that he needed some form of connection to the outer world. Mahler drew a deep breath and said, 'Yes. He's here. With me.'

The background noises changed and Mahler knew that Benke had taken the phone and gone somewhere no one else could hear him.

'Is he ... in bad shape?'

'Yes.'

Now everything was quiet on Benke's end. He had probably slipped into an empty office.

'OK, Gustav. I don't know what to say.'

'You don't have to say anything. But I want to know what they are doing. If I'm doing the right thing.'

'They're collecting them, taking them all to Danderyd. They've started opening graves all over. The armed forces have been called in. They're citing some regulation about mass epidemics. No one knows anything, really. I think. . .' Benke paused. 'I don't know. But I have grand kids too, as you know. Maybe you are doing the right thing. There's a general feeling ... of panic.'

'Does anyone know why this is happening?'

'No. And now, Gustav ... to my other point.'

'Benke, I can't. I'm completely done in.'

Benke breathed into the receiver; Mahler sensed the effort it cost him to remain calm, not to start haranguing him. 'Do you have the photos?' he asked.

'Yes, but .. .'

'In that case,' Benke said, 'they're the only independent photos available from the inside. And you are the only journalist who managed to get in before they closed. Gustav ... with all due respect for your situation-which I cannot even imagine- I am trying to put together a newspaper. Right now I'm talking to my best writer who is sitting on incomparably the best material. You, on the other hand, can probably imagine
my
situation.'

'Benke, you have to understand that .. .'

'I understand. But please, please, please Gustav, can't you just ... anything? The pictures, a little text in the present tense, straight on? Please? And, if nothing else, then the pies? Just that?'

If Mahler had been able to laugh, he would have. Now all that came out of him was a groan. During the fifteen years that they had worked together he could not recall a single instance when Benke had actually begged for something. The word 'please' with a question mark after it had not been in his vocabulary.

'I'll try,' he said.

As if this was what he had expected the whole time, Benke said,

'I'll hold the centre spot. Forty-five minutes.'

 'Jesus Christ, Benke .. .'

'Yes. And thanks, Gustav. Thanks. Get cracking now.'

They ended the call. Mahler glanced at Elias who had not moved. Walked over and placed a finger in his hand, which closed. He wanted to sit down next to him, fall asleep with his finger in his hand.

Forty-five minutes ...

Insanity. Why had he agreed?

Because he couldn't help himself: he had been a reporter his whole adult life, and he knew what Benke had said was true. He was in possession of potentially the best material anyone had, of the biggest story ... ever. He couldn't not do it. In spite of everything.

He sat down at the computer, took the film out from inside his head, and his fingers started to move across the keyboard.

The elevator starts with a jerk. I can hear screams through the thick concrete. The morgue level comes into view through the door glass ...