Handling the Undead (4 page)

A ladybug had landed on the balcony railing.

Anna had been busy packing. They were going to Mahler's summer house in Roslagen, staying a couple of weeks.

'Mummy, a ladybug .. .look.'

She had come out into the living room in time to see Elias standing on the outdoor table, reaching out for the ladybug as it flew away. One of the legs of the table gave way. She didn't get there in time.

Below the balcony was the parking lot. Black asphalt.

'Here, pumpkin.'

Mahler held out the fork with a serving of food for Anna. She sat up in bed, took the fork and put it into her mouth. Mahler handed her the plate. Her face was red and swollen and there were grey streaks in her brown hair. She ate four bites, then handed back the plate.

'Thank you. That was delicious.'

Mahler put the plate down on Elias' desk, put his hands in his lap.

'Have you been out today?' 'I've been with him.'

Mahler nodded. Couldn't think of anything else to say. When he i stood up he banged his head into the wooden duck suspended over the bed. It flapped its wings a few times, swishing air across Anna's. face. Stopped.

Back in his own apartment on the other side of the courtyard, he removed his sweat-drenched clothes, showered, pulled on his robe and took a couple of painkillers for the headache. He sat down at the computer and logged into Reuters. Spent an hour searching for and translating three items.

A Japanese gadget that could translate the meaning of dogs' barks. Siamese twins separated. A man who had built a house of tin cans in Lubeck. There was no photograph of the Japanese machine, so he searched for a picture of a Labrador and attached that. Sent it ' to the paper.

Then he read an email from one of his old sources in the police who wondered how things were going for him these days, it had been : a long time. He replied that things were hell, that his grandson had .: died two months ago and that he considered suicide daily. Deleted it without sending.

The shadows on the floor had grown longer, it was past seven. He stood up out of the chair, massaging his temples. Went out into the kitchen and fetched a beer from the fridge, drank half of it standing up, wandered back to the living room. Ended up next to the couch.

On the floor below the arm of the couch there was the Fortress.

It had been a present to Elias on his sixth birthday four months earlier. The biggest Lego fortress. They had built it together and afterwards they had played with it in the afternoons, arranging knights in different places, making up stories, rebuilding and extending. Now it stood there just as they had left it.

Every time Mahler saw it, it hurt. Each time he thought he should throw it away or at the very least take it to pieces, but he couldn't.

Most likely it would stay there as long as he lived, just as he would take the necklace to the grave.

Elias, Elias ...

The abyss opened inside him. Panic came, the pressure on his chest. He hurried to the computer, logged into one of his porn sites. Sat and clicked for an hour, without so much as a movement in his groin. Only indifference, revulsion.

Shortly after nine he logged out and shut down the computer. The screen wouldn't turn off. He couldn't be bothered with it. The headache had started to press on the insides of his eyes, making him agitated. He walked around the apartment a few times, drank another beer; finally stopped and crouched in front of the fortress.

One of the Lego knights had leaned over the edge of the tower, exactly like he was shouting something to the enemy trying to break the door down.

'Watch out or I'll pour out the contents of our toilet on you!' Mahler had said in a creaky voice and Elias had laughed until he lost his breath, shouting, 'More! More!' and Mahler had gone through all the terrible things that a knight could conceivably pour on someone else. Rotten yogurt.

Mahler picked up the piece, turned it in his fingers. The knight had a silver helmet that partially concealed his resolute facial expression. The little sword he held in his hands was still shiny. The colour had flaked off the ones Elias had at home. Mahler looked at the shiny sword and two realisations dropped down through him like black stones.

This sword will always remain shiny. I will never play, ever again.

He replaced the knight, stared at the wall. I will never play, ever again.

In the grief after Elias he had gone over all the things that he would never get to do again: walks in the forest, the playground,  juice and sweet rolls at the cafe, the zoo park and more and more and more. But there it was, in all its simplicity: he would never play again, and that was not restricted to Legos and hide-the-key. With Elias' death, he had lost not only his playmate but also his desire to play.

That was why he couldn't write, that was why pornography no longer stirred him and why the minutes went by so slowly. He couldn't fantasise any longer, make things up. It should have been a blessed state, to live only in what is, what exists before one's eyes, not to refashion the world. Should have been. But it wasn't.

Mahler fingered the scar from the operation on his chest. Life is what we choose to make it.

He had lost his vigour, was chained to an overweight body that he would have to drag around joylessly in the days and years to come. He saw this, in a sudden realisation, and was overcome with the desire to smash something. The clenched lis! 1 rembled above the fortress, but he controlled himself, stood up and wcut out to the balcony where he grabbed the railing, shaking it.

A dog was running around in circles down there, barking.  Mahler would have liked to be doing the same thing.

When in trouble, when in doubt

Run in circles, scream and shou
t.

He looked out over the railing, saw himself fall, split wide open against the ground like an overripe melon. The dog would maybe come over and start to gnaw at him. This thought made the act more tempting. To end his days as dog food. But the dog would probably not even notice, it seemed hysterical. Someone was probably coming to shoot it soon.

He pressed his hands to the sides of his head. It would probably split open anyway if the pain continued to escalate like this.

It was a little after half past ten when Mahler realized that he probably did want to live after all.

He had suffered his first attack eight years ago, when he was out interviewing a fisherman who had caught a corpse in his net. When they stepped ashore from the trawler, the light had all of a sudden dimmed, shrinking to a point, and then Mahler couldn't remember anything more until he woke up lying on a pile of nets. If the fisherman had not been proficient in CPR, Mahler's troubles would have been over.

A doctor had told him that he had chronic myocarditis and needed a pacemaker to stabilise his heart. During that time Mahler had been so depressed that he'd considered taking his chances with death, but he had had the operation in the end.

Then Elias came along and Mahler finally found a reason for even having a heart after all these years. The pacemaker had ticked along faithfully and allowed him to play grandpa as much as he wanted.

But now ...

Beads of sweat broke out along his hairline and Mahler pressed his hand over his heart; it was beating twice as fast as normal. Somehow his heart was managing to duck out from under the steady beat of the pacemaker and race off on its own. Under his hand, Mahler felt his pulse increase even more.

He put his fingers on his wrist, looked at the alarm clock and counted the seconds. He timed himself at 120 beats per minute, but he wasn't sure that was correct. Even the second hand on the clock appeared to be moving faster than usual.

Calm down ... calm ... it will pass.

He knew that this kind of heart spasm was not dangerous in itself as long as it did not become too extreme. It was the worry, the anxiety that did the damage. Mahler tried to breathe calmly while his heart raced faster and faster.

Then he had a thought. He placed his fingers over the pacemaker, the metal box just under his skin that was guarding his life. He couldn't tell if it was going faster than normal, but he suspected that's what was happening: the same thing that was happening to the clock.

He curled up in a foetal position on the couch. The pain was going to split his head open, his heart was racing insanely and to his own surprise he saw that he did not want to die. No. At least, he did not want to be killed by a machine whipping up his heart until it burst. He looked up and squinted at the computer screen. Even that had become more intense, and all the icons were engulfed in shining white light.

What should I do?

Nothing. He should do nothing that would strain his heart any more. He sank back again, resting his hand over the muscle of life. His heart was beating so quickly now that he could not make out the different pulses, it was a drum roll from the land of the dead increasing in tempo, and Mahler closed his eyes and waited for the climax.

Just as he thought the drum skin was going to burst and vision close in, like that other time, it was over.

The heart palpitations eased back to the old, deliberate rhythm.

He lay completely still with his eyes closed, then breathed in deeply and felt his face as if checking that he was still there. His face was there; it was covered in sweat, warm drops trickling down through the folds on his belly, tickling.

He opened his eyes. The icons on his computer were back, set against their usual cerulean background. Then the screen went dark. The dog in the yard stopped barking.

What is happening?

The clock was marking the seconds at a normal pace, and an enormous silence had fallen over the world. For the first time, now that they had stopped, he became aware of the cacophony of sounds and screams that had preceded this lull. He licked his salty lips, crouched down and stared at the clock.

Seconds, minutes ... one second we are born, one second we die.

He had been lying there for twenty minutes or so when the telephone rang. He slid off the couch and crawled over to the desk. His legs would probably have carried him, but he felt that he should crawl. He pulled himself up onto the desk chair and lifted the receiver. 

'This is Mahler.'

'Hi, Ludde here. At Danderyd.'

'Oh ... hi.'

'I've got something for you.'

Ludde had been one of his innumerable sources when he was working at the paper. As a custodian at Danderyd Hospital, he would sometimes hear or see things that could be 'of public interest', as Ludde put it.

Mahler said, 'I'm not working anymore, you'll have to call Benke ... Bengt Jansson, evening editor at .. .'

'Listen, the stiffs have come back to life.'

'What are you saying?'

'The stiffs. The corpses. In the morgue. They've come back to life.'

'No.'

'Yes, listen to me. The pathology department just called here completely hysterical, wanting more personnel to go down and help out.'

Mahler watched his hand reach automatically over the desk for his notebook, but pulled it back, shaking his head.

'Ludde, calm down. Do you hear what you .. .'

'Yes, I know. I know. But it's true. People are running around here like ... it's complete chaos. They've come back. All of them.' Mahler could actually hear voices in the background, speaking agitatedly, but could not make out what they were saying.

Something was clearly up, but. ..

'Ludde, let's take this one more time. From the top.'

Ludde sighed. In the background someone cried out, 'Check  with Emergency!' and when Ludde spoke again, he had his mouth closer to the mouthpiece, his voice almost erotic.

'First everything was haywire here because of the electrical stuff. Everything was on and nothing worked. You know? The electricity?'

'Yes ... yes, I know.'

'OK. Then five minutes ago ... the body butchers called the reception desk, said to send down a couple of guys from Security because there was a bunch of stiffs that were ... escaping. OK. The security guys have a laugh, great joke, but they go down there. OK. A couple of minutes later the security guys call, say they need reinforcements because now everyone has woken up. An even funnier joke. A couple more go down, maybe there's a party on down there. OK. Then a doctor calls and says the same thing ... and now there are even emergency surgeons heading down there.'

'How many corpses do you have there?'

'No idea. A hundred, at least. Are you coming, or what?' Mahler checked the time.

Twenty-five minutes past eleven. 'Yes. Yes, I'm coming.'

'Great. Will you bring ... ?'

'Yes, yes.'

He put on his clothes, packed his tape recorder, his cell phone and the digital camera he had never got around to returning to the paper, took some money for Ludde, two thousand kronor, to be on the safe side, and ran down the stairs as fast as he dared.

His heart was still with him as he wedged himself into his Ford Fiesta, started the engine and drove east. When he was out on the Blackeberg roundabout he called Benke, told him, yes, he had quit but he'd just got a tip-off about a thing at Danderyd and was checking up on it. Benke said welcome back.

The roads were empty and Mahler accelerated to 120 when he was through Islands Square. The western suburbs rushed by  and somewhere in the vicinity of the Tranebergs Bridge he caught sight of himself. He was more alive than he had been in a month. Almost happy.

Taby Municipality 21.05

'Darling, you'll have to turn that off now.' Elvy wagged her finger at the television screen.

'That groaning is too much for my head.' Flora nodded without taking her eyes off the screen, said, 'OK. I'll just save this.'

Elvy laid Grimberg aside-she had not been able to concentrate on her reading anyway since this headache began-and watched as Jill Valentine made her way back to her safe room. Flora had explained how the video game worked and Elvy understood the basics.