Handling the Undead (30 page)

the question. David stared angrily at the policeman who had wandered on with his hands clasped behind his back, wishing he had been able to pulverise him with his thoughts.

'Let's walk around a bit,' Sture said. They moved around the outskirts of the crowd in a wide quarter circle until they left it and arrived at a forested area where, to his relief, David spotted a couple of portaloos. He excused himself, selected the one with the least graffiti, sat down and exploded with freedom. When he was done he discovered that there was no toilet paper. He tried to use the flyer but the shiny paper was only good for smearing. He removed his socks, used them and tossed them into the hole.

All right ... now ...

David felt better. Everything was going to go well. He tied his shoe laces on his bare feet and walked out. Sture and Magnus were looking secretive.

'What is it?' David asked.

Sture lifted his jacket a little like a black market dealer and showed the inner pocket with Balthazar's head sticking up. Magnus giggled and Sture shrugged: it was worth a shot anyhow. David had no objections. He was cleansed inside now, unbound and light of heart. Just as the neurologist had requested.

They walked back to the gates. Sture complained that Balthazar was nibbling on his shirt and Magnus laughed. David glanced at Sture, who was struggling exaggeratedly with his jacket, and felt enormous gratitude. It would not have been possible without him. The tension around smuggling Balthazar in appeared to have distracted Magnus completely from the visit ahead of them.

They reached the gates in time for another speech. The crowd had shrunk considerably in their absence, so presumably the guards were not particularly strict about verifying relatives' identities. Before they had reached the queue, something happened up on the podium.

Two elderly women got up on stage and switched on the PA. Before anyone had time to react, one of them approached the microphone.

'Hello?' she called out and was startled by the strength of her own voice, taking half a step back. The other lady put a hand to her ear. The one who had spoken summoned her courage, stepped up again and repeated, 'Hello! I just want to say that all of this is a mistake. The dead have awakened because their souls have returned. This is about our souls. We are all lost if we do not ... '

She did not get any further. The PA was turned off and her prescription for how to avoid being lost could only be heard by those closest to the stage. A very large man in a suit, most likely security, got up on stage, ushered the woman firmly away from the microphone and led her to the ground. The other woman followed.

'Daddy?' Magnus asked. 'What is a soul anyway?'

'Something that some people think we have inside of us.' Magnus felt with his hands over his body.

'Where is it, then?'

'Nowhere in particular. It's like an invisible ghost where all the thoughts and feelings come from, sort of. Some people think that when we die it flies out of the body.'

Magnus nodded. 'I think so.'

'Yes,' David said. 'But I don't.'

Magnus turned to Sture who was holding a hand over his heart as if he was having a heart attack. 'Grandad? Do you believe in the soul?'

'Yes,' Sture said. 'Absolutely. I also believe I'm getting a hole in my shirt.

Can we go?'

They got in line. There were still a couple of hundred people ahead of them but the line was moving rapidly. In ten minutes they would be inside.

The Heath 12.15

When Flora reached the Heath and saw the great mass of people and how quickly it was shrinking, her hope of getting in increased. She did not have the same last name as her grandfather and no way to prove her status. She had called Elvy that morning to get a signed document, but as usual she only got to talk with a lady who said that Elvy was busy.

She went and stood in one of the lines snaking up toward the gates. Over the last few days she had spoken several times to Peter, who had avoided discovery during the clear-out and managed to stay in his basement. The evening before, however, his battery had gone flat and he had no possibility of getting out to where there was electricity as long as the feverish activity in the area continued.

Damn, how they must have worked.

Just the feat of putting up at least three kilometres of fence to encircle the area. In two days. One of the few times that Peter had dared to go out he had reported that the area was swarming with military personnel and that the work was continuing round the clock. The press had either been excluded or come to some kind of arrangement, and nothing had been written about the Heath until the Prime Minister made his announcement.

Flora moved slowly forward, straightening the backpack full of fruit that she had brought for Peter. In her head she counted prime numbers-o
ne, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen
-- since it was almost unbearable standing here among all these people.

The whiff of fear she could pick up on the streets was nothing to what she found here. Wherever she turned her attention she caught the same signals. People looked as they usually did, possibly somewhat more abstracted in their gaze, a little more purposeful, but there were deep-sea creatures swimming inside them, the terror of confronting the completely unknown;
the other.

nineteen, twenty-three ...

Unlike her, most of the people here had never seen one of the undead. They were here because relatives had awakened in morgues, their dearly departed had been plucked out of the earth by the military and transported to sealed wards. There were good reasons to fear the worst, and that was exactly what people were doing. Flora tried to shut her brain from the ever-present horror and could not understand why people had decided to enact their reunions in this way.

She lowered her head and tried to escape through concentration.

 Twenty-nine, thirty-one ... thirty-seven ... to show they have everything under control. .. thirty-nine, no ... mum rotten face fingers· bone .. forty-one .. forty-one ...

'Hello?'

A voice echoed through the fog of thoughts, a voice she knew well. She opened her eyes, lifted her head and saw her grandmother for the first time in four days. On stage, with Hagar standing right behind her.

She was so flabbergasted that she lost control of the Power and was overwhelmed by a wave of jumbled, frightened thoughts that drowned out the sound of her Nana's voice. She caught something about 'souls' before Elvy was forced down from the stage. Flora ran over.

A guard was holding Elvy by the shoulders, but he let go just as Flora arrived, his attention now directed at a besuited man by the sound equipment. The guard raised a finger at the man, at the amplifier, ' ... get the hell away from those things. You stay right here.'

'Nana!'

Elvy looked up and Flora winced. Elvy had aged so much since they last saw each other. Her face was grey and sunken; she had dark circles under her eyes as if she had not slept in several days. The arms that embraced Flora were slack and thin.

'Nana, how are you?'

'Fine.'

'You don't look well.'

Elvy fingered a scab on her forehead. 'Perhaps I'm a little ... tired.'

The guard shoved the younger man over to Elvy and said, 'Now you get away from here, right now.'

Many people had assembled around them, mostly older women who walked over to Elvy, patting her and whispering among themselves.

'Nana,' Flora said. 'What are you doing?'

'Hi,' the younger man held out his hand and Flora shook it. 'Are you Flora?'

Flora nodded and dropped the man's hand. She could not read him through the murmur, which was both an unusual and disconcerting feeling. Hagar came over and patted Flora's arm. 'Hello dearie. How are you?'

'I'm fine,' Flora said and gestured at the stage. 'What was that?'

'What? Oh, sorry,' Hagar fiddled with something behind her ear. 'What did you say?'

'I'm just wondering what you're doing.'

The man answered for Hagar.

'Your grandmother,' he said in a tone that implied that Flora should be proud to be her granddaughter, 'received a message that people need to be saved. That there isn't much time. That it has to be done now. We are her assistants in this struggle. Are you a believer?'

Flora shook her head and the man gave a laugh.

'That's almost comical, isn't it? From what 1 understand you ought to have been the first to sign on after what both of you experienced that evening in the garden .. .'

Flora felt creeped out that the man knew about an experience that she herself had not shared with anyone. Elvy was being taken care of by her old ladies and for a moment Flora had a vision that her haggardness was because those helping hands were in fact sucking the life out of her.

'Nana? What is the message you have received?'

'Your grandmother. . .' the man started, but Flora ignored him and walked over to Elvy, laying a hand on her arm. Perhaps because they were so close to the reliving Flora found a sharp image projected into her head: a woman in a television screen, surrounded by a bright light .

... Their only salvation is to come to me ...

The television turned off, the image faded and Flora stared into Elvy's tired eyes.

'What does that mean?'

'I don't know. Just that I have to do something. 1 don't know.'

'But you can't handle it. I can see that.'

Elvy closed her eyes half-way and smiled.

'Oh, I think I can handle it.'

'Why don't you answer when I ring you?'

'I will. I'm sorry.'

One of the women came over and stroked Elvy's back.

'Come along, love. We'll have to think of something else.'

Elvy nodded faintly and allowed herself to be led away. Flora called out to her, 'Nana! I'm going in to see Grandpa.'

Elvy turned around. 'You do that. Give him my best.'

Flora stayed where she was, her arms hanging, unsure what to do. When all of this was over, when she had seen what there was to be seen she would go out to Elvy's and .. .free her? Well, do something. But not now. Now she had to see.

She joined the line, trying to recall the image that Elvy had sent to her. She did not understand. Was it a television program? She thought she vaguely recognised the woman, but could not place her.

An actress? Daddy all the flowers his hand the lid the earth

It was impossible to think logically with all of these people around. She was forced to put her thoughts in a sealed box, which floated and bobbed around in the others' streams; she could not focus.

In front of her there was a child holding a man by the hand. Next to them was an older gentleman, fidgeting. The incomprehensible image of a rabbit flashed through her head. It hopped around for a couple of moments in the streams and was washed away by coffins, earth, vacant eyes, guilt.

Their only salvation is to come to me.

Yes, Flora thought. People needed some kind of help, that much was clear. She was almost up at the gates now and could see with her normal vision how the people around her were becoming grimmer, more determined; she felt how they tried, and failed, to damp down their fear. Like children on their way into the ghost train for the first time: what
is
it in there, anyway?

Someone pushed her in the back, she heard a woman's voice: 'Lennart, what is it?'

The man's voice was throaty, 'Well, I don't know .. .1 don't know if I. .. can handle this .. .'

She turned around and saw a man being supported by a woman.

The man's face had a greyish cast, his eyes were wide. The gaze met Flora's and he pointed into the area and said:

'Dad .. .I didn't like him. When I was little, he used to .. .'

The woman pulled on the man's arm, shushing him and smiling apologetically at Flora who instantly saw their whole marriage, the man's childhood. What she saw made her turn away from them with a shudder.

'Eva Zetterberg.'

It was the man in front of her who spoke, the man with the child. The guard with the lists asked, 'And you are?'

'Her husband,' the man replied and pointed to the boy and the older man. 'Her son, her father.'

The guard nodded and flipped through to one of the last pages in his packet, running his finger down the column.

The rabbit, the rabbit ...

Bruno the Beaver. And a rabbit. A baby rabbit in a pocket. Even the boy, Eva Zetterberg's son, was thinking about a rabbit. The same rabbit. This is what they looked like, her family. And they were thinking about a rabbit.

'17C,' the guard said and pointed into the compound. 'Follow the signs.'

The family set off quickly through the gates. Flora caught a sense

of relief and she memorised 17C. The guard looked sternly at her.

'Tore Lundberg,' Flora said.

'And you are?'

'His granddaughter.'

The guard looked appraisingly at her, evaluating her clothing, her black-painted eyes, her big hair and she realised she would not be let in.

'Can you prove it?'

'No,' Flora said. 'Afraid not.'

It was meaningless to engage in a debate; the guard was thinking about cobblestones, youths prying up cobblestones.

She walked away from the gates and followed the fence, letting her fingers trail across the chain links. The streams of thoughts faded away, becoming fainter the farther away she got and it was like coming inside after a storm. She continued until the people inside her died away then sat down in the grass, taking a mental breather.

When she felt OK again she continued along the fence until the angle of the buildings shielded her from the guards at the gate. The fence looked perverse, quite disconnected from the people it was supposed to keep out or keep in. A military neurosis.

There would be no real problem climbing it, the problem was the open area between her and the buildings. It surprised her that there were no other guards on; if it had been a concert, for example, they would have been posted every twenty metres. Maybe they hadn't been counting on people wanting to sneak in.