I Am Behind You (40 page)

He falls silent. Listens. Stefan can hear it too. Screams of pain in various keys are coming from the field, from both directions. And they are getting closer.

*

‘Have you calmed down, Donald? Have you calmed down now?'

However crazy everything might be, Majvor cannot deny that she finds a certain amount of satisfaction in the current situation. She has always had to deal with Donald's unpredictable moods alone, picking her way through the minefield of his capricious nature. Now at least she has help.

Lennart and Olof have stayed with Majvor so that they can keep an eye, or rather six eyes, on Donald who seems anything but calm now that the initial shock has passed. He pulls a face and sets off towards Stefan, muttering something about his gun, but Lennart and Olof grab an arm each and hold on to him.

‘Stop it, Donald!' Lennart says. ‘You can't go around
shooting
people, for heaven's sake!'

Donald twists and turns in their grip, yelling: ‘Let go of me, you bastard cowfuckers!'

‘You're in a state,' Lennart says. ‘We can't have you like this.'

‘So what are you going to do? Shoot me? Go on then, shoot me, just like you shoot your bloody cows when you've finished fucking them!'

Olof looks at Majvor, who blushes. Donald can be foul-mouthed, but he doesn't usually go this far. He is her husband, after all, so she feels guilty by association when he says such terrible things to Lennart and Olof, whom she has come to regard as two fine men.

‘Shut up, Donald!' she says, and perhaps it is his tasteless comments that make her add: ‘Shut your mouth!'

Donald's eyes open wide, and he falls silent in the face of this unusually fierce reprimand. He jerks his body, trying to escape from Lennart and Olof, but without success. Lennart sighs and nods towards the breast pocket of his dungarees.

‘Majvor, I've got a roll of tape here.'

Majvor has seen enough films to know what he means. Lennart and Olof twist Donald's arms behind his back so that Majvor can wind the tape around his wrists as she says: ‘I really don't want to do this, Donald, but you are behaving like a madman right now. As soon as you calm down, we'll let you go.'

She sighs, breaks off the tape and pats him on the back. ‘Goodness me, what a mess.'

Regardless of how Donald has been behaving, this feels wrong. That business with the can of beer was a necessary evil, an emergency measure, but she has wound the tape around his wrists with cold deliberation. You just don't
do
that to your husband. She walks around so that she can look him in the eye, and says: ‘Sweetheart, I know all this has been terrible for you, and that you're confused. I just want to prevent you from doing something you might regret. Do you understand?'

Donald nods, and Majvor feels a spark of hope; perhaps he is starting to come to his senses. Then he looks at her and smiles nastily.

‘Oh, I understand. The farmer wants a wife. It's one of your favourite TV shows. So now you've got a wet pussy, hoping to get a bit of farmer's cock, yum yum…'

He doesn't get any further; Majvor rips off a strip of tape and clamps it over his mouth.
That
doesn't feel wrong. Not at all.

Donald's face is bright red as he continues to utter muffled curses, which are fortunately unintelligible. The colour of Majvor's face isn't far behind as she turns to Lennart and Olof to apologise for her husband.

The two men are turning their heads from side to side as if they are listening, concentrating hard. Now that Donald has been more or less silenced, they can hear something else. The sound of screaming, as if someone somewhere is in great pain, and a whiff of…fried food. Majvor sniffs. Fried food and something else.

Sulphur
.

Fire and brimstone. Majvor looks around, and what she sees approaching from the field makes the association even stronger.

Lord have mercy on us sinners.

*

Carina goes into her caravan, ready to console Emil. He must have witnessed the terrible scene with Donald, and how his father risked his life—things they would never allow him to see in a film, for example.

But Emil is not where she expected to find him, glued to the window that overlooks the middle of the camp. Instead he is kneeling on the sofa, looking out of the window on the other side. His fists are clenched, his body tense.

‘You don't need to be scared any more, sweetheart,' Carina begins.

‘Look, Mummy!'

Carina sits down beside him, strokes his head. Then she looks out of the window.

The first thing she sees are rainclouds covering almost her entire
field of vision, and she thinks:
Lovely
. The unchanging blue sky has made her feel uncomfortable, and has contributed to her thoughts about disappearing. The clouds are something different, and they also mean water, life. Then she lowers her gaze.

Her mind tries to find an explanation for what she is seeing, and her first thought is marathon runners. Skinny black men whose thin bodies seem to be made up of nothing but muscle and sinew. A group of marathon runners is approaching from the field, but there is something wrong with their technique. They are struggling, throwing themselves forward in a series of jerky movements, as if the component parts of their skeletons are inadequately linked together. She hears the screams, and as they come closer she can see their bodies more clearly. If this is a race, then it started in the kingdom of the dead.

‘Zombies, Mummy!'

Carina has no idea what these ragged creatures are, but she does know one thing: they must not get into the caravan.

‘Stay here, sweetheart,' she says, and as she gets to her feet she sees the Lego fortress. The four walls, the three knights.

With thick walls so it can withstand the attack. The door is the weakest point. Is there anything bigger that lives on blood?

Somehow Emil has known all along. What else did he say? Something about whatever it is that lives on blood, but what was it? There isn't time to ask him now. She has to go and find Stefan.

When she reaches the doorway she sees her husband standing in the middle of the camp holding the shotgun high above his head as if he is wading across a river. Before she can say anything he shouts: ‘Listen everyone! We need to get inside the caravans! The rain contains some kind of corrosive acid. We need to take cover!'

Carina steps back to let Stefan in. He has the gun in one hand, and with the other he closes and locks the door behind him.

‘How are you two?' he asks. ‘Are you okay?'

Stefan is essentially a very calm person, and it takes a lot to get him worked up. On one occasion a truck ran into a petrol pump
outside the store, and thousands of litres of fuel gushed out across the car park. Just one spark and ICA Ålviken would have been nothing more than a memory. Stefan took charge of evacuating the premises, cordoned off the area and called the emergency services. Everything turned out okay in the end, but it's the only time Carina has seen him really stressed.

Until now; this is much worse. His voice has a metallic tone and his eyes are darting all around the caravan as he brandishes the shotgun. Carina temporarily pushes her own fears to one side so that she can put her arms around his trembling body. ‘You're my hero. You're the bravest person I know. I love you.'

The trembling subsides a little, and Stefan takes a deep breath, then exhales in a long sigh. He puts down the gun on the worktop and hugs her back.

‘Thank you,' he whispers into her hair.

Emil squeezes in between them so that he can join in with the hug. With his head between their stomachs he says in a broken voice: ‘They're here now.'

There is a crash and the caravan shudders as the first runner crosses the line.

*

Peter has given up. As he was driving towards the camp, his plan of action was clear in his mind: hook up the caravan and head away from the clouds. Now it turns out that the clouds are coming from both directions, and his head is empty. All he can do is sit and wait. Let others say their prayers, if they so wish.

Before he goes into the caravan he looks around. Stefan has just slammed the door shut behind him, while the two farmers are manhandling Donald into their caravan, followed by Majvor. The four versions of his father are still standing in the middle of the camp, staring in different directions.

‘I hate you,' Peter says to them. ‘I know it isn't you, but I hate you
anyway. If I had the gun, I'd shoot you. And you. And you.' He looks at the last figure, the kinder version from his childhood. ‘And you.'

The clouds are now so close that they are visible above the roof of the caravan. Peter nods to the four fathers. ‘I hope you burn.'

He steps inside, checking that Isabelle and Molly are already there. He closes the door behind him, and as he turns the lock he
sees
what he just saw, the horrific vision of Isabelle, sitting up in bed with his laptop open in front of her.

‘What the hell have you
done
?'

Isabelle's face is so swollen that she is barely recognisable, and there are patches of dried blood on her cheeks and chin. Both arms are encased in duct tape, and a string of pink saliva is dangling from the corner of her mouth, heading for the laptop's keypad.

‘Hi, Daddy!' Molly says. ‘We're watching a film!'

The approaching screams from the creatures outside mingle with similar noises from the laptop's speaker. Peter sits down on the bed and turns the computer so that he can see the screen.

A woman is hanging on a metal frame while a man flays her alive, his face expressionless. The woman screams and screams as the man uses a scalpel to remove yet another sliver of skin, exposing red, gleaming flesh. He throws the scrap of skin into a metal bowl, looks into the woman's eyes, which are hysterical with fear, then begins to slice off another piece.

‘It's
brilliant
!' Molly says, clapping her hands. ‘Come and watch it with us, Daddy!'

Peter has gone through a range of emotions over the past few hours, many sensations have surged through his body, but he has not experienced the entire spectrum until now: he feels ill. Bile rises in his throat as he looks at Isabelle's distorted face, the martyred woman on the screen, and Molly's beaming smile.

Sick, this is…sick.

The sky outside grows dark, and the light from the screen flickers in nauseating shades of blue and green over his wife, his daughter. With his hand covering his mouth Peter gets up from the bed just as
one of the creatures reaches the caravan and starts banging its hands against the metal. Peter jumps and takes a step back as the claw-like fingers scrabble at the window.

‘Nooooo, please God! Nooooo!'

For a moment he thinks that the creature's inarticulate cries have turned into words in English. Then he understands, reaches across the bed and slams the laptop shut. He grabs it and places it on the highest kitchen shelf.

‘Daddy, no!'

‘Molly, you're not to watch that kind of thing.'

‘But I
love
that kind of thing!'

Peter looks out of the window. There is no longer any sign of the burnt creature, nor can he hear the sound of scrabbling as it tries to find a way in. Fifty metres away a ripple passes through the grass as the curtain of rain comes closer. Forty metres. Thirty.

There is nothing he can do. The nausea subsides; the internal voices urging him to run, to do something, think of something, fall silent. Slowly he sinks down onto the bed. There is just one thing he would like to know before it all ends.

‘Molly,' he says, and his daughter looks up at him, her expression sullen. ‘What exactly
are
you?'

The sullenness disappears and Molly's face changes as she straightens up; it is as if she has been waiting for this question for a long time. ‘Don't you know, Daddy?'

‘No, Molly. I don't know.'

Molly looks at her mother's ruined face to check if she is listening, but Isabelle is lost, her gaze turned inward. Molly shuffles closer to Peter and whispers: ‘I am a fountain of blood in the form of a girl.'

And then the rain is upon them.

*

Benny doesn't like whatever it is that has crawled under the caravan to join him and Cat. He doesn't like it at all. It smells kind of like when
there is a fire, it is neither He nor She, and Benny barks at it, hoping it will go away. Cat must be of the same opinion, because she hisses and makes herself enormous.

Benny wishes he could make himself enormous too, just like one of those Dogs people are scared of, because the thing that smells of fire takes no notice of the noise they are making, but simply edges closer as if it wants to grab hold of Benny.

A few seconds ago they could have run across to another caravan, but this is no longer possible; it is raining, and you only have to sniff the rain to realise that you will be a dead dog if it touches you. They are stuck here with the firecreature.

Benny and Cat shuffle backwards, barking and hissing. The firecreature has a noise too, a horrible noise just like when He or She have hurt themselves really badly, and it makes this noise all the time, as if it is constantly hurting itself.

Benny and Cat have reached the far side of the caravan; there is nowhere else to go. Benny peeps out and sees that the four big Grandchildren are still standing there; the rain is pouring down on them, but they are not dead. Benny is so preoccupied by this sight that he has no time to react when the firecreature seizes his collar.

The barking changes to a howl as Benny is dragged across the grass towards the firecreature's mouth. He can see its teeth. Big white teeth, gleaming in the darkness. Benny's claws scrabble and slip on the grass without finding any purchase, and he whimpers in terror as the teeth part and the mouth opens, ready to bite his throat.

Then he sees an orange stripe out of the corner of his eye. Cat's fur tickles his nose and Cat sinks her sharp little teeth into the firecreature's hand. Cat is now so big that she only just fits beneath the caravan, and her eyes are wild.