Savage Spring (53 page)

They’re hiding behind it.

It has to be the Kurtzon brothers, and she empties her clip towards the sofa, then pushes a new one in as Zeke clutches his arm.

Has his artery been hit?

If it has, he’ll die here.

In which case he doesn’t have much time left.

And Malin fires off two more shots before leaping up in a flash and rushing towards the sofa, and she sees two figures dressed in black race towards a staircase, and she fires at them, one, two shots, but they disappear down the stairs, and she rushes after them, past an open case full of green dollar bills, and notes in currencies she doesn’t recognise. She tries to present as small a target as possible, she can’t get hit now, and the stairs lead towards the lower terrace, and she sees the brothers over by some steps that lead further down, and screams: ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot!’

And one of the brothers turns around, raises what looks like some sort of automatic weapon towards Malin, and is just about to fire when she squeezes the trigger of her pistol, praying that it’s not too late, either for her or Zeke or the children, the missing, lonely children who could be here somewhere.

They might not be dead.

Please, let them not be dead.

Zeke holds his arm as he hears shots from an automatic weapon down by the lower terrace.

Did I hear pistol shots as well?

Malin.

Did they get you?

I have to save you.

Shit, I’m bleeding badly.

The tops of the firs and pines sway in the wind. He takes a firm grip on his arm. Can I stem the blood somehow?

If the bullet hit my artery, I’m finished. But I have to save Malin.

He gets to his feet.

Picks up his pistol.

Hurries over to the far end of the terrace, towards the place where the gunfire came from.

He fell.

Whichever one of the brothers was holding the sub-machine gun fell, firing up at the sky as she hit him in the leg, and now he’s lying on the terrace clutching one of his knees, without making a sound, as the marble under him turns red.

And now the other brother slowly raises his pistol towards her, and Malin can’t see his face, which one is it, who am I about to be shot by, or who am I about to shoot?

She hesitates.

Then she fires, but her pistol clicks, and now she can see the man’s face, he’s smiling, his finger stroking the trigger, and Malin is sure she’s about to die, but then a shot rings out, and she sees the man fall backwards over the low railing of the terrace, down into the garden, landing in the flowerbed ten metres below.

She hears Zeke call in a weak voice: ‘Are you there, Malin? Are you OK?’

‘I’m OK,’ and she rushes over to the other man, who has let go of his knee and is trying to crawl forward to reach the machinegun a metre or so away from him.

One of the Kurtzon brothers.

A pointed nose. She can see that from his profile. Leopold, this must be Leopold Kurtzon.

She kicks the gun away from him, leans cautiously over the railing, and ten metres below she sees the man she presumes must be Henry Kurtzon, his body like a crushed flower among the plants.

His eyes are open.

Lifeless.

And one of the huge lizards is eating his leg, tearing at his body, silently but with a frenzy the like of which Malin has never seen before.

More lizards appear.

Their jaws open. Their bodies move. They rip the human body apart, hissing with delight and fury.

Malin turns away.

‘Are you OK?’

She hears Zeke’s voice behind her.

‘Yes,’ she shouts. ‘How about you?’

‘At first I thought the bullet had gone through the artery, but it hasn’t. I can stem the bleeding if I put enough pressure on my arm.’

‘Keep an eye on this one,’ Malin says, kicking the man at her feet. ‘I’ll check the house.’

The man on the ground looks up at her.

With a peculiar smile that looks like a grimace in the darkness.

As if he knows something she doesn’t.

‘Which one are you, Henry or Leopold?’ Malin hisses, her voice ice-cold. Wants to know for sure, even though she recognises Leopold Kurtzon from his passport photograph.

‘Leopold. Does it matter?’

‘I’ll take care of him. Go and find the children,’ Zeke says. ‘Find them.’

60

Malin rushes through the house, searching every corner of every floor.

Zeke has called for back-up and an ambulance.

Minutes pass.

I have to find Elena and Marko.

Take their fear away.

She makes her way downwards.

The bottom floor of the house, dark and gloomy and lonely.

Another little terrace, two shovels discarded on it.

Recently used?

Impossible to say, and she doesn’t want to believe the worst, but feels that the children are here somewhere.

Beneath the soil by the terrace? Or behind the door straight in front of me, which seems to lead straight underground?

She yanks the door open.

Behind it is a sequence of rooms lining a damp, dark corridor, and she must be moving deeper into the rock face now, surely? To where the chamber of darkness might be found?

She opens door after door. Empty, windowless rooms and storerooms.

She switches on the lights as she gets deeper into the building.

Moves further and further into the darkness, closer to what must be the rock face itself.

She is holding her pistol out in front of her.

Silence. Or is it actually silent? She listens. Hears whirring, ticking, and light breathing.

What’s making the ticking sound?

A white door leading into a storeroom. Malin turns on the light.

And at the back of the storeroom is another door that leads into yet another damp but oddly warm room.

She turns on the light.

Another door, and she can hear something behind it. Breathing? Life?

Is that you? Is that you, tell me it’s you?

The ticking.

Voices behind the door, she can hear them now, weak and scared:

‘Daddy . . . where are you? . . . where are you? . . . I’m scared . . . Daddy . . .’

But the ticking. Louder here. What does the ticking mean?

Is that you? Are you there?

Light filtering in under the door.

Someone’s coming.

Not them again.

Is that you, Daddy?

‘Daddy . . . where are you?. . . where are you?’ Are they going to kill us now? You have to rescue us, Daddy, tell us what’s going on, take us away from here. You mustn’t abandon us. Is that you out there?

They took us out, pointed their guns at us, at our heads, and they screamed and shouted, but then they shoved us back in here again, so no one would find us.

Those words, those actions will live on inside us forever, even if we can’t put words to them right now.

Light.

Darkness before the light.

And then a whole lot of light. As someone opens the door to our dungeon.

The children.

Naked.

Dirty. Smelly.

But it’s them. It’s Marko and Elena.

And their room stinks, and they’re skinny, and they screw up their eyes as they peer in her direction from where they’re huddled on the floor in their own excrement and urine. They can’t see me, but there, in my shadow, there they are.

Malin sinks to her knees.

Never mind the dirt and the smell. That doesn’t matter. The children are alive.

She crawls the few metres to the figures in front of her.

‘Now, is your name Marko? And you must be Elena?’

Drawings on the walls. Strange symbols made with crayons. Characters, like a strange, alien language, brought here by spaceships from a distant future.

‘It’s all right now,’ she whispers to the children, hugging them, feeling the warmth of their skin. ‘It’s all right now, Marko and Elena. You don’t have to be frightened any more.’

And then she hears a voice, and seems to feel four small, white bird wings flapping above her head.

‘We’re not frightened any more either,’ the birds whisper, and Malin holds the children tightly, feeling the warm blood coursing through their living bodies, as the ticking in the room that led to the children’s cell is replaced by a ringing, and Malin doesn’t want to let go of the children, wants to hold them, fill them with love, but she has to deal with the ringing.

She picks up the children and carries them out of the room. Can’t leave them in there.

A large white box in one corner. She lets go of the children and they scream. She crouches down and crawls over to the box, and opens it.

Fifty-five.

Fifty-four.

Wires and transparent metal tubes. A digital counter, numbers, a speaker spewing out the ringing sound, and the children, silent behind Malin.

Explosives.

At least ten kilos. A detonator.

Fifty.

No obvious switch to stop it.

Should I pull out that wire, that cable? The black one, or the white one?

Red?

Green?

Sweat breaks out on her forehead.

Forty-five.

If I touch the bomb anything could happen, I’d set it off. And that fucking ringing sound.

Forty, and Malin turns around, tucks one child under each arm and rushes out of the underground, through room after room, through the corridor and up into the light, out onto the bottom terrace, counting inside her head the whole time, as the ringing disappears behind her.

Thirty-five.

Thirty-four.

Up on the other terrace. Zeke catches sight of her, he’s covered in blood, and he smiles, and the children scream, and she tries to calm them as she runs. Zeke’s alone, where’s Leopold Kurtzon? And Malin sees Zeke point towards the railing, and he says: ‘He fell when I was trying to help him up,’ and Malin realises what’s happened. Zeke didn’t back down. And she can hear the lizards grunting and roaring and hissing as they tear Leopold Kurtzon apart.

Twenty-two.

‘There’s a bomb!’ she screams, passing the little girl, Elena, to Zeke. She knows he can carry her in spite of his injury, she can see it in his eyes. ‘It’s about to go off, we have to get out of here,’ and Zeke shouts: ‘That’s why he was smiling, the bastard . . .’

He runs after her with the girl in his arms, and they run up the steps towards the entrance hall.

Ten.

Nine.

Out through the door, out into the garden. The lizards can’t be anywhere close, they’re busy elsewhere.

Eight.

Seven.

How powerful is the bomb? How far do we have to run to avoid being turned to ash?

Six.

Five.

Four.

Fifty metres from the house now, on dew-wet grass, on their way to the sea and the bridge, then out onto the bridge. Is the world about to end?

Three.

Two.

Malin and Zeke stop, panting, hugging the children.

One.

How far away do we need to be?

Zero.

61

A rumble.

The island seems to vibrate behind them, and the house shakes, the bridge lurches violently from side to side – just let it stay up.

The air thickens, and Malin’s whole body seems to be sucked into a furious vacuum.

They’re standing in the middle of the bridge, trying to stay upright with the children in their arms, watching the brothers’ house shake, the arched roof twists this way and that, as an invisible force seems to rip the trees and bushes apart, and the bridge beneath them is shaking even more now.

Then the roof of the house disappears, blown out into the night sky.

A dark grey cloud of smoke is rolling towards them from the island, and the world vanishes into a cloud of ash, smoke, and dust.

Malin sinks to her knees, feels the thick oak planks of the bridge protesting, puts one hand over the boy’s mouth to shield him, help him breathe, and can see Zeke doing the same before the smoke envelops him.

Are you about to die, Zeke?

Small, green, poisonous fragments fly through the
fog.

Where’s Zeke? Gone. The girl in his arms.

Then the smoke eases slightly.

She sees Zeke, the girl. Their chests heaving up and down, up and down.

The boy in her own arms. Gasping for air.

They’re surrounded by poisonous smoke.

But it doesn’t stop the children breathing.

Epilogue

Hälsingland, June

Mummy’s here.

And Daddy.

We’re together again as a family.

There’s no pain any more, Malin. No desire.

Just a moment in which we can be together.

Who was our real daddy, Malin? Our biological daddy?

He isn’t here, even though he should be. But who is he? A shadow, a tree in a forest, raping a young woman?

Our real mummy is still in her home in the underground. Her father and brothers are even further down, in places that can’t be described.

In a cell inside the prison next to Kronoberg Park, Jokso Mirovic is playing with his children. He’s allowed to have them with him, and they’ll have a loving home with their aunt, where they can live and grow up during the years their father is locked away.

We see them playing, laughing and having fun, bubbling with life, and we can understand him. We can see their mummy too now, she’s close to them, but in the same realm as us.

Your mummy was with us once, Malin, and she was wondering if you’re OK, and you are, aren’t you? You’re finally happy now, aren’t you?

Your mummy didn’t want to, or couldn’t, or didn’t dare to get any closer to you, any of you.

We’re going to go now, Malin Fors.

It’s time. We’re going to pretend we’re real people, doing the things that people do.

This is the last time we’ll see you, Malin.

Thanks for everything.

You’re walking towards a bed now.

And in that bed lies your brother.

Malin is holding Tove’s hand.

The room around them is furnished like a teenage boy’s bedroom. A desk, a bookcase with ornaments and a few videos.