Handling the Undead Read online

  ‘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.

  Täby 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.

  There were two things she didn’t understand: how such worlds could be created in computers, and how Flora could remember everything. Her fingers flew over the buttons, and text, maps, indexes flickered past and were replaced so rapidly that Elvy could never take in what was happening.

  Jill moved down a dark corridor with her pistol raised, her body tense. Flora’s lips were compressed, her heavily made-up eyes narrowed. Elvy’s gaze caressed the thin, pale inner arms marked with scratches and scabs from old cuts. The head with its red, straggling hair looked too large for her small body. For a while she had coloured it black, but had been letting it grow out for a year or so.

  ‘Is it going all right?’ Elvy asked.

  ‘Mmm. I just got a thing I needed. Just have to…save.’

  The map came up, then disappeared. A door opened to a dark background and Jill was standing at the top of some stairs. Flora moistened her lips and steered her toward the steps.

  Margareta, who was Flora’s mother and Elvy’s daughter, would have objected if she had known what kind of game Flora was playing: deemed it unsuitable for both of them, for different reasons.

  The Gamecube had ended up at Elvy’s three months ago, as a compromise. Flora had been glued to the machine three, four, five hours a day for the past six months, her parents had issued an ultimatum: either sell the machine or keep it at her grandmother’s, if Elvy agreed.

  And Elvy agreed. She was very fond of her grandchild and vice versa. Flora dropped by two or three evenings a week to play and didn’t usually spend more than a couple of hours at the console. They had tea, talked, played cards and sometimes Flora spent the night.

  ‘Ooooohh…’

  ‘Damndamndamn!’

  Elvy looked up. Flora’s body was curled, tense.

  A zombie had staggered out from around a corner and Jill raised her gun, managed to fire a shot before it was upon her. The control in Flora’s hand creaked as she tried to turn away but the blood spewed out in red spouts and soon Jill lay at the zombie’s feet.

  You are dead.

  ‘Idiot!’ Flora slapped her forehead. ‘Ow. I forgot to burn him. Ow.’

  Elvy leaned forward in the armchair. ‘Is it…over now?’

  ‘No…I know where it is now.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Flora had self-destructive tendencies, according to her school counsellor. Elvy didn’t know if that was better or worse than the diagnosis she’d received herself at the same age: hysterical. In the fifties, as the welfare state flowered and the final victory of rationality seemed imminent, it was not a nice thing to be hysterical. Even Elvy had cut her arms and legs then—inner pain, outer pressures. This problem hadn’t even existed back then. No one had the right to be unhappy.

  Ever since Flora was very little, Elvy had felt a strong connection to the serious, imaginative child, had sensed that she might have troubles. The sensitivity they were cursed with had skipped a generation. Maybe in reaction to her emotional mother, Margareta had studied law and become neat, polished and successful. Had married Göran, another law student who might have come from the same pod.

  ‘Do you have a headache too?’ Elvy asked, watching Flora push the hair off her forehead as she leaned forward and turned off the game.

  ‘Yes, it’s…’ Flora pushed the button. ‘Oh. It won’t turn off.’

  ‘Then turn off the television.’

  But the television could not be turned off either. The game started to display self-generated scenes. Jill shocked two zombies, another was shot in a corridor. The shots echoed in Elvy’s head and she grimaced. The volume couldn’t be cut either.

  When Flora tried to pull the cord out of the socket it crackled and she jumped back with a scream. Elvy stood up from the armchair, ‘What happened?’

  Flora stared at the hand that had grabbed the cord.

  ‘I got a shock. Not that strong, but…’ She shook her hand as if to cool it down and pointed at the screen where Jill was again electrocuting the undead, chuckled and said, ‘No, not like that.’

  Elvy held out her hand, helped her up on her feet.

  ‘Let’s go out in the kitchen.’

  Everything electrical and mechanical had been Tore’s domain. After he fell ill with Alzheimer’s, Elvy had been forced to call an electrician the first time a fuse blew. She’d never been entrusted with that kind of information because she was considered delicate. But the electrician, who didn’t know about her limitations, showed her what to do and now she could do it. A malfunctioning television, however, exceeded her abilities. That would have to wait until tomorrow.

  They played a hand of canasta in the kitchen, but they bo
th had trouble concentrating on the cards. Beyond the headache there was something else in the air, something they both sensed. At a quarter past ten, Elvy gathered up all the cards, asked, ‘Flora? Do you feel…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Both stared down at the table top, tried to…sniff it out. Elvy had occasionally encountered other people who had this ability: in Flora’s experience Elvy was the only other one. It had been a relief to her when they had first spoken of it a couple of years ago. There was someone else as crazy as her, who had the Sense.

  In another society, in another time, they might have been shamans. Or burned at the stake, for that matter. In Sweden in the twenty-first century they were hysterical and self-destructive. Overly sensitive.

  The Sense was as difficult to describe, to put one’s finger on, as a scent-impression. But just as the fox knows that there is a hare somewhere out there in the dark and even knows, from the smell of the hare’s fear, that the hare is aware of the fox’s presence, both women could discern something that lingered in the air around places and people.

  They had started talking about it last summer when they had been walking along Norr Mälarstrand. Just short of the City Hall they had both, as if on cue, turned away from the wharf and gone up onto the bike path. Elvy had stopped and asked, ‘Didn’t you want to walk there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because…’ Flora had shrugged, looked down at the ground as if she was ashamed. ‘It just didn’t feel good.’

  ‘You know…’ Elvy had taken Flora’s chin in her hand, lifted her face, ‘I felt the same thing.’

  Flora had looked searchingly into her eyes. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elvy said. ‘Something has happened there. Something bad. I think…someone drowned.’

  ‘Mm, yeah,’ Flora said. ‘He was going to jump from the boat…’

  ‘…and then he hit his head on the edge of the wharf,’ Elvy filled in.

  ‘Yes.’

  They had not checked if they were right. They knew. They spent the rest of the afternoon swapping stories. The Sense had come to both of them in their early teens and Flora’s pain stemmed from the same source as Elvy’s at that age: she knew people too well. The Sense told her the exact state of mind of the people around her, and she could not accept their lies.

  ‘My dear,’ Elvy had said, ‘all of us lie in some way. It is a precondition for society to function, that we lie a little bit. You can view it as a form of consideration. The truth is, in a way, very self-centred.’

  ‘I know, Grandma, I do know that. But it’s so…revolting. The air sort of stinks around people who…you know?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elvy sighed. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘You don’t have to be out in it. You interact with, like, Grandpa and the old ladies at church. But at school, there are like a thousand people and all, almost all of them, are unhappy. Some of them don’t know it themselves, but I know and it hurts. It hurts. All the time. When some teacher calls me over and wants to have a serious discussion and tell me everything that’s wrong with me…I just want to throw up because while he’s talking he just reeks of different stuff. Anxiety and worry and he’s afraid of me and has a lousy life and he’s the one who is telling me how I should act?’

  ‘Flora,’ Elvy said. ‘I know it’s no comfort now, but you will get used to it. When you’ve been sitting in the outhouse for a while, you don’t notice the smell anymore.’ Flora laughed at this, and Elvy went on. ‘And as far as the ladies in the church are concerned, I can tell you I wish I had a clothes peg sometimes.’

  ‘A clothes peg?’

  ‘To put on my nose. And Grandpa…we’ll get to that another time. But there is no way to turn it off. You should know that. If you are like me, then there is no clothes peg. You have to get used to it. It’s purgatory, I know. But you have to get used to it if you want to live.’

  The positive result of the conversation was that Flora stopped cutting herself. And she started visiting Elvy more often. Even in the middle of the week, she would take the bus to Täby Church, going back to school the next morning. She volunteered to help care for Grandpa, but there wasn’t much to do. Elvy let her feed him his porridge a couple of times so that she could feel involved when she wanted.

  Elvy started hesitant conversations about God a couple of times; but Flora was an atheist. Flora tried to play Marilyn Manson for Elvy, with the same unsatisfactory result. There were limits to their friendship. But Elvy could tolerate the horror films, in modest amounts.

  When they returned to the living room the television had got louder. Flora tried turning it off again, but nothing happened.

  She had received the Gamecube from Elvy on her fifteenth birthday. There had been heated discussions with Margareta, who claimed that videogames made teenagers switch off from the real world. Elvy thought she was right, which was the precise reason she had bought the game. She herself had been fifteen when she started to drink: to switch off, to dull the emotional antennae. From that perspective, she felt that the game was a better option.

  ‘Let’s go out for a bit,’ Elvy said.

  They couldn’t hear the television from the garden, but the air was still and the heat oppressive. All the surrounding houses were lit up, dogs were barking and an aura of foreboding hung over them.

  They walked to the guardian tree: the apple tree planted when the house was built, to stand beside it and keep the household from harm. Hundreds of green fruit peeked through the dark leaves, and shoots that had not been pruned back during Tore’s years of illness splayed up toward the sky.

  I’ll get the shotgun, walk up the stairs and shoot the dogs.

  ‘Did you say something?’ Elvy asked.

  ‘No.’

  Elvy searched the sky. The stars were pinpricks of light against the dark blue, unimaginably distant. She saw them loosen, become needles that flew down and pierced her brain, throbbing and aching.

  ‘Like an iron maiden,’ Flora said.

  Elvy looked at her. Flora was also staring up at the sky.

  ‘Flora,’ she said, ‘Were you thinking about a shotgun just now and…dogs?’

  Flora raised her eyebrows, let out a laugh.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was planning what I was going to do in the game. How…?’

  They looked at each other. This was something new. The headache was increasing in intensity, the needles pressing deeper; and then, in a sudden gust, it was over them.

  Not a leaf moved, not a blade of grass bent, but they both staggered as a great force blew through the garden and for a second was over, around, inside them.

  sa…rack…me…j…i…tess…st…kla…rm…kss

  It was as if a radio had spun through hundreds of frequencies, filling their heads with voices; only staccato half-sounds, but nonetheless they could hear that the voices belonged to people in a state of panic. The strength drained from Elvy’s legs, she fell on her knees on the lawn and mumbled, ‘Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we…’

  ‘Grandma?’

  ‘…forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil…’

  ‘Grandma!’

  Flora’s voice trembled, and with an effort Elvy pulled herself away from her faith, looked around. Flora was sitting wide-eyed on the lawn, staring at her. A beam of pain pierced Elvy’s mind, so sharp that she feared she might be having a stroke and she whispered, ‘…yes?’

  ‘What was that?’

  Elvy grimaced. Everything hurt. It hurt to move her head, it hurt to open her mouth. She tried, and failed, to form the words inside her head and then…it was gone. She closed her eyes, breathed. The ache simply switched off, the world fell back into place, took on its normal colours. She could read her own relief in Fl
ora’s face.

  A deep breath. Yes. It was gone. Over. She reached out her hand, took hold of Flora’s.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘That you are here. That I was not the only one who…experienced this.’

  Flora rubbed her eyes. ‘But what was it?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘Yes. No.’

  Elvy nodded. Of course. In a way it was a matter of faith.

  ‘It was the spirits,’ she said. ‘The souls of the dead. They have been let out.’

  Danderyd Hospital 23.07

  She was his wife, how could he be afraid of her? David took a step closer to the bed. It was that eye, the one eye, and how it looked.

  It’s impossible to describe a human eye; all expectations end up ghost-like, paintings and photographs acceptable only because we know they are frozen moments of time. A living eye cannot be described or recreated. But we know all too well when it is not there.

  Her eye was dead. It was covered by a microscopically thin grey membrane, and it might as well have been a stone wall. She was not switched on, not…present. David leaned over, whispered, ‘Eva?’

  He had to hold onto the steel bed rail in order to keep himself from recoiling when she looked straight at him—

  there are diseases that do that to the eye

  —and opened her mouth, but there was no sound. Only a dry clicking. David ran over to the sink and filled a plastic cup of water, held it up to her. She looked at it but made no attempt to take it.

  ‘Here, my love,’ David said. ‘A little water.’

  Her hand swung up and knocked the cup out of his hand. Water splashed over her face and the cup landed on her stomach. She looked at it, put her hand over it and scrunched it up with a crackle.

  David stared at the hole in her chest, the clamps dangling inside like Christmas decorations from hell, and finally came out of his paralysis. He pressed the button at her bedside and when no one had turned up after five seconds he rushed out into the corridor and shouted, ‘Hello! Help!’

  A nurse responded quickly from a room further down the corridor. Before she had reached him David was screaming, ‘She’s woken up, she is alive she…I don’t know what I should…’