John Lindqvist - Handling The Undead

She gazed up the street. The ambulance was just up at the bend by the big road. The woman was gone.

Is she… inside the ambulance now?

Elvy put her hand against her forehead and thought as hard as she could:

Flora? Flora?

No answer. No contact.

What had the woman actually looked like? How had she been dressed? Elvy was unable to visualise her. When she tried to conjure up the face, the body that she had seen for a split second, her mind could gain no purchase on the image. It was like trying to recapture a memory from early childhood; you could snare a certain detail, something you had latched onto. Everything else lay in shadow.

She could not see the face, the clothes. They were gone. She could only say one thing with any certainty: something had been sticking out between the woman's fingers. Something that gave off a faint reflection in the streetlamp. Something thin, something metallic.

Elvy ran into the house in order to try to reach Flora by conventional means. She dialled her mobile.

'The person you are trying to reach is unavailable…'

Racksta 02.35

Mahler was awakened by voices, the clatter of metal.

For a moment he was disoriented. He sat up. There was something in his lap. His body ached. Where, and why?

And then he remembered.

Elias was still lying across his knees, unmoving. The moon had wandered as Mahler sat there, was now more or less obscured by the tops of the spruce trees.

How long? One hour? Two?

There was a squeaking sound as the gates opened and a number of shadows slipped into the open area in front of the chapel. Flashlights were turned on and beams of light danced over the flagstones. Voices.

'… too early to answer at this stage.'

'

But what will you do if that turns out to be the case?'

'First we'll listen and try to determine how… widespread it is, then… '

'Are you planning to open the graves now?'

Mahler thought he recognised the voice of the person asking the uestions. Karl-Erik Ljunghed, one of his colleagues from the paper. He didn't hear the reply. Elias lay still in his arms, as if dead.

As long as they didn't shine their lights toward the wall they wouldn't spot him. He was sitting in almost total darkness. He shook Elias gently. Nothing happened. Terror blossomed in his chest.

All this, and then…

He found Elias' dry, hard hand, put his index and middle finger in it, and pressed. The hand closed, squeezing his fingers. Five flashlights moved in toward the cemetery, with the shadows in a line.

His body was stiff as a board after this period of sitting, and while he had been unconscious his spine had been replaced with a red-hot iron rod. Why didn't he let his presence be known? KarlErik could have helped him. Why didn't he call out to them?

Because…

Because he shouldn't. Because it was them. The others.

'Elias…Ihave to put you down.'

Elias didn't answer. With a feeling of loss, Mahler drew his fingers out of his grip and softly coaxed him onto the ground. By tensing his back against the wall and only using his thigh muscles, Mahler was able to get to his feet.

The lights were dancing along toward the grave area like excited spirits, and Mahler listened for sounds from new visitors. The only thing he heard was the distant voices of the recent arrivals, and very faintly the sound of 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' from the phone in his car. The hint of a morning blush coloured the sky.

'Elias?'

No reply. The little body lay stretched out on the stonework, a child-shaped condensation of darkness.

Can he hear me? Does he see me? Does he know that it's me?

He crouched down, got his hands in under Elias' knees and neck, stood up and walked toward the car.

'We're going home now, buddy.'

There were now three more cars in the parking lot. An ambulance, an Audi with the newspaper's logo on it as well as a Volvo with a strange licence plate. Yellow numbers on a black background. It took a moment before Mahler made the connection: a military vehicle.

The military? Is it that widespread?

The presence of the military car strengthened him in his belief that he had done the right thing not to reveal himself. When the military comes into the picture, something else goes out the window.

Elias was light, light in his arms. Unnaturally light in view of how…large he had become. His stomach protruded so far that the bottom buttons of his pyjamas had been torn off. But Mahler knew that inside there was only gas, created by the decomposition of the intestinal bacteria. Nothing that weighed anything.

He laid Elias carefully in the back seat and laid back the driver's seat as far as it would go so that he could sit with his back outstretched, almost lying down himself, as he drove out from the parking lot. He wound the windows down on both sides.

His apartment was only a couple of kilometres away. He talked to Elias the whole way, but got no answers.

He placed Elias on the couch in the dark living room, leaning over and planting a kiss on his forehead.

'I'll be right back, love. I just have to…'

He found three painkillers in the medicine drawer in the kitchen, swallowing them with a gulp of water.

And now… and now…

The touch of Elias' forehead was still on his lips. Cool, hard unyielding skin. Like kissing a stone.

He didn't dare turn on the lamps in the living room. Elias was lying absolutely still. The satin material of his pyjamas shimmered in the first light of dawn. Mahler rubbed his hands over his face and thought:

What am I doing?

Yes, what the hell was he doing? Elias was gravely ill. What do you do with an acutely sick child? Carry it home to your apartment?

Wrong. You call an ambulance, you see to it that the child goes to hospital-

morgue

– that it is looked after.

But that was the thing about the morgue. What he had seen there. The dead, held fast, struggling. He didn't want to see Elias in that picture. But what could he do? There was no way for him to care for Elias, to do… whatever it was that was required.

You think the hospitals can do it?

The pain in his back was starting to let up a little. Reason returned. Of course he would call an ambulance. There was nothing else to do.

The little darling. My darling little boy.

If only the accident had occurred a month later. Yesterday. The day before yesterday. If Elias hadn't had to lie in the earth so long, had escaped what death had changed him into: a desiccated, lizard-like creature with blackened extremities. However much Mahler loved him, his eyes saw that Elias no longer resembled anything human. He looked like something you kept behind glass.

'Buddy, I'm going to call a doctor. Someone who can help you.' His mobile rang.

The display showed the newspaper office number. This time he took the call.

'This is…'

Benke sounded close to tears when he interrupted, 'Where have you been? First you get all this shit started and then you go up in a puff of smoke!'

Mahler couldn't help smiling.

'Benke, it wasn't me who "got all this started". I'm completely innocent.'

Benke fell silent. Mahler could hear people speaking in the background, but could not identify their voices.

'Gustav,' Benke said. 'Elias. Is he…?'

What clinched it for him was not the fact that he trusted Benkewhich in fact he did-but the realisation that he needed some form of connection to the outer world. Mahler drew a deep breath and said, 'Yes. He's here. With me.'

The background noises changed and Mahler knew that Benke had taken the phone and gone somewhere no one else could hear him.

'Is he… in bad shape?'