John Lindqvist - Handling The Undead

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.

Taby 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 Goran, 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 both 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 N orr Malarstrand. 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?'