Daniel Åberg - Virus - Stockholm - S2

“It shows the position of the telephone when the mobile network went down last Wednesday morning”, says Amanda.

Iris has a think.

“So it doesn’t still have to be at Nytorget? Sigrid might be wearing the phone on her arm, it’s just that we can’t see it?”

Amanda nods.

“Yes, that could be the case, but it doesn’t really help us now.”

Iris thinks again.

“No, but … oh, I don’t know.” She dismisses it. One thing at a time she thinks – we can consider that later if it becomes relevant.

She pauses in mid thought. Not if it becomes relevant – when it becomes relevant. She’ll be damned if she fails to find her own child .

“What about the map – did you get anything from it?”

Amanda zooms out, scrolls down past their own position and continues South, zooms out again, waits a moment and then sighs.

“The map hasn’t downloaded far enough from the place it was last used, which was back at your place, I assume”, she says despairingly. “Perhaps we can try driving to a petrol station and break in – they usually have roadmaps for sale, don’t they?”

Iris shrugs.

“Perhaps. But we haven’t got time to look for maps. We have to find Sigrid – NOW!”

Dano moves forward. Iris notices that he’s looking at the phone in Amanda’s hand. She doesn’t know how much he’s understood of what she and Amanda were talking about and she’s a bit ashamed they leave him out so often by speaking Swedish to one another, but it feels so unnatural to speak English to Amanda, especially about things he wouldn’t understand anyway.

“Do we need a map to find Sigrid?” he asks. Iris and Amanda nod at him.

“I have detailed maps of all the countries in Europe saved in a map app on my mobile phone”, he says, his face brightening slightly. “We fixed that before leaving Syria so that we could always check where we were, even if we couldn’t get a signal. Wait here.”

And before either of them can open their mouths, he’s out of the car and on his way into the bed shop to fetch his phone.

Dano feels his energy return as he rushes into the bed store where they had sheltered earlier in the day. He takes the stairs two at a time, runs up to the window where he left his phone charger and phone, grabs them and runs back towards the stairs. Then he sees the bag over by the bed with the Batman duvet. He hurries over to it and packs the few things they had time to grab from the store, before hurrying out to the car.

“I took our stuff so we can get out of here right now”, he says to Amanda and Iris, throwing the bag and then himself into the backseat of the car.

He pulls out the charging cable – the phone only has 9 percent battery left – and leans forward so the other two can see. He activates the map app and waits for the GPS signal to be picked up by the phone to give him the right map coordinates.

“We’re heading south”, says Amanda. “I remember Linda said their base is a farm just up from Tyresö, and we should avoid taking the road to Älta because that’s the one they use themselves”, she says, pointing to a road on the screen, which, after meandering eastwards a little, turns off in a southerly direction through the countryside.

“That’s the road to Älta, and that is…er…that’s Tyresö over there”, continues Amanda, after zooming out a bit. “So they should be there somewhere”, she says, pointing to an area east of the road.

They stare at the map in Dano’s hand. He taps on an icon and tries to switch to satellite view but all he gets is a fuzzy green image.

“Of course, only the map view gets saved off line”, he says disappointedly. “We can see where all the roads go but unfortunately not where there are buildings and houses.” He’s a little embarrassed – he thought his maps would help, he wanted to be useful – make them see him as an asset.

Iris covers her face with her good hand, as if trying to hide the tears that everyone knows are running down her cheeks.

Dano feels he has to do something. They can’t give up.

“Perhaps the map can help us a bit after all”, he suggests. “So she warned you about this road because that was the one they used? Well, perhaps we can find another road into the same area.” Dano scrolls east on the map and then north. “What about this one?”

Iris dries her eyes and looks at the screen again. Dano has zoomed out, making the smaller roads into the tiniest of streaks on the map. He points to a road going south through what they presume is a forest, a few kilometres east of their current position. On the map, the road meanders, runs through a few crossroads and eventually joins a road that stems off of the one they had been warned about.

“What d’you think?” That’ll take us down to the same area but without having to take that Alt…Elt…well, that road we weren’t supposed to take,” he says, blushing when he sees Amanda’s faint smile at his attempt to pronounce the Swedish name.

Dano traces the route backwards, trying to see if the small road he found can be reached by only using the back roads, where the risk of traffic congestion is less. It’s a maze of side tracks, some lead into housing areas and dead ends,and he has to backtrack. The small size of the screen makes it too difficult to get an overview and it reminds Dano a little of the tangle of mazes in puzzle books he used to solve when he was little.

“It can be done”, he says, once his finger reaches their current location. “Look!”

“Good”, says Amanda. “But it’s not enough. We’ll need a better map once we get closer. We have to work out exactly where they are if we’re going to have the slightest chance. We have to get one of those terrain maps.”

“Do they get that we kind of know where they’re holed up?” asks Iris.

“I don’t think so – I think she mentioned the thing about the road before picking up the radio and secretly transmitting to them, but I’m not sure.”

Dano listens to what they are saying – they’ve switched to English now, even when they’re not talking directly to him, and this makes him happy. He wants them to see him as a fully-fledged member of their quartet – yes, he’s still going to think of them as a quartet because Sigrid will be back. No more people are going to disappear now.

At the same time, a lot of what they are talking about is difficult to work out even though he understands the words. The Radio? And who’s the woman who told them about the road? One of the ones he saw go into the department store? And why did they take Sigrid?

He feels he needs to know everything that’s happened – and soon. That was something he’d learned during his escape through Europe, and that he’d got his parents to understand after a while too – that if they were honest with him everything would be much simpler. In the vulnerable situation they were in, there was no space to treat him like the kid he actually was. And that was true even now.

“It doesn’t matter if they know we’re coming or not”, says Iris. “I’m going to get to that farm even if they’re lying in wait for us with guns at the ready.”

Amanda nods slowly.

“Yes, but it’s just as well to prepare as much as we can. What’s the time?”

Dano clicks the map away and checks the top of the display.

“Almost half ten”, he says.

“Okay”, says Amanda. “So we have a few hours of darkness to reach the area where it starts getting interesting to search. Luckily, now it’s summer, it gets light as early as three, so we should be able to make our way easily. Although I’m not sure you should tag along with that arm of yours.” She nods at Iris’s sling.

Iris says something back in Swedish which Dano doesn’t understand but the tone of her voice makes it pretty easy to work out: Try and stop me.