Daniel Åberg - Virus - Stockholm - S2

The car park is located a couple of hundred metres into the forest. A few vehicles have been abandoned there. Before switching off the ignition, Amanda circles the small gravelled area so that the car is positioned to face the exit – it’s just as well to be prepared for a quick getaway. They leave the car, the windows wound up with a ten-centimetre gap, which will hopefully help to get rid of the rotten stench inside.

And so they stand at the edge of the car park, staring at a wide path with a slight downward slope that disappears into the darkness of the forest. The stars can still be seen in the sky but it’s almost two o’clock and it will get light in an hour. The line-up is the same as before: Dano has the spider wrench. Amanda has the automatic rifle, and Iris the pistol. Not much in the way of weapons, thinks Amanda – more like comfort blankets, something to hold in your hand.

They take a last glance at the map. It’s not as the crow flies but it isn’t more than one and a half kilometres to Erstavik farm. In reality, they will have to walk just over two kilometres. So close. Yet Amanda feels they are so far from their goal.

“What exactly are we going to do when we get there?” asks Dano.

Amanda is standing silently, her eyes fixed on some undetermined point in the darkness. She has no idea.

Iris is the one to break the silence.

“We’re going to use the only real weapon we have”, she says coldly. “We’ll infect them with our virus and then watch them die as we go get my child.”

The dry moss crunches underneath their feet as they creep forwards along a trail, some ten metres from the footpath. Amanda goes first, Dano in the middle and then Iris. They keep a couple of metres’ distance from one another and try to avoid branches, but the thick vegetation makes it difficult for them to see where they are putting their feet.

Using the path would probably have been sheer suicide. Considering how painstaking their opponents have been so far, it doesn’t seem impossible for them to have laid explosive tripwire all over the forest, even though this is the least likely point of entry for an enemy to attack.

Iris’s plan was not well received by the others. Amanda protested, but after failing to deliver a Plan B when Iris directly asked whether she had a better suggestion, she simply mumbled something about it feeling wrong and started walking.

The weight of anxiety in Iris’s stomach is almost a physical lump and she has to concentrate to even manage to stay upright. But the image of her daughter’s unconscious body being thrown into the helicopter sharpens her wits.

She hates them. It’s almost laughable when she thinks about it. Iris thought she had known hate before – hate towards a parent at Sigrid’s kindergarten whose daughter discovered that Sigrid was a little too sensitive to jibes and was therefore an easy victim to tease. It had started innocently but in just a few days escalated into a bullying campaign which a number of kids joined without even understanding why. They were only three years old – but the mother’s indifference towards what had happened – how she refused to even speak to her own daughter, motivated by the idea that it was better for the girls to resolve it themselves – Iris hated her for that. She remembers she said precisely that to Filip: I hate her.

But regardless of how honest she thought those words were, she now understands that those feelings could at the most be likened to simple contempt. Hate is something completely different. From a purely objective point of view, she realises how repulsive and even evil her feelings are, but they seem natural – if this is what is needed for her to be able to retrieve Sigrid alive from the farm, then she’s willing to kill them all. No, not willing, she concludes – eager.

Amanda has stopped and is surveying the road ahead. Between the trees they can see a cylindrical box around half a metre high. It’s surrounded by three dark silhouettes: one large and two smaller ones.

A parent and her kids, thinks Iris. On the way back to the car from the swimming lake. Is that a cool bag of food beside them, and a plastic bag with wet towels and swimsuits? Yes probably.

They survey the scene. The sound of bird chatter can be heard from the foliage above them. Under the protective canopy of the trees, they still can’t see it but simply sense morning approaching. When a different bird responds to the call, Amanda starts walking again.

The silence among them feels liberating. Iris does not want to talk to them – does not want to have to explain or defend her plan. Just move forward now, with silent steps through the sparse forest and a desperate hope that no-one will catch sight of them.

They pass a small dark lake just a few metres away from them. It looks so peaceful.. After this, the terrain starts to slope and get rocky, and they have to slither down along the flat rock faces. Iris steadies herself with her hand, managing to press it into something sharp. She muffles a cry and bites her lip hard, her mouth filling with the taste of blood. Damn it.

As they start approaching the end of this section of forest, they more frequently catch glimpses of the bay that Iris guesses has given Erstavik its name. Iris takes her phone out of her pocket, lighting up the display and shielding it against her stomach before discretely glancing at it. It’s ten past three and the charging session in the car has given her around twenty percent battery power. She daren’t hope for too much and hasn’t said anything to the others, but the fact is she has a faint hope that Sigrid’s wrist phone may be useful after all. But for that to be the case, Iris’s phone has to stay live until they get there.

If her thinking’s right, if Sigrid’s even wearing it and if in turn it has some charge left. And if this is really where they are, she thinks, feeling blackness instantly consume her inside. They have to. Sigrid has to.

They pass the bathing spot a hundred metres further up in the forest, and silently survey the beach, which is unlike any Iris has seen before. Only a few of the people managed to get as far as the family they found on the footpath. People in shorts, swimsuits and bikinis, adults and kids, naked tots – in total about thirty people, splayed out on the beach. Some of them seem to have tried to help each other – they’re lying close together in small clusters. But then Iris remembers the waiting room at Stockholm South General, where some people became aggressive and tried to stir each other up into a rage, and she wondered if a similar scenario could have played out here: fighting until the disease fully asserted itself and people collapsed and died.

Dano has stopped, something that Iris only becomes aware of when she bumps into his back. Observing his pale face, she realises it’s not the first time he’s seen dead people washed up on a beach. She should say something, understand that this sparks memories, not only of fleeing the war in Syria but also of his family. But she doesn’t have the strength. She can’t. Still, she musters up a weak smile and is just about to clumsily stroke his cheek, when half way through she realises she is holding the pistol in her one functioning hand and stops the movement. As a result, Dano interprets the sweep of her arm as an impatient gesture – get a move on – and he looks down ashamedly and hurries forward, almost stumbling, even increasing the pace in order to catch up with Amanda.

Damn, thinks Iris.

A few minutes later they pause, shielded by a large moss-covered rock. The forest ends ten metres ahead. They stare at the collection of buildings in front of them: Erstavik.

Before them, farmland unfolds. In their left field of vision, they glimpse the bay, after which there is open land from the forest up to the road. This is where they would have walked had they not been afraid of advertising their arrival. Further ahead, it converges with a large road bordered by an avenue on both sides. Sticking up behind the avenue is the black roof of the manor house, and they can glimpse two lower-level wings at right angles to the main building. Further off, they can see more buildings, some look like barns and others look like residential or office units.