Daniel Åberg - Virus - Stockholm - S1

“Hello?!” the voice is breathless, strained. “Why didn’t you answer? How’s Lukas? Have you… it’s awful here. There’s an ambulance at one of the neighbours’ houses and… where are you?”

Iris sighs. “Hello,” she starts. “My name is Iris and I’m with your… I’m with Lukas, your son. We are at the sandpit in Skånegläntan.”

She can hear the surprise, and the fear, as Magda draws breath. “Is he OK? Where’s Niklas?”

“He…” Iris looks at Sigrid. She is silent, watching her mother, and Iris can see that she is processing every word, trying to understand what it means for her. My big, lovely baby, she thinks, you will never forget this day.

“He’s sick,” she manages. “He can’t talk right now. Can you get here right away? I have to get my daughter home and… well, you seem to have noticed what’s going on.”

“I’m coming, don’t go anywhere! I’m just… I’m coming!” The woman hangs up.

Iris goes to the children and crouches down beside them. Sigrid is stiff, her whole body is saying that she wants to go home but she is keeping the words to herself. Iris wants nothing more than to keep going, to take her child home and discover that the gnawing fear that has been with her all day has been misplaced. But she can’t.

“Your name is Lukas, isn’t it?” she asks the boy. He nods vaguely and points again at the sandpit. “My daddy,” he says again.

Iris nods. “Yes, your daddy is over there. And your mummy is coming soon. I just spoke to her on the phone.”

The boy smiles, but then turns away, shy from all the attention.

“Do you have brothers or sisters?” Iris asks. “A big sister maybe? A younger brother?”

The boy nods.

“ I want mummy…”

“I know,” says Iris. “Really soon.”

Sounds of the city echo around them, cars honking, a siren somewhere – no, two sirens. Everything feels so desolate, so far away, somewhere, where…?

“LUKAS!” The voice is coming from near the climbing frame. Iris looks over, sees a woman on a bicycle approaching fast. “LUKAS!”

She stands up. The boy looks at Iris with concern, then at Sigrid. He doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on, but then he spots the woman heading straight for them.

“Mummy!” he cries. “Mummy!”

Magda brakes and stops in front of them, throws her bicycle to the side and arrives panting. Her cheeks are red and splashed with tears. She grasps the boy and pulls him into her arms, lifts him and then looks at Iris.

“What have you… Where’s… Where’s Niklas?”

Iris looks over at the sandpit where the bucket and spade are still perched on the edge. She watches Magda’s eyes settle, uncomprehending at first. Then she recognises them.

“He’s over there,” Iris says quietly. “In the sandpit.”

With Lukas pressed hard against her, the woman takes a few steps, but stops at the fence. Her breathing is shallow, she inhales her mucus loudly, coughs a couple of times, then hesitates.

“Thank you,” she says. “It was nice of you to call…” She breaks off into yet more coughing.

“Should we maybe… Are you OK?” Iris asks.

“It’s OK. Thank you,” she says, but Iris can’t help noticing the sweat running down her fevered cheeks. Her harried gaze flickering between the body, the back the only part visible, and Iris.

“But…”

“I said thanks, OK?!”

She places her son on the ground, lifts her bike and then places Lukas into the seat on the back. She coughs again, harder this time, clears her throat and dries her eyes, then looks at Iris and Sigrid with an expression Iris can’t interpret. Then she leaves.

“Byeee!” they hear Lukas call as they disappear past the climbing frame.

“What about his daddy?” asks Sigrid.

Iris seeks out her daughter’s hand, takes hold of it and squeezes tight. “We can’t do anything for him.” She takes a deep breath and forces herself to look away when she sees how close Sigrid is to crying. “Come on, let’s go home now.”

They reach the end of the park and it’s as if the world comes back, the number of people on the streets increases, cyclists are weaving in and out of cars and pedestrians and no one is looking where they are going. People are sweating, threatening each other with their fists, wishing death and damnation upon their fellow travellers. Iris drags Sigrid over the road, no teaching her to look left and right first, just straight out into the traffic. They zig-zag between three cyclists and two cars all coming from different directions. She needs to get away from here, to erase the boy’s last look at them as his mother cycled away. The dull ache in her arm suddenly explodes as she yanks Sigrid onto the pavement on the other side of the road. One second later and she would have been mowed down by a Lycra clad cyclist, panic in his eyes. Iris is too exhausted to shout at him and instead pulls her daughter onwards.

Onwards. Homewards.

The traffic is at a standstill everywhere on their route home. A cacophony of sound is echoing off the buildings – horns, shrieking, sobbing and the slamming of car doors as people abandon their vehicles in the street. She sees fury in their eyes, fear and desperation – and everywhere that same sweat pouring down cheeks and being wiped from shiny foreheads. She hears the coughing and spontaneous outbursts of tears that seem to floor people as the realisation hits. As they understand what is going on. Iris is fighting to hold back tears of her own. She doesn’t want to break down here, not in front of Sigrid .

A young man comes rushing out of the Skrapan plaza, a Macbook still in its box under each arm. A guard comes running after him, but stops before the young man has even made it halfway across the street. The guard looks along the cycle lane, bends over double, cough, cough, coughs, then sits down. Within seconds, a man with a child seat on the back of his bike drives straight into him, slamming the handlebars into his head. The guard screams, falls, but coughs again, while the man on the bike smashes into the ground a few metres on, spilling out over the bicycle lane. And there he remains.

“He wasn’t wearing a helmet mummy,” Sigrid says matter-of-factly as a pool of blood collects around his head. Iris turns towards her, wants to say something, but sees a break in the bicycle traffic and drags Sigrid across to the other side instead. She bites her lip to ignore the pain that accompanies such a drastic movement, but she’s in the middle of the road. They weave through the standing cars. Just then, a man winds down his window to get some fresh air and instead starts choking on his own blood and vomit. Iris tries to get Sigrid to look the other way.

Enough, thinks Iris. Enough of the sickness, the death, the accidents, crushed metal, mangled bones, broken hearts.

“Come on, let’s run all the way home,” she says as they reach the pavement on the other side of the road.

Within minutes of Dano placing his head against his mother’s chest, she is dead. He hears her last, raspy gasp of breath through her top, as if she wants to leave with her lungs full of oxygen. She holds it, lets the oxygen linger. Every muscle in her body tightens and she stays like that for a few, tremulous seconds. Then her body sinks back and is still forever. Dano is alone.

He stays lying there, clutching his dead mother and brother, trying to take it all in. He wants to remember this moment forever, just as he wishes more than anything he has ever hoped for in his twelve short years of life that it could be undone.

At last, he sits up and looks around. No one nearby, no life anywhere. The only thing he can hear is a car driving across the bridge above. He is uncomprehending and numb. What’s going on?