Daniel Åberg - Virus - Stockholm - S1

Further along the platform is a glazed waiting area. He drags his mother and brother as gently as he possibly can over the concrete, opens the swing door with his back and pulls them inside. It’s greenhouse-hot and their bodies will begin to decompose and smell faster in here, but at least they’ll be protected from birds and other animals. He goes back to their bags and takes the biggest blanket from his father’s rucksack. Then he covers their bodies, carefully tucking the edges in under his mother.

He feels powerless, he wants to do more – bury them, sing for their souls, grieve for them. He sits by their side for a few minutes, hums the song they sang at the funerals of his two cousins just before they left in January. He doesn’t remember the words, but it probably doesn’t matter.

He walks back to the bags, removes all their packing and divides the contents into two equal piles, including the small amount of food they have left. He then repacks it all into two bags. He stands one of the bags down and takes the other into the waiting room, placing it beside his mother and Bilal. Then he takes a piece of paper from the notebook his father keeps in the small rucksack and writes a note for him, using the pen in the front pocket.

He’ll wait for his father and Line here, until darkness falls. If they don’t come before then, he will fasten the note to the rucksack and leave it here.

He rereads the lines he has written. “I’m fine. I have gone towards the city, I’ll try to find Ahmed. Please come find me. Dano.”

Then his tears start falling again.

Iris grips her daughter’s hand so hard as they sprint along that she fears she might have bruised her. But Iris can’t worry about that now, it could be much worse. The afternoon is giving way to evening and the city is collapsing around them. Iris’ only goal in life at this precise moment is to get her daughter to safety.

On Södermannagatan she saw a woman sprawled out beside Il Caffe. Sigrid didn’t seem to see her, she was watching a dog scuttle past, its lead hanging low, at least Iris hopes so because she’s pretty sure the woman was Stina, Sigrid’s nursery school teacher, the one who had had trouble standing upright due to the raging fever only a few hours ago when Iris, the last parent to arrive, finally appeared.

She isn’t completely sure. It could have been anyone, but didn’t she live nearby? Hadn’t Iris met her in this neighbourhood before? Iris should have stopped of course, what kind of person doesn’t stop to see if her daughter’s teacher is OK, but just like the man in the sandpit and the man in the car on Götagatan, this woman had vomited blood. An asymmetric pool had formed around her head and Iris understood instinctively that there was nothing to be done. Other than to hurry her daughter on.

“Stand here,” she says when they finally arrive at the door just by the 7-Eleven on Nytorget. With her good arm, she pulls Sigrid up the long staircase and presses her against the door before releasing her hand and typing in the code. The lock clicks and by putting her entire body weight behind her right shoulder, she pushes open the door. The pain explodes in her arm and she has to clench her teeth to stop herself screaming.

Once inside, Sigrid runs to the elevator and presses the button.

“No, we’re taking the stairs,” says Iris.

“But it’s coming, look,” says Sigrid and points upwards.

“Uh-huh, but we’re walking anyway.” Iris has no intention of getting stuck between floors in the rickety scissor-gate elevator that the estate agent described as “full of rustic charm”. Not today.

Sigrid looks uncomprehendingly at her as if she is preparing to protest, when she sees her mother’s serious expression and defiance turns to regret. She moves to the stairs and starts climbing with demonstratively heavy steps.

Iris tries to get a hold of her thoughts. Is he going to be there? Will he be OK? Alive…? No, she can’t let her mind travel towards that last option, not before she absolutely must. Maybe she should go in first, to check that all is as it should be, that he…

She stops. Coughing, from a flat a few floors up. The sound rolls like thunder down the walls of the stairwell. Sigrid has also stopped and is looking at her.

“Someone else is sick, mummy,” she says.

Iris nods and pushes her daughter on. Onwards. Homewards. Whatever awaits them inside, she’d rather be there than stay out here.

They hear the coughing again as they pass a door on the third floor. She should ring on the door, ask if they need help. She should, but she can’t. She doesn’t want to.

Instead, she continues on to their door and out of reflex attempts to swing her shoulder bag forward, the one she always carries, but it isn’t there.

“What’s the matter mummy?”

“Uh, it seems I forgot my bag at the hospital,” she says stiffly.

“Didn’t we bring Cartman?” Iris can hear the panic rise in her daughter.

In any other situation, Iris would have smiled at her daughter calling their keys “Cartman”. It’s not that she doesn’t know the word for keys, but as a two-year-old, Sigrid learned that the foam character that hangs from her mother’s keychain had a name and she came to associate him with the door being unlocked. So now all keys equal Cartman. Which has caused a certain amount of confusion among her teachers at nursery, as well as her grandmother.

“It appears not.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Say a prayer that daddy is home,” Iris replies.

“How do you say a…” Sigrid begins, but then stops as Iris presses the bell and the surly knell is audible through the door. After four or five seconds she releases the button and silence descends on the stairwell. They wait, saying nothing.

Come on come on come on, Iris thinks. Come on my lovely darling you.

But the mantra feels hopeless and the words ring false.

Iris pulls vainly at the handle even though she knows they never leave the door unlocked.

“Try ringing him again mummy,” Sigrid says after what feels like an eternity. “Ring his mobile.”

Iris takes her phone out of the pocket of her jeans. No notifications. 23% battery left. She taps in the pin, clicks on “Recents” and presses on the first number for the twelfth time that day. She doesn’t even bother to put the phone to her ear, just stares hopelessly at the screen. She doesn’t have the strength left. Shit.

“It’s ringing, mummy.”

“Yes, I know, I’m calling him now.”

“No, I don’t mean like that. It’s ringing. From inside the flat. Can’t you hear it?”

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