Daniel Åberg - Virus - Stockholm - S1

“Da… Da…” she says with a quiet voice. At least that’s what Dano thinks she is saying, Bilal’s screaming is drowning out most other sounds. He slides down off the bench, his wailing brother still pressed tight against him, and kneels beside his mother. His tears fall on her cheeks, but she doesn’t notice; she is much too disorientated.

Just as he is about to free one hand and stroke it across her cheek, she jerks and throws herself violently to one side. She vomits, yet again, all over the platform, mostly foul-smelling yellow bile, but Dano thinks he sees streaks of blood this time and panic rises in him.

“Mama,” he wails, “Mama, stop, please!”

A man in his twenties is lying on a park bench a few metres away. He’s wearing black jeans and a faded blue T-shirt. Dano thinks he looks German, at least he saw lots of guys like him in Germany with hair so white that it looked bleached. He was screaming earlier, at Dano, howled and swore in a language that didn’t sound like normal German. Is that how Swedish sounds? He lunged, but stopped short. The sweat had formed beads on his forehead and ran down his face as he grabbed his stomach, just like Dano’s mother did just now. Dano could see how the hatred shone in his eyes but he was too weak, and he returned, doubled over, to his bench where he crumpled into a foetal position on the wooden slats. He hadn’t moved since, except to vomit.

That feels like hours ago, Dano thinks.

Bilal is still screaming in his arms, still drumming his stomach, determined to make the pain in there go away.

“Please, stop now Bilal,” Dano pleads quietly into Bilal’s ear between clenched teeth. He tries to shush him by pulling him closer. “Please, it doesn’t help. Leave your tummy alone. Stop, stop, stop.” But the little boy doesn’t stop, his little arms are shaking from the exhaustion, but still he keeps banging.

A train is standing on the tracks in front of them. A blue train with far fewer doors than the silver one that brought them here. The seats look different and Dano guesses this must be one of those commuter trains the man across the aisle told him about. The doors are open and it looks abandoned, but Dano can hear sounds coming from inside: complaints, that much he is sure. There must be people lying in there.

The man with the yellow vest opened the doors to their train eventually. Then he sat down beside the train and as they passed Dano saw him crumpled with one hand on his chest, the other clutching a strange-shaped key. His breathing had the same shallow gasping quality as his mother’s had now.

The man infected her, Dano thinks. He infected her and he infected Bilal. Maybe Baba is also sick. Wasn’t he also coughing in that terrible way when he left with Line to look for help?

Dano had been standing closest to him, so he too should be lying on the concrete vomiting. But Dano doesn’t feel sick.

Only tired, emptied of all energy, life drained from him.

His mother started complaining about the heat not long after they left the train. The cough started in earnest soon after that, then the sweats, cramps and shivers. By the time they reached the station, Dano had long been responsible for Bilal, and Baba had to help Mama up onto the platform as she couldn’t manage to heave herself up on her own. Lots of other people seemed to be sick, people stopped to rest by the side of the tracks, held their foreheads, shuffled to the side and leant against the fence to be sick again and again. Then they started collapsing, those with energy searched for shade, hoping that someone might come to help. Others fell on the tracks, beside and even on top of each other, as if the dirt, dust and bodies of strangers no longer mattered.

A road bridge crosses the tracks close to where they’re sitting. Traffic has been heavy from what he can see and hear. Cars have been honking their horns in a way he didn’t think was normal here. An ambulance with sirens and blue lights blaring passed, as did two police cars, maybe more that he didn’t notice.

Something warm and sticky runs over his hands, and when he looks down he realises Bilal too has started vomiting. A warm, yellowy-white goo, breast milk mixed with something thicker and slimier, oozes over his arms as he clutches his little brother. Dano wants to scream, howl out his pain, but instead he tips Bilal forwards so that he won’t choke. The contents of Bilal’s stomach flows slower compared to the violent vomiting of his mother, as if his little body has already been emptied of all strength.

“Dano…” he hears his mother’s weak voice say, “Dano, are you…”

“I’m fine Mama,” he replies quickly, so that she won’t have to waste energy talking. “I don’t feel sick.”

“Bilal…”

“He’s well,” Dano says without thinking. “He’s fine, he’s only crying because he’s scared,” he continues and turns away from his mother. Her eyes are closed, but he doesn’t want to take any chances.

He doesn’t know where he’s getting the strength to lie from, all he knows is he has to protect her from the feeling of powerlessness that comes from watching your baby die and not even being able to hold him or comfort him in your arms.

Bilal is sick again, and this time there is blood in his vomit. Dano doesn’t want to see it, would rather cast his little brother away – hurl him – as far as he can. He wants to wake from this nightmare. Instead, he presses his cheek to his brother’s, (he’s burning hot) shushes and stands up, paces, rocks his brother back and forth, tries to do exactly what his mother usually does to get him to sleep.

People are spread out everywhere along the platform. A woman in office wear was leaning against a column, but has fallen forwards. Dead probably, her glassy eyes are fixed on the train as if accusing it of not having taken her home. Something sticky and yellowy-white has trickled down her chin and collected in a pool at the corner of her half-open mouth.

An older woman has collapsed over her suitcase a few metres further away. Dano can’t see her face, but she doesn’t appear to be breathing. The angry man with the bleached hair has also stopped moving.

Everyone’s dying. Dano doesn’t understand it, but the passengers from the train are dropping like flies around him.

Bilal spasms and vomits for a third time, every muscle in his tiny body stiffens in one last attempt to rid his body of the pain. Practically the only thing that comes up is pink phlegm with streaks of fresh red blood. Dano presses his little brother’s clenched fists to his chest, feels that they want to keep hitting, but also notices their strength fading.

“I’m sorry Bilal,” he whispers. “I love you. Never believe otherwise.”

He manages to free an arm without dropping his brother and places his hand over Bilal’s face, pinches his nose with his thumb and forefinger and presses his palm gently but firmly over the little baby’s mouth.

Nothing happens at first, his little brother’s movements continue as before, but after five or six seconds his head begins to jolt, as if such resistance might be enough to free him. Dano sobs, the tears roll down his face and land in Bilal’s sweat-soaked, messy hair. He walks further from his mother to make sure she doesn’t realise what’s happening. He sinks down behind a pillar, bawls, shushes, cries, sings into a little ear. Refuses to yield to the love in his chest that wants him to let go.

It didn’t take long. The little body didn’t have the strength to hold on. Soon, his brother is lying still in his arms.

Dano stays sitting by the pillar for a while. Now that Bilal is no longer screaming, the silence in the station is unbearable. Sometimes he thinks he hears the sound of a motor, but the traffic appears to have thinned and he can’t hear any more sirens.