He placed Elias on the couch in the dark living room, leaning over and planting a kiss on his forehead.
‘I’ll be right back, love. I just have to…’
He found three painkillers in the medicine drawer in the kitchen, swallowing them with a gulp of water.
And now… and now…
The touch of Elias’ forehead was still on his lips. Cool, hard unyielding skin. Like kissing a stone.
He didn’t dare turn on the lamps in the living room. Elias was lying absolutely still. The satin material of his pyjamas shimmered in the first light of dawn. Mahler rubbed his hands over his face and thought:
What am I doing?
Yes, what the hell was he doing? Elias was gravely ill. What do you do with an acutely sick child? Carry it home to your apartment?
Wrong. You call an ambulance, you see to it that the child goes to hospital—
morgue
– that it is looked after.
But that was the thing about the morgue. What he had seen there. The dead, held fast, struggling. He didn’t want to see Elias in that picture. But what could he do? There was no way for him to care for Elias, to do… whatever it was that was required.
You think the hospitals can do it?
The pain in his back was starting to let up a little. Reason returned. Of course he would call an ambulance. There was nothing else to do.
The little darling. My darling little boy.
If only the accident had occurred a month later. Yesterday. The day before yesterday. If Elias hadn’t had to lie in the earth so long, had escaped what death had changed him into: a desiccated, lizard-like creature with blackened extremities. However much Mahler loved him, his eyes saw that Elias no longer resembled anything human. He looked like something you kept behind glass.
‘Buddy, I’m going to call a doctor. Someone who can help you.’ His mobile rang.
The display showed the newspaper office number. This time he took the call.
‘This is…’
Benke sounded close to tears when he interrupted, ‘Where have you been? First you get all this shit started and then you go up in a puff of smoke!’
Mahler couldn’t help smiling.
‘Benke, it wasn’t me who “got all this started”. I’m completely innocent.’
Benke fell silent. Mahler could hear people speaking in the background, but could not identify their voices.
‘Gustav,’ Benke said. ‘Elias. Is he…?’
What clinched it for him was not the fact that he trusted Benkewhich in fact he did-but the realisation that he needed some form of connection to the outer world. Mahler drew a deep breath and said, ‘Yes. He’s here. With me.’
The background noises changed and Mahler knew that Benke had taken the phone and gone somewhere no one else could hear him.
‘Is he… in bad shape?’
‘Yes.’
Now everything was quiet on Benke’s end. He had probably slipped into an empty office.
‘OK, Gustav. I don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t have to say anything. But I want to know what they are doing. If I’m doing the right thing.’
‘They’re collecting them, taking them all to Danderyd. They’ve started opening graves all over. The armed forces have been called in. They’re citing some regulation about mass epidemics. No one knows anything, really. I think…’ Benke paused. ‘I don’t know. But I have grand kids too, as you know. Maybe you are doing the right thing. There’s a general feeling… of panic.’
‘Does anyone know why this is happening?’
‘No. And now, Gustav… to my other point.’
‘Benke, I can’t. I’m completely done in.’
Benke breathed into the receiver; Mahler sensed the effort it cost him to remain calm, not to start haranguing him. ‘Do you have the photos?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but…’
‘In that case,’ Benke said, ‘they’re the only independent photos available from the inside. And you are the only journalist who managed to get in before they closed. Gustav… with all due respect for your situation-which I cannot even imagine-I am trying to put together a newspaper. Right now I’m talking to my best writer who is sitting on incomparably the best material. You, on the other hand, can probably imagine my situation.’
‘Benke, you have to understand that…’
‘I understand. But please, please, please Gustav, can’t you just… anything? The pictures, a little text in the present tense, straight on? Please? And, if nothing else, then the pies? Just that?’
If Mahler had been able to laugh, he would have. Now all that came out of him was a groan. During the fifteen years that they had worked together he could not recall a single instance when Benke had actually begged for something. The word ‘please’ with a question mark after it had not been in his vocabulary.
‘I’ll try,’ he said.
As if this was what he had expected the whole time, Benke said,
‘I’ll hold the centre spot. Forty-five minutes.’
‘Jesus Christ, Benke…’
‘Yes. And thanks, Gustav. Thanks. Get cracking now.’
They ended the call. Mahler glanced at Elias who had not moved. Walked over and placed a finger in his hand, which closed. He wanted to sit down next to him, fall asleep with his finger in his hand.
Forty-five minutes…
Insanity. Why had he agreed?
Because he couldn’t help himself: he had been a reporter his whole adult life, and he knew what Benke had said was true. He was in possession of potentially the best material anyone had, of the biggest story… ever. He couldn’t not do it. In spite of everything.
He sat down at the computer, took the film out from inside his head, and his fingers started to move across the keyboard.
The elevator starts with a jerk. I can hear screams through the thick concrete. The morgue level comes into view through the door glass…
Overview
00.22: The Minister of Health and Social Affairs arrives at the department. Under his supervision, a provisional command unit is formed consisting of representatives of various departments and the police, as well as eminent physicians from a number of disciplines.
A conference room at the department has been set up as a temporary command centre. It will quickly come to be known as the Dead Room.
00.25: The Prime Minister is informed of the situation, in Cape Town. The situation is deemed to be so extraordinary that a planned meeting with Nelson Mandela the next day is cancelled and the state plane is made ready for take-off. The flight takes eleven hours.
00.42: The first reliable report about awakenings at cemeteries reaches the Dead Room. The calculations have already been made. It is a matter of around 980 people. The police report that they do not have the resources to manage the exhumations.
00·45: Public pressure for a press statement from the Dead Room increases. A certain confusion about terminology abounds. After a brief meeting the term ‘reliving’ is unanimously adopted to refer to the awakened dead.
00.50: The task of exhumation is transferred to the military.
As collaboration between the police and the armed forces is forbidden by law, no military representatives can be included in the command unit. The military is given the same authority as in a state of emergency and has to address the matter as best they can.
01.00: Danderyd reports that 430 reliving have now been admitted to the Clinic for Infectious Diseases and work is underway to clear the wards in order to make more room. Only two ambulances at each hospital have been set aside for emergency dispatches, the rest are being used for transportation. Additional assistance is requested.
01.03: There is a discussion in the Dead Room about allowing funeral homes to help transport their former clients. It is decided, however, that this may be perceived as inappropriate, and instead all available taxi cabs are called in to transport patients from Danderyd to other hospitals.
01.05: A state
ment issued to the press by General J ohan Stenberg-who has been appointed head of the military emergency action-reaches the Dead Room. ‘At present we view the corpses largely as a logistical problem,’ the general has apparently said. A press secretary from the department agrees to take on the task of informing the general of the correct terminology.
01.08: Two emergency technicians and a chaplain are threatened with a rifle when they try to pick up a reliving woman in Tyreso. Police are dispatched to the scene.
01.10: CNN becomes the first foreign television station to carry reports on the events in Stockholm. Their images are limited to the chaos outside Danderyd and in the report, those patients who are being moved to other hospitals are erroneously referred to as ‘the living dead’.
01.14: Pressure on the Dead Room from foreign media increases after the CNN report. A media spokesperson from the Foreign Ministry is given the task of fielding the telephone calls.
01.17: The first military exhumation division sets off, comprising mine-clearing experts as well as personnel with UN experience opening mass graves in Bosnia. While waiting for further similar groups to be dispatched, they set off to the Stockholm Forest Cemetery in order to start there.
01.21: The man in Tyreso who had refused to hand over his reliving wife opens fire at the police. No one is injured.
O1. 23: The Minister of Health and Social Affairs decides in consultation with judicial experts to apply to this situation those laws relating to mass epidemics, which affords the police corresponding interim authority before the results of the medical analysis. A plea is dispatched to the Medical Examiner to hurry up the work.
01.24: The police in Tyreso are given permission to use teargas, but decide not to since the armed man is elderly and may be seriously injured.
A police negotiator establishes telephone contact with the man as he is making his way to the scene.
01.27: An initial medical report indicates that the reliving apparently do not employ respiratory or circulatory organs. Hasty cell tests indicate, however, that some kind of metabolic function may be present. According to the specialist in internal medicine who is spear-heading the investigation, ‘Everything is completely impossible, but we are doing what we can.’
01.3°: At Danderyd they have now admitted 640 reliving and ask for additional reinforcements from other hospitals. For unknown reasons, conflicts constantly erupt among members of the staff, which makes cooperation more difficult.
01.32: After significant pressure from the national and international media, the Dead Room’s press secretary now announces a planned press conference in City Hall at 06.00.
01.33: Psychiatric clinics and emergency rooms are overwhelmed with family members in various states of hysteria. The internal psychiatric unit of the police force starts to see psychologically burnt out officers.
O1·3 5: The search for those reliving who are at large is more or
less ended. Reinforcements are, however, called out to the shelter of the City Mission, where clients have resisted police attempts to remove a homeless man-dead for two weeks-who has returned.
01.40: The first reliving at the Forest Cemetery is freed. The man is reported to be in the ‘most miserable state imaginable’ as he has been lifted out of a deeplying area where the ground is waterlogged.
01.41: The facilitator arrives in Tyreso, The last thing the armed man says on the phone is, ‘I’m going to her now’ whereupon he shoots himself. The emergency technicians fetch his wife while police cordon off the area. The man shows no signs of awakening.
01.41: There is a request to the general public from the Forest Cemetery for ‘people with strong stomachs’. The exhumed man makes an attempt to get away.
01. 4 5: Danderyd starts to lose control. 715 reliving have now been admitted and a number of disputes and several cases of fistfights have erupted among staff members in direct contact with the reliving.
01.50: The military calls in members of the Army Corpswithout consultation with the Dead Room-in order to erect a temporary holding facility for the reliving until they can be transported.
01. 55: Questioning of Danderyd staff members reveals that their conflicts have arisen due to a claimed ability to read one another’s thoughts.
02.30: Reliving of particular significance to gaining a greater understanding of the phenomenon are moved to the Medical Examiner’s office at Karolinska Medical Institute in Solna. Among these is Eva Zetterberg, who has the power of speech, as well as Rudolf Albin-the one who has been dead the longest before awakening.
02.56: Tomas Berggren, professor of Neurology, conducts an initial interview with Eva Zetterberg.
Interview 1
The following is a transcript of my first interview with patient Eva Zetterberg. The patient is of particular interest as a very short period of time elapsed between the cessation of her life-sustaining functions and her subsequent awakening without the support of said functions.
The patient’s ability to speak has shown continuous improvement since the awakening.
This interview was conducted in Solna, Wednesday the 14th of August 2002 at 02.56-03.07.
TB: My name is Tomas. What is your name?
EZ: Eva.
TB: Can you tell me your whole name?
EZ:No.
TB: Can you tell me your last name?
EZ:No.
[Pause]
TB: Can you tell me your first name?
EZ:No.
TB: What is your name?
EZ: Eva.
TB: Eva is your first name.
EZ: Eva is my first name.
TB: Can you tell me your first name?
EZ: Eva.
[Pause]
TB: Do you know where you are right now?
EZ:No.
TB: What does it look like around here?
EZ: Where is here.
TB: Here is the place where Eva is.
EZ:No.
TB: Where is Eva?
EZ: Eva is not here.
TB: You are Eva.
EZ: I am Eva.
TB: Where are you?
[Pause]
EZ: Hospital. A white man. His name is Tomas.
TB: Yes. Where is Eva?
EZ: Eva is not here.
[TB touches EZ’s hand]
TB: Whose hand is this?
EZ: Hand. I’s hand.
TB: Who is I?
EZ:Tomas.
[Pause]
TB: Who are you?
EZ: I am Eva.
[TB touches EZ’s hand]
TB: Whose hand is this?
EZ: Eva…‘s hand.
TB: Where is Eva?
EZ: Eva is here.
[Pause] No.
TB: What does it look like where Eva is?
EZ:No.
[Pause]
TB: Can I speak with Eva?
EZ:No.
TB: What do your eyes see?
EZ: A wall. A room. A man. His name is Tomas.
TB: What do Eva’s eyes see?
EZ: Eva has no eyes.
TB: Eva has no eyes?
EZ: Eva cannot see.
[Pause]
TB: What can Eva hear?
EZ: Eva cannot hear.
TB: Does Eva understand what I say?
[Pause]
EZ:Yes.
TB: Can I speak with Eva?
EZ:No.
TB: Why can’t I talk to Eva?
EZ: Eva has no… mouth. Eva afraid.
[Pause]
TB: Why is Eva afraid? [Pause]
Can you tell me why Eva is afraid?
EZ: Eva stay.
TB: Does Eva want to stay where she is?
EZ:Yes.
TB: What is Eva afraid of?
EZ:No.
[EZ shakes her head violently.]
After this EZ refuses to answer any further questions.
The Heath 03.48
On the night bus to Tensta, Flora checked her voicemail and saw that Elvy had called five ti
mes. She immediately dialled her number.
‘Hi, it’s me… ‘
A strong exhalation on the other end hissed in Flora’s ear.
‘My dear child! Is everything all right?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘I don’t know, I just thought… I’ve been trying to call.’
‘I wasn’t allowed to have my mobile on in the ambulance.’
‘No, of course… ‘ Flora could imagine Elvy slapping her forehead lightly, ‘of course not. How silly of me.’
There was silence for a couple of seconds. The dark floors of Rissnes apartment buildings glided by outside the window.
‘Nana? You heard him too, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘The minister didn’t notice anything. And you couldn’t see it on Gramps. He was just lying there.’
Silence again. Flora took her walkman out of her bag. It was such an ancient model that you had to take the cassette out and turn it to switch sides. She flipped the tape over from Holy Wood to Antichrist Superstar. Then she waited.
‘I…thought I saw something,’ Elvy said finally.
‘What?’
Elvy hesitated for two seconds and then said, ‘I just wanted to hear that everything was all right with you. Are you on a bus?’
‘Yes.’
Flora didn’t add anything, and Elvy had run out of questions. They ended the conversation with a promise to be in touch the next day. Flora curled up in the corner of one of the seats, put the earpieces in and pushed play, leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.
We hate love… we love hate… we hate love…
After the bus let her off at Tensta centrum she had to walk a kilometre. The Akalla path brought her almost the whole way, but on the last bit across the jarva field there were no trails other than those that the construction machines had left behind ten years earlier, and even they were returning to nature now.
She came up on a hill and looked out across the Heath. A hint of dawn brought the grey buildings out in sharp relief. She had been here at night once before, this spring. In the full dark she hadn’t been able to make out the city at all from this vantage point. It had been present only as suggestion, a change in the soundscape.
There were no street lights, no lamps on in any windows, neither power, water nor drains had been laid all the way. They had never gotten that far.
As Flora walked down the slope with ‘Tourniquet’ winding through her ears, dawn slowly turned up its light and glinted in the few windows that remained unbroken. Until a few years ago the area-in theory still a construction site-had been enclosed by a fence but since the residents of the Heath created new entrances for the umpteenth time it had finally been left as it was. Large parts of the fence had had other uses found for them, and what was left lay fallen, scattered in the grass.
Handling The Undead Page 10