Handling The Undead

by John Ajdive Lindqvist

  There were two gates and at each gate there were four guards.

  Even if they had not had rifles or even batons, but were placing their trust in the self-control of the masses, it was difficult to see how this could be Sweden. David was tormented less by the repressive aura of the fence or the crowd than the general impression of carnival. An audience agog, eager to see what was concealed beyond the barriers. And that Eva was somewhere at the heart of this circus.

  A young man came over and put a piece of paper in his hand.

  DO YOU DARE TO LIVE WITHOUT GOD?

  THE WORLD WILL CEASE TO EXIST MAN WILL BE OBLITERATED PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE TURN TO GOD

  BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

  WE CAN HELP YOU

  The flyer was well made; an elegantly printed text superimposed onto the pale background figure of the Virgin Mary. The man handing it out looked more like a real estate agent than a fanatic. David nodded thanks and walked on, holding Magnus by the hand. The man took a side step to stand in front of them.

  ‘This is serious,’ he said. ‘This…’ he pointed at the flyer and shrugged. ‘This kind of thing is hard to express. We aren’t an organisation, no church, but we know, OK? All of this…’ His arm swept in the direction of the fence, ‘all of this will go to hell if we don’t turn to God.’

  He threw a pitying glance at Magnus, and if David had been charmed for a couple of seconds by the man’s humble words and his please, please, please, then thIs look convinced him that even if the guy was right, he was disgusting.

  ‘Excuse us,’ David said and pulled Magnus along. The man made no further attempts to stop them.

  ‘Crackpot,’ Sture said.

  David thrust the paper in his pocket and saw others lying scrunched up, scattered in the grass. Something was happening in the crowd: a thickening, an increase in concentration. There was a puffing sound that David knew well; someone was testing a microphone.

  ‘One, two…’ They stopped.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Sture asked.

  ‘No idea,’ David answered. ‘Someone must be… going to perform.’

  It was starting to look more and more like a festival of some kind.

  Soon Tomas Ledin would climb up on stage and belt out a couple of numbers. David felt his stomach cramp up, his anxiety spreading to encompass the whole situation. The possibility of the whole thing coming apart; the agony of watching a comedian dying onstage.

  The Minister of Social Affairs approached the microphone. There were scattered boos that died down when they received no support. David looked around. Despite the TV and newspapers covering little else but the reliving over the past few days, he had not been able to view this as anything but his own personal drama. Now he realised this was not the case.

  Several TV cameras were sticking up out of the crowd, even more were gathered at the front by the podium where the minister was now straightening his suit jacket and leaning forward, tapping the mike-ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls-and said:

  ‘Welcome. As a representative of the government I want, first and foremost, to apologise. This has taken far too long. Thank you for your patience. As you understand, this situation took us by surprise and we made a series of decisions that in hindsight can perhaps be judged as not the most enlightened… ‘

  Magnus pulled on David’s hand, and he bent down.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dad, why is that man talking?’

  ‘Because he wants everyone to like him.’

  ‘What is he saying?’

  ‘Nothing. Do you want me to take Balthazar?’

  Magnus shook his head and gripped the basket more tightly. David thought his arms must be tired, but let it go. He saw that Sture was standing with his arms folded over his chest, scowling. Perhaps David’s fears of a disastrous performance had not been so far off the mark. Luckily the minister had the presence of mind to bring things to a rapid close and give the word to a man in a lightweight suit who introduced himself as the head of the Department of Neurology at Danderyd Hospital.

  From his first words it was clear that he was critical of the whole carnival atmosphere, even though he did not say as much.

  ‘So to my real point. There has been much speculation and many rumours, but the fact is that people can read each other’s thoughts in the proximity of the reliving. I’m not going to dwell on how we have all tried to avoid facing these facts, to rationalise them or soft-pedal the issue. The fact remains… ‘ he pointed toward the enclosed area with a gesture that David

  felt was unnecessarily theatrical, ‘when you pass through these gates you will hear what people around you are thinking. We still don’t know how it is possible, but you must be prepared for the fact that the experience is not altogether… pleasant.’

  The neurologist went silent for a moment and let his last words sink in, as if he half expected people to split off from the crowd and start leaving, for fear of the unpleasant experience. This did not happen. David, whose profession it was to sense an audience’s emotions, could feel a growing impatience. People were stirring restlessly, scratching-arms and legs. They were not interested in caveats, they wanted to see their dead.

  The neurologist, however, was not finished.

  ‘The effect is less noticeable now that your reliving have been separated-that is one of the reasons that we are here-but it is still present, and I would ask you, as much as humanly possible…’ he tilted his head and said in a lightly jocular tone, ‘try to think nice thoughts. All right?’

  People looked around at each other, some smiled as if to confirm how nice their thoughts were already. The growing pain in David’s stomach signalled impending calamity, and he crouched down, his hands clasped around his middle.

  ‘Well, that was all I had to say,’ the neurologist said. ‘At the gates you will be informed of the exact location of the person you are looking for. Thank you.’

  David heard a rustle of clothing as the mass of people started to move forward. If he moved, he would soil himself.

  ‘Dad, what is it?’

  ‘Just a little stomach ache. It’ll be fine.’

  Yes. The pressure momentarily subsided and he could straighten up, look out over the thousands of heads now dividing into two more compact masses around the gates. Sture shook his head, said, ‘It’s going to take hours like this.’

  Eva, are you there?

  Testing, David sent out the strongest thought he could muster, but received no answer. That field they were talking about-where exactly did it start, and why was it only the living could hear each other, not the reliving?

  A police officer wandering around, underemployed in the wellmannered crowd, came up to them and said hello. They returned the greeting and the policeman pointed to the basket in Magnus’ lap. ‘What do you have there?’

  ‘Balthazar,’ Magnus answered.

  ‘His rabbit,’ David answered. ‘It’s his birthday today and… ‘ he fell silent, sensing that an explanation wouldn’t matter either way.

  The policeman smiled. ‘Well, congratulations! Were you planning to bring it in? The rabbit?’

  Magnus looked up at David.

  ‘That’s what we’d been thinking, yes,’ David said. He didn’t dare lie for fear that Magnus would contradict him.

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

  Sture took a step closer. ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Why can’t he bring the animal?’

  The policeman held up his palms, Only following orders. ‘There aren’t supposed to be any animals in there, that’s all I know. Sorry.’

  The policeman walked away and Magnus sat down on the ground with the basket on his lap. ‘I’m not going in.’

  Sture and David looked at each other. Neither of them was going to stay outside with Magnus, and leaving Balthazar in the car was probably out of

  the question. David stared angrily at the policeman who had wandered on with his hands clasped behind his back, wishing he had been able to pulverise him
with his thoughts.

  ‘Let’s walk around a bit,’ Sture said. They moved around the outskirts of the crowd in a wide quarter circle until they left it and arrived at a forested area where, to his relief, David spotted a couple of portaloos. He excused himself, selected the one with the least graffiti, sat down and exploded with freedom. When he was done he discovered that there was no toilet paper. He tried to use the flyer but the shiny paper was only good for smearing. He removed his socks, used them and tossed them into the hole.

  All right… now…

  David felt better. Everything was going to go well. He tied his shoe laces on his bare feet and walked out. Sture and Magnus were looking secretive.

  ‘What is it?’ David asked.

  Sture lifted his jacket a little like a black market dealer and showed the inner pocket with Balthazar’s head sticking up. Magnus giggled and Sture shrugged: it was worth a shot anyhow. David had no objections. He was cleansed inside now, unbound and light of heart. Just as the neurologist had requested.

  They walked back to the gates. Sture complained that Balthazar was nibbling on his shirt and Magnus laughed. David glanced at Sture, who was struggling exaggeratedly with his jacket, and felt enormous gratitude. It would not have been possible without him. The tension around smuggling Balthazar in appeared to have distracted Magnus completely from the visit ahead of them.

  They reached the gates in time for another speech. The crowd had shrunk considerably in their absence, so presumably the guards were not particularly strict about verifying relatives’ identities. Before they had reached the queue, something happened up on the podium.

  Two elderly women got up on stage and switched on the PA. Before anyone had time to react, one of them approached the microphone.

  ‘Hello?’ she called out and was startled by the strength of her own voice, taking half a step back. The other lady put a hand to her ear. The one who had spoken summoned her courage, stepped up again and repeated, ‘Hello! I just want to say that all of this is a mistake. The dead have awakened because their souls have returned. This is about our souls. We are all lost if we do not… ‘

  She did not get any further. The PA was turned off and her prescription for how to avoid being lost could only be heard by those closest to the stage. A very large man in a suit, most likely security, got up on stage, ushered the woman firmly away from the microphone and led her to the ground. The other woman followed.

  ‘Daddy?’ Magnus asked. ‘What is a soul anyway?’

  ‘Something that some people think we have inside of us.’ Magnus felt with his hands over his body.

  ‘Where is it, then?’

  ‘Nowhere in particular. It’s like an invisible ghost where all the thoughts and feelings come from, sort of. Some people think that when we die it flies out of the body.’

  Magnus nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Yes,’ David said. ‘But I don’t.’

  Magnus turned to Sture who was holding a hand over his heart as if he was having a heart attack. ‘Grandad? Do you believe in the soul?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sture said. ‘Absolutely. I also believe I’m getting a hole in my shirt.

  Can we go?’

  They got in line. There were still a couple of hundred people ahead of them but the line was moving rapidly. In ten minutes they would be inside.

  The Heath 12.15

  When Flora reached the Heath and saw the great mass of people and how quickly it was shrinking, her hope of getting in increased. She did not have the same last name as her grandfather and no way to prove her status. She had called Elvy that morning to get a signed document, but as usual she only got to talk with a lady who said that Elvy was busy.

  She went and stood in one of the lines snaking up toward the gates. Over the last few days she had spoken several times to Peter, who had avoided discovery during the clear-out and managed to stay in his basement. The evening before, however, his battery had gone flat and he had no possibility of getting out to where there was electricity as long as the feverish activity in the area continued.

  Damn, how they must have worked.

  Just the feat of putting up at least three kilometres of fence to encircle the area. In two days. One of the few times that Peter had dared to go out he had reported that the area was swarming with military personnel and that the work was continuing round the clock. The press had either been excluded or come to some kind of arrangement, and nothing had been written about the Heath until the Prime Minister made his announcement.

  Flora moved slowly forward, straightening the backpack full of fruit that she had brought for Peter. In her head she counted prime numbers-one, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen – since it was almost unbearable standing here among all these people.

  The whiff of fear she could pick up on the streets was nothing to what she found here. Wherever she turned her attention she caught the same signals. People looked as they usually did, possibly somewhat more abstracted in their gaze, a little more purposeful, but there were deep-sea creatures swimming inside them, the terror of confronting the completely unknown; the other.

  nineteen, twenty-three…

  Unlike her, most of the people here had never seen one of the undead. They were here because relatives had awakened in morgues, their dearly departed had been plucked out of the earth by the military and transported to sealed wards. There were good reasons to fear the worst, and that was exactly what people were doing. Flora tried to shut her brain from the ever-present horror and could not understand why people had decided to enact their reunions in this way.

  She lowered her head and tried to escape through concentration.

  Twenty-nine, thirty-one… thirty-seven… to show they have everything under control… thirty-nine, no… mum rotten face fingers· bone… forty-one… forty-one…

  ‘Hello?’

  A voice echoed through the fog of thoughts, a voice she knew well. She opened her eyes, lifted her head and saw her grandmother for the first time in four days. On stage, with Hagar standing right behind her.

  She was so flabbergasted that she lost control of the Power and was overwhelmed by a wave of jumbled, frightened thoughts that drowned out the sound of her Nana’s voice. She caught something about ‘souls’ before Elvy was forced down from the stage. Flora ran over.

  A guard was holding Elvy by the shoulders, but he let go just as Flora arrived, his attention now directed at a besuited man by the sound equipment. The guard raised a finger at the man, at the amplifier, ‘… get the hell away from those things. You stay right here.’

  ‘Nana!’

  Elvy looked up and Flora winced. Elvy had aged so much since they last saw each other. Her face was grey and sunken; she had dark circles under her eyes as if she had not slept in several days. The arms that embraced Flora were slack and thin.

  ‘Nana, how are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You don’t look well.’

  Elvy fingered a scab on her forehead. ‘Perhaps I’m a little… tired.’

  The guard shoved the younger man over to Elvy and said, ‘Now you get away from here, right now.’

  Many people had assembled around them, mostly older women who walked over to Elvy, patting her and whispering among themselves.

  ‘Nana,’ Flora said. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Hi,’ the younger man held out his hand and Flora shook it. ‘Are you Flora?’

  Flora nodded and dropped the man’s hand. She could not read him through the murmur, which was both an unusual and disconcerting feeling. Hagar came over and patted Flora’s arm. ‘Hello dearie. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Flora said and gestured at the stage. ‘What was that?’

  ‘What? Oh, sorry,’ Hagar fiddled with something behind her ear. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m just wondering what you’re doing.’

  The man answered for Hagar.

  ‘Your grandmother,’ he said in a tone that implied that Flora should be
proud to be her granddaughter, ‘received a message that people need to be saved. That there isn’t much time. That it has to be done now. We are her assistants in this struggle. Are you a believer?’

  Flora shook her head and the man gave a laugh.

  ‘That’s almost comical, isn’t it? From what 1 understand you ought to have been the first to sign on after what both of you experienced that evening in the garden…’

  Flora felt creeped out that the man knew about an experience that she herself had not shared with anyone. Elvy was being taken care of by her old ladies and for a moment Flora had a vision that her haggardness was because those helping hands were in fact sucking the life out of her.

  ‘Nana? What is the message you have received?’

  ‘Your grandmother…’ the man started, but Flora ignored him and walked over to Elvy, laying a hand on her arm. Perhaps because they were so close to the reliving Flora found a sharp image projected into her head: a woman in a television screen, surrounded by a bright light.

  … Their only salvation is to come to me…

  The television turned off, the image faded and Flora stared into Elvy’s tired eyes.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just that I have to do something. 1 don’t know.’

  ‘But you can’t handle it. I can see that.’

  Elvy closed her eyes halfway and smiled.

  ‘Oh, I think I can handle it.’

  ‘Why don’t you answer when I ring you?’

  ‘I will. I’m sorry.’

  One of the women came over and stroked Elvy’s back.

  ‘Come along, love. We’ll have to think of something else.’

  Elvy nodded faintly and allowed herself to be led away. Flora called out to her, ‘Nana! I’m going in to see Grandpa.’

  Elvy turned around. ‘You do that. Give him my best.’

  Flora stayed where she was, her arms hanging, unsure what to do. When all of this was over, when she had seen what there was to be seen she would go out to Elvy’s and…free her? Well, do something. But not now. Now she had to see.

  She joined the line, trying to recall the image that Elvy had sent to her. She did not understand. Was it a television program? She thought she vaguely recognised the woman, but could not place her.