Handling The Undead

by John Ajdive Lindqvist

‘Maybe they haven’t wanted to.’

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake, what does he say?’

  ‘Like I said… ‘

  Anna was sitting on the edge of the bed giving him a look that he. felt was… pitying. Rage boiled up inside him. It wasn’t fair. He was the one who had saved Elias, he was the one who had worked the whole time at trying to make him better while Anna had simply… vegetated. He took a step toward her, and raised his finger.

  ‘You shouldn’t… ‘

  Elias sat straight up in the bed, staring at him. Mahler caught his breath, backing up. Anna did not move.

  What is this…

  A sharp bang inside his temple, as if a blood vessel had burst, made him teeter, almost tripping on the rug. He leaned against the bureau and the raging headache he’d felt coming on immediately retreated, disappeared.

  Instinctively he held his hands out in front of him, saying, ‘I won’t…I won’t…’ He had no idea what he wasn’t going to do.

  Anna and Elias were sitting next to each other, looking at him.

  An intense distaste gripped him and he backed out of the room with his outstretched hands protective in front of him. Kept going away from the cottage, over the rocks.

  What is happening?

  He left the cottage as far behind as possible. His feet ached from the weight of his heavy body on the rock. He crawled out of the wind behind a wall of rock where he could not be seen from the house and sat there looking out at the sea. The occasional gull sailed out there; no prey to dive for. He rested his face in his hands.

  I’m… locked out.

  They did not want him. What had he done? It was as if Anna had been biding her time before she let the bomb drop, allowed him to understand that he was not wanted. Took her chance as soon as they got here, when there was no possibility of flight.

  He picked up a stone, tossed it at a gull and missed by several metres. A white sail sliced the horizon like a shark fin in the distance. He slapped his hand against the rock face.

  Let them try to manage on their own. Let them just try.

  He blocked the thought, tried to erase it. Could they hear him? The insight that, on top of everything else, he had to be careful what he was thinking was even more enraging. He was alone, and could not even be alone in peace.

  This was not how he had imagined it. Not at all.

  The Heath 12.50

  With each step Flora took toward the buildings, she could feel the field grow stronger. If the sensation outside the gates had been of streams running through her head, this was more like wandering into a gradually thickening fog. And just as fog magnifies sound, she could hear single individuals’ thoughts faintly but clearly, distant cries. When she reached the area between the buildings she stopped, and took it in.

  She had never before experienced anything like this field. It consisted of consciousness, many consciousnesses, but they were simply there: a strong presence, thinking no thoughts. There were thoughts, though. Mental exclamations of horror could be heard within the field, causing it to grow in intensity, just as an electric conductor grows warm when power flows through it.

  The more you fear us, the bigger we get.

  She leaned against a wall and it was as if there was not enough space for her. There was a micro version of everything happening in the area right now inside her head, and mainly it was terror, despair-the base human emotions, the reflexes of the reptilian mind, and she could feel them everywhere so strongly that she thought the field ought to be visible, billowing in the air like waves of heat rising from the asphalt.

  This is not good, this is… dangerous.

  She took a couple of steps with her hands around her head and looked in through a balcony window on the ground level. She saw a living room without furniture. Sitting in the middle of the floor there was a figure in a blue hospital gown and pants. A figure, because it was almost impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. Almost all the hair had fallen from the head, the features had withered away and the yellowing skin was smeared onto the skeleton as though a temporary cover had been applied for the sake of decency. No meat, no muscles. The person on the floor had about as much identity as a head that has spent a couple of weeks on a spike.

  Even so the body had not collapsed. It sat rigid, tense, legs jutting out; staring at a point straight ahead. The eyes were too deeply sunk into the skull for it to be clear where the gaze was directed, but the head was turned to the front.

  A frog was hopping between its legs. For a moment Flora thought it was a real frog but when she’d watched the mechanical hopping for a couple of seconds she realised it was a toy. Up and down, up and down the frog jumped and the dead person sat with gaping mouth, following its movements. A soft clicketyclack, clicketyclack could be heard through the windows.

  The movements became slower, the frog’s hopping more feeble.

  Finally there were only small death twitches in its legs, then it stopped completely.

  The dead person leaned over and put a hand on the frog, hitting it a couple of times. When nothing happened the frog was lifted to eye level and the dead person studied it, bony fingers working across the frog’s smooth metallic surface. Found the key and turned it over and over and over. Put the frog back down on the ground, where it resumed its hopping, observed with exactly the same interest.

  Flora turned away from the window and shook her head, which still rang with the anguished cries of a suffering that was in her, but was not hers. She walked into the nearest courtyard, saw the grey facades, the rows of repaired windows, the emptiness between the front doors now that people had gone in to see their own.

  Hell. This is Hell.

  She had thought this place was creepy before: all the garbage, people quarrelling in bombed-out apartments, but that was nothing compared to what she felt now. Every speck of dirt had been removed from the walkways and a smell of disinfectant hovered in the air. The apartments had been set up nicely, cleaned; the dead had been given somewhere to live and it was simply new graves. Sit still in the grave, staring at an endlessly repeated motion. Hell.

  Flora walked out into the middle of the yard where once a playground might have been planned, but they had got no further than the swing supports and a couple of benches. She sat down heavily, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes until she saw exploding suns.

  But the field… the presence…

  A couple with hunched shoulders walked out of a building. A man and a woman. The man was thinking something about regard her as dead and the woman was a little girl, clambering up into her mother’s lap.

  Flora put her backpack down next to the bench and curled herself up. Peter’s building was a couple of hundred metres away and she didn’t have the energy to get there. She wished the field would fade back just a little, but there was intense motion everywhere, a cacophony of revulsion and denial that just fed it.

  Somewhere behind her glass broke. She looked, but was only in time to see the flash of shards falling to the ground, shattering. There was a scream from somewhere. Oddly enough, she found it calming. The pressure was starting to find release. She smiled.

  It is starting.

  Yes. It was starting like a distant hum, a swarm of mosquitoes on a summer evening that you can hear but not see. It came closer, slicing through all the other sounds.

  Something was coming.

  The sharp sound, piercing now, assumed physical form, became a force that was directed at her, pushing her head down and to the right.

  Was it her gift? She found she could pinpoint the exact location of the sound; it came from a spot ten metres to the left of her and she understood its significance: she was not allowed to look at that place.

  The source changed position, moving away from her.

  I am not afraid!

  With the muscles of her neck straining, as if she were straightening up under a heavy load, she turned her head up to the left. And saw.

  She saw herself moving away from herself.
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  The girl walking across the yard had a too-large outfit exactly the same as hers. The same backpack, the same straggly red hair. The only thing different was the shoes. The girl was wearing her favourite shoes, the sneakers that had broken; but on her they were intact.

  The girl stopped, as if she had felt Flora’s eyes in her back. The screech of grinding metal in her head did not let up, and there was no possibility that she could get up and follow the girl when she started moving again, going on down the path to the next courtyard. All the strength in her legs was gone. Flora collapsed on the bench, sobbing and averting her gaze. The screeching stopped.

  She closed her eyes, lying down on the bench with her backpack as a pillow, turning her back in the direction she had seen the girl, hugging herself.

  I saw it, she thought. It was here and I saw it.

  The Heath 12.55

  It was not easy to find 17C. New hospital-style signs had been put up but no one had removed the old ones. The result was a contradictory mixture of directions to different street names between identical blocks of houses. It was like a maze, with people wandering around like lab rats and no one to stop and ask the way.

  It was hard to collect your thoughts, too; hard to concentrate. As soon as David thought he had understood the system, other people’s confusion broke into his own-other numbers, other consciousnesses-and it was like trying to do mental arithmetic next to someone reciting random numbers. And if it wasn’t numbers, searching, then it was fear, a great trepidation rumbling at the base of it all.

  A drink. Alcohol. Calm.

  An incredible desire for alcohol sank its claws into him and he did not know if this longing was his own, or Sture’s. It was probably a mixture of the two; a conjectural mix of wine and whisky sloshed around in a conjectural mouth.

  The disconcerting thing about the telepathy was not so much the fact that he could read Sture’s thoughts, Magnus’ thoughts, other people’s thoughts, as the fact that he didn’t know which thoughts were his own. Now he understood why the situation at the hospital had been untenable.

  Here, the thoughts of others were mostly fainter, a background murmur of voices, images. After ten minutes of aimless wandering he started to identify his own consciousness in the hubbub. But when the reliving had been closer together it must have been almost impossible, all the ‘I’ and ‘me’ flowing in and out of each other like watercolours.

  ‘Dad, I’m tired,’ Magnus said. ‘Where is it?’

  They were standing in a passageway between two courtyards.

  People were walking in and out of buildings, most of them appeared to have found the right place. Sture was looking at the numbers nailed to the

  wall, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. ‘Idiots,’ he said. ‘They needn’t have bothered with the numbers. Ouch!’

  Sture made a fist and raised it to his chest, stopping.

  ‘Should I take him?’ David asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Sture looked around and opened his jacket. There was a large hole in his shirt above his heart. Balthazar was writhing inside the pocket, trying to get out. David took the rabbit, now struggling wildly between their hands, and put it into his own inside pocket, where it continued to kick.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’ Magnus asked.

  David crouched down.

  ‘We’ll find it soon,’ he said. ‘How is everything… ‘ he pointed at Magnus’ head, ‘in here?’

  Magnus rubbed his forehead. ‘It’s like there’s a lot of people talking.’

  ‘Yes. Is it bothering you?’

  ‘Not so much. I’m thinking about Balthazar.’

  David kissed him on the head and stood up. Paused. Something had happened. The voices were muted, almost disappeared. Inside his head he saw something he could not at first identify. Tall, yellow bending stalks and a soft warmth. The warmth came from a body right up close.

  Sture stood in place, gaping and turning around and around.

  He is seeing the same thing, David thought. What is it?

  Sture looked at David, holding his head.

  ‘Is this… ‘ he said and his eyes widened in terror. David did not understand. What he was feeling was a great sense of comfort, of calm. He could feel the heartbeat of the warm body close by-rapid heartbeats, over one hundred per minute, but nonetheless comforting.

  ‘All these thoughts,’ Sture said. ‘It makes you crazy… ‘

  Now David saw what the yellow stalks were. He had not recognised them because their size was so distorted. Even though they were as thick as fingers, it was hay. He was lying in hay next to a warm body, and the hay was so large because he himself was so little.

  Balthazar.

  It was the rabbit’s consciousness, making a backdrop to his own. The warm body with the rapid heartbeat was its mother.

  Sture came over with his hand outstretched.

  ‘I’m happy to take him again,’ he said. ‘I’d rather deal with that.’

  ‘What is it?’ Magnus asked. ‘Come on… ‘

  David signalled to Sture and all three of them crouched down, forming a small circle concealing them from the world. David took Balthazar out of his pocket, holding him out to Magnus.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Feel.’

  Magnus took the rabbit, held him up against his chest and stared unseeing into space. Sture opened his jacket, sniffed his pocket and made a face. A few dark streaks of rabbit urine could be seen on the light lining of the jacket. They sat like that for half a minute, until tears slowly rose in Magnus’ eyes. David leaned forward.

  ‘What is it, buddy?’

  Magnus’ eyes were shiny, he looked at Balthazar and said, ‘He doesn’t want to be with me. He wants to be with his mum.’

  David and Sture exchanged glances and Sture said, ‘Yes. But he would not have been able to do that even if he had been wild. The mother drives out the young.’

  ‘What do you mean drives out?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘So that they have to manage on their own. Balthazar was lucky he could come to you instead.’

  David did not know if this was true, but it soothed Magnus a bit. He pressed Balthazar harder against his chest and spoke as if he were talking to a baby, ‘Poor little Balthazar. I will be your mother.’

  Incredibly, it seemed that this declaration soothed even Balthazar. He stopped struggling and rested calmly in Magnus’ hands. Sture looked around. ‘Probably best if I take him anyway.’

  Balthazar was put back in Sture’s pocket and they continued their search. They caught sight of the number they were looking for in a courtyard, quite by chance. A sign above a door: 17 A-F.

  Some minutes had passed as they sat in the passageway. The atmosphere in the area had changed, and as they walked toward the entrance they could hear glass shattering, a door slamming somewhere, isolated cries. People around them were moving more rapidly, looking over their shoulders, and a sound like a swarm of gnats somewhere nearby was growing.

  ‘What is it?’ Sture asked, staring up at the sky.

  ‘I don’t know,’ David said.

  Magnus tilted his head, said, ‘It’s a big machine.’

  They could not place the sound, what it was or where it was coming from but, as Magnus had said, it sounded as if a large machine had been turned on. Perhaps a computer, the high-frequency whirring of enormous fans.

  They walked through the entrance.

  Instead of the usual smells of cooking, sweat and dust there was only a sterile combination of hospital and disinfectant. Everything had been wiped down until it shone and there were letters pasted on the worn doors. A and B on the ground floor. They continued up stairs slick with cleaning fluids.

  Magnus moved like a sleepwalker, putting both feet on each step. David felt his fear and adjusted his own steps to match. On the landing between the two floors Magnus stopped and said, ‘I want Balthazar.’

  Balthazar was handed over and Magnus held him tightly to his chest so that only his little nos
e was visible, sniffing. The last few steps up to apartment C he walked as if under water.

  The doorbell did not work, but before David knocked he tried the handle and found the door was unlocked. He stepped into an empty hallway with Sture and Magnus following behind.

  ‘Hello?’

  After a couple of seconds an elderly man appeared, carrying the evening paper. He looked like a caricature of an absentminded professor: short and thin, with tufts of grey hair sticking out above his ears, glasses perched on his nose. David liked him immediately.

  ‘Well, well,’ the man said. ‘Are you…’ He removed his glasses and slipped them into his chest pocket as he stepped forward, his hand outstretched. ‘I’m Roy Bodstrom, We were the ones who… ‘ he held up his index and pinky finger to his ear to indicate a telephone.

  They shook hands. Magnus drew back toward the door and tried to hide Balthazar with his arms.

  ‘Hello,’ Roy said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Magnus,’ Magnus whispered.

  ‘Magnus, I see. What do you have there?’

  Magnus shook his head and David stepped in.

  ‘It’s his birthday today and he got a rabbit that he wanted to bring along and show… Eva. She is here, isn’t she?’

  ‘Of course,’ Roy said and turned back to Magnus. ‘A rabbit? Yes, well then I certainly understand if you want…I would also want to. Come.’

  Without further ceremony he waved fro them to follow him and led them into the room from which he had appeared. David took a deep breath, put his hand on Magnus’ shoulder and followed.

  The room echoed with the quiet and the scattering of the hospital equipment highlighted the emptiness. There was only a bed with a nightstand on which there was a machine, and next to the bed was a simple armchair. On the floor next to the armchair were a couple of issues of Journal of American Medcine. Sitting on the bed, Eva.

  The bandage that had covered half of her face had been replaced with a stocking of thick gauze that emphasised the damage beneath. The blue hospital gown curved in on one side of her chest. A number of cables ran from her head to the machine on the nightstand. The bed was raised in a sitting position and both of Eva’s hands rested on the institutional blanket, her one eye directed at the door through which they came.