Handling The Undead

by John Ajdive Lindqvist

  The dead continued in their dance, apparently unaware of their new audience. One of the guys said, ‘What the fuck are they doing?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said another. ‘Looks like a disco.’

  ‘Zombie disco!’

  The guys laughed and Flora thought They’re not going to…. they can’t.., but knew that they were thinking it and were fully capable. One of them looked around. He was almost as unsteady on his feet as those who had come out of the buildings.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘There’s someone here, isn’t there?’

  The others stopped talking, scanning the area. Flora bit her lip, sitting absolutely still. It was a completely new situation for herothers reading her thoughts as clearly as she could read theirs. She tried not to think. When that didn’t work she used the static she had tried on Peter.

  ‘Fuck it,’ one of them said, gesturing at his head. ‘It was just

  something.’

  They walked closer to the dead. One of them wrenched off a

  backpack, said, ‘Should we light ‘em up right away, or what?’

  ‘Nah,’ said another and waved his bat. ‘Let’s have a feel first.’

  ‘Damn, they’re ugly.’

  ‘They’re gonna get even uglier.’

  The guys stopped only a couple of metres from the dead, who had now stopped their dance and turned towards them. The hatred and terror that had been emanating from the young men grew stronger. And stronger.

  ‘Hello gorgeous!’ one of them shouted.

  ‘Aaaaahhhhhh… ‘ another said and an image of a zombie from Resident Evil flashed in Flora’s head. When she had caught it, other images linked to it. Zombies from movies, monsters from games. This was what the guys’ excursion was about: they’d headed out to get a little live action.

  I can’t…

  Before she had made a conscious decision-it was hard to think with the guys’ agitation crackling in her head-she got up and shouted ‘Hello!’

  It would have been comic under any other circumstances, all of the young men turning their heads in her direction at once. Flora stepped out of the shadows. Her legs shook; no amount of willpower could get them to stop. Trembling, she moved forward halfway to the lamppost, stopped.

  ‘I’m watching you,’ she said. ‘Just so you know.’

  That was all she could say. The only threat she had to brandish.

  But she knew that her voice, her thoughts betrayed her fear. Their thoughts were set on destruction and human consideration paled.

  ‘A girl!’ one of them called out and Flora felt her own body looked over by five minds, picked up twinges of lust, the impulse to fuck her into the ground, before or after they had done what they were going to do. She instinctively backed up a step.

  ‘Go home to bed!’ she shouted at the one who seemed to be the leader. He let his bat swing back and forth at her. ‘Start thinking with your head

  instead of your dick, because you can’t do this!’

  The guy smiled broadly. His hair was combed back and his smile… professional. He was dressed in a light blue shirt and clean jeans. They were all dressed the same way-less like a lynch mob than a social club from the Business School; they’d just wound up a meeting and decided to go out and have some fun.

  ‘Show me the law that…’ the guy started and Flora saw an older man, presumably the young man’s father, sitting at the kitchen table in a suit, saying until the laws are changed the reliving are defenceless since they have already been legally determined to be deceased. The guy didn’t get any further, however, because one of his friends shouted, ‘Markus! Watch out!’

  While the guys were looking at Flora, the reliving had started to move closer to them, nourished and goaded by their hatred. The closest, a stick-thin old man a head shorter than the one they called Markus, stretched out his hands and took hold of Markus’ shirt.

  Markus jumped back and a low tearing of cloth could be heard.

  He looked down at the rip and screamed, ‘Are you going to tear up my shirt, you bastard?’ and swung his baseball bat against the dead man’s head.

  The blow connected perfectly right above the ear and made a sound like someone cracking a dry branch over their knee, before the force of the blow slung the dead man away a couple of metres, spinning a half-turn in the air and landing on his head e, He rolled through another half-rotation in the same direction and collapsed on the concrete.

  Markus held his hand up in the air and one of his pals high-fived

  him. They moved in on their prey.

  Flora was unable to move. It was not only the terror that kept her feet nailed to the spot-the blood lust and hatred blazing from the men was intense enough to paralyse her mind. She lost command of her body, her thoughts swamped by theirs. She stood. She watched.

  The dead were no match for five young, fit men. They went down one by one, accompanied by shrieks of triumph. Even when they were on the ground the men kept hitting them. It was as if they were demolishing a wall that had to be smashed into little pieces, small enough to be carried away in sacks. The dead made no effort to protect themselves. Even after their legs were broken they just kept crawling towards their attackers, taking more blows. The brittle snapping sounds went on but the dead did not stop, they only moved more slowly.

  The young men lowered their bats and moved a couple of paces away from the crawling mass at their feet. One of them took out a pack of cigarettes, offering them round. They smoked and regarded their work.

  ‘Damn,’ said one. ‘I think one of them bit me.’

  He held out his arm and displayed a dark spot on the light fabric.

  The others recoiled in feigned horror, holding up their hands and shouting, ‘Ahhh! He’s been infected!’

  The guy who had the bite smiled uncertainly and said, ‘Oh, come off it. Do you think I should get a tetanus shot or something?’

  The others picked up his concern and went on ribbing him about how he’d soon turn into a zombie hungry for human flesh until the guy told them to shut up. They laughed at him and he crouched nonchalantly next to the closest wreck of what had been a person, a little old lady whose one arm was so shattered it lay limply across her neck. He held out his injured arm to her mouth and said, ‘Yum, yum. Come on, have a snack.’

  The woman’s mangled mouth, its few teeth protruding between crushed lips, opened and closed like a fish on a riverbank. The guy smiled and looked up at the others, and at that moment something happened that Flora had been fervently hoping for: the old woman’s other arm shot out to grab his, and her teeth sunk into his flesh.

  He screamed and lost his balance then quickly regained his feet.

  The teeth refused to let go and the old woman was dragged up from the ground like a ragdoll, hanging from his arm.

  ‘Someone help me, God damn it,’ the young man screamed and shook his arm, but even though the old woman was only a pile of broken bones in a sack of skin, her jaws were locked and she dangled along with his movements.

  The man she’d latched onto wrenched his arm and gave an incoherent scream of revulsion as a substantial piece of flesh was torn out of his lower arm. He hopped around stamping his feet as if he could only think of getting away somewhere-anywhere but in this situation.

  As the blood ran down the man’s arm his friend Markus pulled off his shirt, ripped off the arm that already had a tear and said, ‘Come on, we’ll have to apply a pressure b… ‘

  His injured friend did not appear to hear him. He frantically ripped open the backpack, produced a couple of plastic bottles, unscrewed the caps and splashed liquid over the heap of bodies still quivering, searching.

  ‘What about this, you bastards!’ He ran around the perimeter of the heap, spraying from both bottles until they were empty. ‘Let’s see you bite now!’

  The paralysis that had overcome Flora was wearing off; the other four guys had calmed down, having battered themselves into a state of exhaustion. Only the injured one’s hysteria pierced her head
like a saw, a saw through metal…

  No…

  It was the other sound she was hearing. There was nothing she could do to stop the guys, it was too late. She looked around. There, on the other side of the courtyard, she spotted herself on her way toward the lamppost. It was still hard to look, there was a force that told her to look away, but it was as if she was getting used to it-she pushed the whining into the back of her mind and left her thoughts free.

  Do something, do something she thought at the figure, so like herself, who had moved, between one breath and another, to the edge of the heap of corpses where the guys were now getting a box of matches out of the backpack. They did not see her, but apparently they heard the sound and spotted her in their peripheral vision because their heads whipped round and they started shouting. ‘What the hell is this, what the hell, what the hell…’

  Death spread her arms, an invitation to embrace and-as if mesmerised-Flora did the same. She was a mirror image. The guys managed to light a match and Death took a couple of steps into the mass of bodies. She bent down and stretched her hands out, making small plucking movements as if she was picking berries, gathering something.

  The match sailed through the air and Flora screamed, ‘Look out, get away!’

  At the instant the match landed, Death lifted her head and met Flora’s gaze. They were identical to one another. There was nothing forbidding or dark in her eyes, they were simply Flora’s eyes. For a second they had time to look into each other, share their secrets. Then the petrol exploded into fire and a wall of flames bloomed between them.

  The guys stood frozen, staring at the bonfire. The highest flames stretched up almost to the rooftops, but after a few seconds the fumes had burned away and the fire took hold of the fuel itself; a sputtering crackle as hospital gowns and flesh charred.

  ‘Come on, let’s get out of here!’

  The young men watched the fire a moment longer, as if to imprint it on their memories for good, then turned and jogged away from the yard. The one called Markus, his torso now bare, paused for a moment, looked at Flora and raised his index finger. But if he was planning to say something, he decided against it and followed the others. After a couple of minutes their minds were out of her reach.

  The flames died out. Flora knew from the stillness in her mind that Death was gone. She walked up to the bonfire-no more than isolated little flare-ups and a strong, cloying smoke now, billowing up into the sky. Maybe it was because the dead had so little flesh, so little fat, that the fire hadn’t really caught.

  Everything was black. The doubly dead lay curled up with their elbows against their sides and their fists sticking straight out, as if boxing into the dark. The stench that rose from the heap was nauseating and Flora pulled a corner of her jacket over her nose and mouth.

  They were dancing a moment ago.

  Her chest filled. Grief, as deep as an abyss. The opposite of that wondrous awe she had felt for the dance of the dead. Grief for all humankind and its paths upon the Earth. And the same thought that had gripped her then returned now, in a different light:

  This is how it is.

  Norra Brunn 21.00

  David had let Sture talk him into this and was already regretting it. As expected, Leo had cancelled him. There was a message on his answering machine that he had not listened to. He got a beer and went to join the others in the kitchen. A condoling silence. The jokes and laughter from just a moment ago died away.

  This was not the place for serious conversation. If you couldn’t joke about it, it didn’t get said. The comedians were all, as individuals, regular people with the same capacity for sadness and joy as everyone else, but as a group they were a flippant lot, unable to handle anything that could not be expressed as a one-liner.

  Right before the show was about to start, Benny Melin came up to him and said, ‘Look, I hope you don’t… but I have some stuff about all this with the reliving.’

  ‘No, no,’ David said. ‘Do your thing.’

  ‘OK,’ Benny said and his face grew lighter. ‘It’s such a big thing, it’s hard not to get into it, you know.’

  ‘I understand.’

  David saw that Benny was on the verge of trying out some of his material on him so he raised his glass, wished him good luck and backed away. Benny grimaced faintly. You didn’t wish someone good luck, you said break a leg or something and David knew it, and Benny knew that David knew. To say good luck was very like an insult.

  David went to the bar. The staff nodded to him but no one came up to talk. David downed his beer and asked Leo to pour him another.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Leo asked as he poured. ‘It’s going,’

  David said. ‘That’s about it.’

  Leo placed the beer on the counter. There was no point answering the question in more detail. Leo dried his hands on a towel and said, ‘You’ll have to give her my regards. When she’s better.’

  ‘I will.’

  David felt that he was close to tears again. He turned away from the bar, toward the stage, and sank half the glass greedily. Better now. Now that he was left alone and no one had to pretend that they could understand any of it.

  Death makes us strangers to one another.

  The stage lights went up and via the ghost mike, Leo wished everyone a warm welcome and asked them to put their hands together for the evening’s host, Benny Melin.

  The place was full and the clapping and whistling that accompanied Benny up on stage gave David a twinge of longing to be back here, in this real world of unreality.

  Benny gave a quick bow and the applause died down. He adjusted the mike stand-a little up, a little down-and the microphone ended up in the same place it had been from the start. He said, ‘So, I don’t know about you, but I’m a little worried about this thing with the Heath. A suburb full of dead people.’

  The room was silent. Tense with anticipation. Everyone was worried about this thing with the Heath; maybe there was a new twist to the whole thing that they hadn’t considered.

  Benny wrinkled his forehead as if contemplating a difficult issue. ‘And the one thing I’d really like to know…’

  A rhetorical pause.

  ‘Is the ice cream van going to want to drive there?’

  Relieved laughter. Not funny enough for applause, but not far off.

  Benoy went on, ‘And if it’s going to go there, will it sell anything?

  ‘And if it sells something, then what?’

  Benny waved his hand through the air, sketching a screen that everyone was supposed to look at.

  ‘Just imagine. Hundreds of dead people lured from their homes by…’ Benny started up a rendition of ‘Greensleeves’ and then quickly switched to being a zombie staggering along with outstretched arms. People giggled and when Benny groaned, ‘Popsiiiiceeeel, Popsiiiiceeeel…’ the applause came.

  David downed the last of his beer and slunk out behind the bar.

  He couldn’t handle this. Benny and all the rest of them had every right to joke about something as current as this, in fact they were obliged to, but he didn’t have to listen. He walked quickly through the bar and out of the doors onto the street. A new round of applause fired off behind him and he walked away from the sound.

  The painful thing was not that they were joking about it. There had to be jokes, jokes were necessary if people were going to keep living. The painful thing was that it had happened so quickly. After the ferry Estonia sank, for example, it had taken six months before anyone tried to say anything funny about ferry salvage or bow doors, and then without much success. The World Trade Center had gone much faster. Only a couple of days after the attack ‘someone said something about the new cut-price alternative Taliban Airways, and people had laughed. It had been far enough away to feel like it wasn’t really happening.

  Apparently the reliving fell into the same category. They weren’t real, you didn’t have to have any respect. That’s why David’s presence had been hard for the other comedians to take; h
e made it real. But in the end that’s what the reliving were to them: a joke.

  He slunk past the tightly parked cars that lined Surbrunnsgatan, seeing Balthazar’s headless body wriggling in Eva’s lap, and wondered if he would be able to see the funny side of anything ever again.

  The walk from Norra Brunn had exhausted his strength. The hastily downed beer sloshed in his stomach and every step was an act of will. Most of all he wanted to curl up in the nearest doorway and sleep away the remaining hours of this horrible day.

  He had to lean up against the wall in the entrance and rest for a couple of minutes before going up to the apartment. He did not want to appear so pathetic that Sture offered to stay. He wanted to be alone.

  Sture did not offer. After reporting that Magnus had slept the

  whole time, he said, ‘I guess I should go home now.’

  ‘Of course,’ David said.

  ‘Thanks for everything.’ Sture looked searchingly at him.

  ‘Will you manage, then?’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He was so tired, his speech was starting to sound like Eva’s; he could only repeat what was said to him. They parted with a hug, instigated by David. This time he let his head drop onto Sture’s chest for a few seconds.

  When Sture had left he stood still in the kitchen for a while, staring at the bottle of wine, but decided that he was too tired even for that. He went and checked on Magnus, regarding his sleeping child for a long time. He had fallen asleep in almost exactly the position David had left him in: his hand under his cheek, the eyes slowly sliding under thin eyelids.

  David crawled gently into bed, slipping into the narrow space between Magnus’ body and the wall. Was only planning to lie there for a couple of seconds and look at the thin, smooth shoulder that stuck out of the blankets. He closed his eyes and thought… thought nothing. Slept.