PART 2

PART 2

The dry moss crunches underneath their feet as they creep forwards along a trail, some ten metres from the footpath. Amanda goes first, Dano in the middle and then Iris. They keep a couple of metres’ distance from one another and try to avoid branches, but the thick vegetation makes it difficult for them to see where they are putting their feet.

Using the path would probably have been sheer suicide. Considering how painstaking their opponents have been so far, it doesn’t seem impossible for them to have laid explosive tripwire all over the forest, even though this is the least likely point of entry for an enemy to attack.

Iris’s plan was not well received by the others. Amanda protested, but after failing to deliver a Plan B when Iris directly asked whether she had a better suggestion, she simply mumbled something about it feeling wrong and started walking.

The weight of anxiety in Iris’s stomach is almost a physical lump and she has to concentrate to even manage to stay upright. But the image of her daughter’s unconscious body being thrown into the helicopter sharpens her wits.

She hates them. It’s almost laughable when she thinks about it. Iris thought she had known hate before – hate towards a parent at Sigrid’s kindergarten whose daughter discovered that Sigrid was a little too sensitive to jibes and was therefore an easy victim to tease. It had started innocently but in just a few days escalated into a bullying campaign which a number of kids joined without even understanding why. They were only three years old – but the mother’s indifference towards what had happened – how she refused to even speak to her own daughter, motivated by the idea that it was better for the girls to resolve it themselves – Iris hated her for that. She remembers she said precisely that to Filip:

I hate her.

But regardless of how honest she thought those words were, she now understands that those feelings could at the most be likened to simple contempt. Hate is something completely different. From a purely objective point of view, she realises how repulsive and even evil her feelings are, but they seem natural – if this is what is needed for her to be able to retrieve Sigrid alive from the farm, then she’s willing to kill them all. No, not willing, she concludes – eager.

Amanda has stopped and is surveying the road ahead. Between the trees they can see a cylindrical box around half a metre high. It’s surrounded by three dark silhouettes: one large and two smaller ones.

A parent and her kids, thinks Iris. On the way back to the car from the swimming lake. Is that a cool bag of food beside them, and a plastic bag with wet towels and swimsuits? Yes probably.

They survey the scene. The sound of bird chatter can be heard from the foliage above them. Under the protective canopy of the trees, they still can’t see it but simply sense morning approaching. When a different bird responds to the call, Amanda starts walking again.

The silence among them feels liberating. Iris does not want to talk to them – does not want to have to explain or defend her plan. Just move forward now, with silent steps through the sparse forest and a desperate hope that no-one will catch sight of them.

They pass a small dark lake just a few metres away from them. It looks so peaceful.. After this, the terrain starts to slope and get rocky, and they have to slither down along the flat rock faces. Iris steadies herself with her hand, managing to press it into something sharp. She muffles a cry and bites her lip hard, her mouth filling with the taste of blood. Damn it.

As they start approaching the end of this section of forest, they more frequently catch glimpses of the bay that Iris guesses has given Erstavik its name. Iris takes her phone out of her pocket, lighting up the display and shielding it against her stomach before discretely glancing at it. It’s ten past three and the charging session in the car has given her around twenty percent battery power. She daren’t hope for too much and hasn’t said anything to the others, but the fact is she has a faint hope that Sigrid’s wrist phone may be useful after all. But for that to be the case, Iris’s phone has to stay live until they get there.

If her thinking’s right, if Sigrid’s even wearing it and if in turn it has some charge left. And if this is really where they are, she thinks, feeling blackness instantly consume her inside. They have to. Sigrid has to.

They pass the bathing spot a hundred metres further up in the forest, and silently survey the beach, which is unlike any Iris has seen before. Only a few of the people managed to get as far as the family they found on the footpath. People in shorts, swimsuits and bikinis, adults and kids, naked tots – in total about thirty people, splayed out on the beach. Some of them seem to have tried to help each other – they’re lying close together in small clusters. But then Iris remembers the waiting room at Stockholm South General, where some people became aggressive and tried to stir each other up into a rage, and she wondered if a similar scenario could have played out here: fighting until the disease fully asserted itself and people collapsed and died.

Dano has stopped, something that Iris only becomes aware of when she bumps into his back. Observing his pale face, she realises it’s not the first time he’s seen dead people washed up on a beach. She should say something, understand that this sparks memories, not only of fleeing the war in Syria but also of his family. But she doesn’t have the strength. She can’t. Still, she musters up a weak smile and is just about to clumsily stroke his cheek, when half way through she realises she is holding the pistol in her one functioning hand and stops the movement. As a result, Dano interprets the sweep of her arm as an impatient gesture – get a move on – and he looks down ashamedly and hurries forward, almost stumbling, even increasing the pace in order to catch up with Amanda.

Damn, thinks Iris.

A few minutes later they pause, shielded by a large moss-covered rock. The forest ends ten metres ahead. They stare at the collection of buildings in front of them: Erstavik.

Before them, farmland unfolds. In their left field of vision, they glimpse the bay, after which there is open land from the forest up to the road. This is where they would have walked had they not been afraid of advertising their arrival. Further ahead, it converges with a large road bordered by an avenue on both sides. Sticking up behind the avenue is the black roof of the manor house, and they can glimpse two lower-level wings at right angles to the main building. Further off, they can see more buildings, some look like barns and others look like residential or office units.

Dano, who is shorter than the others and so can’t peer over the top of the rock, is crouching down and taking a peek from the side.

“Are we sure this is really it?” he asks.

Iris' heart is thumping. She wants to say that of course they have come to the right place, that there is no other place in the vicinity large enough to house the kind of operation they are dealing with. That it

must

be here.

But equally, it does look desolate. No movement, no signs of life, no parked cars. In the dawn light, it’s simply an empty monument to an era of Swedish nobility, one that she guesses has drawn its last breath now.

“There’s no reason for anyone to be awake now, apart from some guard who’s probably keeping hidden”, says Amanda in a low voice. “We can’t see the yard or what’s going on further away. And that’s where most of the buildings are.”

Iris looks out over the bay again. It’s now about half past three in the morning and the sun is just starting to move across the horizon to the east, making the surface of the water glitter peacefully. She doesn’t want it to end like this. She has to get her daughter back. She has to.

“Look”, whispers Dano. “Do you see? On the short side, by the window – there.”

He discretely points to the smaller barn closest to them, on the other side of the road that comes out of the forest. The distance between the house and their position is a maximum of one hundred metres.

“What d’you mean?” whispers Iris.

“I…I thought I saw movement inside. And look closely – doesn’t it look like one of the window sections has gone – like something’s missing?”

Iris can’t see anything moving but Dano’s observation about the window panes is right. On the left is the traditional white window you see on most older Swedish houses, which opens outwards and hooks onto a catch when you want to air the room, but to the right there is a gaping hole, as if the window has been opened and lifted off its hinges.

All to give a sniper full visibility if anyone came along the road from the forest, thinks Iris, noticing that this thought scares and exhilarates her at the same time.

“Okay, let’s assume we’re right about the window. How do we get past?” whispers Amanda, after both she and Iris have crouched down behind the rock.

“Do you see the ditch right across the field there, that goes on to follow the road up to the avenue?” Iris asks, pointing. In her mind, an idea has started to take shape – or rather two ideas.

“With a little luck we might not have to go up to the house at all”, she says, fishing out her mobile phone from her pocket.

“That barn could be where they’ve locked up Sigrid. It’s isolated from the farm”, she whispers, clicking the phone on. “Even if we got the GPS thing all wrong last night, Sigrid’s phone might still be useful if she’s got it on her and if there’s some charge left.”

She starts the app connected to Sigrid’s phone and once again receives a notification that the phone is at Nytorget in Stockholm. Bringing up Sigrid’s contact details, she goes to settings, takes a deep breath and clicks on the option “Remove Sigrid”, then confirming that yes – she really does want to do that.

“But what are you doing?” asks Amanda, agitatedly. “Any links to her have now disappeared.”

“That’s the point. If we’re close to her mobile we can find her again because it starts transmitting a Bluetooth signal as soon as it’s switched on. I thought it was weird too – when you pair Bluetooth devices it normally requires you to do something to both the sending and receiving device but this one doesn’t work like that. Look.”

She selects the option “Add new unit”, showing them the message on the display. “Power on your hand unit and select when it appears below”, it says.

“It doesn’t matter if the phone has just been switched on or whether it’s been on for a whole day – as long as there’s enough battery charge, this long combination of letters and numbers pops up. I had to remove and add Sigrid’s phone a number of times in the first few weeks as the app had quite a few bugs to begin with.”

She glances back at the barn again.

“The Bluetooth signal shouldn’t have trouble transmitting through that wooden building. If one of us creeps along the ditch up to the road and manages to get over the other side and close to the barn without getting discovered, the app should let us know she’s in there. If you follow the ditch up to the farm before running across it, you should be able to do it without the guard seeing anything, as you won’t be visible from the window – it faces further up into the forest.”

“I’ll do it”, whispers Dano. “I’m the smallest – I’ve got the biggest chance of succeeding without being seen.”

Iris looks at him.

“Hmm, maybe”, says Iris hesitantly. “But I haven’t finished yet.”

She takes a deep breath. This is the hard part.

“Still, there’s only a slim chance she’s there, and even if she is, we’ll have to get rid of the guard in a way that doesn’t draw attention from the people up at the farm. When Amanda infected Linda – you know, one of the soldiers in Sickla – it hardly took anything. Linda got into a panic just by being in the same room as Amanda, and sure enough, she got ill once we’d gone out onto the lawn afterwards – it took less than an hour. If whoever of us reaches the barn creeps up and lies on the ground right under the window, just a metre or so from the guard, and breathes straight up for a while, that should give the same result. Exhalation is warm and warm air rises, doesn’t it?”

Iris looks at Dano. He doesn’t look quite as enthusiastic anymore.

“With a little luck, the guard will get ill before the replacement comes along, so we’ll try to exploit that – an improvised attack of some kind.”

Dano is quiet for a while, and then he nods.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Wait Dano”, says Amanda. “What do we do if it doesn’t work?”

Iris flashes Amanda an angry look, but realises how unfair her annoyance is – Amanda is quite right, here comes the hardest part:

“If Sigrid isn’t there, we still have to do what we first planned. So you’ll have to wait behind the barn until we can see from here that the replacement guard is on their way. When the new guard gets close enough not to be able to see the window anymore – the entrance must be on the other side because we can’t see it from here – then we’ll give you the signal and you creep up and breathe as quietly but as heavily as hell under the window and we’ll pray to God and Allah that the guard inside gets infected before the exchange happens. If we get one guard exposed to the virus up to the farm and he starts to get ill up there, then we’ve won.”

The determination that Dano’s face had earlier shown has all but vanished. All that’s left is a boy’s frightened look.

“So…”, says Amanda. “It…yes, that could work if everything falls into place but I mean…”

“You mean what?”

It’s Dano who says what Iris has been afraid of.

“I don’t think that…

One

guard’s life in exchange for Sigrid’s, I can perhaps live with that but…we can’t…I mean…when mama and Bilal got sick so…when they died it seems to be so…” He sighs and looks away. “It’s so painful. It feels too awful.”

Iris feels her pulse increase and her breathing get shallow – the air can’t reach all the way down into her lungs.

“They want to kill us all”, she says, with as much control in her tone as she can. “You saw with your own eyes how they shot that homeless person, and he was just walking by. And you weren’t there to see what happened when they took Sigrid – do you know what they were thinking of doing at first? Before Amanda managed to convince them that Sigrid could be useful as a guinea pig, they had the option to shoot me or her first. Although as the adult, I was the greater threat to them, they were going to shoot her first. They wanted me to see how they killed my daughter – d’you get it? We’re just weeds to them – weeds that need to be weeded out.”

Dano has tears in his eyes now. He’s staring angrily at the ground, not daring to look Iris in the eye.

“That…that doesn’t have to have been the case”, he mumbles. “They…they might have actually wanted to shoot her first so that she…well, so she didn’t need to see her mama die.”

And then he presses his face into the grass and starts sobbing silently.

Dano feels powerless. It’s a feeling he’s been familiar with for half his life: he wasn’t quite seven when the unrest broke out at home in Syria, when his parents’ conversation increasingly turned into murmuring and whispering and occasionally held in French so that Dano would not understand what they were discussing. He never had an opportunity to influence what was happening around him, steered by more powerful forces which were almost always rooted in evil: threats, persecution, war.

Everything was going to be different in Sweden. And it was – it was a lot worse.

He feels Amanda’s hand stroke his hair as he’s lying in the grass. He doesn’t want to look up – so much snot and tears on his face – it’s like he’s a kid. And he is a kid, but he also knows that there isn’t any space for him to be one right now. Perhaps he’ll never be able to be a kid again.

“Dano, listen to me”, he hears Iris saying. Her voice is broken and thick. She’s stressed and tries to hide it but he can hear it in her English – it gets worse when she’s scared, and he’s noticed that before. It was actually only when they were sitting in the bed store yesterday afternoon and allowed themselves to eat and rest that her Swedish pronunciation broke through again, when he was talking about his family’s flight through Europe. Sigrid was sleeping in the bed next to them, and she felt a calm inside. Dano could both see and hear that.

“Dano”, she says again. He nods slowly to indicate that he’s heard her.

“I’m really sorry that it turned out this way”, she says. “But I…I actually can’t think of another way. You might be right – that they did what they did in order to spare her in some way, but that doesn’t really change anything. They were going to kill us, and that’s still their intention. Their plan is to kill everyone who survives the virus naturally. And it’s not just a desperate plan – it’s pure madness. I don’t for one second think that they have a chance of succeeding – the only thing they are doing is consciously sabotaging things for the people who can actually continue living. We can’t let that happen.”

Dano sits up slowly, leaning against the cold surface of the rock. For the first time in a really long time he feels cold. He looks at Iris. There’s so much grief in her face. In some way, the pain she is radiating reminds him of his grandfather in the days before they set off, when the knowledge that he was perhaps going to lose his daughter forever gave him a similar appearance.

Iris raises her eyes to meet his, but is silent. Instead, it’s Amanda who strokes Dano’s hair and then begins to speak quietly.

“Hell,” she says. “I don’t know. But…I think she’s right. Nothing of what we’ve witnessed so far indicates that they’ll give in and leave us immune people alone.”

She’s quiet for a few seconds.

“But you don’t have to do it. Give me the mobile phone.”

Iris starts handing the phone over to Amanda but stops when Dano shakes his head.

“No”, he whispers, with a sigh. “If we’re still going to do it then it doesn’t matter who the virus comes from – we’re all equally guilty. I’m the smallest and have the greatest chance of getting over there without being seen.”

He takes the phone out of Iris’s hand. Amanda looks like she wants to protest but he just nods and she gives him a hug instead.

A couple of minutes later, they’ve gone through the details. Just as Dano is about to creep off to the ditch, he turns to Iris:

“If they hadn’t taken Sigrid last night, would you still have chosen to do this? Would you still have been convinced that we were the ones who had to stop their crazy plan, if she wasn’t in danger?”

Iris starts to answer but breaks off before any sound leaves her throat. She shakes her head ashamedly.

At first, Dano can easily move forward in the ditch because visibility from the barn is impaired by trees, but soon he has to lie down and inch forward on his forearms.

The ditch is half a metre deep and at the bottom in the middle, there’s a ten-centimetre wide furrow filled with small stones. To avoid scraping his chest and stomach and making them rattle underneath him, he has to put all his body weight onto his elbows. Having only come half way, he can already feel his skin has rubbed raw.

As the ditch starts to follow the road in parallel, he rests his shaking arms for a bit before continuing. Those last ten metres might be inconsequential but better to be overly cautious. If the guard sees him crossing the road, all is lost.

He still feels wretched about what he is about to do – his body is shouting IT’S ALL SO WRONG – that this is bringing them down to the same level as Sigrid’s kidnappers. He had in fact wanted Amanda to be the one to go, but then he would have been alone with Iris and he didn’t want that.

Iris’s unpredictable nature and coldness scares him. If something unexpected happens that requires them to change their plan, it’s better if Amanda is there and can at least make some sort of well-thought out decision.

Dano takes a good look at the barn. No movement, no sounds, but from this proximity he can clearly see that the window has been removed – it’s leaning against the wall they couldn’t see and, as they thought, this is also where the entrance is. He looks towards the farm. No movement there either. Then he runs as quietly as he can over the narrow grit road and right into the field until he is out of sight of the window. From there he moves to the furthest end of the barn as quickly and noiselessly as he can.

Dano lies down on the grass and creeps round the next corner. This long side of the barn faces the forest and can’t be seen from the other buildings close by. He listens for sounds, but apart from his own heartbeat, the world is silent – uncomfortably silent.

He gets out Iris’s phone, and with shaking fingers, taps in the code she taught him. He has to make two attempts before succeeding. He does what she showed him in the app, choosing “Add new unit”, waiting for that anticipated row of numbers.

Nothing happens. No pairing.

So it’s Plan B. He feels a knot in his stomach.

With the phone still in his hand, he steals forward in a low crouch, careful not to tread on the patches of gravel lying here and there around the façade. When he reaches the middle of the barn, he checks the app again to be sure. It’s the same crushing result: Sigrid isn’t here.

At the corner of the building closest to the window, he lays down on the ground again and listens. If they’ve worked it out right, there’s a guard just a few metres away from him. Dano points the back of the phone in the direction of the rock at the edge of the forest, where Iris and Amanda are hiding. One flash for ‘yes’, two for ‘no’. Dano clicks on the torch icon: on, off, on, off, waits ten seconds and repeats the procedure with a heavy heart.

He realises the plan has several potential flaws. Firstly, the guard who is going to be infected has to stay at his post by the window right until the replacement has gone in and assumed his lookout post. Ideally, they should also stay by the window and talk to each other for a while so that they have time to get properly infected. Secondly, the whole plan relies on the notion that the guards aren’t wearing gas masks. But Dano doesn’t think they are – masks would hamper their line of sight too much for them to be able to keep a lookout. He also guesses that they consider the area closest to Erstavik to be safe. If anyone approaches along the road from the forest, the guard has plenty of time to both put on a mask and shoot them before the attacker has managed to get close enough to be a risk of infection.

But for now, all Dano can do is wait. The grass is soft and he feels tired. Cautiously, he sits up and rests against the barn wall. He pulls his arms inside his t-shirt. It feels nice as he’s cold and the thin t-shirt is damp from the dewy grass. Slowly, some warmth comes back to him, but as the cold disappears so the fatigue increases. Apart from the nap in the bed store, he will soon have been awake for twenty-four hours, and he can’t remember the last time he slept for a whole night. Even before the outbreak, sleep was always a rare commodity.

Dano twitches. His head lurches up and almost hits the wall. Did he fall asleep? Couldn’t he stay awake, despite everything? And what made him wake up?

He scans the edge of the forest. Because he has Iris’s mobile phone, she has his, and the plan is that if anyone approaches the barn from the house she’ll give him the double flash signal that he had to give them just now. In daylight, hopefully the flash signal should only be visible if your gaze is directed at exactly the right spot – left of the rock, directly down on the ground. To confirm he has seen the signal he has to return a simple ‘yes’ flash.

Something makes a scraping noise on the other side of the wall right by him. Could it be a chair someone’s sitting on that’s being moved a couple of centimetres? It’s followed by a brief clearing of the throat.

Dano’s heart starts racing again. There really is someone in there! A person who will be dead in a few hours – dead because of Dano. His bodily reflex is to hyperventilate but he refuses to cave into panic, forces his body to…

Then another noise can be heard. It’s low but insistent, almost like a hum, and it’s slowly getting louder. Where is it coming from?

After perhaps thirty seconds, he hears the scraping noise again, but more decisively this time, followed by a little creaking. Has the guard stood up? If the person on the other side looks out of the window, will they see Dano? No, he’s sitting about a metre from the corner – not a chance. But the noise – it’s getting louder - where is it com…

Then he sees the car headlights. At first, they’re just short flashes between the tree trunks but then a grey jeep with its roof covered rolls out from the forest onto the road the guard is posted to monitor.

Despite its low speed, the vehicle brakes suddenly.

Dano is quick enough to realise the driver’s seen him.

In that moment, the driver door opens and a man armed with an automatic rifle rushes out. Before Dano has even had time to pull his arms back through his t-shirt sleeves, the first bullet hits the barn wall, just centimetres from his head.

Amanda can feel Iris’s hand on her shoulder as the jeep emerges from the forest. She clutches it so hard, Amanda would normally have screamed, but right now she’s not even thinking about the pain.

It takes just a couple of seconds for a man dressed in black trousers and a green military polo neck to jump out of the car and position himself in the field with his weapon pointed in Dano’s direction. He shoots immediately – BANG! – wooden splinters fly from the wall of the barn right next to Dano, who dazedly gets to his feet and starts running down the side of the building. BANG! Again, and again only hitting the wall, a little higher this time, judging by the rain of splinters, and Amanda can’t help but wonder why Dano looks like he’s wearing a straitjacket as he runs down the long side of the barn.

“Da…”, Amanda starts to shout, but Iris moves her hand from Amanda’s shoulder and silences her.

“But what the fuck, we have to…”

“Wait, look over there”, says Iris quietly as she points her finger.

They see movement inside the barn for the first time. Something flashes and in the next second, a man armed with a rifle sticks the upper half of his body through the window gap and fires two shots in rapid succession. But Dano isn’t the target – it’s the man in the polo neck. The first shot misses but the next one is a hit, and a red puff of blood explodes in the left side of the man’s chest.

Jesus, thinks Amanda. The lookout must think the guy in the jeep attacked him!

The man in the field gets down on his knees. He’s lost his grip on his gun and is losing his balance, throwing his hands down to stop himself crashing on to the short grass. But he doesn’t entirely succeed in stopping his fall and cries out in pain as his torso hits the ground.

While Amanda and Iris are watching Dano run for his life down towards the water’s edge, the guard jumps out of the window and hurries, crouching towards the wounded man. Amanda notes he’s wearing a gas mask. So their assumption was wrong – the plan wouldn’t have worked anyway.

The guard shouts something at the guy lying on the floor. It’s difficult to hear – could he be saying the word ‘Password!’? The phrase is repeated twice – far more desperately the second time, but instead of replying – at least, Amanda can’t hear a reply – the man on the ground twists to the side and raises one arm in the direction of the water. At first, the guard won’t take his eyes off the man, but as he roars in rage and waves one arm, the guard momentarily looks in that direction and just manages to catch a glimpse of Dano’s head before it disappears behind a row of brushwood.

There’s a brief, agitated exchange between the two men in the field before the guard runs after Dano.

“Now!” hisses Iris. “Quick – over to the guy in the field!”

“But, what – shouldn’t we…” Amanda starts to say, but Iris is already on her feet and rushing forwards along the edge of the forest.

Amanda follows her in confusion, unsure what Iris is planning. A number of things hurtle through her mind:

What they experienced last night in the car park at Sickla was no exception – their opponents are very goal-orientated and disciplined. She suddenly remembers Linda’s last seconds of life: how she made a thumbs down to the sniper in the helicopter to signal she’d been exposed to the virus and how he then instantly put two bullets in her head.

Iris and Amanda crouch down when they see the guard who has started hunting Dano pause at the edge of the field and scan every direction before he puts something to his mouth. A shrill sound cuts the air all around them. There are three short whistles repeated twice within a few seconds of each other. Then he leaves the field and disappears from sight.

Amanda and Iris rush towards the jeep. Iris glances hastily towards the main buildings – still no movement – and then points to the open driver’s door.

“Check if the keys are in the ignition”, she says, advancing towards the wounded man.

Amanda heaves herself into the car – yes, the keys are there – and quickly gets out again.

Iris leans over the man. He’s seen her but is too badly wounded to turn over and grab his gun. Iris snatches the automatic rifle and takes a couple of steps backwards. When Amanda arrives, she hands over the weapon. Amanda checks the rifle is cocked and points it at the man.

“She’ll shoot you on the spot if you move”, hisses Iris. “And don’t think she can’t do it – she’s the one who took down your colleague Linda in Sickla last night, although, unlike your bitch of a friend, she was unarmed.”

The man’s chest is heaving jerkily and with every breath, blood pours out of his bullet wound.

He’ll die if the bleeding isn’t stopped soon, thinks Amanda, and in that same moment, the man coughs. Through the mask, it sounds more like gurgling. Jesus, it’s even worse, she thinks. He’s going to drown in his own blood.

“Is the little girl you kidnapped in Sickla still alive?”

Despite her anger, Amanda can clearly hear the fear in Iris’s words. If he gives the wrong answer, the life of the woman next to her will be utterly devastated.

At first, the man does not appear to react to the question, or at least does not want to answer, but Amanda takes two steps forward and forcefully pushes the automatic weapon into the open wound. She shudders as she feels the barrel hit his ribs, a shudder that transforms into panic when she realises the front sight has wedged itself between two ribs and the man is about to faint from the rapid rush of pain. Only when she twists the weapon slightly does it release, with a popping noise as it leaves the wound.

Amanda glances worriedly in the direction of the buildings – there’s still no sign of life as far as she can see. But the house is largely concealed by the barn, which also means you can’t clearly see what’s happening from the field. Still, they take it as a no-brainer that the shooting and whistle signal have been noticed.

The pressure cooker that Iris has turned into during the night is about to explode. She kicks the man. He groans loudly, increasing the flow of blood even more in his wound.

“Where is she? Where is my daughter?!”

Iris kicks him again. He raises one hand, wanting to signal to her to stop, and replies in a wheezy voice:

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been on a mission since early yesterday morning.” His breathing is shallow and he’s panting. “Please, it’s true, I don’t know.”

It’s clearly difficult for him to speak and he seems to be finding it hard to get air into his lungs.

Then they hear a bang go off somewhere, and Iris looks around nervously.

“Are there more women with your lot – more than Linda?”

He doesn’t appear to understand the question because Amanda can see him frowning through the eyes of the gas mask.

“What’s happened to Linda?” he asks, groaning.

Iris emits a muted shriek of frustration.

“Answer the question!” she hisses. “Are there only men up there or are there women too?”

Iris is close to losing it now. Even Amanda is stressed – they can’t stay there any longer. More soldiers will arrive and whether or not Sigrid is here, they will have to try to save Dano. She interprets the fact that they haven’t heard any more shots as a sign that he’s still ok.

The man shakes his head.

“No, we’re not just men, we have…”

“Good”, Iris interrupts, bending forward to use her good hand to root around under the man’s polo neck. She gets hold of the rubber edge of the gas mask and starts tugging and bending it to pull it off him.

He reacts violently, flailing his arms to stop the attack, and when she resolutely braces one foot against his wounded chest, he gives a muffled shout and stops struggling. After another few seconds of wrestling with the blood and saliva-soaked rubber, she has the mask in her hand.

They stare at the man’s exposed face. He’s relatively young – twenty-seven, twenty-eight perhaps; he has short, light blond hair and a few days’ worth of stubble. His gaze shifts wildly between them in confusion and terror.

“You have a password,” says Iris. “We heard the other guy ask you. What is it? She’ll stick the barrel in your chest again if you don’t answer.”

They don’t get an immediate response but the young man keeps switching his gaze between them.

“He’s scared”, says Amanda. “Scared we’re going to infect him.”

Iris keeps staring at the man. Her no-compromise attitude frightens Amanda but it is effective. The guy isn’t just scared – he’s terrified.

“Answer now and we’ll clear off – and with a little luck, you might just survive. Otherwise I’ll sit down and kiss you. Then you’ll soon be dead no matter how wounded you are.”

“Anthrax”, he whispers, in resignation. When he coughs, blood stained slime bubbles up out of him.

“Anthrax?” Iris sounds sceptical.

“A disease is fitting, don’t you think?” he says weakly.

More blood comes out of his mouth and Amanda can see it mingling with the pool that has formed underneath him – the bullet must have gone straight through his chest and out of his back. The air around them is starting to fill with the acrid smell of iron.

He’ll be dead soon, she thinks, and despite everything that’s happened, the thought isn’t without sadness.

“Thank you”, says Iris and turns towards Amanda. “We can’t leave him here. If they find one of their men dead in a field without a gas mask on, everything will go to hell.”

“What d’you mean? He’s alive!”, Amanda exclaims, but when she looks down at the man she sees his eyes have closed. His chest is still moving up and down but much more slowly now, and the dark pool underneath him is rapidly getting larger.

“There’s nothing they can do to save him. Besides, I don’t even think they’ll even go near him when they don’t know whether he’s been infected or not.” Iris gives Amanda a resolute look. “Drag him to the barn wall. He won’t be visible from the farm there.”

Amanda stares at Iris. She doesn’t want to be involved in this, but she gives the automatic rifle to Iris, grabs the man’s arms and starts dragging him off to the wall where Dano had just been sitting. She swallows in disgust as she sees the lifeless body leave a sticky red trail behind in the grass.

Dano tumbles down the slope by the sand dune at the water’s edge. He manages to get his arms up at the last minute to break the fall but still hits his head hard on the dewy sand and loses his breath. His body rolls several times before finally coming to rest.

But he has to get up again. He hears his pursuer coming, the quick, hard footsteps of his boots and loud huffing and puffing – the man probably isn’t used to running with a gas mask on.

Dano gets to his feet. Left or right along the water? To the left there’s forest, but it’s further to go than to the elevation he can glimpse in the other direction: some bushes by the outflow of a large ditch. Perhaps he’ll be able to get there before the man who shot him reaches the slope.

He’s just about to start running when he discovers that he’s leaving clear footprints in the sand. At first, he is seized with panic before he realises this might help him. He runs along the beach for five or six metres in the direction of the forest and is careful to strike hard with his feet to leave a clear trail of prints. Then he turns off at a diagonal down to the shallow water, still clearly in the direction of the bathing spot and the forest. Once the water reaches his knees, he turns and wades off as fast as he can in the opposite direction. His splashing can be heard but the guard’s gas mask should muffle most of the sound and anyway, the waves are constantly lapping the shore – the ripples he makes in the water should disappear fast.

It’s hard work running like this and he has to keep looking nervously up towards the field to check if the man’s menacing form is towering up against the dawn sky. Amanda and Iris did tell him that the military people in the helicopter were wearing masks but seeing it first hand was much scarier than he could have imagined.

Finally, he reaches the hillock and throws himself headlong over a thorny bush. He puts his arms up to protect himself from the fall but instead crashes head first into the ditch behind him, which is much wider than the one he crawled through in the field. What’s more, it’s filled with water. In sheer surprise he takes a breath and his lungs feel as though they fill with liquid. As he comes up to the surface again, he spontaneously spews it out.

Quiet now, he thinks, don’t cough anymore. Keep your head down and shut up.

He has stomach cramps but he’s keeping his mouth closed. Getting hold of a thick branch, he pulls himself towards land. Iris’s phone in his trouser pocket crosses his mind – no, not in the water – he manages to get hold of it, fumbles and loses his grip but manages to knock it mid-air so that it bounces down into the bushes in front of him. Relieved, he pulls himself up onto the shore.

Can I be seen here? No, he doesn’t think so, but in that same moment he sees the man in the mask coming over the top of the hill.

As the man is slithering down the slope and stops to study Dano’s footprints for a second, Dano sees that it isn’t the same man – this one’s wearing jeans and a black t-shirt and isn’t holding an automatic weapon, just a normal rifle. What happened up there? Dano heard someone shout but couldn’t understand the words and assumed it was an order for him to stop. Is that the guard he was supposed to infect? So what happened to the guy who was shooting at Dano?

His body temperature, which is already low, sinks further as he realises this may mean two people are chasing him. The fact that this guy seems to be falling for his trick and running in the direction of the footprints might not mean anything, as someone else might come running towards Dano at any moment.

But seconds pass and nothing happens apart from the first pursuer disappearing from sight. Dano heard him blow his whistle. It’s a signal that warns Dano that more people will come and join in from the farm.

He scans the area from every angle. One road leads to a promontory, where he spots a small house. It’s round with glass walls glittering in the dawn sunlight, and there’s a rowing boat bobbing up and down in the water below it.

No, not out there – it’s a dead end. But on the other hand, what’s the alternative? There’s water in one direction, open meadows in another and the last option is to follow in the tracks of the armed guard.

So either he lies here and hopes that the protection of the bushes will be enough, or he follows the sloping path out to the promontory in the hope that he gets there before the guard can get reinforcements. Could there be a guard out there too, keeping an eye on the bay? There’s a risk, but shouldn’t they have already joined in pursuing him?

Dano hears the crack of a breaking branch and turns around. He catches sight of two armed people approaching rapidly from somewhere west of the manor house.

They can’t miss me, he thinks.

As quietly as he can, he writhes out of his bush hideout, being careful not to brush against the branches so that they shake and give him away. He sinks into the water right by the mouth of the ditch, biting down on the telephone as he keeps his head above the water. It’s unexpectedly deep here. If he has to dive, the mobile phone will be trashed, but that’s better than having his head blown off.

It should be about twenty metres to the promontory. He does front crawl in as controlled a fashion as possible before turning around in the water and swimming on his back for a few metres to get a view behind him. He doesn’t see any of the military people – so they shouldn’t be able to see him? – but one second later, a loud bang ricochets around him and a hard splash sprays out a metre away from him. Someone’s shooting at him – again.

It’s strange, but he feels almost nothing but exhaustion. He can’t cope with it any more. Police have pointed their guns at him, men have beaten him unconscious and only a few minutes have passed since he was last shot at. The idea crosses his mind that whoever fired should have hit him and put an end to his misery. That’s enough now – he can’t go on.

It happens again – two shots in a row – and one hits him in the side, just under his chest.

Still desperately trying to grip Iris’s phone between his teeth, he starts to sink. He throws the phone towards the bank as the pain explodes within and he feels the taste of his own blood in the water that is gushing down his throat.

Iris throws herself onto the passenger seat. How many minutes could have passed since Dano ran off? Despite everything that’s happened, perhaps no more than three or four, she guesses. She’s surprised that reinforcements haven’t arrived. Maybe there aren’t that many of them here after all?

“Was there anyone there?” she asks Amanda, who had jumped in through the barn window to quickly check for signs of Sigrid.

She shakes her head in reply.

“Mostly old rubbish – the barn was just one large room. There was hardly anything there apart from a chair and a table by the window.”

Iris nods resolutely and hands over a dark grey jacket that was lying on the seat.

“Put this on”, she says. “And this.” She nods at the gas mask that she’s wiping clean with a tissue from a pack she found in the glove compartment.

Amanda gives her a sceptical look, but Iris isn’t going to be deterred.

“They’ll never believe I’m one of them – not with this arm. If you wear the mask and this jacket, maybe they’ll think they haven’t seen you before – they’ve only been in each other’s company a few days and can scarcely know everyone properly. Besides, the person they’re hunting down is a boy in a red t-shirt who they’ve never seen before. He wasn’t there when they took Sigrid – they don’t know he’s with us.”

“Just put the stuff on and start the car.”

Amanda stares at Iris. Iris sees confusion in her face – scepticism too – but won’t give in. Not now. They are too close and have come too far. They have to finish this, whatever happens.

Amanda shakes her head in disapproval but puts on the jacket. It’s large but not so big that it attracts attention. Before Amanda pulls the mask over her head, she glances with distaste at the bit of tissue that Iris used to clean it with. It’s sticky with red slime.

“Delightful”, she sighs, taking a deep breath and pulling the mask over her face.

It’s tight around her face and she mumbles something about pressure on her cheeks and neck; it hurts her scalp where her bun is being pressed in but soon it’s in position. As she cautiously takes her first breath, Iris hears the air filter make a wheezing sound – some of the bloody phlegm must have been left inside of it. Amanda stifles a retch and starts the car.

“I know it’s a desperate plan, but I can’t think of anything better”, says Iris. “We have to get to them immediately – perhaps the guy driving the jeep was just out on patrol and was coming back to base and didn’t know why the guard blew the alarm whistle.”

Something down by the water attracts Iris’s attention.

“Look”, she says, pointing.

Two people with weapons at the ready – they look like pistols – are rushing across the field towards the bay. From their silhouettes it looks like a man and a woman.

“Dano has quite a head start”, says Iris once they’ve got half way up the avenue towards Erstavik farm. “I don’t think there’s any risk of them catching him.”

“They won’t try to catch him”, says Amanda in annoyance. “If they see him, they’ll shoot him on the spot.”

Iris grimaces.

“I know.” She climbs over to the minimal backseat , and presses herself down on the floor behind Amanda, who continues to drive up a slight incline where the road widens. They approach the side buildings and still no people have turned up.

“What do we do now?” asks Amanda.

“Drive past the main buildings, if you can. They’re hardly holding her in there. We saw a smaller building further off – I think she’s there somewhere. What do you see now?

“The manor house is to the right; there’s a fence around it but the gate is open. Difficult to say if there’s anyone there but there are three cars up by the house, and they aren’t military or anything. Shall I drive over there or carry on? There are more buildings further on. And there…there are people there! They’re running – three of them in masks – down to the water and they’re all armed. Shall I turn around?”

Iris feels her pulse rise in her chest. She can also hear that Amanda is affected too – the wheezing through the filter is increasing. Damn it, she’s scared now.

“No, carry on for as long as they don’t seem to be taking any notice of you. Look out for the helicopter – they can’t have…”

A shot is fired, and another two, in quick succession. From her position on the floor, it’s hard for Iris to hear where they are coming from but it sounds distant – probably from the direction in which Dano was running. Shit.

“We have to…”, Amanda starts saying, but Iris interrupts her.

“We don’t ‘have to’ anything! Think about it. We can do nothing to help him. Even if we get out and distract them, he’s still just as big of a threat to them. They’ll chase him until they’re sure he’s dead or gone. It doesn’t matter what we do.”

She goes quiet and the car slowly rolls on. Iris knows that what she’s said is right but at the same time she hates herself for being so cold. But she has no choice. Somehow, Dano has still chosen to be with them of his own free will and he is aware of the risks. He could have chosen to leave them, and it seemed almost like he was going to do that last night after Sigrid disappeared.

But the same isn’t true of her daughter. She is completely dependent on their doing all they can to save her.

“Where did those new military people come from?” she asks.

“Difficult to say”, Amanda replies. “I don’t see a back entrance to the wing building, so probably not there but…yes, between the wing and the main manor house there’s a smaller building and it has a door. Perhaps from there?

Iris wants to stick her head up to see the surroundings with her own eyes but doesn’t dare.

“What else d’you see?”

“A windowless barn to the right, and further ahead to the left there’s a larger building, er, there are flowers in the window there – it might be accommodation or offices. There are a number of cars – a jeep like ours and three ordinary cars. And then there’s a kind of garden further ahead to the right, with very high bushes and stuff and then…”

“Could I jump out and hide there? I’d be able to try and get there myself or find somewhere I can access to infect someone. Plus, it’s easier if we look for Sigrid in diff…”

“No, wait. Stop!” exclaims Amanda. “Don’t move – there’s someone in one of the windows – the one with flowers in it. A woman I think, not wearing a gas mask. She’s looking at us. I…” She falls silent.

Please, don’t let that woman suspect anything, Iris prays silently to herself.

“Damn it”, says Amanda. “I might have screwed up now – I waved at her – you know, just casually – but she didn’t wave back, or at least I didn’t see anything, anyway.” She is silent for a moment, then continues, thoughtfully. . “But…no, I don’t know, she didn’t appear to react so perhaps there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Did she just stand there?”

“I can’t see anymore, we’ve driven too far away, but…I think so. Shall I park here or…is it better that we carry on?”

“I don’t know, you decide.”

Amanda sighs deeply.

“ There’s a bit of forest over to the left – more like a small patch of woodland – and a road directly to the right that leads to some large farm buildings. They look more modern. The buildings we’ve driven past are more olde worlde. And then… wait! The helicopter! It’s over there! Parked in a field next to the barns!”

She brakes, and Iris can’t contain herself any longer and glances up. But she can’t see much from the angle she’s lying in – just a house with a grey foundation, red planks and some bushes. She’s itching to get out, infect them, obliterate them and find her daughter.

“Just park somewhere”, Iris says in a stressed tone. “Park up by the other jeeps. I think we’ll draw less attention to ourselves if we’re stationary.”

Amanda brakes, puts the jeep into reverse, turns and drives slowly back a few metres and stops. Iris looks up again. They’ve parked between two cars and there’s a glimpse of a jeep on the other side of one of them. Amanda switches off the engine.

Why is it so quiet? thinks Iris. The silence around them makes her nervous.

“Why aren’t any more people coming out? Aren’t there as many as we thought?”

“I think they’re scared”, says Amanda in a low voice. “Scared and unsure. I got the feeling even yesterday that they don’t have that many walkie-talkies – they couldn’t contact the helicopter, for example, and the guard back there was only blowing a whistle when Dano fled. Perhaps the people here don’t know how they’ve been attacked, so they’re keeping inside until the envoys can report back.”

Iris glances up again. She can see enough through the car windows to the left to guess that the helicopter is far off. She reacts much more strongly than she thought she would. Something freezes in her chest and she is reminded of the dull ache in her broken arm.

“We can’t just sit here”, she says. “It’s too weird. The real driver of this car has somewhere he’s expected to be – they’ll soon start to wonder. We have to get out, start looking for her, even if Dano has the phone. Can I get out of the car without being seen?”

“It’s only a few metres to the wall”, says Amanda. If I get out first, I can check if anyone’s looking at us from the windows. If it’s all clear you can crawl out after me and crouch down between the cars up to the wall and then sneak around the corner facing the field.. If it stays all clear, I’ll follow you.”

Not wanting the car to sway and rock, Iris tries to get back into the front passenger seat as gently as she can. Once there, she curls up and sees Amanda take a deep, wheezy breath and open the door.

The few seconds that Amanda takes to stand outside the car and try to read her surroundings seem like forever. And then very briefly and almost undetectably, she gives a thumbs up through the window, and Iris quickly crawls over the driver’s seat and almost falls down onto the gravel. Amanda moves closer to the red house but still has one hand resting casually on the outside of the driver-side door. When Iris is fully out, Amanda carefully but decisively shuts the car door.

“I think it’s all clear”, she whispers. “At least I can’t see anyone.” She takes a step towards the blue car parked next to theirs so that Iris can sneak past down on the ground.

Iris crawls forward on the gravel, reaching the back wheel of the jeep, and is just about to take the short leap to the wall when a door opens.

“Daddy?”, enquires a bright but slightly uncertain voice. Iris hears small feet patter down some stairs and reach the gravel. “Ouch, it’s sharp”, says the voice. There are more gravel crunching noises, closer now.

“Daddy? Mummy saw you come with the car. I couldn’t sleep. Did it go okay out there?” The crunching stops. Iris can’t move. It’s not possible. It mustn’t be…

“But… you’re not Daddy. Why are you wearing his jacket?”

Iris hears a loud wheezy breath and feels Amanda clutching at her shoulder, trying to pull her backwards. No, thinks Iris, they mustn’t have any…

She forces her gaze up from the gravel. Standing just half a metre away from her is a boy of about four years old, dressed in Lightning McQueen themed pyjamas. His tiny feet are bare on the gravel. No, thinks Iris, it wasn’t supposed to be like this…go away little boy…

“Where’s Daddy? And who are you?” The boy’s large eyes stare at her.

Don’t breathe, thinks Iris. I mustn’t breathe…

Just as Iris is raising her hand to cover her nose and mouth, she hears, as if in a fog, the door of the house opening again and a woman’s voice shouting:

“Tim? You’re not allowed out by yourself – not even to meet Daddy, you know that. Tim?”

The woman gasps when she discovers her child standing in front of Iris and Amanda. A second later, the silence of Erstavik is shattered by her horrified cries.