Handling the Undead

"Children, children, children...
David stood in the school yard and watched as the children poured out of the school like a liquid. Three, four, ten, thirty multi-coloured little beings with backpacks ran down the stairs. Pieces of humanity, a mass to direct and discipline. Four hundred of them were stuffed into this building six hours a day, four hundred were let out again when those six hours were up.
Material.
But zoom in on one single child and there you had an upholder of the world. A child with a mother, a father, grandparents, relatives and friends. A child whose existence is necessary for the proper functioning of many lives. Children are fragile, and carry so many lives on their frail shoulders. Fragile is their world, controlled by adults. Everything is fragile.
All day David had walked around as if in a dream.
(...)
Even on his way toward the school he felt how the threads that usually connected him to the world were severed. At most he was a pair of eyes hovering throught the air, avoiding obstacles, stopping for a red light. At the school he grasped a black metal railing, held onto it.
Then the bell rang and the children came pouring out. He opened his eyes and saw the mass of biological tissue that hopped and skipped its way down the stairs and he held onto the railing so that he would not float away.
When the flood had spread out across the school yard and started to gush through the gates, Magnus came out. Pushed open the doors with all his might and ended up standing on the landing, looking around.
David became aware of the railing in his hand. Aware that he had a hand that was holding onto the railing; that the hand was attached to a body that was his. He fell back into his body and became... a father. He was back in the world and he went to meet his son.
'Hi buddy.'
Magnus hoisted his backpack and stared at the ground.
'Dad...'
'Yes?'
'Has Mum become like one of those orcs?'"

-  in "Handling The Undead" escrito por John Ajvide Lindqvist