The Secret Bunker Trilogy: Part One: Darkness Falls (2 page)

I’m not sure if I even saw the black car at the time. In my memory it’s there, but I’m not sure if that’s just because I’ve
heard so many people talk about the accident.

I even have a newspaper cutting hidden in my old laptop case upstairs,
but I haven’t actually looked at it since I put it there. I know that if I look at that faded cutting it will instantly transport me
back to that day of the funeral, when that great, empty, immovable
void just sat there before us.

When the final person leaves the house after the funeral, that’s when it
really begins. The silence and the coping - that’s when it really begins, not when the
person dies. There’s too much going on after they die, you know they’re dead but
there’s just too much going on.
It’s only when silence finally descends that you’re alone with death.
It’s only then that you find out how you’ll be.

As a nine year old I never even thought about death.
Why would you when you’re nine? I’m not sure I’d even think about it much now if it wasn’t for Nat.
Of course, I’d see it in films and cartoons, I’d read about it in books.
But that’s not really my life and it seems so far away. Always so far away until the final moment of innocence when my
twin’s blood spattered across my favourite t-shirt and I heard the last
gasp for life as Nat's limp body hit the concrete in front of me.

So, Dad was entering another competition to win us a holiday.
‘Somebody has to win,’ he’d say ‘And it might as well be us!’ Then Mum would chime in with some wise catchphrase like ‘You’ve
got to be in it to win it! Honestly, it was like they wrote the script before each day started,
how did they come up with this stuff, seemingly off the top of their
heads?

Usually we entered competitions in magazines or on the back of cereal
boxes. Sometimes we even crowded round Dad’s laptop to figure out some
daft question in a Facebook contest. But I remember this one because it was different from usual.
It came via email, directly to Mum.

Now, this is where I should explain, we’re a modern family and we all
like our tech. Who doesn’t, this is the 21st Century after all!
So when Mum got the email, she forwarded it to Dad. ‘Hey Mike, I’ve got some holiday competition from one of my web
sites, do you want it?’

‘Can you forward it to me Amy?’ asked Dad, and after a few taps from
Mum on her keyboard I knew that the transaction was complete
because Dad said, as if completely out of the blue five minutes later,
‘Thanks’. The funny thing is, we all knew what he meant by this stray
acknowledgement An onlooker from 100 years ago would wonder what on earth had just
happened.

This is just how modern families operate, the unspoken fusion of tech
and relationships when human interaction can slip seamlessly from
words to typing to reading and back to words again - and everybody’s
still in the loop.

Now, Mum was always a deleter.
It was pretty well the only time she’d cuss. I think it was because she’d taken on more responsibility at work
since Dad stopped to stay at home with me, and she was pretty sick of
emails by the time she got home So, about 10 minutes after she got home from work every night, she’d
sit down with a cup of tea, open her laptop, scan her emails, cuss a bit
then whack the ‘delete’ button much harder than was required.
‘She’s going to wreck that button!’ I’d think to myself.

‘Sorted!’ she’d announce, then she’d relax and become ‘Mum’ again,
like deleting those personal emails was revenge for everything she’d
had to do at work all day.

That’s why I noticed this email in particular.
At the time I just assumed that she’d had a better day at work.
But now I can see it was something more than that. Anyway, Dad got the email and within seconds of him opening it and
asking if we all wanted to go to Scotland, we were all tapping away at
our keyboards trying to find the name of a disused Cold War nuclear
bunker in the South of Scotland. David got there first, he messaged the link to Dad to check it, Dad
announced ‘That’s the one, never heard of it!’ and that was the holiday
sorted. Well, almost - until Mum almost ruined everything by ending up in
hospital!

The woman sits on the bed with a briefcase at her side. She’s reading something on a digital reader, but it’s quite clear she
was just distracting herself, because when the man comes, she closes
it immediately. She is expecting him, and although she knows him already, she’s
clearly uneasy about something.

This is a strange place. It has the feel of a hospital, but it doesn’t seem to have any patients. There is an antiseptic, clinical feel about it, the beds are neatly made
and in rows. There are no curtains between the beds here though, no radios on the
walls, nothing extra or decorative.

As the man presses the pen-like gadget against her neck, and the
device enters her bloodstream, it strikes her that this is almost like a
military hospital.

I didn’t even know that Mum gave blood.
Not until we got a phone call saying that she’d fainted and they were
keeping her in hospital overnight. Dad went into a bit of rant at that stage. The funny thing about Dad is that he would rant away like something
really bothered him, when really it was obvious to everybody in the
room that actually he was really concerned and worried about
whoever was involved. So while Dad was moaning about Mum’s great timing and how it was
going to mess up the packing and our early morning departure, me,
David and even Harriet really knew that he was just worried sick
about Mum. It was that script thing again, like nobody would finish off his lines if
Mum wasn’t there.

‘I’m going to have to leave you guys here for an hour,’ he started, ‘Nat,
can you look after ...’
There it was again. A simple mistake, but Nat was back in the room again …

Hospitals always meant terrible news to me. Of course, in most cases they’re places of healing. People who have the most terrible illnesses and problems enter those
buildings and most often leave them cured, healed or in greater
comfort.

It was the hospital chapel that I particularly noticed when Nat died.
I didn’t know that hospitals had chapels. My nine year old self thought that they were made up of wards, lines
of beds and filled with doctors and nurses. So much of what we think of these places is from TV and books. A chapel in a hospital makes perfect sense, I know that now.
After all, it’s where I first watched my parents crying helplessly as
they clung onto each other trying to comprehend that Nat was dead.
It was the first and only time in my life that they completely shut me
out. It was like they had to go to each other first before they could come to
give me comfort. I know now, the Chapel is the most important place in a hospital.
It’s where people go to pray and beg, even if they believe there is no
God. It’s where people who are ill go when they must come to terms with
the end of life. And it’s where those who know loss must go, before returning to a
home that is missing a child.

Often, as a child, things happen around you and you don’t get their
meaning. You take them at face value, you see them as they are.
One of the things that I’ve noticed since I’ve been at home more is that
there is hidden meaning in most things. It’s like Dad’s ranting for instance.
He says one thing, but he means another.
And it’s the same with Mum and Dad. They have conversations, but they sometimes seem to mean a
different thing from what I understand. Like a double conversation, as if the words mean one thing to me but
they’re hearing something different. I don’t know if that’s my age or just one of the things that Dr Pierce
was talking about with Mum and Dad.

So when Dad left me in charge of David and Harriet he was - on the
face of it - going to see Mum after she’d fainted in hospital. But it felt to me like something else was going on, something I just
wasn’t getting.
Dad wasn’t that long as it turned out.
I think the reason he was most worried is that Mum had been away
the night before. They always got crabby when they didn’t see each other after a while.
She’d been away at some business meeting and had left to catch an
early train long before I got up. Dad was cross that she’d given blood rather than coming straight
home. Of course he’d never have known if she hadn’t fainted. And now she was in hospital overnight and we were travelling to
Scotland the next day.

Sometimes parents seem to make life so difficult.
All Dad had to do was get the packing done and pick Mum up from
hospital on the way out in the morning. When he got home, Dad put Mum’s briefcase in its customary place by
the front door, David and Harriet went to bed, and Dad got me to help
with the packing.

I liked it since I’d been at home, Dad treated me differently. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was like I was an adult at last, he
just chatted to me like he did Mum, he didn’t use that kind of talk you
reserve for kids, like you’re over-acting in a bad TV series.
That’s why I was still up when there was a knock at the door. It’s funny that a knock at the door means nothing at all during the day
time, but at night or in darkness, it can take on such a different
meaning.
At night it can be threatening - or it takes on new urgency, like
important news has to be delivered that cannot wait until morning. So when the knock came, at shortly after 11 o’clock, not only did it
make me jump, we also just looked at each other while we registered
what had just happened.

Dad told me to get ready for bed and to stay upstairs, and I felt a sharp
change from his easiness in the minutes just before the night time
interruption. I wasn’t much the wiser for what was said at the front door, it was just
a series of mumbles preceded and followed by greetings and farewells.
But there was something about the conversation that registered with
me, not words, but a tone and style of speaking.
It was only while I was lying awake in bed long after Dad had retired
for the night that I finally realised what it was that had registered with
me. That was Doctor Pierce talking to Dad at the door. So why had Dad said, after closing the door and re-joining me, that it
was a 'wrong address'?

I’m trying to stay calm but it’s really difficult. None of this makes sense to me at all, it’s like somebody just turned all
the lights out and now they refuse to tell me what’s going on.
I don’t know what to do. If I try to move in this darkness, I might fall.
Even worse I might get lost.

I’m desperately trying to remember the layout of the bunker beyond
the heavy doors, but I can’t, and anyway it’s complete darkness, I have
no light or sound to help me navigate. I’ve called for help until I’m hoarse and my water is gone now.
I’m scared, hungry and alone. It’s ridiculous, but in spite of this I can think of no better strategy than
to stay where I am. If somebody comes, they will either enter via the doors or try to leave
using this route.

The thing is, I know there are lots of people still in there.
So why can’t they hear me? And what happened to Dad and Harriet, they were pretty close when
the darkness fell but now I can’t see or hear them? It seems crazy to just stay here, but I can’t think of anything better to
do for now. And if death comes?
Well, I was at Nat’s side when life ended, so I know what it's like.

The black car didn’t stop when it struck Nat at the roadside.
Nobody even thought about the car at the time, everybody’s attention
was focused on the bloody body that lay lifeless in front of us. It could have been invisible, a brutal force that came out of nowhere
and took the life away from my twin without a care.
It was only once the ambulance had been called - as Mum cradled Nat
in her arms and a crowd of passers had gathered - that the question
was asked about the driver.

All those people around, yet the only information that we could get
about the driver was that he was in a large, black vehicle.
Make unknown. Driver appeared to be a male.
And it didn’t have number plates.

We finally set off on our journey to Scotland. Needless to say, we
did
win the competition in the end.
We weren’t used to having that type of luck, but in this case it was
pretty quick.
It must have been less than a week between Dad sending off our entry
and his announcement at breakfast that we’d won, and in no time at
all, it was the day of the holiday. So, after a chaotic breakfast and a hasty packing of the car, Dad locked
up the house, we all got in the car, picked up Mum from the hospital
and we were on our way.

Mum seemed fine after her night in hospital. None of us needed any medical detail, so long as Mum was back in
sight and we could see her, and tell that she was okay, the whole
incident was forgotten. Or at least for a while.
When I asked her to show me where they’d taken the blood from her
arm there was no mark. ‘I must be a quick healer,’ Mum had joked.
But I didn’t think injections healed that fast.

She can’t really feel the device but she knows it’s there. It must be microscopic to have been able to enter her bloodstream so
easily and painlessly, and she is clearly uneasy about its presence in
her body. But the man is blunt and dismissive, he has the manner of an
impatient doctor.

The woman seems to be wary of him, so holds back the questions that
she wants to ask. When he stands up, it is clear that she is supposed to follow him. He takes her through a long corridor, this whole building feels military
- or governmental at least.

Nothing is there for decoration or pleasure, it feels like things are only
there because there is a job to be done. Charmless functionality.
She is taken to an office which instantly looks out of place in this
building. A name plate indicates that this is the man’s office and it is full of high
tech equipment. Still the office is grey and without character.
It is as if the man has no need to show his personality here. There are no family pictures, no artwork, no attempt to create any life
in this room.