Bunker

Bunker

Also by Andrea Maria Schenkel

The Murder Farm
Ice Cold

Andrea Maria Schenkel

Translated from the German by Anthea Bell

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

Quercus
21 Bloomsbury Square
London
WC1A 2NS

German original,
Bunker
, first published by Edition Nautilus.

English translation Copyright © 2010 by Anthea Bell
Copyright © 2009 by Edition Nautilus

Published by agreement with Edition Nautilus.

The moral right of Andrea Maria Schenkel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84916 112 1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Designed and typeset by Lindsay Nash
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc.

Bunker

I still have to get the keys. They're in the bedroom, on the bed. Back into the bunker. Damn, the paraffin lamps have burnt out, even though I had two for each room in it. Funny, I thought those things lasted longer. What a waste, six lamps in three rooms, and all of them gone out. Dammit! I have a torch in the car. Must be in the glove compartment, but I don't feel like going back for it. If I leave the door wide open there might be enough light from the stairway for me to see into the back room.

It's still light enough here in the front room. I'll leave the connecting door wide open. It's already quite dark in the second room. The fittings of the little kitchen counter along the wall don't reflect much of the light coming in. Pitch black in
the third room. My feet come up against the plastic sack, and then I have to feel my way along the side of the bed. Why did those stupid lamps go out so quickly? I filled them, or did I forget to? Well, that won't get me anywhere now. I need those damn keys. Where are they? I left them on the bed. I feel the pillow, nothing there. The sheet under it, still nothing. OK, keep calm. Those keys just have to be here. Keep calm! Pull the quilt right down to the foot of the bed…nothing. Those bloody things must be here. I saw them, clearly! Chucked them on the bed with the rest of the stuff from the jacket. This is too much. I'll just strip off all the bedclothes. Maybe the keys will fall on the floor then… Nothing. Shit, shit, shit! Rummage through everything again – still nothing.

Where are the stupid things? Keep calm. Think about it, think. Of course, I must have knocked them under the bed. Crawl under it. Disgusting, dust and dirt all over the place. And those crumbly heaps of something. Heaps of what? Mouse shit, can only be mouse shit. This place must be teeming with mice, filthy vermin. It stinks of mouse piss down here too, and I'm lying flat on my front in all that dirt, groping about in the dark for those damn keys. I squeeze under the bed as far as I can; I can touch the wall with my fingertips now, it's all cold and slimy. No wonder the whole wall's mouldy, everything down here is damp and cold.
Dust, dirt, mouse piss, mould. This is getting me nowhere, I'll have to go and fetch the torch or nothing's going to come of this, nothing at all. I slowly begin wriggling out from under the bed again.

What's that sound? Is there someone at the door? No, can't be, who'd be there? That fat slob is dead. But there's someone tinkering about with the door. No, no! Damn it, there is someone there. Can't be her, can it? Who's there? Shit, shit! This is all going wrong! Who can that be? Just don't let me hear the door squeal now, please don't let it squeal!

Push off from the wall and crawl out from under the bed. Takes far too long. I'll do it yet, I'll make it to the door. Quick, quick! I'm scurrying on all fours, trying to stand up as I crawl, trying to get to the door. Through the second room. I can see the door! The bunker door closes slowly, very slowly. Squealing.

Darkness. I stumble, fall to the ground. My face hits the concrete – it feels hard, cold, clammy. The palms of my hands are stinging from the impact. I try to push myself up, raise my head, look at the door. It's closed. All dark around me, only that narrow strip of light under the bunker door. I crawl forward, making for the strip of light. I can hear myself breathing, taking air in noisily through my open mouth. I'm
breathing fast, my ribcage rising and falling at every breath. I lie down flat on the floor in front of the strip of light. Try to get my face really close to it. I can feel the cold draught of air coming into the bunker through the gap. Maybe I can look out through it? I have to squeeze my face down on the floor even harder. Very close to the gap, right up against it. The shadow of two feet. The shadow disappears.

I hear a hollow thud; the wooden trapdoor has come down, the gap with the light showing through has gone. Total darkness. Everything's black, everything. Pitch dark everywhere.

I'm still lying in front of the door. The right-hand side of my face on the cold concrete floor, mouth and nose pressed to the gap under the metal door. I'm gasping for air in panic, like a fish on dry land.

I lie there. I ought really to jump up, shout, hammer frantically on that door. But I lie there exhausted, empty. Losing any sense of time in the darkness. Feeling the cold of the concrete seeping slowly into me, feeling myself chilling. It's like falling into a dark hole. I suck air in, and with every breath I'm pulled deeper. I close my eyes, or did I just open them? Doesn't matter, the darkness is still the same. I lie there feeling drained, horribly drained.

The room is bathed in red light. I can't make out where
the light's coming from. In it I see myself getting up, slowly looking around. I'm not alone. I hear footsteps. I'm walking through this sea of red light, following the footsteps into the middle room. I see him there, a big, strong man. Hair cut very short, jeans and army jacket. He's going through the room, right to the back room of the bunker. At the back wall he stops, turns to me. I see his face, a striking nose with a dip in it, prominent cheekbones, eyes deep-set in their sockets. Eyelids drooping, expression of burning self-confidence and determination. He pushes off from the wall with one leg, strides towards the locked steel door, turns his right shoulder in that direction and rams the door with it. The door springs open with a deafening noise, glaring white light dazzles me, hurts my eyes. I put my hands up to protect my face. He must have jumped over me. I lower my hands again, carefully open my eyes.

The room is pitch black, the bunker door is closed, I'm still flat out on the cold floor in front of the door, I'm trapped in this hole underground.

A week earlier
…

Friday afternoon, the evening rush hour, car after car, bumper to bumper, all the way down the street. The air is full of exhaust fumes from the vehicles, a stale smell with every breath you take. Loud traffic noise, horns honking, edgy, impatient pedestrians in amongst it all. Everyone wants to get home. A woman hurries over the road, dodging the stationary cars. Cyclists wind their way through the queuing traffic, swerving right or left wherever there's a small gap. Crowding together at the lights. One of them can't wait, rides his bike along the pavement. Pushes past the pedestrians, almost running one of them down. The man jumps out of the way just in time, shouts angrily at the cyclist. The cyclist rides on, takes no notice. I stand on the pavement watching. Cars right down both sides of the street. A line of parked
vehicles adds to the traffic chaos. I look across at the car hire firm's parking place. All the vehicles are quite old models, but all washed and polished. The building the other side of the fleet of cars is concrete, large windows without any visible frames, just dark outlines where they fit into the concrete slabs. I can't see into the building through the tinted glass of the windows. A customer goes in. The glazed front door opens automatically. Through the open door I get a moment's glimpse of the interior. She's standing behind the dark wood of the reception counter.

She's busy sorting through a stack of papers. No one else in the room. The door closes, opens again a little later. She shows the customer out, gives him the car keys. I see the red tag of the keys, there's a brief exchange of words, they shake hands, the man gets into a grey BMW. She waves him out of the parking slot, smiles briefly, nods and goes back into the building.

I cross the road, winding my way through the stationary traffic like the other pedestrians. I cross the car park. The path is paved with exposed aggregate concrete slabs.

The automatic glass door opens. I go in. She's busy with her papers again. She doesn't even look up. Doesn't say a word to me. Goes on putting her papers in order, as if she were still alone in the room.

I stop at the counter. Wait, never taking my eyes off her.

‘We're closing in two minutes' time.'

‘I know.'

She's kneeling in front of me, her hands tied behind her back with a length of washing line round her wrists. Her back is bent so that her shoulders hunch forward. Her head is bowed, her shoulder-length dark hair hangs over her face like a curtain. I hear her breathing in and out. She takes in air, lets it out again through her tightly closed lips with a soft little hissing sound. Kneeling, she comes nearly up to my belt. I take a step back. Her breasts rise and fall with every breath. She's afraid, I can feel her fear. A small, gleaming drop of sweat runs down to her breasts. I watch the drop slowly making its way over her bare skin, disappearing down into her neckline.

With my left hand I take hold of her hair, grab it tight, jerk
her head back. She utters a short scream. Damn it, I want her to look me in the face. Her eyes avoid me. She keeps staring down. Her forehead is wet with sweat, her eye make-up smeared, streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. The outlines of her face are blurred by the smudged make-up. She whimpers, sniffs, draws air noisily in through her nose.

I pull her head back again with my left hand. My right hand grabs her chin and squeezes it.

‘Where's the key? Come on, where's the key?'

She sniffs snot back up her nose again. I swing back the hand that was squeezing her chin just now, hit her in the face. She moans. Even though I'm still holding her hair, her head jerks slightly to one side. The rim of one nostril turns red, a thin trail of blood runs out of her nose and down her chin. She's crying quietly.

‘The key, right now!'

My left hand shakes her head back and forth. Droplets of blood fan out on my shirt. I feel disgusted. And furious. Why doesn't she say something? Why does she just keep on crying?

I clench my fist and hit her in the face once more. Her head jerks to one side again. Next moment she falls forward with her eyes closed and her mouth pursed up. She stays there propped on her shoulders for a second, then slowly
shifts back to a kneeling position. I look into her face. It's ridiculous, with that pouting mouth and her eyes like slits.