The Bunker Diary (27 page)

‘But what if He is still
there?’

‘What have we got to lose?’

Our lives, I thought.

‘All right,’ I said.
‘Let’s just give it another day.’

‘
Why?
’

‘We have to play to our
strengths,’ I said. ‘We’re weak, drained, confused, starved, cold. The
only thing we’re fit for is waiting. We’ve spent the last two months doing
nothing. We’re good at it. He’s not. Let’s use what we’ve
got.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then we do something.’

Fred looked at me, his eyes struggling to
stay open.

‘OK,’ he said eventually.

We both turned to check that it was OK with
Jenny, but she was already asleep.

Now I’m alone, with you, listening to
the hum of the walls, and I’m beginning to doubt myself. I want to tell you
something, but it’s best if I don’t.

Let’s just say I can see the end of
something, the end of a trail of doubts.

And it doesn’t look good.

I wish I had something to read apart from
the bible. I can’t possibly read that. Anything else would do, anything to take my
mind off thinking. A dictionary would be good. Yeah, a dictionary. If I had the choice
between a chocolate cake and a dictionary … well, obviously I’d take the
cake. But I’d have to think about it.

No I wouldn’t.

I’d swap a thousand dictionaries for a
piece of stale cake.

I would like a dictionary though. A dictionary
contains all the books ever written, and all the books that will ever be written.
That’s something, isn’t it? The words aren’t in the right order, of
course, but it’s still something.

You know what else I’d like?

A map of the world.

I’d pin it on the wall. Then I’d
know where everywhere was. It’d be right there, on the wall.

I’m off to think about zebras
now.

The lights are out. I don’t know what
time it is. The clock’s stopped. It’s 11.35 for ever. I’m writing this
in the light of a fire.

Now
we’re starting down the
trail of doubts.

I was in the kitchen when it happened.
Jenny was asleep. Fred was in the bathroom. I’d just washed my face and I was
peering at my reflection in the steel surface of the sink, trying to convince myself
that I didn’t actually look like that, that it was the paucity – I remember the
word popping into my head – that it was the
paucity
of the sink as a mirror
that was the problem, not me … or some such drivel.

Some such?

Paucity?

What’s the matter with me? Why am I
suddenly talking like a Charles Dickens character? Maybe I’m turning into Oliver
Twist. Desperate with hunger and reckless with misery … please, sir, I want
some more …

Anyway, I was stooped over the sink.
Everything was as dull and deadly quiet as it always is. Boring, airless, flat, white.
Suddenly I sensed something. I didn’t know what it was. A vibration, perhaps. A
shift in tone or pressure. A faint change in the unheard rhythm of the
bunker … I don’t know. Whatever
it was, it
didn’t last long. A second, two at the most, and then the silence fell. Absolute
silence. It sounded very loud for a moment, then incredibly quiet. I swear I could hear
my blood running cold.

The humming had stopped.

That’s what it was.

The humming in the walls. Stopped. Gone.

No power
, I thought.
Shit, if
there’s no power
 …

And that’s when the lights went
out.

The kitchen was blacker than black.
Lightless. Sightless. As I stood there staring into the dark, a vision came to me of the
very first morning I woke up down here. I saw myself getting out of bed and groping my
way to the door and out into the corridor. Scared to death. Touching the walls. Scared
of the dark. Tapping my foot on the floor. Scared of what I couldn’t see. No
clock, no hands, no sky, no sounds, just solid darkness and a low humming sound deep
within the walls.

And now even the humming was gone.

I was nothing, existing in nothing.

‘We shouldn’t have
waited,’ I said out loud.

My voice was a foghorn.

‘Shit.’

The next thing I did was possibly the
stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

After I’d stood there for a while,
listening to Fred’s distant shouts from the bathroom – ‘Hey! What’s
going on? Where’s the light? Hey! Linus?
Linus!
’ – I suddenly
realized that I was incredibly thirsty. I don’t why. Maybe it was the adrenaline
or something, sucking out my precious fuel reserves … I really don’t
know.

All I knew was that I had to have a drink,
right now.

Without thinking, I turned on the tap, let
it run, and started feeling around in the dark for a cup. But I couldn’t find one.
I felt along the draining board, along the counter, then reached up into the cupboards.
I was panicking. You know how the dark can make you panic over stupid little things?
Well, that’s my excuse. I was panicking. I wasn’t thinking. My hands were
clattering through the cupboards, finding plates and bowls, but still no cups, and all
the time the water was streaming from the tap, splashing into the sink, draining away,
down the plughole …

And then three things happened
simultaneously.

1) my hand closed on a cup

2) a thought flashed into my head –
save
the water!

and 3) the tap started coughing, spitting
out the last few drops.

No power, no plumbing, no water.

Shit! No water!

I dropped the cup, crashed around in the
sink looking for the plug, stuck my hand over the plughole, found the plug, dropped it,
found it again, and stuck it in the plughole. But by then the water from the tap had
dried up. The tap was silent. No hissing, no gurgling, no nothing. I groaned. I dried my
hand on my shirt, groaned again, and put my hand in the sink. Hoping hoping hoping for a
touch of water …

Please
 …

There was just enough to dampen my palm.

I need to rest now.

More later.

Later.

So there I am, in the kitchen, feeling dead
and stupid and disbelieving. From the other end of the bunker I can hear Fred trying to
flush the lavatory. It brings a momentary smile to my face. He’s always doing
that. Pumping away on the handle, flush, flush, flush … only this time it
sounds different. It sounds dry and empty … waterless.

Oh no.

‘
Fred!
’ I call out.
‘
Don’t flush it! FRED!
’

But he’s too busy trying to flush. He
can’t hear me.

I start running out of the kitchen, racing
through the darkness … and run straight into the open door.
Whack!
I’m vaguely aware of the initial shock, a cracking sound, a dull thud, and for the
tiniest fraction of a second I think –
it’s OK, I’m all right, I just
ran into the door, that’s all, it’s not so bad
 – and then the truth
kicks in with a blinding roar that sears through my head and I stagger drunkenly to one
side and fall to the floor clutching at my broken nose and moaning like a baby. Jesus
Christ
, it hurts. My head’s on fire … my nose, my mouth, my
teeth … hot blood and tears streaming down my face …

‘
FRED!
’ I call out
again through bloody lips.

And then I pass out.

Next thing I know Fred’s standing
over me with a burning cigarette lighter in his hand. Jenny is behind him. Their faces
loom ghoulishly in the shadows of the flame.

‘What are you doing down there?’
says Fred.

‘Bleeding,’ I tell him.

So that’s it. We’ve got about a
millimetre of water in the sink. No food, no plumbing, no light, no heat …

No, we’ve got heat. We’ve got a
fire going in my room. Can you hear it crackling? Burning wood, table legs,
paper … nice and hot. Enough light to see what we need to see.

‘
Now
can we do
something?’ says Fred.

‘We still don’t know if
He’s gone.’

‘Of
course
He’s fucking
gone. The generator’s packed in. The lift’s stopped. We’ve got a fire
going. He wouldn’t let us have a fire, would He? If He was still here, He’d
have put it out by now.’

‘Not necessarily. He could
be –’

Fred slams his hand on the floor.
‘He’s
GONE
, Linus! He’s gone. Shit, man, what’s the
matter with you? He’s gone. Why can’t you
see
it?’

I look at Fred. ‘I don’t know. I
suppose I’m just scared.’

He shakes his head. Angry, sad, kind.
‘There’s nothing to be scared of now. He’s gone.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Believe it. He’s gone.
We’re on our own. No one’s watching us any more. Now all we’ve got to
do is get out.’

All we’ve got to do is get out.

That was a few hours ago, maybe more than a
few hours. A day, two days … who knows? I think Fred’s right. I think
He’s gone. We’ve poked at the cameras, set light to them, spat at
them … no reaction. He’s gone. I don’t know why I was so unwilling
to accept it. Maybe I’m going mad. Stir crazy. Maybe I don’t want to leave.
Maybe I’ve got so used to being down
here that the idea of
getting out is even scarier than the idea of dying.

Or maybe it’s something else.

Anyway, He’s gone.

Dead?

Possibly.

Car crash, illness, accident, it could be
anything. He fell down some stairs. He got a fish bone stuck in His throat. He drank too
much, fell over, broke His neck. Stuck His finger in a wall socket and zapped Himself.
These things happen, don’t they? People die, nothing happens.

I mean, He’s not likely to have many
friends, is He? No one’s going to miss Him. No one’s going to come calling.
And wherever we are, it’s bound to be somewhere remote. He could be lying dead
upstairs for years before anyone finds Him.

Then again, maybe I was right the first
time. Maybe He’s not dead, He’s just gone. Got fed up with the whole thing.
Got bored with it, got in his car and drove off to create another hell-hole somewhere
else.

It’s possible.

It’s also irrelevant.

We’ve been trying to get out for
hours, days, and we haven’t got anywhere at all. We’ve hit things, bashed
things, burned things, ripped things, hammered things, screamed at things. Nothing.
Nowhere. We’ve sat down in the firelight and talked about things. Nothing.
We’ve virtually burned the kitchen to the ground. Useless.

Worse than useless.

We forgot about the fridge.

I can’t believe it. We forgot about
the ice in the fridge. We
set light to the kitchen … God
knows why … it seemed like a good idea at the time … nearly fried
ourselves in the process, and all we did was burn up the kitchen, ice and all. Got hot,
got sweaty, got dry and tired, got thirsty …

We have half a cup of water left.

No days, no nights. No dates. Just times of
sleep and non-sleep. The water’s all gone. We lick condensation from the walls.
Fred hammers at the lift door with whatever he can find. Saucepans, chair legs, bits of
cooker. When they break he finds something else. The door is barely scratched.

Fred wipes sweat from his skin and sucks on
the cloth.

‘It’s salt,’ I tell him.
Thalt
. My speech is thick and slurred. ‘It’s just salt and
stuff. It’s no good.’

He sniffs and rubs his throat. His lips are
blue.

‘There’s a bottle of cleaning
stuff in the bathroom,’ he says.

‘Bleach.’

‘It’s liquid. Might be all
right. We could do something –’

‘It’s
bleach.
It’ll kill you.’

He shrugs.

Jenny lies still. Her skin is ashen-grey,
blotchy.

I stare at the fire and think of zebras.

Can’t walk, can’t get up.
Can’t speak. Mouth is foul. Tongue’s as big as a mountain. Numb.
Fred’s stopped hammering. Sits cross-legged on the floor with his head bowed, like
a Buddha in rags. Skin shrunk to his bones, eyes sunk inside his skull.

It hurts to pee.

Hurts to drink it.

Everything hurts.

Mountain … salt …

I got it.

Mountain … zebra.

Dad’s zebra.

Hey, Dad …

Listen …

I didn’t mean anything, you know.

I didn’t mean to hurt you.

OK?

I’m sorry.

Fred’s dead.

Went to the bathroom and drank the
bleach.

Howled for an hour then coughed up blood and
died.

So terrible. No words.