The Secret Bunker Trilogy: Part One: Darkness Falls (11 page)

‘I’m sure an intelligent lad like you understands how important this is
and that it’s really crucial that we don’t interfere with any mission
critical issues before then,’

The ‘Intelligent lad’ worked just as well as the ‘Good question’
technique. I really must try to be less easily flattered.

‘So what I’d appreciate is if you could restrict your access to Green
Zone areas
only
until we receive the briefing? Is that a reasonable
thing to ask Dan?’ she finished.

Of course it was a reasonable thing to ask.
But remember Kate, I’m a twelve year old boy.
I know what ‘reasonable’ is. I understand what ‘reasonable’ is.
But I don’t always like
being
‘reasonable’. However, I’m not going to pick any fights right now.
I agree to restrict my movements to the Green Zones and keep out of
the Red Zones until we get the full briefing.
I reassure Kate that I wouldn’t want to put the lives of my family at
risk. I tell her how important it is to me that we find my mum safe and
make sure that she’s properly looked after. And I hope she doesn’t spot me using her own techniques on her.
I’m a quick learner.
‘I think that’s a really great plan Kate,’ I smile.

How could she have been so stupid as to go back for the tech?
If she’d followed her instincts, they would have just had the time to get
inside those doors before they closed. As it was, the darkness was swiftly closing in.
Beyond the cottage it was beginning to look like it was dark outside,
even though it was mid-afternoon.
Inside the cottage even the lights were struggling, this was like no
other darkness she’d ever seen before. She felt fine and her young companion seemed fine. She knew that she needed to seek shelter and the bunker seemed the
best place to do it.

But there didn’t
appear
to be an immediate risk to them.
What would she have told the kids to do?
Wait by the entrance. It’s the safest thing to do.
If anybody comes out of there, that’s where they’ll exit. If anybody goes in there, that’s where they’ll enter.
In a situation where the options were very limited, the best thing to do
seemed to wait by the blast doors.
Unknown to her, Dan had made exactly the same decision on the other
side of the doors. So they waited, sitting down outside the huge red blast doors as they
became surrounded by the darkness. It neither harmed them nor stopped them breathing, but its
impenetrable blackness was completely debilitating, any movement
was completely out of the question.

She imagined that this must be like blindness, only her mind allowed
her to picture the doors in front of them, the corridor behind them and
her young son only metres away, but all alone.

He’d seen his chance when he was able to reconnect with the mother
at the training centre. Driving her to the hospital and checking her in, she seemed like she’d
recovered okay after the accident. He didn’t really converse with her, just did his job, but on the surface
she looked to be fine.
It had been what the police a ‘cold case’ since that horrible day when
the car had hit the child. When
he’d
hit the child.
He hadn’t meant to, but he’d been the one in the car at the time. That sickening sound would live with him forever.
Out of the blue she’d ended up in his car again.

What were the chances of that?
Very high as it turned out. He knew that in this line of work, things had a funny way of
connecting. Often, completely unrelated people and events would come together.

It wasn’t the
actual
car.
But the same make.
More gadgets, more tech, more devices than three years ago. But still the same car, same design, same black colour.
The original had been destroyed of course.
DNA - a great thing or a dangerous thing.
All depends who you work for of course. He’d had time to plant a tracking device on her before he left her in the
hospital. One that couldn’t be traced by anybody else.
You didn’t work in this line of business for so long without learning a
few tricks. He’d actually bought it from a High Street electrical store.
Hilarious! They had all this kit, but never thought anybody capable of buying a
few bits of electrical circuit from a local store.
International espionage foiled by Maplin.
Sure, he’d had to adapt it a bit. But you could fool the organisation using bits of kit that
anybody
can
buy for less than a tenner.
He knew that if she had surfaced again, then the story was just about
to become clear.

Yes, you had to be
very
patient in this business. Random threads could appear from every direction and seem to have
nothing at all in common. But he knew that the threads in this particular story were just being
drawn together. He was sure that he’d discover the reason for the accident and how it
all tied in together.

The tracker would help him to figure out why she had appeared back
on the radar after three years away from it completely. But when he realised where the tracker was taking him - following in
his car a mile behind - he knew that this wasn’t just going to be the
conclusion of
any
old story. This was where
all
the threads from his work were going to lead. This was the end game.

When the lady and the youngster re-enter the cottage, he immediately
spots the mother. He can guess what’s happening outside, he’s prepared for it of course,
but he didn’t think that it was going to play out like this.
In this place. And with these people involved.
How do they link up with this? He doesn’t know yet, but he’ll keep close because it’s unlikely to end
well.
And after losing her child like that, doesn’t she deserve to have
someone like him looking out for her? Where did the kid come from? That might cause a problem later, but first things first.
The sirens are sounding, the first release must have begun.
She’s making her way to the bunker, like everybody else is. That’s where
he
needs to be too.
He follows at a distance, an expert at not being seen, but is quick to
realise that they’re not going to make it to the bunker doors in time.

He knows that when the first release is completed, they will not be
able to see a thing. So, she’s doing the best thing, the most sensible strategy right now is
to wait by those doors. She makes good decisions under stress.
Sooner or later they’ll be spotted and he’ll be able to get in.
He’ll just pretend to be bunker staff, nobody will know. He can patch in clearance levels when he gets inside, should be simple
enough.

So as the woman and the child sit closely together on the left hand side
of the bunker doors, they are completely unaware that only a few feet
away from them, standing in complete silence and completely
unknown to them, is the man who will be forced to shoot one of them
in the next 36 hours.

I’m pretty amazed that Kate and the two security guys just let me go
after that.
I suppose that they’ll know exactly where I’m going and what I’m up to
from the surveillance cameras that are positioned wherever I go in
this place. I assume that pretty well every room I go into must be monitored too.

This place seems to run on biometrics and although I’m not entirely
sure what that means, I suspect that everything I do here is directly
tracked back to me. Which means that I can’t really get away with anything. The best bet, as far as I can tell at present, is to carry on exploring and
get a feel for this place. Really, we’re all waiting for that mission announcement which must
still be a few hours away. Plenty of time to have a good snoop around.

First though, I decide to head directly for the bathroom and shower
areas because I want to get a look at my neck. I’m not really sure what happened to me in the MedLab earlier, I
assume I was just checked over to make sure everything was fine.

That reminds me of another unusual thing that happened earlier. How come the darkness didn’t have any impact on me? I was in the entrance area at the same time as Dad, David and Harriet
and the bunker staff from the cottage area were also coming below
ground at that time. So why are they in the glass pods and I’m not?
I feeling totally fine now. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that after the temporary discomfort
of being all alone in that corridor for so many hours, and having
stuffed myself with food, I’m back to 100 per cent Dan.
If they have put one of those weird, glowing things into my neck, I
certainly can’t detect it. Neither does it seem to be making any impact on me, I can’t feel it
pulsating or vibrating in any way, so I assume I don’t have one.
I enter the bathroom area and head straight for a mirror.

The light is unusual below ground, you can’t quite catch the full light
that you would if the area had a window to natural light.
I inspect my neck closely, on both sides, but I can see and feel nothing. I’m pretty sure I’m clear. I see a mirror that is lit better, so I go over to it and check again. Everything is fine.
Whatever Kate and the security guys have going on, I seem to be well
clear of it. I reckon it’s probably just something bunker related. A communication device or something like that. But I resolve to check out everybody that I encounter from now on to
see if they also have one of these devices fitted.

Satisfied that all is as it should be, I leave the bathroom area and start
to walk along the corridor once again. It’s pretty quiet here, the main hub at present must be in the Control
Room which I’m guessing has changed quite a lot since I last saw it. I’d expect that to be a Red Zone area and although, in theory I’m
allowed in there, I decide that the best strategy is to explore as many
Green Zone areas as I can and just to take a mental note of anything
unusual that is Red Zone.

There are two levels to the bunker, we explored them both thoroughly
when I was here with the family. That was only two days ago, but it seems like so much has happened
since then. I haven’t really had time to think about what’s going on outside.
It’s easy to forget down here, with no windows or view of the world
beyond these concrete walls. It’s a strange feeling, it really does feel that outside doesn’t exist
anymore.

I’d really like to know what’s being done about Mum, I was so
distracted by trying to take care of my own interests in my last
exchange with Kate that I didn’t push that point.

It’s good to know that she’s okay, but I picture her locked outside the
blast doors and hope that she’s okay. She’ll probably end up in one of those pods before I get to see her, but
at least if she winds up like Dad, David and Harriet, I’ll know that she’s
safe.
And who was that who was with her?
I only caught a glimpse. Whoever it was, they were my sort of age and my sort of height.
I’m doubting my judgement now, it
can’t
have been Nat, that would be
ridiculous. They certainly had the same look and hair colouring though.

So many questions, so few answers. There’s nothing I can do to progress things right now, so I decide to
head for Level 2.
When we’d toured the bunker earlier, we had bypassed the lift. It had looked pretty basic at that time but now, like everything else in
this transformed bunker, it’s definitely something that I want to try.

As I approach the lift a member of the bunker staff gets in ahead of me.
‘Just hold the doors please!’ I shout, catching the lift before the doors
close. I had expected to see only two floor options in the lift, but there are
four. Well, I say four, but there are two unusually labelled buttons above
the marker for Level 1. ‘It must go up to the cottage,’ I think to myself, ‘But why two buttons?’
‘Where do the other floors lead to?’ I ask my companion in the lift.
‘They’re redundant,’ she replies, ‘There are only the two levels in this
place, the rest are there in case they extend the bunker in future.’ She can see that I’m curious, so she presses buttons 3 and 4.
Nothing happens. No lights, no noises, nothing at all.
‘How about those two?’ I ask, pointing at the unusual symbols above
the button marked ‘1’.
‘Nothing again,’ she replies.

She presses both of them.
Individually and then together.
She must have kids in her life beyond the bunker, she’s very patient.
They must be young kids because she’s very ‘show and tell’.

‘See’, she says.
Again nothing.
She presses the button for Level 2 and we begin our descent.
I had been thinking that maybe it was just a simple case of a broken
lift. But no, those buttons are clearly not for use.
The lift arrives on Level 2, the doors open and the lady steps out,
giving me a smile as she does so. I notice a faint, red pulsating light in her neck. It is
very
faint this time, I’d never have noticed it if I hadn’t known to
look carefully.
‘Must just be something to do with all the people here’ I think to
myself, resolving to ask Kate next time I see her.

I’m about to step out of the lift to begin my exploration of Level 2
when an attack of inquisitiveness makes me step back inside. I’ve never been one of those people who just accepts things at face
value. Ask Mum, she’ll tell you.
So for instance, when she told me at age five not to touch the kettle
because she’d just boiled it, what do you think I did? I opened the lid and touched the water with my finger of course!
And when Mum asked me not to touch the kitchen blender when I was
age seven because the lid wasn’t on, what do you think I did? Well I pressed the button of course!
And created a massive mess of blended strawberries and bananas.
So, when the kind lady told me that the extra lift buttons didn’t work and even went so far as to demonstrate - what do you think I did?
I needed to prove it to myself of course.
Why would anybody add extra buttons if they weren’t needed?

This place looks like everything has been designed very carefully to
me, I can’t imagine anybody leaving a few spares around in case they’d
forgotten anything. So, I decide to put it to the test.
I press the weird symbols first.
The first button, then the second button, then both of them together.
My heart gives a small jump. There is a glimmer of something when I touch the buttons together, a
momentary jolt, but it stalls. One of the buttons is illuminated.
I try again.
Same again, a small jolt, but no movement.
You have to press both buttons at once to get that though.
One of the buttons remains illuminated.