The Secret Bunker Trilogy

by Paul Teague

I suppose you can’t cry all the time; at some point, you have to get back to the things that you did before the death. Even though you carry that empty feeling inside you. I knew Mum and Dad were sad, but it was hidden by the routines of daily life. Piling dirty washing into the machine. Putting the used plates into the dishwasher. Cutting the grass and weeding the flower beds. Trivial, stupid things force grief aside and demand to be done. And so it was in our house.

  But I was struggling. I can only describe it as ‘searching for a signal’. That’s how it felt without Nat. When Nat had been around I’d been fine, I felt perfectly okay. But when Nat died, I was left searching desperately for something that wasn’t there anymore.

  I know all twins will tell you that. They’re incredibly close, they sometimes know what the other twin is thinking and feeling. Amazing how humans work. But this was different, it wasn’t just about closeness. I didn’t have the words to explain it at the time. Now I do. It really was as if we were fused in some way, locked together, dependent. ‘Symbiotic’ is the word I found in the online dictionary, it describes it perfectly. And so when Nat died, it wasn’t so much one death, it was more like two.

  Trouble At School

  I had real trouble adjusting to life without Nat. They handled me with kid gloves at school. Or at least for a while they did. Just like washing plates and cutting grass, real life has a habit of getting in the way. In a class of twenty teenagers, there was only so long I had to get over Nat. The reality was that they needed me fully functioning as soon as possible, there’s only so long that you can put up with a problem child in a busy classroom. So all the time, I felt as if I was desperately trying to re-establish this connection.

  It wasn’t just sadness, loss and grief. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, and I just thought it was what everybody else in the family was going through too. To be honest, I didn’t cope with it very well at all. Sometimes it would drive me mad. I just needed to get that connection back with Nat and I’d be fine. So, if other kids caught me at the wrong time, I’d just go crazy with them. A bit of stupid teasing, some playful pushing, a daft comment. Sometimes, when I was struggling with my ‘disconnection’ with Nat, I would just lash out.

  Before I knew it, the hushed conversations had begun. Mum and Dad were being called in after school to chat with my class teacher. When it gets really serious, the head teacher is involved and Mum and Dad are having those conversations during the working day. And before you know it, you’re being introduced to a man with an unusual tie, called Doctor Pierce.

  The Holiday Itinerary

  I wasn’t unusually troubled by that logo at the time because I was more interested in the details of the holiday. It made no difference to me, of course, but this holiday had to be taken in term time. That was okay for us, because Harriet could come out of nursery and David would be able to come out of school for a week. Mum and Dad had pulled this one off before, and so long as you called it an ‘educational visit’ and made a big thing of the incredible learning experiences involved, the head teacher usually let you get away with it. Mum and Dad didn’t bother mentioning the long morning lie-ins, the evening DVDs and the trips to our favourite burger restaurant. Always best to miss those bits out when talking to the head teacher.

  We seemed to be pretty free to do as we pleased for most of the time. But they were very insistent about that trip to the bunker. In fact, although it was written in a really cheery way, it was made pretty clear that if we didn’t make that bunker visit, there would be a ‘penalty’ to pay. I scanned words like ‘publicity opportunity’, ‘sponsor involvement’ and ‘extra spending money’ – enough to know that if there was one thing that had to happen on this holiday, it was getting to that bunker at the appointed time.

  Chapter Seven

  Jigsaw

  There were three pieces that didn’t quite fit in this jigsaw. Yes, they were part of the overall picture, but they felt as if they’d been taken out of another set. Why do I remember Nat moving, for instance? That image doesn’t belong in this picture. Nat died, I was there at the funeral. It was the way it happened that made me remember it. I know now that when people die it’s not like it usually happens on TV. It can be slower than that in real life, it takes more time. It’s actually quite hard for people to die, in fact, particularly if you’re trying to kill them.

  People die of all sorts of crazy things every day – such as slipping on ice, choking on toast and even laughing themselves to death. But to purposefully kill them is quite hard. It’s all there on the internet, people die of silly things. I did say that home education is nothing like school. I have plenty of time to research this stuff. So, it was perfectly possible that Nat could have moved after being hit by the black car. Again, my source was the internet, so I hope it’s correct, but it was on a reputable site.

  After death occurs, there’s a period called ‘clinical death’ where a person can be revived. Well, Nat was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident, even though the body was still taken away in the ambulance. The blood on my clothes was certainly for real and Nat was completely still in the road as the medical staff scurried around the body, doing their best to save another life. I don’t really know what death looks like, but even to my thirteen-year-old self, Nat looked dead to me. But probably only a thirteen-year-old would have seen this.

  The adults were all talking and busy. Mum was being comforted by a police officer and I was chatting to an ambulance man, close enough to see what was going on.

  From nowhere, a man joined the huddle of medical staff around Nat’s body. He showed them some sort of card, I’m guessing that it must have been identification. Whatever it was, they jumped at it and it was obvious even to me that he was now in charge.

  As they started to move away from Nat, and in that second that they were distracted, and thrown off balance by the arrival of this man, he did something to Nat. I couldn’t see what it was – it wasn’t an injection, but whatever he did had the same motion as giving somebody an injection. Nat’s body didn’t do anything immediately, in fact I only saw the movement just as the body was being lifted into the ambulance.

  It could have been anything, of course. I have no knowledge of medical procedures and he certainly looked as if he knew what he was doing. It was just very surprising that this man had been the same person who had distracted Mum immediately before Nat’s accident.

  Meeting Doctor Pierce

  When you’re a kid, you’re introduced to all sorts of adults and people in authority and you’re expected to just accept it as a normal part of life. Yet, at school, at home and even in TV programmes, you’re warned constantly about ‘stranger danger’. What’s a kid supposed to think, for goodness' sake? One minute I’m being told that I have to see this doctor who I really don’t like, then next minute I’m being told to alert a responsible adult if someone talks to me and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Well, that’s exactly how Doctor Pierce made me feel. In fact ‘uncomfortable’ wasn’t the word for it.

  It wasn’t because I was frightened of him or anything like that. He just had real problems communicating with children. He was so intelligent and high flying, that I really struggled to relate to him.

  And that tie of his, what was that all about? I never really listened to what he was saying, because I was watching that tie all the time. The metallic quality of that logo was really unusual. Metallic objects usually catch the light and often reflect different colours based on the surroundings. Only Doctor Pierce’s tie didn’t do that.

  The metallic logo on his tie seemed to have a life of its own and reflected colours that weren’t even in the room.

  Or at least I’d noticed that whenever I was anywhere near him, that’s what happened.

  The Day Of The Visit

  It was pretty amusing on the day of the visit to the bunker. In fact, if I never saw my family again – and I had to consider that possibility at the time – it was a pretty nice ‘final day’ together.

  Mum wa
s so funny. She got a real bee in her bonnet about us being tidy if the holiday people were going to take a publicity photograph of us all. Dad was a bit stressed too. We all knew money was tight, but that extra spending money that we were due to pick up … well, anybody would have thought it was the Holy Grail that we were collecting.

  Dad was determined to get there on time and bank that extra cash. It was one of those scenes of family chaos, where Mum’s trying to get us all decent and ready at a certain time, Harriet’s rebelling by spilling juice all over herself five minutes before we go out and Dad’s doing a big ‘countdown to leaving the house’ to make sure none of us gets distracted by our tech.

  The only problem is, we didn’t have an internet connection in this holiday house. Can you believe that? Who doesn’t have a broadband connection these days? Well apparently, some rural areas in Southern Scotland don’t. Give me city life any day. So it’s fair to say that we were all pretty desperate to get connected. And they had free wireless at the bunker. Thank goodness, civilization at last.

  Mum and Dad refused to take all of our tech, they were too embarrassed, so the deal was – as we were ‘guests’ on this visit – that we’d just take Mum’s laptop and my phone and have five minutes ‘catch-up’ time in the cafe.

  That’s why Mum got caught outside the doors when the darkness came. It was ‘tech-time’ and we had left my phone and Mum’s laptop in the car.

  Calibration

  The woman was sitting uneasily on the low, hessian-covered chair. It was a small concession to comfort, though they both knew that comfort was not going to be a primary concern in what happened next. The doctor moved over to the computer equipment and began to make hand gestures on the screen.

  This was advanced technology, recognizable for what it was – screens, speakers, camera, tech hubs – yet somehow unfamiliar.

  As the doctor moved his hands, there was a faint, pulsing glow just beneath the skin on the woman’s neck. It was where the device had entered her body only minutes before.

  Whatever it was, it was receiving some signal from the equipment in that room. She could barely feel it; it brought no pain or discomfort, but she knew that something was going on.

  The doctor never spoke to her while all of this was happening. He didn’t offer words of reassurance or explanation as you might expect from a medical professional.

  The woman had experienced all different types of doctor in her lifetime – friendly, brash, superior, calming – but never one like this.

  This man made no effort to establish a rapport or demonstrate an appropriate bedside manner.

  If she had to describe how he made her feel, she’d probably say, ‘Uncomfortable’.

  Chapter Eight

  Underground

  After all the mayhem, we did actually get to the bunker in time. At first, we were really disappointed. When Mum and Dad had been talking about ‘Cold War bunkers’ and ‘nuclear proliferation’ I’d conjured up all sorts of images of an imposing military base surrounded by barbed wire and missiles. Okay, I knew this was disused and now a visitor attraction, but it just had the appearance of a boring cottage from the outside, with a few suggestions of possible military use as you drove up to the car park.

  I don’t know what it is about government buildings, but they very definitely have a ‘look’ and a ‘feel’ about them. They’re well-built, strong and robust. They’re also businesslike, functional and plain. That’s how I’d describe the cottage. For all intents and purposes it was a regular cottage. But the guttering was metal, not plastic; the fence posts were concrete and nothing was done for decoration, it was purely functional. The land surrounding the cottage was scattered with man-made knolls, some of which had aerials and dishes perched on them, others looked like ventilation outlets and the rest were just concrete stores. It was a rural and hilly area, with a mobile- phone mast close by and lines of pylons dotted along the horizon.

  It became immediately clear from a map just outside the main entrance that this was just the shop and ticket-buying area, the real Secret Bunker was concealed deep beneath the ground.

  Our sheer excitement at the adventure that awaited us beyond the ticket desk distracted us from the fact that our hosts had not turned up. There was a message waiting for us as we were handed our free tickets, apologizing for the delay and asking us to go ahead and look around the bunker. We’d be joined in the cafe in about one hour’s time. By somebody with the surname Pierce.

  A Sudden Sound

  My anxiety has taken over again and I’m not really thinking now about what happened just before I lost sight of Mum. I’m really hungry and considering making my way along the corridor again. I’ve tried calling out to Dad, but my cries are just returned to me as an echo. Why can’t they hear me? They weren’t that far away. And what the devil is going on out there?

  Mum was caught outside the closing blast doors, there’s no way she can get through those. The sign outside said that they weigh three tonnes. When the alarms sounded, they closed automatically.

  Funny that: they looked as if they’d be manually operated, they had handles on them the same as the ones that you see in submarines, the type that you have to turn several times to open and close. I don’t think I’d be able to hear her through them, either.

  I thought that most places had emergency lights when something unusual like this happened. I suppose this place is just a museum now, but still, we’re so deep underground, why didn’t the lights come on? My mind starts to race again with all the different scenarios and possibilities. The simple fact is, I just don’t know what’s going on. I tried to get up and walk along the corridor one more time, but I just gave up again. It’s so dark, if only I could hear somebody or something, I’d have a destination to aim for. I’m pretty sure that if I can’t hear Dad, he must have made it past the next set of doors, so all I’m going to reach is a dead end if I move forward.

  And then I’m startled, because out of the silence and blackness, I can hear a noise. It’s not a person, there is no voice or movement. It is the faint hum of something that sounds electrical, as if somebody just turned the power on.

  The Other Pieces

  Three years on, and I was still pretty sure of what I saw. But as a thirteen-year-old child you receive the world as it’s presented to you by adults. Nat was dead, Mum and Dad were distraught and there was a funeral. It must be so. Only I knew what I’d seen. I couldn’t explain it, but I knew that it had happened.

  And what about that man who’d distracted Mum? Was it a coincidence that he was there at that time? In films, if somebody has a heart attack on a plane, they always ask for a doctor. There’s usually one on board. So was this just a happy coincidence?

  As a thirteen-year-old I was unsure. My sixteen-year-old self was definite that it was no coincidence. And there was one thing that I knew with complete certainty about that day. Again, it was a feeling in the moment, an instant of understanding, vision and acceptance. As I stepped forward with Nat, then stepped back to take a look at that coin on the ground, I looked up. A black car was coming at us at speed, Nat just hadn’t seen it. In that moment I looked up and saw the eyes of the driver. This was no driver error, no careless steering or momentary lapse of concentration. He was looking at me directly in the eyes and the car was being aimed straight at us.

  Chapter Nine

  Concealed

  The Secret Bunker was amazing. I was at that age where I could often take or leave Mum and Dad’s family days out, but this one captivated the entire family.

  There was nothing ornate or subtle about the place. It was a massive concrete bunker buried one hundred feet under the ground. You reached it via a 450-feet sloping tunnel, accessed through the cottage. The bunker itself was incredible. There were offices, control rooms, dormitories and bathrooms. There was a chapel and even a radio studio. I hadn’t a clue why anybody would want to hear a DJ playing tunes after a nuclear apocalypse, but Dad informed me that radio would be used to trans
mit important messages from the Government in the event of an emergency. I think I’d prefer the DJ.

  We found what must have been a mini cinema on our explorations, and inside they were showing Cold War films in black and white. Part of me wanted to laugh at these films, another part of me knew how deadly serious they were. They were explaining what to do in case of a nuclear attack. Men with really posh voices used phrases such as ‘Duck and cover’ and ‘Protect and survive’ and you’d see old-fashioned school children practising what to do when the bomb went off. It only struck me looking back how ominous the sound of the sirens had been in those old films.

  Twenty-four Hours After The Darkness

  It’s only a faint hum at first, and I can feel it as much as see it, because with the noise comes a small vibration through the floor. Whatever is creating this must be pretty big and powerful – or extremely close – as I’m feeling it through a thick wall of concrete. It is building slowly, and it doesn’t feel to me like a generator, it’s not a sound I’ve ever heard before.

  Still this wretched darkness though, I’d had a sudden leap of hope when the humming had started, expecting the lights to come on and everything to be resolved. What I’d give for this all to be sorted. In an instant, the humming alters pitch, as if somebody just changed the gears of a car. It has an urgency now and I get the sensation for the first time in however many hours it has been that something is changing around me, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.