The Bunker (The Infected Series Book 2)

by Justin Gowland

  THE BUNKER

  The Infected Series: Book Two

  Written By

  Justin Gowland

  Edit By

  Veronica Smith

  (Thanks Babe)

  Justin Gowland

  Copyright Justin Gowland 2014

  Published at Amazon

  Disclaimer

  All characters contained herein are fictional and all similarities to actual persons, living or dead are purely coincidental. Places and information, while some may be real have been altered for the story and should be taken as such.

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my readers that have made my writing worthwhile. I would also like to say thank you to my friends on Facebook. Who have helped with beta reading and editing. Thanks guys for your support and help with this new set of books. I would also like to say I have inserted certain names into this book as a thank you to my friends on Facebook that have supported my writing. Read the book and you’ll know who you are.

  Chapter One

  We all stood looking into the dark hole that was the entrance. I could feel everyone’s hesitance about the bunker, mainly because I was feeling exactly the same. Chris walked slowly forward and stood to the side of the doorway peering into the darkness. When nothing came out at us he stepped inside and a few seconds later a light flicked on. I heard the women behind me sigh in relief.

  Chris stepped into the door way and said “You lot coming inside?”

  I walked forward and stepped inside. The room had a semi-circular desk in the centre. The walls were painted a cream and there were chairs placed along the walls. Behind the desk stood two lifts with metal doors. The ceiling had that ugly office vibe with the lowered panel ceiling in a dull grey, with large strip lights. Giving the entrance the feeling of a doctor’s office or even worse a lawyers. I walked over and stood next to the desk to give everyone behind me room to come inside. As the last of the group passed through the door, Chris pushed the door closed and it hissed and then clunked with the sound of the locks engaging.

  “Well I can assume that there is no one in here otherwise the desk would have been occupied and the lights would be on.” I said.

  “Looks that way.” Chris said walking over and pressing the call button on the lift panel.

  After a short while we could hear the lift rising inside the shaft followed by the usual ding of the door opening. We all stepped inside and I pressed the button for the first floor. The doors closed and we all felt the lift drop down the shaft toward the floor below. I could feel the braking of the lift and there was a slight lurch as it stopped. Chris and I were the first ones out into a large dimly lit hallway. I covered the left and Chris covered right, both of us looking for any kind of threat. After what seemed an age the rest of the group emerged and we stood huddled together in the hallway.

  Chris was still looking outward when he said in his rumbling voice “I think we are going to have to split up.”

  “No, I think that’s a bad idea.” Tracy whispered.

  Chris looked over his shoulder at her and said “Look if we were going to get jumped they would have done it upstairs, rather than chancing it down here. Also they wouldn’t really know which floor we had chosen.”

  “He has a point Tracy.” Jay said.

  “Look how about we do it this way. I take one person with me and Chris can take another the rest can stay here with Jay. If they hear any kind of trouble, then they can jump in the lift and get out of here.” I said.

  “Hold on! Why do I have to be the one to look after the others?” Jay said.

  Smiling I said “Ok, tell you what. How about I stay here and you can go have a look round the dark hidden base.”

  “Well now that you say it like that.” Jay said edging that little bit closer to the open lift doors.

  “Next thing is who’s going with Chris?” I asked even though I knew who it was going to be.

  “I’ll go.” Tracy said edging to stand behind Chris.

  “I’ll go with Marc.” Mary said before I even had the chance to ask.

  “Marc, I think we should agree on coming back here in an hour. It should give us enough time to have a look round.” Chris said.

  Nodding I checked my mags, webbing and rifle. Dropping my rucksack on the floor I raised my rifle rolled my shoulders and then headed off down the hallway with Mary slowly following behind me. The first few doors I came to had signs saying maintenance and cleaning supplies. I didn’t think that there was going to be anything worthwhile inside so we kept on going. After about fifty meters the hallway went round a corner to the right. Placing my back to the wall I slowly slid up to the corner. Mary was stood next to me with her back to the wall. Her eyes were wide open and they looked like the size of dinner plates.

  Lifting my finger to my lips, I pointed to myself and then round the corner. I then pointed at her and to where she was standing. She nodded to let me know she understood what I wanted. Raising the rifle I slipped round the corner and stood looking at some large double doors.

  “Mary you might as well come round.” I said.

  She edged round the corner and looked at the doors and sighed.

  “What did you expect?” I asked.

  “I don’t know to tell you the truth.” She replied.

  I stood thinking of how we were going to do this. I mean, she had no weapons with her and we had no idea what was on the other side of the doors. I came up with a solution, granted it wasn’t a very good one, but it was the best I could come up with given the situation.

  “Mary I want you to go back round the corner and stand where you were before. I’m going to go through the doors and if you hear shooting I want you to run back to Jay and the others. Ok?” I asked.

  “But what will happen to you?”

  “Hopefully I might be able to shoot my way out and I’ll catch up with you.”

  “Please be careful.” She said before giving me a quick kiss on the cheek and running round the corner.

  Shaking my head I took a deep breath and flicked the safety off on the rifle. Stepping up close to the doors I listened out for any noise coming from the other side. Nothing stood out so I carefully pushed on the right hand door. Whoever maintained these bunkers must have been good at their job, because there was very little noise from the hinges. Inside the room was roughly the size of a basketball court and there were desks all over. At one end was a huge bank of monitors. The lights in here were a little brighter than those out in the hallway. I was looking for any kind of movement, but the only movement came from a set of numbers in the top left hand corner of a large screen mounted on a wall. As I moved round the desks to get a better look at the numbers, I heard a door open. Spinning round and raising my rifle I saw someone standing at the entrance to the room.

  “Don’t Shoot!” Mary cried out.

  “God woman I nearly shit myself.” I shouted.

  “I’m sorry but when I didn’t hear any shooting I thought it would be ok to come in.”

  “I would have come and got you and I haven’t even had a chance to check out the other doors yet.” Pointing to three doors leading off the large room.

  Mary slowly threaded her way through the desks and came to stand beside me looking at the numbers on the screen. I turned to look at them and noticed that they were steadily climbing. What the fuck did that mean? Looking round at the desks I could see each had their own work station. This must have been the office or something.

  “Marc do you know what those numbers are?” Mary asked.

  “Sorry, the only thing I can see is that they are increasing. We’ll figure it out later on. ” I answered.

  She shrugg
ed her shoulders and followed me over to the nearest of the three doors. As we got closer I noticed that there was lettering stencilled on to it. Officer in Command was written about a third of the way down the door. I tried the handle and found it unlocked. Pushing the door open we saw a reasonable sized office with a desk, chairs and filing cabinets. Closing the door we headed to the next and again a third of the way down was lettering, this time saying Second in Command. I took a quick glance inside and it was another office decked out in much the same way as the first. The last door took me by surprise it was signed Toilets, opening it we saw a small area then two doors one marked for males the other females.

  Looking round the rest of the room I saw that there were no more entrances or exits. So this had to the main operations hub for the bunker. We headed back the way we had come and met up with Jay and the other two women. I was just about to let them know what we had found when Chris and Tracy came walking down the hall.

  “What did you find?” Chris asked as he came to a stop.

  “There’s some kind of operations centre down that way, a maintenance room and cleaning supplies.” I said.

  “We’ve had some good luck down that way. You’d all best come and see for yourselves.” He said smiling as he turned round and walked the way he had just come.

  Everyone followed Chris and Tracy down the hallway to double doors. We followed them through the doors and I swear my jaw nearly hit the floor. It was a dining room/kitchen that was roughly the same size as the operations room that Mary and I had found.

  “Oh my god! Is there any food?” Mary asked.

  “We checked the pantry and fridges and they seem to be stocked with dry goods and frozen goods but nothing fresh.” Tracy said.

  “The bonus is there seems to be enough in there to last a group our size a good long while.” Chris said.

  “How about we have something to eat?” One of the other women asked timidly, to be honest I think that was the first time I had heard either of the other women say anything.

  “That’s not too bad an idea.” Tracy said.

  “Hang on ladies. We still have the rest of the bunker to check out first.” I said.

  “But it’s been awhile since we last had a good meal!” Tracy said.

  Chris looked at everyone and then said “How about we do this, Jay you stay here and guard the women whilst they make themselves some food. Marc and I will check out the rest of the bunker.”

  “I suppose, I can do that.” Jay said.

  “Right we’ll be back once we’ve checked out the lower floors.” Chris said turning to leave the dining room.

  I followed him down the hallway to the lifts. Pressing the call button we waited for the either one of the lifts to arrive.

  Looking at Chris I asked “How the hell is this place being powered?”

  “What? Oh sorry my mind was wandering. The bunkers were built with small hydroelectric power plants. They’re powered by underground rivers. That’s why they were built in places like this.” He said.

  A set of lift doors opened and we stepped inside. Chris leaned over and pressed the button for the second floor. The doors closed and we felt the lift drop slowly downwards toward the next level. The lift jerked to a stop and the doors opened to a small well lit room with one door. Stepping to either side of the door, Chris counted to five and then pulled the door open. I moved to right as the door came open and Chris headed to the left. On this side of the door was a large double width corridor that stretched for about one hundred meters, on either side of it were four doors. We walked slowly down the corridor to the first doors. The doors all looked alike, the only difference was the signs stencilled to them. The one on the left hand side of the hallway said Communications and the door opposite said Network Operations. I took communications and pushed the door open stepping inside with my rifle raised covering the corners of the small room. There wasn’t much to see inside, a few desks and computers. The thing that stood out was the one wall completely covered with dials and switches. I returned to the hallway and waited for Chris to come out of the doorway opposite. After about five minutes he walked out shaking his head.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  Looking back over his shoulder he said “There’s row after row of servers in there, but no one around.”

  “Come on let’s get the rest of this place done, then head back for some food.” I said moving on to the next doorway.

  The one on my side had Security on the door and the opposite one had Armoury on it.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Chris said with a grin on his face.

  Opening the security door I stepped inside and saw a layout I was familiar with. The room was setup pretty much the same way that my room back at the labs had been. Looking at the screens I could see movement in two of them. The first was the kitchen on the first floor, the women were moving around placing pots and pans on the stoves whilst I could see Jay sitting in the background watching. The other screen that held movement was the armoury across the hallway. Chris was moving from one weapon stand to another touching the rifles and other items with what looked like reverence. Leaving the room I walked down to the next doorway and saw it had Gym on it. Opening the door I didn’t have to go inside as it was an open space with mats in the centre and surrounded by weights and running machines. I heard footsteps and turned to see Chris heading toward me. The door opposite had Range on it. It didn’t take much imagination to know what was on the other side. The last two doors surprised me to say the least. The one on my side just said Changing Rooms and the door Chris was about to check threw us both for a loop with Swimming Pool written on it.

  The changing rooms were just that two rooms separated by a small wall of lockers and showers at each end. The swimming pool on the other hand was half the size of an Olympic pool. This bunker was getting more and more surprising the deeper we went and we still had two more levels to go. Heading back to the lifts I was trying to figure out what was going to be on the next floors. I mean it stood to reason that there would be some sort of barracks or living accommodation. Taking the lift down to level three was pretty much the same as taking the lift down to first two levels. The doors opened on a large open area that had couches and seats scattered around. Along the walls were bookshelves and large screen TV’s. In each corner was a single door and above the doors were signs saying Bunkroom 1 through to Bunkroom 4. I walked over to the first door and pushed it open and looked inside. There was a row of lockers and beds on each side of the room and what looked like a bathroom at the end. I counted the beds and came up with thirty beds per room. This would mean this level alone would hold one hundred and twenty personnel that didn’t take into account officers. At the corner of each room there was a laundry and clothing stores with various sizes of uniforms.

  “Looks like they had a good idea with this place.” I said turning back to the room.

  “Looks like it. Come on let’s check out the last floor.” Chris said heading back to the lifts.

  The last floor was probably the most surprising of all there were eighteen rooms and they each had their own bathrooms and small kitchenettes. The rooms were quite sparse with decorations but each had a large double bed and TV area. Really they were small apartments only they were four floors underground. These must have been for the high ranking officers or V.I.Ps that were supposed to get evacuated here. Taking our time we checked each of them and found no one hiding anywhere. We headed back to the first floor and the large kitchen. The women had made a good start on the food and as Chris and I entered the smell of cooking hit us in the face. My stomach grumbled with the smell and I went over to sit beside Jay, who was watching the women busying themselves round the large kitchen.

  “Find anything?” Jay asked.

  “Let’s wait till we get food inside us before we talk about what we found.” Chris said.

  It wasn’t long before we were all sat at one of the tables and the food was piled in front of us. The women had made
a meat broth and homemade bread. They had even found some bottles of wine and a couple of cans of lager. We ate and drank in silence. I pushed my plate away and looked at each of us sat round the table. We were all dirty and probably smelt to high heaven, but each had a sort of satisfied smile on our faces.

  “So what did you find down there?” Jay asked again.

  I looked at Chris and nodded to let him know this was his show and I was just along for the ride. He grimaced and started to let our group know what we had found further down. When Chris got to the pool and the showers the women made a collective sigh. I just shook my head and looked around the room. When he had finished telling everyone about the levels, it was decided that we should make the fourth floor our home for the time being. The women said that they would call in on the third floor and go through the clothing stores and find fresh new clothes. I stood and walked over to where our rucksacks were stacked and picked mine up. Leaving the others to talk I headed for the lifts and down to the four floor. Turning right as I left the lift I headed to the room furthest away from the lift. Walking inside I dropped my rucksack near the wardrobe and place my rifle at the foot of the bed. I looked at the bed and thought how comfortable it would be to sleep on it instead of the hard floor. I then caught sight of my hands, they were covered in dirt and blood. There was no way I was climbing into any bed in the state I was in. Heading for the small bathroom I leaned in and turned the light on. One look in the mirror told me that I was filthy. My hair was all matted and greasy, the beard I had grown was sticking out from my face at different angles.

  The shower looked like the gods had installed it. I turned the handles and hot water gushed out of the large head. Turning the cold till the water felt just right, I shed my filthy clothes and walked under the flow of cleansing water. I’m sure the noise that I made sounded like an orgasm only a man can make. I stood there feeling all the filth, worry and upset get washed down the drain and away from my poor mind and body. After half an hour under the water, I stepped out into the bathroom feeling much better. Grabbing the rough towel from the hanger I towelled myself down and headed for the bed. I sat on the bed with the towel round my waist and looked at the room. It was as secure as any place could be and to tell the truth I was looking forward to getting some sleep. Lying down I looked at the plain grey ceiling and closed my eyes.