by David Moody
Cole left Taylor and disappeared into the kitchen himself. He’d make do with whatever was available.
The rows of industrial fridges were well-stocked and hummed with life. Opening the doors revealed a blast of bright interior light which cast a welcome glow over the kitchen area. It was almost as good as the natural sunlight he so desperately craved.
Cole walked further into the kitchen area and more canteen lights flickered into luminosity, revealing several boxes of chocolate Wagon Wheels stacked on a table. He couldn’t resist grabbing one from the open box on top, tearing off the plastic wrapper and scoffing it down. He jammed the empty packet behind the stack where it joined a small army of other wrappers already wedged between the cardboard boxes and the wall.
He collected a packet of dry cream crackers, a block of processed cheese and a bottle of home-made chutney which lured him in with an intriguing hand-written label. He scanned the top shelves for tinned fruit and grabbed some peaches, half-remembering the warnings about vitamin C deficiency and scurvy. He completed his preparations by snatching the last carton of juice and not feeling guilty about it.
The meal was typical bunker food and in many ways, Cole enjoyed it. The frequent dining sessions of the early months had broken down with Taylor’s cooked group meals becoming less regular. Now, Cole could help himself to whatever he wanted and whenever he wanted it. It was every teenager’s food wet-dream. The frozen meats were restricted to a locked freezer and the alcohol in the canteen to an even more secure metal cabinet. Apart from that, he was free to forage. And if he didn’t find what he wanted, he could always raid the cavernous supply chamber three floors down. Eating when he wanted gave him a sense of independence. He could sit for hours with a comic, alone in the canteen, enjoying his own company, as long as he avoided the more regular hours the Marines seemed to still be keeping.
A year ago and before the outbreak, he’d been struggling on a fiendish apprentice contract for a local air-conditioning company. The work had been unpredictable: he was either over-run with jobs and just making ends meet, or sitting on his ass getting zip. Of course, he probably wasn’t getting paid anything now, unless he was getting numbers punched in some databank in a Midland Bank mainframe strong room somewhere – he was quite sure there was nothing he could do with the microcomputer money. But at least he was free to loaf and lounge at leisure. If it wasn’t for the immediate threat of being kicked out of the Ark into the waiting arms of the hungry dead, he thought, this would have been a good gig.
Even though there was no one about to watch him, Cole reached down discretely to his crotch and unclipped his trousers. The tension relieved, he reached over and grabbed a faded Penthouse magazine from a table opposite. He felt a twinge of guilt about loosening his trousers as he read an article about Britt Ekland’s new home and family in St Tropez, complete with images of the happy and bronzed couple looking fit and glowing like they’d slept in a nuclear reactor. But, whilst his diet avoided heavy meals, his habit of grazing through snacks and sweets twelve hours a day was clearly taking its toll as the growing roll of cookie-dough fat around his middle revealed. He un-tucked his grubby t-shirt to cover his imperial waist-line and immediately felt more comfortable.
He sneaked a glance at Taylor as he munched his way through the crackers and cheese like a famished mouse, then jammed in another Wagon Wheel. The morose cook didn’t move at all. Cole considered checking on him but couldn’t be bothered. Bunker life did that to you. Normally effervescent characters were reduced to barely functioning creatures, their energy levels sapped. In fairness, it wasn’t just bunker life, it was the violent thugs they were co-habiting the Ark with that caused this malaise. Why the hell did they need guards anyway? thought Cole. It was something he’d thought to himself every day since the Captain had implemented her own haphazard version of martial law.
He continued his meal, feeling more conscious now of the unconscious Taylor slumped in the corner. He finished half the packet of crackers then put the remains on a plastic tray. The cheese was rubbery and artificial-tasting but the mystery meat chutney livened things up as he sat idly leafing through the glossy magazine. He made a further trip to the kitchens, returning with a weak tea and another packet of chocolate biscuits.
Cole read the last lurid problem page letter about a man who sounded remarkably like Warren Beatty and his challenge of keeping two nymphomaniac Swedish twins satisfied sexually. He checked the time again – it was already eighteen-hundred hours. He had an hour before “night-time” in the bunker. He wanted to check one more location before giving up for this cycle. He scooped everything including his plastic tray into the rubbish chute and forgot about the would-be Mr Beatty’s fantastical bedroom problems.
◆◆◆
The sleeping quarters on the third floor were quiet as Cole peeked around the open door. A dull orange glimmer lit the corner casting shadows on the walls and the various slumbering figures. The four members of the night-shift team lay still as statues and the room stank of stale air, sweat and the forgotten crumbs hidden under damp carpet tiles. Cole navigated through the stacks of unwashed clothing and poked his head into the bathroom area – curiously it was bone-dry, but empty nonetheless. Towels lay scattered around the cracked tiles like grubby snowflakes. He wasn’t even sure if they’d ever been white at all. Bars of desiccated coal-tar soap decorated with rogue pubes were soldered to the floor like albino prunes.
As he crept back, he couldn’t help but notice posh-boy Lawrence, his pale body lying on the bed like some fallen Pre-Raphaelite beauty, artfully half-covered by a crumpled linen sheet. His skin glowed in the dim light, still and perfect, on the cusp of death. Cole resisted the urge to touch him.
He glanced at the ugly clock at the end of the corridor. Nineteen hundred hours was fast approaching: the end of another day cycle in this concrete hell. Cole stood for a few minutes listening to the cooling pipes echoing along the corridors. Despite being surrounded by ten yards of reinforced concrete the Ark was never truly silent. If it wasn’t one of the Marines stomping around on their pointless perimeter patrols then it was an over-energetic fluorescent bulb or the creaky ventilation system as the bunker heated and cooled according to the programmed day-night cycle.
Cole leaned over and checked each one of the snoring figures. He gave into temptation and lifted the cotton sheet covering the consumptive Lawrence. He really was perfect. Cole stroked his deathly-white marble arm. It was cold, very cold like chilled porcelain, and all the more erotic for it to Cole. He gently replaced the sheet, feeling voyeuristic and guilty. Confident that Ahmed was not in the bedrooms, he decided to finish for the night.
The corridor lights flicked off, plunging the bunker into darkness for a few panicky seconds before being replaced by a dingy citron hue. It was simulated night time in the Ark. Gone were the bright stars or overcast moonshine of the outside world, replaced by a urine-glow covered nightscape. Cole walked off down the corridor towards his sleep quarters. If he was about to be murdered in the bunker then he certainly didn’t want to be caught in one of the poorly lit communal corridors. He thought briefly about trying for the common room. It was where he spent most of his time. Situated at the top of the bunker, it was the only room with natural light and a view across the city. More than that, its relaxed office décor made it feel more domestic than the sterile functional set up of the rest of the bunker. He gravitated towards it whenever possible.
A suspicious clank at the end of the corridor reminded him that Ahmed was still missing so he quickly entered one of the service stairwells and used it to access the engineering floor, scurrying along to his sleep quarters.
Cole’s make-shift refuge was a converted storage room, shelves littered with components and reels of electrical cable almost completely hiding the government grey-washed walls. What little available space remained was covered with ironic posters warning of the dangers of radiation and the threat of Soviet bombers. After all that planning, the ten minute warning h
adn’t made one jot of difference to the fall of man. A colourful poster of the Bay City Rollers dominated the back wall, the smiling faces of the tartan rockers looking out beyond the storage room and towards some joke long forgotten. Cole had always like Woody best. Everyone loved Woody. That joke always made Cole smirk.
He closed the door behind him and, in a well-rehearsed lock-down routine, wedged a metal bar between the handle and a heavy-looking metal cabinet. At first he’d felt ridiculous and paranoid sealing himself in every night, even before the violence and the disappearances, but it soon became second-nature. A natural response which allowed him to doze with some measure of security. At least he’d have a warning if anyone tried to break in.
He flicked on a tiny plastic kettle which was sitting on a shelf and grabbed a pack of Garibaldi biscuits from the food stock he’d stashed underneath the desk. He wasn’t really hungry; grazing was a habit. As structured meal times in the canteen became erratic and then stopped completely, most of the non-military survivors wandered like cows, munching on whatever snacks they’d managed to forage from the stores.
Cole had everything he needed in his fortified quarters. Apart from a proper toilet, that was. For that, he used the plastic bottle in the corner. Pissing accurately into a plastic water bottle was an acquired skill and a couple of times he simply lost patience and ventured across the lonely corridor to the toilet block opposite. But not tonight. He was too nervous, and every sound from outside made him more so, expecting the Marines to come crashing through the door at any minute and carry him to the exterior doors. Instead, he expertly pissed in the plastic bottle, half-filling it before tightening the lid and stowing it out of sight before lying back on his air mattress and pulling up a frayed tartan blanket.
Cole’s Dream:
Wandering through empty corridors. Back in the bedroom where he grew up. Arranging dolls. It was heavy work. He was so small and weak. The dolls were like giants. He struggled to get them around the table. He didn’t recognise the faces of any of the toys. There was a strangeness to them and the bedroom itself now. He was tired and thirsty. He looked for a drink but the table was empty. What kind of tea party has no tea? The alien bedroom became dark as a cloud covered the sun outside the window. The electric glamour of T-Rex permeated the room as he noticed Marc Bolan’s haunted face hovering at the window pane. He was trying to say something through the glass . . .
Something the psychologists never covered in their hurried briefings before the Ark lock-down was that long-term bunker dwellers rarely sleep well as they clock up the months underground. Perhaps it was something to do with the lack of natural light, something about the artificial glare or the recycled, stale air which drained people of their zest for life. Sleep for a bunker-dweller seemed to provide just about enough rest to get them through the next cycle. Like human rechargeable batteries, gradually losing their ability to charge, no amount of sleep ever fully refreshed the body or mind. But somehow it was always enough to conjure the deep and disturbing dreams which haunted every survivor. On most occasions when he woke, Cole felt like he’d hardly slept at all.
Cole came around with the usual dull and pervasive headache which seemed to emanate from just behind his eyes, jabbing into his unprotected frontal lobe. He reached over and took a swig of the iodine-tasting bottled water he kept by his inflatable mattress. The bottle was as far away from the piss-bottle as it could be. He didn’t want to make that mistake. Again.
He sat up, an off-white sheet sticking to his sweaty body like pasted wallpaper. As he peeled it off, he realised he’d slept in his boots again. He could’ve sworn he removed them. Cole was a slave to routine and this, along with other suspicious anomalies, such as the slightly skewed angle of the bar across the door, disturbed him. In the absence of any other logical explanation he just put it down to bunker fever. It was a convenient excuse residents of the Ark used for every occasion – from mislaying an assault rifle to answering questions about another missing member of the group.
Bunker fever – a non-medical term for the claustrophobic reaction that takes place during extended solitary or group confinement in restricted quarters. Common symptoms include chronic fatigue, irritability, restlessness and even paranoia.
Cole thought about a shower for a few seconds. The relief of being soaked in the deep cleansing hot water appealed to him but being naked and vulnerable did not. He hadn’t reported back to Farrell on the missing technician. He glanced at the crib sheet on the chair. A to-do list of jobs around the bunker. Scanning down he noticed the disappearance of some initials and the prevalence of others. There were fewer and fewer technicians and his initials dominated the recently completed jobs. Most in the bunker now feigned the appearance of completing scheduled work. Routine patrols were lacklustre, the guards loafing from one station to the next, scarcely noticing anything. The repair jobs Cole spent his time doing were exaggerated and over-cooked beyond belief. He’d sit there for hours unnecessarily fiddling with circuits and changing some random fuse to pad out what should have been a ten minute job. In reality, the well-designed bunker systems pretty much ran themselves, with redundancy built into every system. In the past few months, Cole got the feeling the Captain had finally realised she didn’t really need a team of engineers to keep this concrete coffin operational.
As he pinned the messy job sheet to the wall, it reminded Cole that he needed to act. He wasn’t a fool. If he didn’t act now, he’d be next. Until then, he at least had to pretend to be of some use to the rest of the bunker.
He decided to visit the workshop to do some last minute checks then maybe he’d get out of the Ark. A battered khaki rucksack sat in the corner of his room, filled with emergency supplies. It was a curious escape bag and at a glance revealed just how little Cole really knew about the outside world. There were several tin cans but no can opener. He’d carefully stowed dried packet soup and a tiny camping saucepan but no matches.
Looking at the neatly packed rucksack made Cole think about his options. Maybe this time he really would venture outside and take his chances in the city. The infected couldn’t be any more dangerous than the team in the bunker. He fantasised about finding other survivors, about finding a stranded rugby team desperate for a skilled technician. He’d take a gun with him and take charge of the situation, show them who was boss. Then reality kicked in. First, London was now a city of around five million walking corpses. He pictured it again. That was an entire city of the dead – each street populated by hundreds of stumbling and infected psychotic imbeciles. Second, where the hell did he think he was going to run to? Nowhere outside the bunker was safe. None of the patrols the Captain had sent out had found any survivors. For all he knew, they were the last humans in the country.
Cole splashed some water on his face from the cut-open plastic bottle by his sleeping bag and changed into a new set of blue maintenance overall. He tucked a hammer into his belt: a tool one would normally expect a technician to carry but one he could use for other purposes if things got really desperate. He checked his watch and fiddled aimlessly with an aluminium ball joint for a few minutes. He heard the clank of the main switch as the day lights came on signalling the start of the day-shift. He didn’t really know whether it was any safer but in his experience, better lit corridors meant fewer shadows for potential attackers to hide in.
He walked down a short corridor and burst through plastic double-doors into the main workshop, then froze to the spot when Captain Seaton looked up and caught him in her cheetah-like gaze. He was surprised to see her and her jaded lover Dr Howard both sitting on upturned jerry cans in the maintenance area.
‘Trouble Cole?’ she asked, her tone almost accusatory.
As the bunker’s commanding officer, she’d always been fair to the technical team. She was hard on the Marines but provided the black and white lines they craved. In the first few months, she’d given the scientists the wide berth they needed to enable them to pursue their impossible quest for a dynamic cure to
the most complex virus the world had ever seen. She’d given them a free reign until it became obvious, even to a military woman, that they had nothing. After that, she began to clamp down on everyone.
For the technicians like Cole, there always seemed to be something hidden between her words, like a lemon-ink secret message sneaked between the pages of a book by some old-world spy. Or a concealed hook – trying to trick him into saying something that would compromise his very presence in the Ark.
The look on the Captain’s face and the impatient silence of the chief medical officer told Cole that he had clearly interrupted something.
‘Do you need something from the workshop?’ asked Dr Howard.
‘I’m looking for Ahmed. No one’s seen him in days.’
‘Well, you really need to be more careful Cole. First Green, now Ahmed. If you keep going on this rate, we’ll be out of technicians before we wake the sleepers up,’ the Captain said, smirking. She’s changed, thought Cole. She could only have been around thirty, but the sunken grey complexion every Ark resident developed made her look twenty years older. The same was true of Dr Howard. Too much time cocooned in that sweaty bedroom together.
Cole noticed the sheets of the Ark schematics littering the table over which the two lovers now hunched. What the hell were they planning? Dr Howard noted Cole clocking the technical documents and shot him an angry glance.
‘You can get out now,’ fired Dr Howard as he fiddled with a video cassette. Six months ago when they’d first entered the Ark, he would never had spoken like that. When he’d arrived he’d been a polite Territorial Army general practitioner with about as much emergency experience as Cole. Now, he was a cold and manipulative survivor, perfectly aware that being the Captain’s lover kept him safer than any other from being flushed out into a downfallen London.
