The Rules

by Tracy Darnton

  “Your dad has important people to meet.”

  “Really? Up here in the countryside? And he didn’t invite you along. He likes keeping secrets, the great Mr Fitzpatrick. Want to swap a secret, Will? Like where’s he keeping all the valuable stuff? Because here’s the thing, Will. Want to know the thing about my father?” I whisper the last bit and urge him closer.

  Will doesn’t take the bait. “Honour thy father. That’s the Rule.”

  He slams the door on the way out. And locks it.

  I’ve won a minor skirmish. I got under his skin. But then I remember the war is far from over and the main enemy is my dad. And I’m still locked in a room – just one floor below the one I woke up in. Although this one has tea and toast, and for the first time, I’m on my own in here.

  I’ve made myself so annoying that Will needs a break from babysitting. So maybe I’ve won more than a minor battle. The front door slams and locks and shortly Will’s working off his frustrations on the outdoor gym. He’s rigged up a punch-bag off a tree branch and pummels it. I watch him for a moment from the window but then take my chance to go through the boxes of papers, systematically looking for any notes on Eden Farm. Dad was obsessive about noting down all we did. It will be here somewhere. Including, if he’s kept it, the footage of the bunker. That’s what I need.

  I pick through the papers quickly. Sheets of plans, blueprints for the Ark, photos of a sickbay – amazingly equipped – and the beginnings of a list of gear. It’s erratically written in his usual spidery handwriting, numbers down one side, pharmaceutical and medical supplies on the other. He certainly needs me to sort it out – it makes no sense. I can’t tell what he’s already got and what’s left to buy.

  I check on Will. He’s dripping with sweat now and he’s switched to skipping – the rope swishing gracefully from side to side as he works through his routine. He’s pushing himself hard. Even Will can’t keep that intensity up. How long before he comes back in here? I try another box, and another.

  I work through the last pile of boxes, ploughing through seed catalogues, ‘How to’ guides, a broken set of walkie-talkies I recognize from Eden Farm. He must have just parcelled everything up and put it in storage here while he was back in the US.

  Despite all Dad’s hints, the records aren’t here. Maybe they weren’t hints to start with. I’ve heard what I wanted to hear.

  Will is stretching out, lunging and pushing back against the tree trunk. He’s winding it up. I’m running out of time.

  I grab the final box. As I dig around in its contents I notice something odd about it – there doesn’t seem to be as much space inside as its size suggests. When I examine it more closely I find that an extra layer of card has been slotted in to create a false bottom, and there, tucked inside the inch-deep cavity, I find what I’m looking for: SD cards with dates written on them in permanent black marker. These are the records of days in the bunker at Eden. Our underground paradise. These tiny video files hold the miserable evidence of what happened there – and how it ended. All the fuss he made about setting up the system, all the pretence that what he was doing was in some way scientific, evidential, important. I’ve thought about the power of them all this time, thought about what that final recording could mean for me. Yet here they are, in a mess of old papers, in a cardboard box, in a tip of a room, in a musty house, in the middle of nowhere.

  I take them, resealing the cardboard. I check the window but I can’t see Will. He must be walking back round. He’ll be here in minutes. I shove the three SD cards down the front of my jeans behind the bulky zip and rearrange my jumper. I’ll keep them with me now. I’ve got what I needed. I grab the equipment sheets and sit down with a pen just in time.

  Will’s back. Red and sweaty. “I’m going for a shower,” he says. “I’ll be back in five and we can go through the medical supply list together.”

  I make an elaborate paper aeroplane and draw a pilot in sunglasses sitting in the cockpit. It flies well across the room and drops into the bookcase. The bookcase is empty of course. I wonder how Dad has persuaded his northern contacts to let him use Centurion House. More promised places in the Ark?

  I pick up the photo he showed me of the entrance to the Ark yesterday, showing off the blast door that we can shut against intruders. The door is reinforced concrete with a mounted camera and triple-lock system in case the electronics fail. Looks expensive. If he wants to spend Grandma’s money on a door to keep out the alien invasion, I suppose he can. I’d use it to buy a house – far away from him – somewhere on an island. I want a clear blue sea, bright blue sky, set off by a white-painted house with red flowers spilling from window boxes and climbing up the walls, and a green wooden door.

  But as my daydream melts back into the image on the photo, I notice that something looks wrong. There’s a tiny spiky tree in the background. Half tree, half cactus. A Joshua tree. Pretty sure they don’t have those in Scotland. Or anywhere else in the UK.

  Wherever his Ark is, it isn’t in this country.

  He lied.

  There are many varieties of wild mushrooms.

  Some are delicious.

  Some can make you sick.

  Some can kill you.

  It’s important to know the difference.

  Dad should have remembered that.

  We were at Eden Farm. Dad clutched his stomach again and dived for the bathroom. He’d lasted just fifteen minutes between visits this time. The gaps were getting shorter.

  I allowed myself to feel some hope as I listened at the door to him vomiting. There was no way he could do the supply run now. But I knew him well enough not to point this out. He had to take all decisions. I bit my tongue and waited. I knocked gently at the door.

  “You OK, Dad? Can I get you anything? A glass of water?”

  He made a garbled noise between retches, which I took to mean ‘yes’. My hands shook as I filled the glass, daring to believe that I’d pulled this off. A light, butterflies-in-the-stomach fluttering. I turned the handle on the bathroom door and slowly approached him as he lay sprawled, clutching the toilet bowl. I tried not to focus on the revolting speckles of vomit on his chin and shirt, tried to close my nostrils to the smell. I placed the glass beside him, silently rinsed a facecloth in cold water and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead.

  He threw up again while I patiently waited beside him, my heart in my throat. He wiped his mouth and sipped at the glass of water.

  “That’s a bit better,” he said. He looked terrible. His skin was white with an oily sheen. “But I think I’d best stay here. Could you go on the supply run? It’s a long bike ride.”

  I held my breath. He hadn’t let me out alone since Mum had gone.

  He retched again. “Collect the post. I’m expecting something from your grandma which I shouldn’t let sit in the box.”

  “I can do it, Daddy.”

  ‘Daddy’ popped out of my mouth instead of ‘Dad’. It was the first time I’d said it in ages. He softened. I was just his little girl trying to help. Rule: Honour thy father.

  He pulled the keyring from his pocket – the one that never left him – and picked at the small, shiny key for the mailbox and the larger brass one for the padlock on the gate. I tried not to stare, tried hard to play it cool while he was handing me the keys. Handing me my freedom. “Get the list from the kitchen – there’s money in the envelope.”

  “OK. You can rely on me.”

  I was reliable, trustworthy, dependable. Not the kind to get her mushrooms muddled.

  “Day five in the Big Brother house,” Will says in a Geordie accent when he unlocks the door this morning. I stare at him blankly. “It was a TV show,” he says. “They’d count the days down and film the occupants.”

  “Were they locked up against their will in a totalitarian regime too?” He doesn’t answer. I open the advent calendar to reveal a sleigh, the most impractical form of transport going. Though I’d try anything. Now I’ve got the SD cards I can think a
bout full-on getting out of here. My only other way out may well be the chimney.

  Or Will.

  “If only you had some magic flying reindeer to go with your little sleigh,” he says.

  “Don’t think by making some jokes you can get around me, Will. I’m not going to get Stockholm syndrome where I bond with my kidnapper and sympathize with your cause.”

  “I’m not a kidnapper and I don’t have a cause.”

  “Yes, you do. You just think you don’t. You’ve adopted my father’s cause – which is him over everyone else. Do you think keeping me locked up here is normal behaviour for a loving parent? A couple more days or so and you won’t be able to live with yourself. Lima syndrome. Just saying.”

  “Lima?”

  “The more likely outcome in this kidnap situation is Lima syndrome. Where you, the abductor…” I articulate every syllable so he knows what he is. “The abductor starts to feel bad for me, the hostage.”

  “You’re not a hostage.”

  “But I’m not free to go, am I? If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…”

  He blows a long breath out and his shoulders sag. “Life is simpler if you follow the Rules, Amber.” He sounds tired and not at all convinced that his life is simpler for following Dad’s Rules.

  “My dad is so not the messiah,” I say.

  “I know that. I’m not stupid. Modern life has got so complicated. It needs shaking up. I want to try something new. Radical.”

  “Is this some weird gap-year idea that went wrong? Did you think this was going to be better than travelling around Asia or picking fruit in southern Europe? More worthwhile?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I’d been exploring prepping, reading loads of stuff online and then your dad came and spoke to a group at uni. It clarified things for me.” Will perches on the edge of my bed, next to me. “It was, I don’t know, like a revelation. There was no point doing a degree, more study, when there might not even be a viable society in a few years’ time. Your dad has answers to how we could cope with that.”

  “I get it, Will. I get how someone with a plan, a passion, can seem like a positive solution. Mum was big on green issues when they first met. She liked all the sustainability side of things, making sensible plans. But then Dad just went further and further. She couldn’t cope. She…” I hold my locket tight in my fist.

  “I … I’m sorry about what happened to her.” Will rests a hand on my arm and squeezes gently. I let him. “I don’t know all that went on with your dad in the past but you do still have him. If only you’d give him a chance, listen to his ideas for the future…”

  “But this isn’t about the future or saving the planet, Will. Or being prepared to all live together singing songs round a campfire. This is all about him. You’ve swallowed his whole stinking rulebook. You had a choice about it and you chose this.”

  I gently rest my head against his shoulder. His arm goes round me and I’m pulled into the warmth of him. His head tilts against the top of mine. His breathing’s growing louder. I rest the flat of my palm against his chest, feel his increasing heartbeat. I’m aware of my own too, as my hand moves back and forth across his chest.

  “Amber, I…”

  My fingers loop around the lanyard.

  Will stops, looking down at my hand on the keys, then stands up suddenly, shaking me off. “I should go. I’ve got jobs to do.”

  Shit. I’ve missed my chance. He locks me back in my room. I hammer on the door with both fists. “Look what he’s made you do, Will the Abductor. Look what he’s made you do!”

  My heart was beating fast. So fast I worried it would give me away, that Dad would sense it pounding in my chest. I dutifully picked up my Grab-and-Go Bag and flung it casually over my shoulder to hide how much heavier than usual it was.

  I pulled out the bike and trailer from the woodstore, stowed my bag and cycled off down the lane, dodging the potholes, not minding the gathering clouds on the horizon. Keep on peddling. That’s all I had to do. It was over. I hadn’t been beyond the gates of Eden Farm on my own for weeks.

  Every revolution of the bike wheels took me further away from him.

  Stay one step ahead. That was the Rule. And I had thought ahead, worked through my plans and what could go wrong. Strategized.

  I had his cash in my pocket. And my own items of jewellery stashed in my bra. Dad was always banging on about how when the collapse of the monetary system came, gold and jewellery would have more value than banknotes.

  I reckoned I had at least three hours before Dad realized I was late back. He was probably too busy throwing up to even notice what time I’d left. That could buy me another hour.

  If I didn’t come back, he’d think at first that the bike had a puncture. He’d be looking for a sensible reason that his dutiful daughter had let him down. Rule: Honour thy father.

  Meanwhile I would get back to civilization and doctors and phones and computers. I would go through every place called Springside until I found Mum. And then we would run.

  I’d followed the Rule: Stay one step ahead.

  I was free.

  Dad’s back. He is free to come and go as he wishes while I’m locked up in Centurion House, hour after hour, day after day, supervised by Will. Wherever he’s been, he’s back with new enthusiasm – more lists and more choices to be made. We spend the morning in the basement storeroom finishing reordering the shelves of supplies to his precise requirements. Everything has its place.

  Dad escorts me back to the main room to assign me another task. I offer to go through catalogues for gas and chemical-attack masks to see if we should replace the ones I selected from the basement store and stored safely in my Grab-and-Go Bag. Other teenagers are probably browsing online gift stores, choosing novelty Christmas presents, and I’m weighing up the specifications of air-supply respirators versus filter masks. Merry Christmas, me! I take ages over it until I know the mask I have is perfect, and laboriously record my findings on his stupid spreadsheets so that he doesn’t give me something else to do.

  The calendar today has a perky little robin. My mum collected robins. After she died, I went through her belongings, with Julie getting in the way and being all melodramatic about it. All those robins I’d given her, saved up my money for over the years, and one I’d nicked from a charity shop, somehow three of them survived all the turmoil and the moves. But I didn’t want them back. They reminded me that nothing I’d done had helped her. What use was a cheap pottery robin? There’s no use looking back. None at all.

  But still, today, I stare at the little bird picture and remember the ones I threw away. What would Mum make of this? Despite our efforts, Dad’s won. He has me back, at his beck and call. A caged bird.

  Dad paces around, glares at Will through the window and raps at the glass for him to cut his session short.

  “I can’t decide between stainless steel and plastic water drums,” says Dad, agitated. “So many different views on which one.”

  “Do you want me to look online?” I offer, thinking there must be a smartphone or a laptop here somewhere. He’s trusting me more. Today my watch and some more contents of my Grab-and-Go Bag were returned. The ones you can’t use as weapons.

  “I’ve got the latest info here,” he says, handing me a set of research papers.

  “Shall I look for any others?” I persist.

  He tuts and shakes his head. “Amber – you know the Rule. I give you what you need to know. There’s no internet here. That’s not allowed.”

  Except for him, apparently. One rule for him, one rule for everyone else.

  I leaf through the papers, trying to care whether there’s more bacteria in water that’s stored in plastic or stainless steel but really just needing to look busy so he doesn’t give me something worse to do. He’s made random jottings in the margins, exclamation marks. He flits from one thing to another, not taking decisions on anything.

  “The internet is full of lies and the government will track what
you do on there,” he says suddenly. “Do you know how damned easy it is to trace someone by the trail they leave?”

  He holds his pen in mid-air, eyebrows raised. It’s not a rhetorical question, he wants an answer.

  The picture of Neville the vicar in the newspaper passes through my head. Is Dad hinting that he’s responsible for that?

  “I do know, yes,” I say quietly.

  Satisfied, a smug smile playing on his lips, he returns to the mountains of paper.

  Milky winter sunshine falls through the window, making patterns on the wooden floor.

  “I haven’t been outside for days,” I say, ready to play on his current feeling of triumph. “And we’ve been doing this for hours. Can I get some fresh air? Some vitamin D.”

  He purses his lips.

  I swallow down the last of my self-respect. “Please, Daddy.”

  He leaves the room and I worry that I’ve pushed it too far, blown my chance to take a look outside, but he returns and silently passes me my boots. It feels strange to put on footwear again after all these days shut up in here. Strange but liberating.

  He takes my hand and leads me to the front door, using his key to unlock it.

  I revel in the rush of cold air and the sun on my face as we stand on the doorstep, then he leads me like a pony round the house. The gravel drive winds away out of sight into the trees. A car’s tucked by the side of the house under a camo tarpaulin. An old prepper trick, so that no one with binoculars can see the metal car glinting.

  The trees my room look out on stretch away up the hillside towards what must be Kielder Forest. A paddock sits on the east side with overgrown grass and a rundown barn in the far corner. I can’t see a single other building, a road, a pylon, or a phone wire. Nothing. As expected, no one is nearby. I hear only wind in the trees, and birdsong. This place is perfect for preppers. Too soon my tour is over, and we’re back at the main door. Back to being locked up.