The Chosen Ones

by Howard Linskey

  There was no one at the cottage and nobody in the scrapyard. They knocked and waited, then knocked and waited some more. They both walked around the cottage and peered in every window. There was no one there and nothing hidden from view, not even a drawn curtain to prevent them from checking the place out.

  ‘No one home,’ said Tom, then he realized Bradshaw had noticed something. ‘What is it?’

  Bradshaw stepped back and let Tom take his place. The journalist peered through the window into a small lounge with a sofa, a single armchair, a coffee table and an old fireplace with a chimney. ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘Above the fireplace,’ said Bradshaw. ‘The painting.’

  Tom looked again. The room was gloomy but he could make out a large print of a painting with a distinctive brushstroke; a Van Gogh, perhaps, or maybe a Renoir? The portrait was of a young girl wearing a simple dress and a bonnet. She was looking right back at the artist. The most striking aspect of it was her most dominant feature, the long red hair that fell down below her shoulders. She even held some in her hands to draw attention to it.

  ‘The same hair colour as Eva Dunbar,’ said Bradshaw. ‘And Cora Harrison.’

  Without taking his eyes from the painting, Tom said, ‘Coincidence, right?’ then he turned back to Bradshaw. ‘Or maybe someone likes redheads because of this old painting?’

  ‘Or has this painting because they like redheads.’ Bradshaw shrugged. ‘Either way, none of the other girls have red hair.’

  ‘There are more in the hallway,’ Tom told him, ‘and framed sayings ‒ proverbs, some stuff from the Bible ‒ and paintings of women. I say we keep looking. Come on. It’s not trespassing if I’ve got you with me.’

  They carefully explored every inch of the yard, walking between lines of cars stacked on top of each other.

  ‘What makes you think Helen came back here?’ asked Bradshaw.

  ‘Nothing. I don’t know. It’s more that I can’t think of anywhere else she’d’ve gone. The young woman gave her the creeps, but why would a woman take women?’ He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but we’re here now, so let’s keep looking round, shall we, to rule the place out, if nothing else?’

  They walked until they reached the end of the yard then stopped and surveyed the land beyond it. There was a wooden fence, but it was a low one with a gap in it wide enough for a person to walk between two fence posts. The field beyond this had a well-worn path trodden into it. Tom and Bradshaw exchanged looks and without a word they both made for the gap.

  They walked across a large field which sloped up and then down again and when they reached its uppermost point they saw there were more fields beyond it. ‘What’s that?’ asked Bradshaw, pointing ahead of them to some dark shapes in a hollow some way up ahead.

  ‘Let’s find out,’ said Tom.

  The next time he came in with the food, Helen stayed silent. She lay on the bed, curled up in the foetal position, one arm clasped to her chest, the other hand tucked up so that it lay under the pillow, seemingly seeking comfort. Her eyes looked dead.

  The man stared down at her silently for a while, as if he didn’t know what to do or say to her. Then he uttered a single word, ‘Eat,’ and put the tray down on the cabinet next to her bed. Was there actual concern in the word? Why did he give a damn whether she ate or not?

  He backed away and opened the door, stepped through it and pulled the door closed behind him. Helen had been waiting for that moment. She knew she only had a second. She pulled her hand out from under the pillow and sprang to her feet. Her bare soles made no sound on the floor as she ran to the door and thrust out the hand that had been hidden under the pillow.

  Just before he turned the key she slid the thin wooden bookmark into the crack between the door and its frame. It was so flimsy it bent when the key turned in the lock and she thought it would give way, but it didn’t break. Instead it buckled against the latch bolt. But it held.

  Helen stepped back from the door, waiting for the moment when the man behind it would notice that the latch bolt had only gone in part way, blocked as it was by the balsa-wood bookmark. If he tried to remove the key at that point it would probably stay in the lock, and she was gambling he would leave it there, like before. Helen braced herself for the door flying open and the man in the balaclava stepping inside to beat her in a fury, but there was no sound, apart from the steady, regular slap-slap of his retreating footsteps on the tiled floor. She didn’t dare believe that this might actually work.

  Helen let out her breath as silently as she could and found herself gasping, her heart beating hard. She waited till she could no longer hear the footsteps then pressed her ear against the door. Moments later she heard a faint clang of metal that could surely only be the hatch dropping back down in place again, then there was a less distinct metallic, scraping sound, which she took to be the locking wheel on top of the hatch being turned from the outside.

  He had gone.

  Please let that be true.

  She waited a full minute, just to be sure, before turning her attention back to the door mechanism. This could work, couldn’t it? She had managed to jam the latch bolt before it fully engaged in the door plate on the frame. If she could just lever the wooden bookmark without breaking it, perhaps she could prise the bolt back a little, and then she might just be able to open the door.

  Helen took a breath and clasped the flimsy wooden bookmark. She bent it slowly, fully expecting it to break into pieces any second, and it buckled alarmingly then splintered, but, as it did so, she could see the bolt begin to push back against it until it was forced free of the frame. Helen grabbed the door handle, turned it then pulled, and the door swung open.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  The shapes seemed to be too small for buildings, but as they drew nearer Tom worked out what they were. ‘Shipping crates.’

  Three of them were set to one side of the hollow. They weren’t new but they didn’t appear to have been there for a long time. Only one of them was old and rusted and it stood apart from the others on the opposite side of the hollow right by some trees. All four crates were locked and could not be prised open. The two men banged on each one, but there was no answer from within.

  ‘Didn’t the stoned girl say she was kept in a box?’ said Tom.

  ‘She did,’ said Bradshaw, ‘and she also said she was taken underground.’ He looked around him for any sign of a subterranean prison, but saw only grass and fields.

  ‘Could be an entirely innocent explanation,’ said Tom facetiously.

  ‘For having four shipping crates in the middle of an isolated field?’ answered Bradshaw. ‘I mean, who wouldn’t do that?’

  Bradshaw shared Tom’s sense of unease. He took out his mobile phone. ‘I think it’s time we told someone where we are, don’t you?’ He looked at the screen. ‘Shit, no signal. Maybe we need higher ground.’

  ‘We’re here now,’ said Tom, ‘there are two of us, and we can both handle ourselves. I say we carry on.’

  Helen closed the door behind her and locked it then ran barefoot all the way down the corridor until she reached the ladder. She climbed up to the top; the hatch was closed and sealed from the outside. There was a wheel on the underside of it which she tried to turn, but it wouldn’t budge. She tried again and again, using all her strength, but there was no indication that it was going to give from the inside. She had to stifle angry tears of frustration. For a moment she thought she had broken free, but now she realized she was just as trapped as before. What would happen if her captor came back and found she had broken out of her cell?

  Surely, though, a bunker this size would not just have a single entrance? There had to be more than one way out, in case debris fell on the hatch from the outside. Helen climbed back down the ladder and retraced her steps cautiously along the corridor until she reached her cell then carried on beyond it, following the lengthy passageway, passing doors she dared not open or knock on for fear of what might
lay beyond them. She told herself she could not allow herself to be distracted by trying to find the others – if they were to be rescued from the bunker at all, Helen had to get out of here and alert the world to its presence. Her priority now was her own survival, for her sake and theirs.

  She rounded a corner and her heart sank because the ground was sloping downwards, which meant she had to go deeper and deeper underground. She could hardly go back, and so she followed the passageway, telling herself she had no choice but to go down.

  It didn’t take them long to find the hatch. They went across the fields and reached a point where the ground rose before meeting a border fence. The hatch was obscured from view until you were right on top of it, and they were some distance from the road by now. If you were going to build a secret bunker, then this would be the ideal place to sit out a nuclear war. No one would even know you were here.

  They didn’t even debate it. Tom bent to grab the wheel on the outside of the hatch and gripped it tightly, expecting it to resist, but immediately it began to turn. ‘It’s moving. It’s not stiff at all.’

  ‘Open it,’ urged Bradshaw, and Tom finished turning the wheel then lifted the hatch.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said the detective as he looked at the ladder that went down deep into the bunker. ‘It looks like something out of a horror film.’

  ‘And there’s a light on.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’ asked Bradshaw, wondering if Tom was as nervous as he was.

  ‘Obviously, I don’t really want to go down there, but what choice do I have? Helen could be in there.’

  ‘And whoever took her could be there, too, waiting with a chainsaw. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tom.

  ‘Maybe one of us should go down and the other stay here, in case he comes back and closes the hatch.’

  ‘Do you want to go down there on your own?’

  ‘Hell, no,’ said Bradshaw

  ‘Neither do I. If we’re going to do this, I want you to cover my back.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Can you get a signal from here?’

  Bradshaw inspected his phone. ‘Nothing. How about you?’

  Tom looked at the signal-strength indicator on his mobile phone, ‘I’ve got one bar.’ He handed it to Bradshaw. ‘Worth a try.’

  Bradshaw keyed in the number and dialled. ‘Come on,’ he said, then a second later. ‘It’s ringing.’

  ‘Let’s hope someone picks up.’

  ‘Malone?’ called Bradshaw down the phone. ‘Is that you?’ He looked at Tom. ‘Line’s terrible.’ He winced as he tried to hear. ‘I’m going to give you an address, and I need you to get down here with some people … I said I need to give you … oh, this is hopeless. I can’t hear her, and she can’t hear me. It keeps crackling.’

  ‘Keep trying,’ said Tom. ‘She might be our only hope.’

  Bradshaw kept on relaying his message in bite-sized chunks and when he had finished, he called, ‘Got that?’ Then he swore because he couldn’t make out her reply, and then she was gone.

  ‘Did she hear you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think so, yes, but I’m not sure if she got it all.’

  ‘Great,’ said Tom. ‘She probably thinks you just placed an order for a takeaway.’

  ‘What do we do now, then? I wouldn’t normally risk it, but it’s Helen, so I say we do this.’

  ‘Well said. Come on.’ And Tom banished the considerable fear he was feeling and began to climb down the stairs.

  Helen had been walking along the snaking tunnel for what seemed like an age but was probably really only several minutes. She had no sense of depth or direction, just a faint hope that there had to be more than one way out of there.

  Finally, she reached the end of the corridor and found what she was looking for, but this time there was no ladder with a hatch on top of it. Instead there was a series of steps that went up in a circular pattern like a corkscrew. This had to lead somewhere significant, but would Helen emerge in an isolated location she could run from or would she suddenly appear in a room where the man would be sitting, nursing his shotgun – and what would he do if Helen saw him without his mask?

  She had to force that idea from her mind and convince herself she had no choice but to go on. She couldn’t go back the way she had come. At least this way her fate was in her own hands. Helen started to quietly climb the staircase, listening for any sounds of life from above.

  She climbed forty steps, counting each one, and held her breath when she reached the top, where two large, thick metal blast doors signalled that the outside world was beyond them. They even had the words DANGER OF CONTAMINATION written on them.

  Helen tried the large handle on one of them, fully expecting it to be locked, like the hatch had been, and felt a combination of fear and relief when it turned and allowed her to push the door slowly open.

  When she walked through the doors she found she was at ground level, in what appeared to be a normal house – the farmhouse? It was dark and dusty and smelt of mould and … something else she did not immediately recognize, but it was a strong smell, like meat that had gone bad. She was in a hallway of some kind with three closed doors to choose from; one to her left, one to her right and one straight ahead. Assuming it to be the way out, Helen chose the door in the middle.

  When she opened it she came face to face with a sickly-looking man wearing pyjamas, with a deathly pale complexion, and she realized the smell of rotting flesh was coming from him. He was sitting propped up in bed and looked as if it was taking all his energy to accomplish that simple act. He was holding a gun in his hand and pointing it straight at Helen at point-blank range. From that distance it would be almost impossible to miss. Before she could say a word in protest, he fired.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  Tom and Bradshaw had been exploring the corridor in the bunker. They walked silently and on edge, fully expecting to be attacked at any moment, but they met no one. They didn’t want to start banging on doors or calling out for Helen yet, not until they were certain there was no one down here waiting for them, but they tried each door in turn to see if it would open.

  Bradshaw walked up to the next door and turned the handle. Predictably, it was locked. Then he noticed there was something sticking out below the handle: a key. Puzzled, he looked around. There was no one there apart from Tom, who was looking back the way they had just come.

  ‘There’s a key in this door,’ said Bradshaw.

  ‘Try it, then.’

  ‘I suggest we don’t both go through it at the same time.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ agreed Tom, who was just as unhappy at the thought of being trapped in any part of the bunker.

  ‘Watch my back,’ said Bradshaw, and Tom nodded. He walked a few paces away from the detective so he could see back down the corridor and warn him if anyone was coming.

  Bradshaw turned the key, wrenched the door open and found a woman lying on a bed. He recognized her immediately, but it wasn’t Helen.

  ‘Eva?’

  Eva Dunbar blinked up at him from her position on the bed in the corner of the room and let out an involuntary cry. She looked startled by his sudden presence, terrified in fact, and he walked into the room to reassure her. She flinched as he entered and pressed herself back against the wall.

  ‘It’s all right, Eva,’ he said. ‘You’re safe now.’

  Everything happened very fast then. First the door slammed behind him and Bradshaw called out, ‘Tom!’ in his alarm. Then the key turned in the lock and they were both trapped.

  Trying not to panic himself now, Bradshaw turned back to Eva. ‘It’s all right,’ he told her again. ‘I’m from the police. Everything is going to be fine.’ This seemed to both calm and confuse her, but Bradshaw had no time to explain further. He turned back to the locked door as the sound of a scuffle began right outside it.

  Chris had seen the two men coming when he was walking back across the fields after feedi
ng the women. He knew if they kept going they would eventually find the bunker, so he went back into it and waited for them to come. He’d been leaving the hatch tightly shut following Eva’s near-escape but this time he had deliberately left it loose so they could open it easily and come down. He left the key in the locked door of Eva’s cell, to bait the trap. He hoped it would lure both men inside, then he could lock the door and leave them all in there. He would keep them for as long as it took, until their strength went and they gave up hope. He could starve them out, whether it took days or even weeks, then he would come back and bury whatever was left.

  It had seemed like a brilliant plan, and it was. There was only one flaw in it. When Eva screamed Chris had burst from the room opposite hers and slammed the door with one hand. His other hand was holding the shotgun and he quickly placed the weapon against the doorframe to free it up so he could turn the key and lock the door. But then he realized only one of the men was inside. He caught a movement from his left, which betrayed the presence of the second man, who immediately bore down on him. He finished locking the door, grabbed the shotgun once more and span to face the second man so he could blast him with it.

  Tom had two choices when he saw the masked man with the shotgun slam the door: run and hope he could get round the corner then climb the ladder out of the bunker, or avoid that suicidal dash by going towards the threat instead. He chose the latter course and ran straight at the man as he grabbed for his shotgun then tried to level it.

  As the gun came up Tom crashed into the masked man and they both went sprawling as both barrels discharged in a deafening roar that echoed through the confined space and left Tom’s ears ringing. The gun hit the floor and both men fell to the ground. Tom landed hard and for a second wondered if he had been shot or if the impact with the ground had caused the pain he was feeling. He couldn’t afford to hesitate and instantly started to grapple with the man on the ground, knowing that, if he didn’t subdue him, he was unlikely to live to see the end of this day.