by Glynn James
I tried searching for a lighting panel near the entrance, but there was nothing. I can tell that the room is big, maybe even vast, just by the way noise echoes, but it’s difficult to judge size when the brightest light that I have – the headlamp that will only stretch out fifty feet or so – hits nothing to reflect the light.
I skirted around the edge, following the wall, until I spotted something large and bulky at the very edge of the light. I knew I should just stick to the wall, but I could still see the glowlight where my gear was, and I hadn’t gone very far, and curiosity won.
Holy damn. It was an APV – an Armoured Personnel Vehicle – and not just a small one. This thing is huge, I’d estimate large enough to hold five squads and command, so twenty troops plus two command, and then add the driver and driver’s mate, navigator, gunners. If I can find a way into the thing it will make the perfect shelter. I’ve seen them before, even seen the same model, I think, though this one looks brand new. Sure, it’s covered in a few inches of dust but after brushing away the dust covering the side door, I could see that it was shiny and pristine.
I pulled at the door release, hoping that it wasn’t locked. No such luck. These things were meant to be almost impenetrable unless you had a key fob, and after searching around on the ground I didn’t find one.
What I did find was another APV sitting just ten feet away, lined up with the first. And that got me curious. I walked to the front of the APV, lined myself up with my gear, now a distant spot of glow, and started walking. By the time I got to within sixty feet of my gear I had passed eight APVs.
I was in a vehicle storage area of some sort, which made me even more curious. I tried to visualise the platform I had lowered to get down here, thinking of the size of the Roughrider. There was no way one of these vehicles would fit on that platform. And no possibility that they would be able to drive along the tunnel that led here, even if it was quite wide.
So how the hell did vehicles like these get down into the bunker?
Was this not the only entrance? Did they assemble them down here?
Found just what I needed after heading in the other direction, past what appears to be rows upon rows of empty metal racking. A mechanised trolley!
I laughed when I spotted it, thinking of how JH had written about his exploits with prams and bicycles, trying to make something that he could put stuff in to take with him, and here I am with a haulage trolley that I can even stand on. The damn thing lights up a hundred feet in front of it with a bright glare, and even has a pop-out seat. Okay, it doesn’t travel very fast, really not much faster than walking, or maybe a slow jog, but I can get around and I can light up whatever I need to look at. And it’s powered. I’m not sure what by, so I’ll have to have a look later, but there are half a dozen of these powered trolleys in the little bay they were kept in, so if the battery indicator starts to go down too far I’ll just head back and swap.
I took two trips all the way around the hall, and found it to be much bigger than I had first imagined. There are three rows of the APVs – twenty-four vehicles in total. Or at least there had been that many of them, at one time. One is missing, and there are tracks in the dusty floor leading towards a huge door at the back of the hall.
Then I spotted the ramp, a stairway, and a massive glass panel overlooking the room, just few yards from a large, dark tunnel.
I hopped off the trolley and started up the steps, guns at the ready, and entered what appeared to be a control room, but it was difficult to tell. I reached inside the doorway, while shining my headlamp into the room, and found a switch. With a flick, some dim lights came on in the room. They weren’t bright enough to light up the room clearly, just enough to see by. Not the main lights, then. Some form of emergency or guidance lighting.
I don’t know how long ago the bunker had been built, but it looked as though most of it hadn’t been disturbed for decades. A row of six dusty monitors sat along the front of the room, near the glass panel – correction, five dusty monitors and one reasonably clean one.
It was then that I noticed the footprints in the dust on the ground in front of me. They went further into the room than I had, so they couldn’t be mine. And they were smaller – I’d say at least five sizes smaller – than mine. The ground between where I now stood and the display screen was well trodden.
The footprints were embedded into the dust but had also gathered a thin coat of dust themselves, as though someone came here long ago and then the place remained undisturbed for a long time afterwards.
Were they my mother’s footprints?
I followed the trail to the screen on the nearest desk and looked at the display. Just like the dust inside the footprints, that one particular screen appeared to have been wiped and used, a long time ago. It wasn’t covered in quite as much dust as the rest.
I leaned forward and pressed the button on the screen, and I was rewarded by a buzz and click. The screen flickered several times and the display appeared, bright and glaring in contrast to the darkness.
And on the screen was a mass of lights, red and green, all labelled. I scanned some of them – outer barrier door release, inner barrier door release, vehicle hangar lighting, guard room lighting. The list continued. I tapped at some of the keys, but nothing on the screen responded, but then I noticed the finger marks on the screen and I tentatively reached forward and tapped the screen area marked “guard room lighting”.
The lights in the room buzzed and flickered, at first, and then came on. The blue fluorescent glow was low to start with but gradually intensified. I switched off my headlamp and scanned the room, seeing it in it’s entirely for the first time. There were a lot of screens in this room, all of them still switched off, and the dusty footprints, harder to see now that the room was fully lit, trailed further around the room than I had first thought.
I looked at the massive glass panel window, now a blank sheet of darkness. The light from inside the guard room – or what I resumed was the guard room – glared off the glass, making the darkness outside seem all the more looming.
Wondering if there would even be enough power to switch on lighting that could illuminate the vast room beyond, I tapped at the screen again, this time touching “Vehicle Hangar Lighting”, and I stood back and waited.
Nothing.
I searched the room and finally found what I’d been hoping for. Inside on of the dust coated closets was a cabinet door that opened up to revealed rows upon rows of small metal hooks, some with sets of keys hanging from them. I noticed that inside were the twenty or so that I’d expected, but there were hooks for hundred more that were empty. I counted them. Twenty-three sets exactly, and each set was just a single key and a numbered key fob.
I took the first and started to walk away, to head back to my trolley, but then thought of the Vigilants outside. They might get in. Hell, they would get in, given enough time. I knew the moment I found the bunker, with the Vigilants on my tail, that it was only a matter of time before they also got in. I could have days, or I could have a few hours. I had to slow them down. I grabbed all the keys, shoving them into an empty pocket.
Two minutes later I was standing right where I had slept the night before, staring at the metal vault door and wondering how I could stop them getting in.
There had been an inner vault mentioned on that screen. An inner vault and an outer vault.
:: Record Date 28:06:4787 12:18
Stopped for a spot of food so I thought I’d catch up midday. These ration packs aren’t too bad when you get used to them. A bit dry, but edible. The juice, or whatever it’s supposed to be, tastes pretty awful, though.
I got the big door open!
Thankfully.
There are only two entrances to this vehicle depot. The one that’s stopping the Vigilants from getting in, and the big door that the tracks from the missing APV lead to.
I was nervous about hitting either the outer or inner door open options on the screen, but eventually I found the me
nu that would display some of the cameras. I don’t remember seeing a camera outside the other entrance, but then I was in a hurry to get in. I flipped around a couple of the different displays and found the right one and then watched. Apart from the Roughrider blocking a lot of the view, the tunnel was empty, as far as the camera would display, and for a few minutes I contemplated opening the door to try and retrieve my Roughrider, but there were blind spots. I imagined that the Vigilants had gone back up top to report, and to plan whatever they were going to do next, but if one of them was hiding under the Roughrider, or behind it, things could go badly.
I sighed, and was about to switch the camera to another view when I noticed at the top of the screen it said Outer Door View A1.
So the inner door must be the bigger one.
I switched to the other menu and pressed the option to open the inner door and heard a grinding, rattling noise outside the office. I glanced out of the door, and yes, there it was, the big door, opening upwards to reveal a very wide, dark tunnel.
That got me thinking, though. If I go that way, how can I stop them following? Both doors can be opened from this office. So if they get in, there is nothing stopping them from doing the same as I have.
Seems like a strange security system.
Putting that problem to the back of my mind, I headed over to the big inner door on my trolley. The trolley makes a low whining noise, that under normal circumstances you would barely hear, but the vehicle hall is huge and empty, and the noise seems to echo around.
It’s not even just a tunnel through the big doors. It’s an underground road. That something as huge could have been constructed and still kept quiet is amazing. How did JH keep this hidden?
:: Record Date 28:06:4787 12:42
The answer to my puzzle about the security was just fifty yards up the tunnel. I hadn’t seen the recessed booth until I started driving my APV up the tunnel.
Oh, yeah. I took one of the armoured vehicles, and I have a box on the floor near my feet with the keys to all of the others.
I’m a damn genius.
If the Vigilants do get in here, they’re not taking one of the vehicles unless they know how to hotwire one.
Hmm. They probably may know how to do that, but they would need to get into the vehicle first. Not happening!
It doesn’t matter, I guess. I’ll just have to deal with that if it happens.
I loaded the trolley and all of my gear into the back of the APV and then went over to where the other trolleys were.
Screw it. Why not take them all? They all fit in the back of the APV, just. So I now I have a dozen trolley batteries and six trolleys, and for good measure, I have one of the plug in re-powering points that they were parked next to. There’s nothing to plug it into inside the APV, so I’d have to find a power outlet somewhere along the way, but I was damned if I was going to leave any form of transport behind for the Vigilants to use if they get in.
When they get in.
I started down the big tunnel through the inner doors. I nearly missed the booth, but as I approached it a red light swept across the front of the APV, like some kind of scanner. Nearly panicking, and expecting a blast from a defence turret, I slowed the APV and waited.
After a few seconds of just waiting, and nothing happening, I lost patience and jumped out of the side door.
The booth was set back in the wall, and the remains of the glass screen that would once have separated it from the tunnel were scattered across the floor. I saw more boot prints, again small, and then I spotted a display screen similar to the ones in the office back at the vehicle depot.
As I approached, stepping over broken glass and pushing away cobwebs – yeah, like there should be many spiders down here? – I spotted the piece of paper attached to the screen. The screen was already switched on, and the glare of light from the display was bright enough to light up the two words scrawled onto the bit of paper.
Turningpoint.
I frowned. Those words meant nothing to me.
Or do they? It’s not two words is it? It’s one. Turningpoint.
I tapped at the screen, flitting through the different menus, searching for locking mechanism options, and eventually found them, except I didn’t just find options to open and close the bunker doors. No, there was another, very final sounding option at the bottom of the list.
Initiate Bunker Outer Security Lockdown.
I selected it, and frowned again as a password request came up. None of the other options had wanted a password. Then I looked at the piece of paper again.
I typed in Turningpoint and waited.
What seemed like dozens of alerts flashed by on the screen. All of them detailing doors locking, power outlets shutting down, access points locking.
Crap. Had I just shut the whole place down? Was the power about to be cut?
But it didn’t. Instead, just fifty feet away, the huge inner door started to grind and rattle once more.
Finally, the screen displayed the words Bunker Secured.
Problem solved, for now. I hope.
Time to head further into the base.
:: Record Date 28:06:4787 15:21
There’s a lot of different routes down here. I’ve passed maybe ten or more junctions and crossroads. If it wasn’t for the obvious tracks in the dust, left behind by my mother in another APV, I wouldn’t have a clue where to go.
One area I passed was mostly collapsed on one side. I got out and climbed up the rubble, mainly because I could see there was a gap at the top, but it was darkness beyond that and a lot more rubble. I shone my light into the gap but the tunnel was blocked for quite a distance, and there was no way I was going to fit through the gap.
It looks like an explosion collapsed the ceiling down into the roadway.
Anyway, I had multiple directions to go in so didn’t try to remove any of the rubble. The tracks left by the other APV – which I’m hoping was driven by my mother – follow one path through the tunnels, and don’t turn off very often. I think I’ve taken a turning maybe three times now.
Why didn’t I block the main entrance up more?
I only just thought of that.
How stupid. I have all the keys to the APVs in the vehicle bay. I could easily have driven a dozen APVs over to the entrance in front of the door and blocked it up. They wouldn’t stop it opening, because it opened into a wall cavity on either side, and it wouldn’t stop them getting in because there would be a gap – the APVs aren’t as tall as the door. But it would have slowed them down.
Damn it.
Should I go back?
No, it’s too far. It would be a couple of hours back in the other direction instead of putting more hours between me and the Vigilants.
Onwards.
:: Record Date 28:06:4787 20:34
What the hell am I going to do when my supplies run out? I’m now locked into this bunker, with a troop of Vigilants outside, trying to get in as I sit here, and I’ve nowhere to go, nowhere to run to other than further into the base.
I drove for about three miles along the dark tunnel before it came to an end. I was about to think that I may have missed something when I saw the lighting up ahead.
The tunnel opened out onto a large platform with several corridors and doors leading from it, but it wasn’t the end of the tunnel.
I stopped the APV, armed up, and jumped out, switching on all the exterior lights so that at least the area around the vehicle was lit up. I did notice that the tracks of the other vehicle, now more than ten years old, led off to the right, and yet another tunnel, rather than going straight ahead along the main route. The side tunnel is smaller, but the APV should still fit through it. I’m beginning to think that these roads were built just to fit the APVs.
The area outside was bleak and abandoned. I don’t think anyone, apart from my mother, had been here for a very long time. The rooms that the doors opened out into appear to have been some sort of accommodation area, and there were rusty bunks lin
ing the walls of otherwise empty rooms. And there were a lot of them. Along the corridors – which I think I took far too long to explore, but I was being cautions – were more doors leading into more old, dis-used dormitories. It was dark nearly everywhere, and my headlamp didn’t light up as much as I’d have liked it to.
Creepy.
But if there was something to be found there, it had been removed a long time ago. Nothing but empty beds.
I headed back to APV and followed the trail that my mother took.
I hope the tracks stay visible.
I think they will.
I’ve noticed that the further into the bunker I go, the dustier it seems to be.
I wonder why that is?
:: Record Date 29:06:4787 07:43
I camped inside the APV, parked at yet another area of rooms. I pulled up at two other areas along the route, which has taken me about ten miles through tunnels so far, but I didn’t stop to look around until now. None of the other areas had signs of passage, but as soon as I opened the side door on the APV in the new area, I spotted the footprints again.
Still no other vehicle, though. I guess my mother must have stopped here for something.
I’m going to go find out.
:: Record Date 29:06:4787 09:28
Stores. Huge stores.
I went through the double doors off the platform expecting to find corridors again, but that wasn’t what greeted me. Instead I saw a vast darkness and the air changed, becoming much cooler. I could also feel a breeze coming from somewhere but have no idea where the source could be, especially underground. I called out and the echo that came back suggested that I was in a very, very large room.
I went back, rolled a trolley out of the side door, and drove the smaller transportation back through the double doors. I’ve unloaded a lot of my gear into the APV so the trolley now moves at quite a speed, maybe a fast jog, and I made sure to recharge it before I left, so the lights are as bright as they are going to get.