by Paul Teague
It wasn’t just sadness, loss and grief. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, and I just thought it was what everybody else in the family was going through too. To be honest, I didn’t cope with it very well at all. Sometimes it would drive me mad, I just needed to get that connection back with Nat and I’d be fine. So, if other kids caught me at the wrong time, I’d just go crazy with them. A bit of stupid teasing, some playful pushing, a daft comment. Sometimes, when I was struggling with my ‘disconnection’ with Nat, I would just lash out.
Before I knew it the hushed conversations had begun. Mum and Dad were being called in after school to chat with my class teacher. When it gets really serious the Head Teacher is involved and Mum and Dad are having those conversations during the working day. And before you know it, you’re being introduced to a man with an unusual tie, called Dr Pierce.
The Holiday Itinerary
I wasn’t unusually troubled by that logo at the time because I was more interested in the details of the holiday. It made no difference to me of course, but this holiday had to be taken in term time. That was okay for us, because Harriet could come out of nursery and David would be able to come out of school for a week. Mum and Dad had pulled this one off before, and so long as you called it an ‘educational visit’ and made a big thing of the incredible learning experiences involved, the Head Teacher usually let you get away with it. Mum and Dad didn’t bother mentioning the long morning lie-ins, the evening DVDs and the trips to our favourite burger restaurant. Always best to miss those bits out when talking to the Head Teacher.
We seemed to be pretty free to do as we pleased for most of the time. But they were really insistent about that trip to the bunker. In fact, although it was written in a really cheery way, it was made pretty clear that if we didn’t make that bunker visit, there would be a ‘penalty’ to pay. I scanned words like ‘publicity opportunity’, ‘sponsor involvement’ and ‘extra spending money’ - enough to know that if there was one thing that had to happen on this holiday, it was getting to that bunker at the appointed time
Chapter Seven
Jigsaw
There were three pieces that didn’t quite fit in this jigsaw. Yes, they were part of the overall picture, but they felt like they’d been taken out of another set. Why do I remember Nat moving for instance? That image doesn’t belong in this picture. Nat died, I was there at the funeral. It was the way it happened that made me remember it. I know now that when people die it’s not like it usually happens on TV. It can be slower than that in real life, it takes more time. It’s actually quite hard for people to die in fact, particularly if you’re trying to kill them.
People die of all sorts of crazy things every day - like slipping on ice, choking on toast and even laughing themselves to death. But to purposefully kill them is quite hard. It’s all there on the internet, people die of silly things. I did say that home education is nothing like school. I have plenty of time to research this stuff. So, it was perfectly possible that Nat could have moved after being hit by the black car. Again, my source was the internet, so I hope it’s correct, but it was on a reputable site.
After death occurs, there’s a period called ‘clinical death’ where a person can be revived. Well, Nat was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident, even though the body was still taken away in the ambulance. The blood on my clothes was certainly for real and Nat was completely still in the road as the medical staff scurried around the body, doing their best to save another life. I don’t really know what death looks like, but even to my nine year old self, Nat looked dead to me. But probably only a nine year old would have seen this.
The adults were all talking and busy, Mum was being comforted by a police officer and I was holding the hand of an ambulance man close enough to see what was going on. From nowhere, a man joined the huddle of medical staff around Nat’s body. He showed them some sort of card, I’m guessing that it must have been identification. Whatever it was, they jumped at it and it was obvious even to me that he was now in charge.
As they started to move away from Nat, and in that second that they were distracted, and thrown off balance by the arrival of this man, he did something to Nat. I couldn’t see what it was - it wasn’t an injection, but whatever he did had the same motion as giving somebody an injection. Nat’s body didn’t do anything immediately, in fact I only saw the movement just as the body was being lifted into the ambulance. It could have been anything of course, I have no knowledge of medical procedures and he certainly looked like he knew what he was doing. It was just very surprising that this man had been the same person who had distracted Mum just before Nat’s accident.
Meeting Dr Pierce
When you’re a kid, you’re introduced to all sorts of adults and people in authority and you are expected to just accept that like it’s a normal part of life. Yet, at school, at home and even in TV programmes, you’re warned constantly about ‘stranger danger’. What’s a kid supposed to think for goodness sake? One minute I’m being told that I have to see this doctor who I really don’t like, then next minute I’m being told to alert a responsible adult if someone talks to me and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Well, that’s exactly how Dr Pierce made me feel. In fact ‘uncomfortable’ wasn’t the word for it.
It wasn’t because I was frightened of him or anything like that. It was just like he had real problems communicating with children, he was so intelligent and high flying, that I really struggled to relate to him. And that tie of his, what was that all about? I never really listened to what he was saying, because I was watching that tie all the time. The metallic quality of that logo was really unusual. Metallic objects usually catch the light and often reflect different colours based on the surroundings. Only Dr Pierce’s tie didn’t do that. The metallic logo on his tie seemed to have a life of its own and reflected colours that weren’t even in the room. Or at least I’d noticed that whenever I was anywhere near him, that’s what happened.
The Day of The Visit
It was pretty funny on the day of the visit to the bunker really. In fact, if I never see my family again - and I have had to consider that possibility - it was a pretty nice ‘final day’ together.
Mum was so funny. She got a real bee in her bonnet about us being tidy if the holiday people were going to take a publicity photograph of us all. Dad was a bit stressed too. We all knew money was tight, but that extra spending money that we were due to pick up today … well, anybody would have thought it was The Holy Grail that we were picking up. Dad was determined to get there on time and bank that extra cash. It was one of those scenes of family chaos, where Mum’s trying to get us all decent and ready at a certain time, Harriet’s rebelling by spilling juice all over herself five minutes before we go out and Dad’s doing a big ‘countdown to leaving the house’ to make sure none of us gets distracted by our tech.
The only problem is, we don’t have an internet connection in this holiday house. Can you believe that? Who doesn’t have a broadband connection these days? Well apparently, some rural areas in Southern Scotland don’t. Give me city-life any day. So it’s fair to say that we were all pretty desperate to get connected. And they had free wireless at the bunker. Thank goodness, civilisation at last.
Mum and Dad refused to take all of our tech, they were too embarrassed, so the deal was - as we were ‘guests’ on this visit - that we’d just take mum’s laptop and my phone and have five minutes ‘catch-up’ time in the cafe. That’s why mum got caught outside the doors when the darkness came. It was ‘tech-time’ and we had left my phone and Mum’s crucial laptop in the car.
Calibration
The woman is sitting uneasily on the low, hessian covered chair. It’s a small concession to comfort, though they both know that comfort is not going to be a primary concern in what happens next. The Doctor moves over to the computer equipment and begins to make hand gestures on the screen.
This is advanced technology, recognisable for what it is - screens, speakers, camera, tech hubs
- yet somehow unfamiliar. As the Doctor moves his hands there is a faint, pulsing glow just beneath the skin on the woman’s neck. It is where the device entered her body only minutes before. Whatever it is, it is receiving some signal from the equipment in that room. She can barely feel it, it brings no pain or discomfort, but she knows that something is going on.
The Doctor never speaks to her while all of this is happening. He doesn’t offer words of reassurance or explanation as you might expect from a medical professional. The woman has experienced all different types of doctor in her lifetime - friendly, brash, superior, calming - but never one like this. If she had to describe how he made her feel, she’d probably say ‘Uncomfortable’.
Chapter Eight
Underground
After all the mayhem, we did actually get to the bunker in time. At first we were really disappointed. When Mum and Dad had been talking about ‘Cold War Bunkers’ and ‘Nuclear Proliferation’ I’d conjured up all sorts of images of an imposing military base surrounded by barbed wire and missiles. Okay, I knew this was disused and now a visitor attraction, but it just looked to me like a boring cottage from the outside, with a few suggestions of possible military use as you drove up to the car park.
I don’t know what it is about Government buildings, but they very definitely have a ‘look’ and a ‘feel’ about them. They’re well-built, strong and robust. They’re also business like, functional, plain. That’s how I’d describe the cottage. For all intents and purposes it looked like a regular cottage. But the guttering was metal, not plastic, the fence posts were concrete and nothing was done for decoration, it was purely functional.
The land surrounding the cottage was scattered with raised areas, some of which had aerials and dishes attached to them, others looked like ventilation outlets and the rest just looked like concrete stores. It became immediately clear from a map just outside the main entrance that this was just the shop and ticket buying area, the real Secret Bunker was concealed deep beneath the ground.
Our sheer excitement at the adventure that awaited us beyond the ticket desk distracted us from the fact that our hosts had not turned up. There was a message waiting for us as we were handed our free tickets, apologising for the delay and asking us to go ahead and look around the bunker. We’d be joined in the cafe in about one hour’s time. By somebody with the surname Pierce.
A Sudden Sound
My anxiety has taken over again and I’m not really thinking now about what happened just before I lost sight of Mum. I’m really hungry and thinking about trying to make my way along the corridor again. I’ve tried calling out to Dad, but my cries are just returned to me as an echo. Why can’t they hear me, they weren’t that far away? And what on earth is going on out there?
Mum was caught outside the closing doors, there’s no way she can get through those. The sign outside said that those doors weigh three tonnes. I don’t really know what three tonnes is, but one look at those doors told me that it’s pretty heavy. When the alarms sounded, they closed automatically.
Funny that, they looked like they’d be manually operated, they had handles on them a bit like the ones you see in submarines, the type that you have to turn several times to open and close. I don’t think I’d be able to hear her through them either. I thought that most places had emergency lights when something unusual like this happened. I suppose this place is just like a museum now, but still, we’re so deep underground, why didn’t the lights come on? My mind starts to race again with all the different scenarios and possibilities. The simple fact is, I just don’t know what’s going on. I tried to get up and walk along the corridor again, but I just gave up again. It’s so dark, if only I could hear somebody or something, I’d have a destination to aim for. I’m pretty sure that if I can’t hear Dad, he must have made it past the next blast doors, so all I’m going to reach is a dead end if I move forwards.
And then I’m startled, because out of the silence and blackness, I can hear a noise. It’s not a person, there is no voice or movement. It is the faint hum of something that sounds electrical, like somebody just turned the power on.
The Other Pieces
Five years on, and I’m still pretty sure of what I saw. But as a nine year old child, you receive the world as it’s presented to you by adults. Nat is dead, Mum and Dad are distraught, there is a funeral. It must be so. Only I know what I saw. I can’t explain it, but I know it happened.
And what about that man who distracted Mum? Was it a coincidence that he was there at that time? In films, if somebody has a heart attack on a plane, they always ask for a doctor. There’s usually one on board. So was this just a happy coincidence? As a nine year old I was unsure. My twelve year old self knows that it was no coincidence. And there’s one thing that I know with complete certainty about that day. Again, it was a feeling in the moment, an instant of understanding, vision and acceptance. As I stepped forward with Nat, then stepped back to take a look at that bug on the ground I looked up. A black car was coming at us at speed, Nat just hadn’t seen it. In that moment I looked up and saw the eyes of the driver. This was no driver error, no careless steering or momentary lapse of concentration. He was looking at me directly in the eyes and the car was being aimed straight at us.
Chapter Nine
Concealed
The secret bunker was amazing. I was at that age where I could often take or leave Mum and Dad’s family days out, but this one captivated the entire family.
This place was concealed 100 feet below ground. It was the size of two football pitches. Now, I don’t play a lot of football, I’m more your Minecraft kind of guy, but even I know that’s pretty big. In fact, it looked just like something you might build on Minecraft, because it was encased in two feet of concrete.
There was nothing ornate or subtle about this place, it was a massive concrete bunker buried under the ground. You reached the main bunker via a 450 foot sloping tunnel. The bunker itself was incredible. There were offices, control rooms, dormitories and bathrooms. How on earth could you flush the loo 100 feet below ground? There was a Chapel and even a radio studio. I hadn’t a clue why anybody would want to hear a DJ playing tunes after a nuclear apocalypse, but Dad informed me that radio would be used to transmit important messages from the Government in the event of an emergency. I think I’d prefer the DJ.
We found what must have been a mini-cinema on our explorations, and inside they were showing Cold War films in black and white. Part of me wanted to laugh at these films, another part of me knew how deadly serious they were. They were explaining what to do in case of a nuclear attack. Men with really posh voices used phrases like ‘Duck and cover’ and ‘Protect and survive’ and you’d see old fashioned school children practising what to do when the bomb went off. It only struck me looking back how ominous the sound of the sirens had been in those old films.
Error
Something is wrong here.
The power should have come on as soon as the sirens sounded. It is 24 hours late. These are crucial minutes. The bunker should be activated.
This is not how it had been planned.
24 Hours After The Darkness
It’s only a faint hum at first, and I can feel it as much as see it, because with the noise comes a small vibration through the floor. Whatever is creating this must be pretty big and powerful - or extremely close - as I’m feeling it through two feet of concrete. It is building slowly, and it doesn’t feel to me like a generator, it’s not a sound I’ve ever heard before.
Still this wretched darkness though, I’d had a sudden leap of hope when the humming had started, expecting the lights to come on and everything to be resolved. What I’d give for this all to be sorted. A lack of internet access has been the very least of my problems whilst waiting alone in the still darkness of this corridor. In an instant, the humming changes pitch, like somebody just changed the gears of a car. It has an urgency now and I get the sensation for the first time in however many hours it has been that somethin
g is changing around me, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
The lights come on. I am dazzled and confused for a moment, my eyes are used to blackness and all of a sudden I’m immersed in bright light. As my eyes adjust, I look up to see that I am no longer where I thought I was. This is still the long corridor, but it has somehow been transformed since I last saw it. I don’t have time to question that. Three figures wearing virus protection suits are running towards me and as they do so the small, red lights from the laser targeting on their weapons come to rest in unison on my forehead.
Part Two: Disconnected
Chapter One
Revelation
I have never had a single gun pointed directly at me before - let alone three - and it’s not something that I’d recommend. On TV people wave guns around like they’re toys. Right now, it’s pretty terrifying having these three red dots directly above my eyes and knowing that at any second - should a trigger be pulled - it’s all over for me. These aren’t regular guns though, they’re certainly weapons and they’re definitely modelled on guns. They look more like they belong to a science fiction world than the 21st Century.
It doesn’t help that these guys are dressed in virus suits. I’m no expert, but I know that can’t be a good thing for me. They’re completely sealed off in these suits from head to toe. The suits are bright yellow, there’s no missing them that’s for sure. As the three figures get closer I can see that I’m being approached by two women and a man, each looking deadly serious, intent but concerned. That’s a considerable improvement on hostile, but I’d still rather those laser dots were not trained directly on me. And what’s happened to this corridor?
Before the doors closed and the lights went out, this was just a gloomy, concrete-lined passageway. Was I unconscious for a while? Did I fall asleep?Did somebody move me? No, I can tell that this is the same place, the same long corridor, but before the lights went on, it completely changed. It’s like a team from one of those TV decorating programmes popped in while the lights were off and gave the corridor a total makeover. Only this looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Let’s put it this way, it belongs more to the realms of imagination and fantasy than a Cold War bunker in Southern Scotland.