I’m all of those people.
Will I ever not be all of those people?
I sit down.
I obey.
Of course.
Honour thy father. That’s the Rule.
Dad runs his tongue slowly over his lips. He has all the time in the world. He’s won.
“Will here has been running around the country, showing your photo at hostels, at bus depots, stations. Up to Edinburgh, a student house in Newcastle. You did well to last so long. But then, I did teach you everything you know.”
He’s taught me how to lie, how to hide, how to deceive.
“Not in the mood for talking?” says Dad. “No matter. We have plenty of time. We thought we saw you at my event last week. What was that ridiculous get-up?” He chuckles.
My mind’s racing. He’s not meant to be anywhere near here. He must have changed his plans after Josh’s stupid stunt with the talk. I should never have gone. I should have trusted my first instincts.
He turns to Will. “You see, Amber and I didn’t part on particularly good terms.” He lowers his voice, as he uncrosses his legs and leans further towards the younger man, as though he’s sharing a confidence. “I’m ashamed to say, we have a few unresolved anger issues in our family, Will. Maybe I’ll share it all with you one day in a big show-and-tell.” He opens his arms wide.
I dig my nails into my palms to stop myself screaming at him. Does that mean he’s got all the Eden Farm records and footage here in this room? Somewhere in all these boxes?
Will looks over at my clenched fists and then back at my dad. “She’s got a pretty feisty tongue on her too.”
“Ha! That’s my girl, a tough cookie,” says Dad, bringing his hands together in a loud clap, his eyes flashing. He chews on invisible gum. “We’ll have to keep a close eye on her, Will. A very close eye.”
He gives me a full minute of silence, waiting in the chair, before asking, “Where did you go when you left Eden Farm? Never even thought about coming back to check on me? And your momma wasn’t really well enough, was she? She couldn’t look after herself, let alone you.”
I breathe in deeply.
He speaks to Will again, “From what I understand, Amber here had to live with strangers provided by the state, instead of living with her own papa.” He shakes his head, tutting.
I want to shout that they were all better than him, all more caring than him. Whether I liked them or not. But I don’t. I swallow the words down.
“And then your mother took a load of pills.” He tuts. “Weak. Irresponsible.”
Even when she’s dead, he can’t stop criticizing her.
“It was an accidental overdose,” I blurt. This is what I tell myself. She wouldn’t have left me voluntarily. She wouldn’t.
“I wasn’t surprised,” he says. “Let’s face it, she was always more of an overhead than an asset.”
His cruelty hangs heavily in the room.
“And what am I? To you?” I ask in a whisper. “Overhead or asset?”
He laughs. “There’s that acid tongue again, Will!” He reaches out and places his hands on either side of my face. I tense every muscle but don’t move away. I hold his gaze – a small act of defiance.
“Why, you’re my flesh and blood,” he says. “You’re my stake in the future.” He drops his hands and leans back in his chair, studying my face. “You’re so like me.”
He moves forwards again to whisper, “You know it. I know it.”
The cold reality seeps into every vein of my body.
Dad slaps his legs and leaps up. “So glad you came to see the talk. I knew your curiosity would get the better of you in the end.” He picks up a box from the floor and adds it to the table. “You can help with all this. Bring some order.” He pauses. “I just never know when all this could come in handy.” He rolls his tongue over his teeth and then smiles. “And there’s a big storeroom downstairs that needs better organizing. These preppers up here don’t have the discipline of our Rules and systems, honey – though I do appreciate the loan of the place.” He looks over at Will. “And we have ourselves a space at the best-equipped bunker facility going. The Ark.”
“The supreme covert bug-out spot,” says Will, smiling from ear to ear. “We will be so ready for when the shit hits.”
“It’s the ultimate prepper bunker,” Dad says. “Underground, of course, but with access to surface-level polytunnels and a biodome. State. Of. The. Art.”
His eyes are blue. I’d forgotten that. I focus on the fleck on his iris and my mind wanders. It’s a defence mechanism. I know I should be paying attention to his lies. He’s become a salesman selling an overpriced prison cell.
Will eagerly joins in with talk of the selection process, of passing a challenge like he’s entered some dystopian competition. I suspect getting hold of me was the selection challenge. Are there more disciples like him?
“We need good people like Will here; people with initiative,” says Dad. He slaps his minion on the back.
Will stands. “I’ll be in the basement if you need me, pressing on with those shelves. I’m going to leave you two to catch up.”
Dad nods. “Why, thank you, Will. It’s certainly been a while.” He turns to me. “A whole new community is building, Amber. People who see the merit in my Rules and understand the need for discipline. You’d be amazed at what people will pay for a place in the Ark.”
The Ark. Eden. I’m sensing a theme.
He points over at Will’s disappearing back and whispers, “You’d be amazed at what people will do for a place in the Ark. So many young people searching for something.”
Dad’s charmed him somewhere along the line – at one of his talks or in a prepping forum. Will does exactly what he asks without question. In a way that I never could. Will’s like the perfect son he never had.
Dad looks at me quizzically. “You don’t seem keen, Amber, honey. You never did like being cooped up, did you? But you’ll get over it this time. For the greater good.” His mouth settles into a firm line. The smile is gone.
In the silence I can hear the distant drip of a tap, the gurgle of water in the pipes.
“Things have changed, Amber. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. We all make mistakes. It’s what we do afterwards to make up for our mistakes that matters.”
I stay silent, glaring.
“I’m somebody now,” he adds. “I’ve learned from the mistakes we – I – made at Eden Farm. That was just an amateur’s attempt. It could never have been a long-term solution. Luckily I have funds now. Major funds.”
“From where?” I ask. “From people who want to live in your brilliant bunker?”
“Partly. But I have sad news about Grandma too. Her heart.” His eyes are cold. I don’t believe he shed a tear for her.
“I never stopped hoping I’d find you again. It was always Grandma’s fondest wish that we’d all be reunited. Sadly it’s come too late for her. But you weren’t to know your selfishness would make her sick. Break her heart.” He reaches forwards and for an awful moment I think he’s going to hug me. He traces my jawline with his finger instead. “You’re so grown-up, Amber. A beautiful young woman now.”
“I don’t want to go to the States, Dad. I want to stay here.”
He repeats my phrase in a childish voice. “I don’t wanna go to the States, Daddy. I wanna stay here.” He leans back again, claps his hands and chuckles. “I knew you were going to say that. I just knew it. That’s why I came back to the UK, Amber. I tried setting up something with some folks in Washington State. Turned out they weren’t serious preppers. They just wanted a cabin in the woods. A weekend place to sit on the veranda and toast marshmallows. They didn’t want to live by the Rules, build a new society. They weren’t serious. Are you serious, Amber? Like Will out there? Like your daddy?” His hand shakes and he tucks it under his thigh on the chair.
We’re back to the trick questions. I don’t know the correct responses to them. History is repeating itse
lf. Those people in Washington State obviously tired of his stupid ideas. Didn’t want to sign up to his Rules. Neither did me and Mum but we had no choice.
“Yes, I’m serious,” I say.
“Well, real good to hear it, my little firecracker.” He gets up and walks to the window and waits for a moment, like he’s weighing up if I’m telling the truth. “I bring good news. The Ark is not in the States, Amber,” he says. “It’s right here in the good old United Kingdom. Just for you, baby. Just for you.”
Dad got paranoid about the landline. A few automated calls came through about claiming for an accident or issues with our internet service provider – fraudsters trying to get access to bank accounts or passwords. But he took it as a sign. It was a sign that we were being watched.
The state was watching us, listening in, trying to confuse us when our guard was down. He’d told me so.
The landline had to go.
The state was clever. Dad grew suspicious of the laptop. The state was watching us through the screen. He stuck tape over the camera.
Emails were infiltrating our software, installing spyware.
He shut down the laptop. Locked it away.
The postman was an agent of the state. Checking up on us every day. Pretending to be bringing mail when he was secretly taking photographs and planting listening devices. Dad redirected our mail to a post-office box he rented in the nearest town. We had to pick up the mail ourselves. One time he said that the box was under surveillance by a woman in a waxed jacket with a spaniel. We didn’t get the post that week.
It was another door to the outside world being shut for me. No phone, no internet, no post.
Dad said the TV was full of lies.
Everything I needed to know, he could tell me. Only practical knowledge mattered.
I knew the TV set was on borrowed time. My argument that we needed it to see when the SHTF gave it an extra week or two. But then it was gone. Because smart TVs could watch you in your own home. The state could see what we were doing in our own lounge. On our own sofa. Even if the power was off. We were safest with a basic wind-up radio. No one could trace that or spy on us.
Dad took a hammer to the TV screen one night while I cowered behind the door.
Just to make extra sure.
Dad had systematically removed most reasons for anyone to come to the house. He erected a set of signs round the edge of the property. ‘No Trespassing’, ‘Private Land – Keep Out’. He added a lock to the five-bar gate. No one could get up the track even if they wanted to.
My world was shrinking
smaller
and
smaller.
Until it was just
me
and
him.
Him
and
me.
But mostly it was him.
I arrange my items on the bathroom shelf and think what I can do with them. My tasks are to find a way to get out of here, and to work out how to overpower ripped Will with a hairbrush, tweezers, a plastic bottle of shower gel and a box of tampons.
Failure is not an option. I can do this. Dad always underestimates what I can do. Preppers adapt to what they have to work with. I smile to myself. They should never have left me the tweezers. There’s so much I can do with them beyond plucking my eyebrows.
I try the tweezers in the door lock, twisting them gently from left to right. But it doesn’t work. Will has left the key in the other side – which gives me a different idea. The gap beneath the door is tight and I don’t know for sure how thick the key is, but it’s worth a go. I flatten out the advent calendar card and slide it partially under the door. There’s a distant sound of a door closing and footsteps so I wait, holding my breath, until all is silent again, save for the tick of the clock. I poke at the key with the tweezers until it falls from the lock and bounces on the wooden floor. As I carefully pull the card back, it’s empty. The key has landed somewhere in the hallway. Damn.
A couple of tiny window flaps have not survived the mission, catching on the rough edge of the carpet. Door three – the snowflake. And yesterday’s snowglobe was the other victim. A lonely penguin in a bobble hat trapped in a blizzard. Trapped forever.
I carefully open today’s door hoping for something symbolic: a rescue helicopter or a flamethrower? Instead I get a snowman with a carrot for his nose and a stupid grin on his face.
I’m left with squirting the shower gel at them or firing tampons. Maybe the hairbrush. Even I can see the ridiculousness of it all. I try to prise the lid off the toilet cistern thinking I could make a weapon out of a float ball and plastic pipe. But it’s fixed solid.
I’ll have to try a more subtle approach. My dad is beyond reasoning with. Beyond reason. But Will? I could work on him and appeal to his better nature. Though anyone prepared to slip drugs to a teenage girl might not have a better nature to appeal to. And I’m not renowned for my charm. That’s the other major flaw in my plan. But it’s worth a go. I pocket the tweezers.
Not for the first time, I think about Josh. Could he have forgiven me for everything I said and gone looking for me? It’s not like Josh owes me or genuinely cares about me. It’s not like we’re really brother and sister. And we’re definitely not best friends – he barely knew me a couple of weeks ago. But he’s wormed his way into my head somehow. And maybe I’m in his.
He could have reported me missing to the police or social services. Or, most likely, he’ll not have contacted anybody in authority at all and is just reading a book and stuffing his face somewhere. I let him down like everyone else in his life. I pushed him away. Why would he help me?
Footsteps approach down the hall. What will they have in store for me today? I’m never left alone in the dining room to do a proper search. Finding extra cash and valuables would be good, of course, but now I know Dad is using this as his base, I’m sure the records from Eden Farm I need are here – if only I can find them. They’re worth more to me if I want to move on. Put my side of events.
Yesterday Dad made me go through plans with him, drawing up supply lists. We worked out how much water a community of twenty-five people would consume, how much they’d need for washing and showering, for laundry. He drew up new Rules about how often to wash. I don’t know why he bothers with all these categories, sub-clauses, clarifications – whatever he wants to call them. The upshot is that what he says goes. I wash as often as he permits, I eat as often as he permits. In the Ark, the worst thing for me won’t be that; it’ll be the lack of daylight – though he tells me there are daylight tubes, camouflaged on the surface for security, but permitting daylight to flow down into the Ark. He adds vitamin D supplements to the supplies list to compensate. He rants about the government and the lack of sunlight in Scotland in the winter. Is that where the Ark is? He won’t say.
Will unlocks the door. He dangles the key in front of my face and raises an eyebrow. “Been playing with the key, have we? Found it on the floor.”
“If you lock up children without any toys, what do you expect? But you can explain all that when the police arrest you for abducting a minor and for false imprisonment. Drugging a child isn’t legal either. I’m keeping quite a list on you.”
He frowns. “Not this again.”
“I want to be there when my social worker gets hold of you,” I say. “She will hunt you down for this. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.” I like the image of Julie chucking off her cardigan and rolling up her sleeves to wrestle Will. I half wish it would happen.
“Your father is keeping you here for your own good. Don’t you know the Rule: The ends justify the means?”
“For my own good? That will sound great at your trial. Tell the judge that in the real world and see how it goes.”
Will points through the doorway. “Time for breakfast, your ladyship. All laid out in the dining room.”
Will thinks that I’m too high and mighty to cook since Dad refused to let me near the kitchen. But aside from all
the sharp things locked away in there, Dad and I know better why he’s refusing to let me anywhere near his food. On the way downstairs, I ask Will questions about his home, his parents, whether he has any siblings, any little sisters like me? But he shuts it down and changes the subject. Being charming is hard.
“Your father wants you to help with the medical set-up today.”
“Aren’t you the one who knows all about drugs?”
Will sighs. “We’re going to be in the Ark together, Amber. I think we should try to move on and get along. It’ll be easier for all concerned.”
“You don’t think Dad’s actually going to let you into his brilliant bunker, do you?” I say, as I pick at the breakfast. “Remember the Rule: The ends justify the means. You can’t trust a word he’s said to you, a single promise he’s made. He’s using you, Will. If you’re so indispensable, why are you making toast and I’m the one trusted with drawing up water supplies and medical requirements?”
I crunch hard on the toast and chew it slowly and loudly to emphasize my point. So I can’t do charming but I can be quite annoying if I put my mind to it. All these years of finding just the right level of sarcasm, tracking down weak spots like a heat-seeking missile. I’m getting under his skin, no matter how hard he’s pretending I’m not. The vein on his temple is twitching.
“Actually, Will, where is the Ark?” I say in my best little-girl voice, putting on a puzzled face to match. “You know, the one you’ve definitely got a VIP spot in. You must have had a full guided tour as you’re such a trusted member of the inner circle.”
I wonder how many more buttons I can press before Will explodes. His fuming silence tells me something I’d only guessed at – there’s no way he’s seen the Ark. Dad has no intention of taking Will with us.
His lips move silently. He’s counting to ten to control himself. “Your father will be back tonight. You’d better make a start.” He points over at the papers at the end of the table.
“Where’s he gone today – all day long?” I ask. I look at the size of Will. Can I overpower a trained prepper when the time is right? Or get the keys off that sodding lanyard round his neck?
The Rules Page 14