The Bunker Diary (18 page)

We all spend a lot of time alone in our
rooms now, me included. It’s not healthy, I know, but it’s hard to find the
energy to do anything else. I do my best. I force myself to get up and walk around every
couple of hours or so. It keeps me sane and stops my head imploding. Also, I’m
still looking for a way out. My brain keeps telling me I’m wasting my time, but my
heart hasn’t given up yet.

Jenny joins me on my walks quite often, and
sometimes Fred tags along for a while, but the rest of them rarely get out of bed any
more. They only show their faces when the lift comes down or when they need to go to the
lavatory.

I don’t know what they do in their
rooms.

Anja cries a lot.

I went to see her yesterday. I don’t
know why I bothered. I knew it was pointless.

Knock, knock.

‘What?’

‘It’s me, Linus.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing, really. I just wondered how
you’re doing.’

‘Go away.’

Russell sleeps most of the time.

I don’t know what Bird does. I never
hear any noise from his room and I very rarely see him. Even when I do, he doesn’t
speak to me. He still hasn’t forgiven me for hitting him. Fair enough, I suppose.
I expect he’s planning some kind of humiliating retaliation. Good luck to him. It
takes a lot to humiliate me.

Jenny sings when she’s on her own. I
hear her sometimes, singing quietly to herself – kids’ songs, made-up songs,
unthinking songs. It’s a very nice sound, but very sad too.

And what about me? What do I do in my
room?

I think.

I write.

I don’t read the bible.

I laugh.

I shudder.

But most of the time, I just think.

A lot of it is escaping stuff, stuff I
can’t tell you about. Not yet anyway. Hopefully never. And the rest of
it … I don’t know. It’s mostly too boring to talk about. Dad, Mum,
memories, feelings …

Who wants to know about that kind of
crap?

I’ll tell you one thing though.

When I get out of here, the first thing
I’m going to do is find myself a nice quiet room with a nice comfy settee and a
nice big TV, and I’m just going to lie there and watch the most boring programmes
I can find until every little thought has been sucked out of my head. Then I’m
going to lie there some more
until my emotions are drained, and then
I’m going to eat a LARGE quarterpounder with cheese, with LARGE fries, and
I’ll wash it all down with a LARGE Coke with tons of ice, and then I’m going
to have a steaming-hot bubble bath, and I’m not getting out until the
water’s cold and my fingers have gone all wrinkly.

Then I’m going to have another LARGE
quarterpounder with cheese.

And then …

Well, I’ll think about that when the
time comes.

Right now, I’m going to sleep.

Now I’ve really gone and done it. I
tried to escape again. This time I didn’t tell anyone else what I was doing.

This time …

Shit.

This time I think I’ve made a big
mistake.

I thought I’d got it all worked out.
I used my head. I used logic. I used past experience. What’s the problem? I asked
myself. Step back and strip it down to the basics, Linus. What. Is. The. Problem? Well,
the problem is – He’s up there and we’re down here. And as long as He stays
up there, we’re staying down here.

Right?

Right.

So why not try to get Him down here?

He came down before, didn’t he? He
likes to punish you. If you do something wrong, He punishes you. The last time you tried
to escape He gassed the lot of you, then came down here and took all the food away.
Think about it. He came down in the lift. So He must have some kind of remote-control
device, otherwise He wouldn’t have been able to get back up again, would He?

So all you’ve got to do is get Him down
here, and then do the necessary.

Just do it.

So I spent Saturday and Sunday thinking and
planning, and by Monday I was ready. I had a plan. Admittedly, the plan was full of
holes, but the way I saw it a plan full of holes was better than no plan at all.

Step 1: I got some bin liners from the
kitchen, filled a saucepan with water, and pretended to clean up my room. Wetting a
cloth, wiping down surfaces, careful not to wet the cloth too much.

Step 2: I stripped the sheet off my bed and
took it into the bathroom. Filled the bath, put the sheet in the bath, gave it a wash.
Then I took the sheet back to my room and hung it over the door to dry.

Step 3: I got the jitters. I re-realized how
holey the plan was and I was struck with the absolute certainty that it wasn’t
going to work. Nothing is 100% certain, I told myself. Just ignore it.

Step 4: I left my room, went over to the
dining table and picked up a chair. Then I went over to the clock on the wall and
smashed it to pieces with the chair. I put the chair down and went back to my room.

Step 5: I waited. I sat down on my bed and
stared at the grille in the ceiling. Read my thoughts, Mister, I thought. I broke your
clock. Punish me. I broke your clock. If you want to carry on messing with the time,
you’re going to have to come down here and fix it. Did you hear what I said? I
broke your clock. Come on, punish me. What’s the matter? You scared? Come
on
 …

Click
.

The lights go out.

I hear voices outside.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Shit, what now?’

‘Hey!’

Then,

Knock, knock.

‘Linus?’

It’s Jenny.

‘Go back to your room, Jen,’ I
call out. ‘Just stay calm. It’ll be all right.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing. Just go back to your room,
get into bed, and lie still.’

Then I hear the hissing sound. I look up at
the grille. I can smell it, the smell of chemicals, growing stronger.

Step 6: I grab a bin liner from under my bed
and rip a hole in it to make a collar. Pull the black plastic over my head and roll it
tightly around my neck. Grab the damp sheet from the door. Tear off a strip, dip it in
the water-filled saucepan, wind the strip round my mouth and nose. And now the chemical
smell is getting stronger. The air is pungent, gassy, hard to breathe. Eyes stinging. I
drape the damp sheet over my head, wrap it round, round and round, over my head, eyes,
mouth, nose, tuck it into the bin-liner collar. Breathe easy. Pour water over my
cloth-wrapped head. Get into bed. Pull up the blanket. Breathe easy.
Concentrate … stay awake. Lie still … go limp … play
dead.

The gas keeps coming.

Hissing in the dark.

How long?

One, thousand … two,
thousand … three, thousand … four, thousand …

Count.

Concentrate.

Stay awake.

How long?

Minutes.

Getting heavy-eyed.

Count.

One, thousand …

Think.

Stay awake …

The hissing stops.

The lights come on.

I’m still alive.

I’m conscious.

Sick, dizzy, dopey … but
conscious.

Now I just have to wait.

A minute.

Keep quiet.

Five minutes.

Lie still.

Ten minutes.

Listen.

Tkk-kshhh-mmm
 …

The lift door closing.

Nnnnnnnn
 …

Going up.

G-dung, g-dunk
.

The lift stops.

Pause.

A whirring.

Clunk
 … 
click
 … 
nnnnnnnn
 …

The lift coming back down.

Step 7: I grab the saucepan, empty it, get
out of bed. I run. My legs are jelly, my head’s all over the place. The air is
foul, thick with gas. Quick, get to the lift, back against the wall, grip the saucepan.
Stay awake. It’s coming down … 
nnnnnnn
 … here it
comes, here He comes … 
g-dung, g-dunk …
get
ready … the door’s opening … 
mmm-kshhh-tkk.

Raise the saucepan, ready to strike.

Ready.

Ready …

Nothing happens.

Wait.

Come
on
 …

Where are you?

Nothing.

Where
are
you?

I stood there for a long time. Back to the
wall, saucepan raised, heart beating hard, hazy head wrapped in plastic and wet cloth,
eyes streaming … and I knew He wasn’t there.

He wasn’t in the lift.

I’d failed. I knew it.

Eventually I had to face up to it.

I stepped away from the wall and looked inside
the lift.

The only thing in there, positioned
carefully in the middle of the floor, was a grubby £10 note folded into the shape of a
butterfly. It was my £10 note. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. It was the
£10 note I’d had in my sock when He got me. The one He’d taken from me a
lifetime ago.

Now everything is really bad and it’s
all my fault. Everyone except Jenny and Russell hates my guts for putting them through
another dose of the gas. Even Russell was a bit frosty for a while.

‘You should have discussed it with
me,’ he said.

‘You would have told me not to do
it.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You would. I know you would.
That’s why I didn’t tell you.’

‘Well, anyway, it’s done
now.’

It’s done, all right.

The food’s stopped again. The
heating’s off. We don’t even have a clock any more.

And that’s not the worst of it.

It’s not even
close
to the
worst of it.

This morning something
really
terrible happened. He raised the punishment to another level. Even now, I can still
hardly believe it.

I was lying in bed shivering, trying to work
out what I felt worst about. The cold? The hunger? The emptiness in my head? The ache in
my bladder? There wasn’t much I could do about the first three, so I decided to
act on the fourth. I got out of bed, wrapped the blanket round my shoulders and started
for
the bathroom. As I left my room I saw Bird standing over by the
lift. He looked across at me, then quickly looked away, making a big show of ignoring
me. I muttered something under my breath and wasted ten seconds or so staring moodily at
his back. Then Fred loped down the corridor towards the kitchen and I turned my
attention to him. Shirtless, pale, and tired. He nodded at me but didn’t say
anything. I waited for him to pass, and was just about to turn down the corridor when I
heard the lift coming down. I paused. I knew it was going to be empty, foodless, but I
still had to wait and see.

The lift is the thing.

The
thing.

It’s impossible to resist. You
can’t ignore it. It’s like checking your pockets for cash when you know
they’re empty. You’ve already been through them twice, you know
they’re empty, but you still have to check them again, just in case.

Anyway, the lift came down.

The door opened.

It wasn’t empty.

There was a dog in there.

I’ve seen some scary-looking dogs in
my time, but this … God … this was something else. A Dobermann. One
of those big ugly ones. Dark brown, nearly black. Long head, small pointy ears, powerful
shoulders. Skinny, bony, half-starved. Burning eyes, bared teeth, snarling black
lips.

We all froze. Bird, Fred, me, the dog. For
about half a second, nothing happened. The dog just stood there, staring at us, tall,
rigid and silent, and the three of us just stood there too, rooted to the spot, staring
back at it. And then suddenly, without a sound, the dog shot out of the lift and
launched itself at Bird.
No growling, no barking, nothing – just a
black streak and a flash of wicked teeth. It was breathtaking. Bird twisted away and
threw his hands up to protect his throat, but the dog was on him like a guided missile.
It jumped up and sank its teeth into his neck, just above the shoulder, and Bird
screamed and fell to the floor with the dog on top of him.

I couldn’t move. I was petrified. But
Fred was already up and running. Before I knew what was happening he was halfway across
the corridor, whipping the belt from his trousers as he ran, heading for Bird and the
dog. Bird was sobbing now, a terrible, gut-wrenching sound. I could hear teeth on bone.
The dog was gnawing on his neck. There was blood all over the place. Fred didn’t
hesitate for a second, he just ran up to Bird and the dog and looped his belt round the
Dobermann’s throat. He put his knee in the dog’s back and pulled the belt
tight, twisting it in his hands, then heaved, pulling upwards and back, tightening the
belt as he pulled. The dog jerked up into the air, twisting and snapping like a crazy
thing, and then Fred swung it round and hammered it down on the floor. Before the dog
had a chance to get up again, Fred dropped down on top of it and grabbed its snout in
one huge hand, clamping its mouth shut. He hooked his other arm under the dog’s
neck, then let go of the snout, locked his arms together, gritted his teeth, and
squeezed. Tighter and tighter, pressing down on the dog’s head, crushing its
throat … choking, pressing, crushing. The dog struggled horribly, kicking its
legs and flexing its body, but Fred had all his weight on it now. The dog couldn’t
move. Couldn’t bite. Couldn’t breathe. Fred squeezed harder, groaning and
straining, forcing the dog’s head down with all his strength, until eventually I
heard a dull
snap
,
and the beast went limp.