The Bunker Diary (21 page)

First the good news.

There was a massive chunk of cooked meat in
the lift this morning. A joint of roast beef on a silver platter. It looked beautiful.
Thick, solid, juicy, succulent …

The smell of it was intoxicating.

And the bad news?

There were two sheets of paper pinned to the
meat with skewers.

One of them was a grubby little note that we
wrote about a month ago. Do you remember that secret meeting I told you about? The one
with Russell and Fred? The one I wouldn’t tell you about? Well, the reason I
didn’t want to tell you about it then was that I was worried The Man Upstairs
might find out about it. But it doesn’t matter now. Because He did find about
it.

We wrote the note after Russell had told us
everything he knew about the bunker. When Fred had first suggested his
message-down-the-lavatory idea, Jenny had been right to say that it was pointless
sending a message if we didn’t know where we were. But a bit later on, when I
mentioned the idea to Russell, he pointed out that although we didn’t know exactly
where we were, we did have
some
information that was worth passing on.

We knew that we were probably somewhere in
Essex.

We knew that we were still alive, and that
as long as the police knew we were alive, they’d probably carry on looking for
us.

And we knew that we were in an old nuclear
bunker.

‘There aren’t that many of them
around,’ Russell said. ‘And I know someone at Cambridge, a physicist called
Dr Lausche, who did some research on post-war nuclear facilities a few years ago. If I
write out everything I know about this place, and we include an instruction with our
note to pass these details on to Dr Lausche, it’s possible that he might be able
to work out where we are.’

So we’d written a note. Names,
descriptions, best guesses … as much information as we could think of. And
we’d carefully wrapped the note in several layers of black polythene torn from a
bin liner, and we’d tied the bundle with brightly coloured plastic strips ripped
from food packaging. And then we’d flushed the package down the lavatory.

That was almost four weeks ago.

And now here it was. Returned to sender.
Skewered to a piece of meat.

I think we all knew from the beginning that
the chances of the note actually reaching anyone were virtually non-existent, and ever
since we flushed it away I’ve been doing my best not to think about it, but I
suppose in the back of my mind I’ve been clinging to the hope that someone would
find it. So when I saw the note this morning, and when I realized what it meant, it hit
me like a cold hard slap in the face.

If anything though, the other sheet of paper
pinned to the meat was even worse. A printed note, it simply said:

We all looked at it for a long time. Ten
words. Nine puzzled eyes. (Bird was still in his room.)

‘Well?’ I said eventually.

‘Well what?’ Fred answered.

‘What does it mean?’

‘Who cares?’ He pulled out one
of the skewers, speared it into the joint of beef, and dug out a big chunk of meat.

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘It
might be drugged –’

‘I don’t care.’ He stuffed
the meat in his mouth and started chewing. ‘I rahvver vee foison v’n
’ungry.’

‘What?’

‘He said he’d rather be poisoned
than hungry,’ Jenny said.

We watched him eat. Chomping, chewing,
swallowing …

We looked at the meat. Mouth-watering, thick
and juicy …

We looked at the note.

The meat won.

We went at it like hyenas, ripping out dirty
great pieces with our bare hands and stuffing ourselves stupid.

Afterwards, when our bellies were full (and
Russell and Jenny had been sick), we considered the note again.

‘I think it’s meant to be some
kind of covenant,’ Russell said.

‘What government?’ said Fred,
picking meat from his teeth.

‘No,’ Russell said. ‘Not
government.
Cov
enant. It’s a kind of contract. An agreement.’ He
coughed weakly. ‘He’s saying that if one of us kills one of the others,
He’ll free the killer. He’ll let them go. A life for a life. That’s
His word.’

No one said anything for a while. It was
hard to know what to say. What with the other note, the food, and the strangeness of the
message, we were all pretty mixed up. I looked at Russell. He had the note in his hand
and was reading it very carefully. The paper was trembling in his hand. His face was
puffy and pale. He put his hand to his mouth and coughed again.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A
covenant. I think that’s it.’

‘I don’t get it,’ I told
him.

‘It’s simple,’ Russell
explained. ‘If you kill one of us – me, for example – He’ll let you
go.’

‘Yeah, I understand that. I just
don’t understand why.’

‘Why what?’

‘Why bother?’

‘With what?’

‘Why bother saying it?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s pointless.
It’s just stupid. He’s not stupid. He might be stark raving mad, but
He’s not stupid.’

‘Stark staring,’ said Russell.

‘What?’

His eye quivered. ‘It’s stark
staring
mad. Not stark
raving
.’

‘Whatever. He’s not stupid, is
He?’

‘No.’

‘He can’t seriously believe
we’re going to start killing each other.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

Russell crossed his arms and shrugged.
‘Well, I don’t think … I don’t …’ His voice
trailed off and he started blinking. ‘I don’t think …’ His face
stilled and he sat there staring into space. After a while his head began to sag and his
eyes closed.

‘Russell?’ I said.
‘Russell … ?’

I leaned across the table and shook his arm.
His head slumped forward and his breath rasped. He was miles away. Dead to the
world.

‘What’s the matter with
him?’ Fred asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘He’s just tired. He’ll be all right.’

Fred shrugged. The message didn’t seem
to bother him at all. Neither did Russell’s odd behaviour. Those kinds of things
never bother Fred. It’s like if he doesn’t understand something, or if it
doesn’t have any direct relevance to him, he just ignores it.

It’s not a bad way of going about
things, I think. I wish I could do it.

Fred reached out, picked up the note and
scanned the words. As he read, he carried on picking bits of meat from his teeth.

‘It’s crap,’ he said,
tossing the note to the table. ‘He’s just pissing around.’

‘Of course it’s crap,’ I
agreed.

‘So why are we talking about
it?’

‘It says
he
,’ Jenny
said suddenly.

I looked at her.

‘The note,’ she said, pointing.
‘Look. It says
he
who kills another.’

‘It doesn’t mean anything, Jen.
Don’t worry about it. It’s just another of His stupid games.’

‘She’s right,’ said
Anja.

‘What?’

‘
He
who kills another. Not
the person
who kills another, or
she
who kills another.’

‘So
what
?’ I
snapped.

‘That’s what it says.’

‘So?’

She glared at me. ‘You’re the
one who said He’s not stupid. If He’s not stupid …’ She began
twisting a lock of hair round her finger. ‘If He’s not stupid, why would He
say
that? Why would He?’

‘Because He’s mad. That’s
why.’

She pouted at me.

I closed my eyes.

This is what He wants, I thought.
This
is what He wants. Madness, disruption, descent into chaos. This is
what it’s all about. He’s like a little kid poking a stick into a nest of
ants. He enjoys seeing the chaos.

That’s it, isn’t it?

That’s what You want.

You just want to see what happens.

All right, I’ll show You what happens.
I’ll write it down for You, OK? How about that?

What happens is this.

Bird comes out of his room and shuffles over
to the table, holding his head to one side and squinting at the light. His skin is a
mess of blotches and streaks. He sits down.

‘Hey,’ says Fred.

Bird grunts.

Despite the cold, he’s sweating.

He looks at the meat.

‘What’s that?’

‘What’s it look like?’
says Fred.

Bird glances at him. ‘What?’

Fred grins and shakes his head.

‘Is he poorly?’ whispers
Jenny.

I nod.

Jenny looks at Bird with the true concern of
a child. She shouldn’t, but she does. With delicate fingers, she picks a shred of
meat from the joint and offers it to Bird. He looks at her, sniffs, then plucks the
morsel from her fingers and puts it in his mouth. Chews wearily. Swallows. Winces.

‘There’s a note,’ Anja
tells him.

‘Uh?’

She picks up The Man’s note and passes
it to Bird. He stares at her. Unsettled, she lowers her eyes. He reads the note. Blinks.
Reads it again. Looks up. Blinks again. Then he carefully folds the note and puts it in
his shirt pocket.

‘I’m tired,’ he says. He
stands up and groans. ‘My throat hurts.’

Across the table Russell has opened his eyes
and is staring intently at him. Bird looks back at Russell, says, ‘What?’,
then turns away and walks unsteadily back to his room.

All these things – the meat, the message, the
£10 note folded into a butterfly – I’ve thought about them. I’ve thought
long and hard. Are they supposed to mean something? Are they clues, symbols, signs,
hints?

I don’t think so.

They’re just toys. Games. He’s
just messing about. That’s all. He’s just enjoying Himself.

I’ve thought about that too.

But I’m not going to tell you what I
think just yet. Because 1) I’m not sure it makes any sense. And 2) If it does make
sense, I’m not sure I want to talk about it.

Later on I made some tea and took it into
Russell’s room. It didn’t smell too good in there. Kind of sicky and stale
and a bit shitty, like a mad old person’s room. Everything seemed dirty and brown,
even the air.

Russell propped himself up on the bed and
sipped his tea. Some of it dribbled down his shirt. He didn’t seem to notice. I
sat down and looked at him. He looks very old now. Ancient. Grizzly and weak. His black
skin is tinged with yellowy-grey.

‘Have you got it?’ he said.

‘Got what?’

‘Have you worked it out
yet?’

‘I don’t know what you
mean.’

‘Come on, Linus,’ he sighed.
‘It’s obvious. You’ve got a choice. One or the other. It’s not
going to be easy, of course, but it’s all you’ve got. Believe me.’ His
voice was short and breathy. He put down his tea and looked at me. ‘Are you up to
it?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, but
I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘The note,’ he said. ‘The
covenant. It gives you a choice. You have to …’ His voice broke into a wet
cough –
eck eck eck
 – and flecks of spit splattered his lips. He wiped his
mouth and went on. ‘You have to use what you’ve got, Linus. You turn the bad
to good. Understand? Use what you’ve got …’

‘What have I got?’

‘Ah …’ He raised a knobbly
finger and waggled it absently in the air. His mouth was smiling loosely and his good
eye was unfocused. It was too much to bear. I looked away, embarrassed. I didn’t
know what to say or where to look or how to feel. The room was silent and white. I
stared at the floor, looking for something to look at, looking for patterns in the
concrete, anything.

‘Listen,’ Russell said suddenly.
‘You’ve got me or Bird. Two of us. We’re both dying anyway. Take your
pick.’

‘I don’t –’

He waved me quiet. ‘I’ve had it,
Linus. I’ve had enough. This thing …’ He touched his head. ‘This
thing is eating me. I can see it growing inside my head. I can
see
it. It
changes shape. Like a coal-black finger, thin and crooked. Like a burnt stick of coral.
Like a witch-bone. Like a blackened worm dried in the sun. Sometimes it’s white,
the white of fish-gristle. Or pink, like wet strings of chicken meat. I can see it.
It’s nothing. Rogue cells, that’s all it is. Living bits gone wrong.
Deformed misfits. Microscopic barbarians. Juvenile delinquents screwing themselves into
oblivion.’ He laughed. ‘They’re devoted to death, the little devils.
They’ll kill me and die doing it.’ He looked up. ‘You can’t help
but admire that, can you?’

‘You’re not making
sense.’

‘Precisely,’ he said.
‘That’s why …’

‘Why what?’

‘Never mind.’ He blinked hard.
‘Mr Bird is infected. I don’t know what it is. Dog
germs … probably septicaemia or meningitis or something. I don’t know.
I’m not a doctor. It doesn’t matter. He’s dying. Probably got a few
days at most. So there you are. Two of us, dead already. You only need the
one.’

It began to dawn on me what he was saying.
‘You mean … ?’

‘Yes,
yes
,’ he grinned.
‘You cheat Him at His own game. Kill me or Bird, or both of us if you want, and
He’ll let you go. You can go home, go back to your father, then get the others
out, Jenny, Fred …’ He glanced slyly at the camera on the ceiling and lowered
his voice. ‘He doesn’t know that we’re dying anyway … He
doesn’t
know
 …’

I felt like crying.

Crying for Russell’s mind.

For mine too.

I let him carry on for a while, babbling on
about the philosophy of death, natural justice, time and physics, until at last his head
started sagging again and his eyes began to close and the words dried up. A dribble of
spit had collected in the corner of his mouth. I went over and wiped it away and covered
him up with a blanket. Then I walked sadly back to my room.