The Bunker Diary
Kevin Brooks
Kevin Brooks
Table of Contents
Monday, 30 January
Tuesday, 31 January
Wednesday, 1 February
Thursday, 2 February
Friday, 3 February
Saturday, 4 February
Sunday, 5 February
Monday, 6 February
Tuesday (?), 7 February
Wednesday, 8 February
Thursday, 9 February
Friday, 10 February
Saturday, 11 February
Sunday, 12 February
Tuesday, 14 February
Wednesday, 15 February
Friday, 17 February
Sunday, 19 February
Monday, 20 February
Tuesday, 21 February
Wednesday, 22 February
Thursday, 23 February
Saturday, 25 February
Tuesday, 28 February
Wednesday, 29 (?) February
Thursday, 1 March
Sunday, 4 March
Tuesday, 6 March
Thursday, 8 March
Friday, 9 March
Sunday, 11 March
Monday, 12 March
Wednesday, 14 March
Sunday, 18 March
Monday, 19 March
Wednesday, 21 March
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
???
PENGUIN BOOKS
Kevin Brooks was born in Exeter, Devon, and he studied in Birmingham and London. He has worked in a crematorium, a zoo, a garage and a post office, before – happily – giving it all up to write books. Kevin is the award-winning author of eleven novels and lives in North Yorkshire.
Books by Kevin Brooks
BEING
BLACK RABBIT SUMMER
THE BUNKER DIARY
CANDY
IBOY
KILLING GOD
KISSING THE RAIN
LUCAS
MARTYN PIG
NAKED
THE ROAD OF THE DEAD
Praise for Kevin Brooks:
‘Kevin Brooks just gets better and better, and given that he started off brilliant, that leaves one scratching around for superlatives’
– Sunday Telegraph
‘He’s an original. And he writes one hell of a story’
– Meg Rosoff, author of How I Live Now
‘A masterly writer’
– Mail on Sunday
Monday, 30 January
10.00 a.m.
This is what I know. I’m in a low-ceilinged rectangular building made entirely of whitewashed concrete. It’s about twelve metres wide and eighteen metres long. A corridor runs down the middle of the building, with a smaller corridor leading off to a lift shaft just over halfway down. There are six little rooms along the main corridor, three on either side. They’re all the same size, three metres by five, and each one is furnished with an iron-framed bed, a hard-backed chair, and a bedside cabinet. There’s a bathroom at one end of the corridor and a kitchen at the other. Opposite the kitchen, in the middle of an open area, there’s a rectangular wooden table with six wooden chairs. In each corner of the open area there’s an L-shaped bench settee.
There are no windows. No doors. The lift is the only way in or out.
The whole place looks something like this:
In the bathroom there’s a steel bath, a steel sink, and a lavatory. No mirrors, no cupboards, no accessories. The kitchen contains a sink, a table, some chairs, an electric cooker, a small fridge, and a wall-mounted cupboard. In the cupboard there’s a plastic washing-up bowl, six plastic dinner plates, six plastic glasses, six plastic mugs, six sets of plastic cutlery.
Why six?
I don’t know.
I’m the only one here.
It feels underground in here. The air is heavy, concrete, damp. It’s not damp, it just feels damp. And it smells like a place that’s old, but new. Like it’s been here a long time but never been used.
There are no light switches anywhere.
There’s a clock on the corridor wall.
The lights come on at eight o’clock in the morning, and they go off again at midnight.
There’s a low humming sound deep within the walls.
12.15 p.m.
Nothing moves.
Time is slow.
I thought he was blind. That’s how he got me. I still can’t believe I fell for it. I keep playing it over in my mind, hoping I’ll do something different, but it always turns out the same.
It was early Sunday morning when it happened. Yesterday morning. I wasn’t doing anything in particular, just hanging around the concourse at Liverpool Street station, trying to keep warm, looking out for Saturday night leftovers. I had my hands in my pockets, my guitar on my back, my eyes to the ground. Sunday morning is a good time for finding things. People get drunk on Saturday night. They rush to get the last train home. They drop stuff. Cash, cards, hats, gloves, cigarettes. The cleaners get most of the good stuff, but sometimes they miss things. I found a fake Rolex once. Got a tenner for it. So it’s always worth looking. But all I’d found that morning was a broken umbrella and a half-empty packet of Marlboro. I threw the umbrella away but kept the cigarettes. I don’t smoke, but cigarettes are always worth keeping.
So there I was, just hanging around, minding my own business, when a couple of platform staff came out of a side door and started walking towards me. One of them was a regular, a young black guy called Buddy who’s usually OK, but I didn’t know the other one. And I didn’t like the look of him. He was a big guy in a peaked cap and steel-tipped shoes, and he looked like trouble. He probably wasn’t, and they probably wouldn’t have bothered me anyway, but it’s always best to play safe, so I put my head down, pulled up my hood, and moved off towards the taxi rank.
And that’s when I saw him. The blind man. Raincoat, hat, dark glasses, white stick. He was standing at the back of a dark-coloured van. A Transit, I think. The back doors were open and there was a heavy-looking suitcase on the ground. The blind man was struggling to get the case in the back of the van. He wasn’t having much luck. There was something wrong with his arm. It was in a sling.
It was still pretty early and the station was deserted. I could hear the two platform men jangling their keys and laughing about something, and from the sound of the big guy’s clackety-clack footsteps I could tell they were moving away from me, heading off towards the escalator that leads up to McDonald’s. I waited a little while just to make sure they weren’t coming back, then I turned my attention to the blind man. Apart from the Transit van, the taxi rank was empty. No black cabs, no one waiting. There was just me and this blind man. A blind man with his arm in a sling.
I thought about it.
You could walk away if you wanted to, I told myself. You don’t have to help him. You could just walk away, nice and quiet. He’s blind, he’ll never know, will he?
But I didn’t walk away.
I’m a nice guy.
I coughed to let him know I was there, then I walked up and asked him if he needed any help. He didn’t look at me. He kept his head down. And I thought that was a bit odd. But then I thought, maybe that’s what blind people do? I mean, what’s the point of looking at someone if you can’t act
ually see them?
‘It’s my arm,’ he muttered, indicating the sling. ‘I can’t get hold of the suitcase properly.’
I bent down and picked it up. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked.
‘Where do you want it?’ I asked.
‘In the back,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
There was no one else in the van, no one in the driving seat. Which was kind of surprising. The back of the van was pretty empty too, just a few bits of rope, some carrier bags, a dusty old blanket.
The blind man said, ‘Would you mind putting the case up by the front seats for me? It’ll be easier to get out.’
I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy now. Something didn’t feel right. What was this guy doing here? Where was he going? Where had he been? Why was he all alone? How the hell could he drive? I mean, a blind man with a broken arm?
‘If you wouldn’t mind?’ he said.
Maybe he isn’t completely blind? I thought. Maybe he can see enough to drive? Or maybe he’s one of those people who pretend they’re disabled so they can get a special parking badge?
‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’m in a hurry.’
I shrugged off my doubts and stepped up into the van. What did I care if he was blind or not? Just get his suitcase into the van and leave him to it. Go and find somewhere warm. Wait for the day to get going. See who’s around – Lugless, Pretty Bob, Windsor Jack. See what’s happening.
I was moving towards the front seats when I felt the van lurch on its springs, and I knew the blind man had climbed up behind me.
‘I’ll show you where to put it,’ he said.
I knew I’d been had then but it was already too late, and as I turned to face him he grabbed my head and clamped a damp cloth over my face. I started to choke. I was breathing in chemicals – chloroform, ether, whatever it was. I couldn’t breathe. There was no air. My lungs were on fire. I thought I was dying. I struggled, lashing out with my elbows and legs, kicking, stamping, jerking my head like a madman, but it was no good. He was strong, a lot stronger than he looked. His hands gripped my skull like a couple of vices. After a few seconds I started to feel dizzy, and then …
Nothing.
I must have passed out.
The next thing I knew I was sitting in a wheelchair inside a large metal box. My head was all mushy and I was only half awake, and for a moment or two I genuinely thought I was dead. All I could see in front of me was a receding tunnel of harsh white light. I thought it was the tunnel of death. I thought I was buried in a metal coffin.
When it finally dawned on me that I wasn’t dead, that it wasn’t a coffin, that the large metal box was in fact just a lift, and that the lift door was open, and the tunnel of death was nothing more than a plain white corridor stretching out in front of me, I was so relieved that for a few short seconds I actually felt like laughing.
The feeling didn’t last long.
After I’d got up out of the wheelchair and stumbled into the corridor, I’m not sure what happened for a while. Maybe I passed out again, I don’t know. All I can really remember is the lift door closing and the lift going up.
I don’t think it went very far.
I heard it stop – g-dung, g-dunk.
It was nine o’clock at night now. I was still sick and dopey and I kept burping up a horrible taste of gassy chemicals. I was scared to death. Shocked. Shaking. Totally confused. I didn’t know what to do.
I went into one of the rooms and sat down on the bed.
Three hours later, at twelve o’clock precisely, the lights went off.
I sat there for a while in the petrified darkness, listening hard for the sound of the lift coming back down. I don’t know what I was expecting, a miracle maybe, or perhaps a nightmare. But nothing happened. No lift, no footsteps. No cavalry, no monsters.
Nothing.
The place was as dead as a graveyard.
I thought the blind man might be waiting for me to fall asleep, but there was no chance of that. I was wide awake. And my eyes were staying open.
But I suppose I must have been more tired than I thought. Either that or I was still suffering from whatever he drugged me with. Probably a bit of both.
I don’t know what time it was when I finally fell asleep.
It was still dark when I woke up this morning. I didn’t have any of that ‘where am I?’ feeling you’re supposed to get when you wake up in a strange place. As soon as my eyes opened I knew where I was. I still didn’t know where I was, of course, but I knew it was the same unknown darkness I’d gone to sleep in. I recognized the underground feel of the air.
The room was blacker than anything. Lightless. Sightless. I groped my way to the door and went out into the corridor, but that was no better. Dark as hell. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or shut. Couldn’t see a thing. Didn’t know what time it was. Couldn’t see the clock. Couldn’t even guess what time it was. There’s nothing to guess from. No windows, no view, no sky, no sounds. Just solid darkness and that unnerving low humming in the walls.
I felt like nothing. Existing in nothing.
Black all over.
I kept touching the walls and tapping my foot on the floor to convince myself that I was real.
I had to go to the bathroom.
I was about halfway along the corridor, feeling my way along the wall, when all of a sudden the lights came on. Blam! A silent flash, and the whole place was lit up in a blaze of sterile white. Scared the life out of me. I couldn’t move for a good five minutes. I just stood there with my back against the wall, trying hard not to wet myself.
The clock on the wall was ticking.
Tick tock, tick tock.
And my eyes were drawn to it. It seemed really important to know what time it was, to see movement. It somehow seemed to mean something to me. A sign of life, I suppose. Something to rely on.
It was five past eight.
I went to the bathroom.
At nine o’clock, the lift came back down again.
I was poking around in the kitchen at the time, trying to find something to use as a weapon, something sharp, or heavy, or sharp and heavy. No luck. Everything is either bolted down, welded to the wall, or made of plastic. I was looking inside the cooker, wondering if I could rip out some bits of metal or something, when I heard the lift starting up – g-dung, g-dunk, a heavy whirring noise, a solid clunk, a sharp click …
And then the sound of the lift coming down – nnnnnnnnnn …
I grabbed a plastic fork and went out into the corridor. The lift door was shut but I could hear the lift getting closer – nnnnnnnnnnnn …
My muscles tensed. My fingers gripped the plastic fork. It felt pathetic, useless. The lift stopped. G-dunk. I snapped the end off the fork, rubbed the jagged end with my thumb and watched as the lift door opened – mmm-kshhh-tkk.
Nothing.
It was empty.
When I was a little kid I used to have recurring dreams about a lift. The dream took place in a big tower block in the middle of town, right next to a roundabout. I didn’t know what the building was. Flats, an office building, something like that. I didn’t know what town it was either. It wasn’t my town, I knew that. It was a big place, kind of grey, with lots of tall buildings and wide grey streets. A bit like London. But it wasn’t London. It was just a town. A dream town.
In my dream I’d go into the tower block and wait for the lift, watching the lights, and when the lift came down I’d step inside, the door would close, and I’d suddenly realize that I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know which floor I wanted. Which button to press. I didn’t know anything. The lift would start up, get movin
g, and then the dream-panic would set in. Where am I going? What am I going to do? Should I press a button? Should I shout for help?
I can’t remember anything else about it.
This morning, when the lift came down and the door slid open, I kept my distance for a while, just standing well back and staring at it. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Just to see if anything happened, I suppose. But nothing did. Eventually, after about ten minutes or so, I cautiously moved closer and looked inside. I didn’t actually go inside, I just stood by the open door and looked around. There wasn’t much to see. No controls. No buttons, no lights. No hatchway in the ceiling. Nothing but a perspex leaflet-holder screwed into the far wall. Clear perspex, A4 size. Empty.
There’s a matching leaflet-holder fixed to the corridor wall outside the lift. This one’s filled with blank sheets of A4 paper, and there’s a ballpoint pen clipped to the wall beside it.
???
It’s nearly midnight now. I’ve been here for nearly forty hours. Is that right? I think so. Anyway, I’ve been here a long time and nothing has happened. I’m still here. Still alive. Still staring at the walls. Writing these words. Thinking.
A thousand questions have streamed through my head.
Where am I?
Where’s the blind man?
Who is he?
What does he want?
What’s he going to do to me?
What am I going to do?
I don’t know.
All right, what do I know?
I know I haven’t been hurt. I’m all in one piece. Legs, arms, feet, hands. Everything’s in working order.
I know I’m hungry.
And frightened.
And confused.
And angry.
My pockets have been emptied. I’d had a £10 note hidden away in one of my socks, and now it’s gone. He must have searched me.
Bastard.
I think he knows who I am. God knows how, but he must do. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He knows I’m Charlie Weems’s son, he knows my dad’s stinking rich, he’s taken me for the money. Kidnapped me. That’s what it is. A kidnapping. He’s probably been in touch with Dad already. Rung him up. Got his number from somewhere, rung him up and demanded a ransom. Half a million in used notes in a black leather suitcase, drop it off at a motorway service station. No police or he’ll cut my ears off.
