The Secret Bunker Trilogy: Part One: Darkness Falls by Paul Teague Page A

than me when I place my hand on
the pad and the door opens.
    It’s dark inside at first, but the lights are clearly wired to come on as
soon as someone enters. It takes my eyes a short time to adjust, but as they do, they fall on
three figures in what I can only describe as ‘pods’. They’re wired up to all sorts of electronic gadgetry, and they’re clearly
unaware of me. At first I think I’ve stumbled on some kind of sleeping area, but I saw
the dormitories only a few minutes ago. They were Green Zone.
This is Red Zone.
These three figures are not sleeping. They’re unconscious, restrained , they’re being kept that way by the
gadgetry.

I recognise one of them, she was the lady who gave us our tickets
when we came in - these must be the staff. Used to serving tourists.
Caught up in something by accident.
‘Unauthorised personnel’ is what Kate would probably call them. Or ‘Unauthorised personnel, Dan’ more likely.
Building more rapport.
    One of the lights in the room flickers into life as I move further into the
room. I don’t know why - or how - I got into this room, but I’m very pleased I
did. As the light adjusts to full brightness and my eyes re-adjust, I focus on
another three figures held captive in these sinister pods. It’s Dad, David and Harriet.

Chapter Ten
Blast Doors
The device that quietly and undetectably pulsated in her neck was
made of extremely advanced technology. Only a very limited number of people knew its source.
It worked very cleverly in the background, she was completely
unaware of its effect upon her consciousness. Those who knew how to look for the devices would have immediately
spotted that it was currently in ‘receive’ mode.

Somebody was controlling her thoughts, but not in a robotic way.
Her device emitted a faint blue light. The untrained eye might have mistaken it for a vein in her neck.
The trained eye would have looked specifically at the colour, because
that was the most crucial thing. Blue, red, yellow, purple, black or green - it made all the difference. She had full consciousness and complete knowledge of what was
going on around her.
    She was not aware that her recognition of the child in the car had been
suppressed by the device, but it had been, working away undetected
in the background, filtering out the elements that would create a
strong emotional response. Things that might distract her right now.
It was very subtle.

So as she rushed past the black car with her new companion, there
was no glimmer of recognition. Neither the child nor the car registered in her memory, even though
she was aware of both. She was aware that there were questions to be asked about why the
child had been in the car in the first place, but it was like her attention
had been caught by something else.
    She had a very strong and compelling sense that she must take shelter
in the bunker. But she’d come for the laptop, juice and Dan’s phone, and she’d even
returned to the car to get one of them. She knew too that there was urgency and that they would have to
hurry. Crazy. Something terrible is happening and you still return to get the tech.
    The sky is now darkening quickly, this appears to be much more than
a storm. It is unworldly, she knows it must be freak weather conditions, maybe
a solar effect or something like that, but she instinctively feels that the
siren and the darkness are linked.
    The two figures rush towards the cottage, through the doors, and with
massive urgency now they try to make up for those few lost seconds
when she returned to the car. They approach the bunker doors just too late. If only they hadn’t returned for the tech. They would have made it if they’d not wasted those vital moments.

They approached the run up to the blast doors as the gap between
them began to narrow to a close. There was just time to see Dan’s face and hear his final calls to them as
the heavy doors shut tightly with a thunderous clang. They were all