Bunker

by Jo Withers

Mum was long dead by the time we unearthed her emergency war supplies, boxes at the back of the bunker that she must have prepared years ago. That was Mum all over, ready for anything, us four kids sent to school overloaded with equipment for every eventuality – sunscreen, mosquito repellent, rain poncho, emergency whistle.

If it wasn’t for Mum, we wouldn’t even have the bunker. When she got Dad’s life insurance, we told her to spend it on a pool or a summerhouse, but no, Mum insisted on building the bunker. So, at the bottom of the garden, twelve feet down and thirty feet across was Mum’s architecturally designed, reinforced concrete hole.

As luck would have it, the day that ended all days, we were in the backyard having an emergency family meeting. All of us were there — me, my brother Patrick and his wife, my sister Maggie, her husband Tony and the three kids. We were standing on top of the bunker talking about filling it in — the house had been on the market for years, and we’d never had the slightest whiff of a buyer; the massive pit beneath was hardly a selling point. As we were standing there talking, suddenly there was this gigantic whirring noise above us, the whole sky clouded over and heavy black rain started pelting down, fizzing and hissing as it came. Around us, the whole world started screaming — screeching, agonising cries from every direction. We piled down the steps into the bunker, screaming our own hot screams as the rain burnt our legs on the way down.

We stood in the dark below, listening as the world was obliterated above. The torrential acid rain continued, punctuated by bomb blasts and a gritty, stop-start sound that sounded like an enormous rusty old lawnmower — as though some huge machine was rolling along the ground pulverising every living thing in its path, spraying minced-up bone and organs above it like grass cuttings.

After ten minutes or so, I couldn’t stand it; the tiny space and the dark getting to me even more than the noise. I started fumbling around the bunker, feeling for a light source, realising with nauseating dread that none of us had ever been inside; there might be nothing down here — no food, no water, nothing. Eventually, my hand hit four cylinders hanging on the back wall and I pulled down a set of torches, shared them out. We swept their hazy orange glow around the area. There was a big water tank in one corner, a stove, a chemical toilet and a cupboard.

My heart swelled with appreciation for Mum, always planning ahead, always thinking of her children. Whatever political war machine or alien invasion was raging outside, maybe the simplest yet most complex of all human emotions, a Mother’s love, could save us.

I threw open the cupboard doors, expecting rows of dehydrated meals, blankets, medicines, all the basics. Inside were four boxes, each one emblazoned with her children’s names.

We were all pretty young when she died; I was the oldest at nineteen. I opened my box first. It contained a few packs of my favourite biscuits, a hoodie emblazoned with Iron Maiden, some board games and a James Herbert novel — thoughtful things I might have welcomed for my birthday or Christmas, but utterly pointless in my battle for survival. Maggie was fourteen when Mum died. She opens her box to find some bottles of raspberry soda, knitting needles and wool, nail varnish, magazines and ten packs of tampons. We turn to see that Patrick has also opened his box — a football, a bubble-gum machine, and a fluffy coat because he’s always hated the cold. It’s a kid’s size ten, so as he tries to pull it on, it rides up above his elbows and stomach making him look like a half-skinned rabbit.

The last box has ‘Charlie’ written on top. Our little brother, only six when Mum died, has been left several boxes of cocoa puff cereal, a toy monkey, some picture books and watercolour paints. We stared at them for a minute, thinking of little Charlie, adored by Mum, always hanging off her skirt. Charlie who had thrown himself from the railway bridge two months shy of his fifteenth birthday. Charlie, who we knew we had failed, too young and suffocated by our own grief to parent him, to pull him out of his weeping hell.

And that’s it, nothing else in the cupboard. Whether Mum intended to add more and never got round to it, we’ll never know. We could scream, we could cry, but what would be the point. We sit down on the bunker floor, start to pass around the food from our boxes, and as we do, we start to reminisce, about Mum, about Charlie, about being kids, before any of the bad stuff happened, about crushes and cocoa puffs, raspberry sodas and never-ending summers by the lake. It sounds crazy, but that night was one of the best nights of my life. As the noise of bodies tearing apart continued overhead, we connected like we hadn’t in years.

And even four days later, when delirious with hunger, I steal Maggie’s box, thrust the knitting needles through her husband’s eyes, smash a soda bottle against the wall so the sharp glass is like a blade, chop his legs into chunky steaks and roast him in the stove, I’m still so grateful to Mum that we had that night, that for two or three hours we were a proper family again.