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Tummel House Community, Perthshire
“Thank you, Mrs Donaldson, for putting us up for the night.” Sitting next to the matriarch of the Tummel House Community, Rory sipped on his second coffee. They ate in the medium sized room off the main kitchen. The hall where Rory had dined on his previous visit to Tummel House Community was empty of people, with chairs and tables stacked neatly against the walls and bare floorboards being all Rory glimpsed on his way to the breakfast room.
Women placed platters of breakfast fare on the table in front of him and men swished past in kilts. Younger men and women passed outside the windows, headed for the gardens with hoes and baskets in hand. A group of men followed carrying firearms and traps.
Beside him, Kendra forked up crispy fried bacon and Xian buttered hot crumpets.
“We may join you at that cockroach’s place later in the week.” Mrs Donaldson glanced over at Xian as he took a bite of his buttery crumpet. She leaned past Rory and picked a freshly toasted one off the serving plate.
“Now, dear, be a wee bit kinder.” Mr Donaldson looked over the top of his spectacles.
“The man is an insect. He should have died already.” The butter melted to nothing as soon as Mrs Donaldson spread it on the hot crumpet.
“He’s a survivor, dear.”
“Aye, at the expense of others.” She peered up from her breakfast and pierced Rory with her gaze. “You be careful. That man has his own agenda and he’ll stick to it. I dinnae fear for ma army but something’s afoot.”
“I ken, ma’am.” Rory finished his coffee. “I intend on findin’ out soon enough.”
“If ye need us—” Mrs Donaldson placed a bony hand on his forearm, her eyes narrowing, “my army is yours, son.” She gave a curt nod, her top knot wobbling in unison with her head movement.
Rory swallowed the lump in his throat. “Thank you, Mrs Donaldson. I appreciate your support and your offer. I have my people, and my man, Micah, is already there with his men.”
“You just remember, Rory.” Mrs Donaldson’s hand remained on his arm. “Ye can call on us.”
“Aye, we carry a portable CB.”
***
SIOBHAN’S TRAINERS squeaked with every step. It should have been irritating, but she found it reassuring. Almost like a pedometer.
“Walking is good exercise,” she repeated to herself. She kept up her stamina with a daily exercise routine. “It helps the backache at least.” She grimaced. “In theory.” She placed her hand on the small of her back and pressed. “Most days.”
Siobhan found herself at the stairwell and took the way downstairs to the garages. The rumble of engines, and shouts of commands rose through this natural acoustic funnel. Personnel who would attend Lloyd’s fuel summit were loading the vehicles.
Siobhan stepped heavily down the stairs. It seemed ironic that they would drive internal-combustion-engine-powered vehicles—the highest consumers of fuels—to this summit, but the electric cars could only do short journeys before their batteries required recharging. Even if the many recharge points that were once dotted around Britain still existed, the national grid didn’t. The batteries of the Government’s cars were charged by their power supply from the nuclear power station, which was guarded and maintained by government personnel.
Yes, fuels and energies were a vital issue and an important aspect of restoring Scotland’s infrastructure.
She strolled through the door to the garage floor and out onto the empty loading platform. The jeeps taking the PM and her security team were parked in front of it.
“Jake’s in the nursery.” Murray stepped beside her.
“Thanks, Uncle Murray. He loves you.” Siobhan grinned up at him.
Murray returned it with one of his own.
Thank heavens for Murray. Without Rory, he was her sanity. And it had been a relief to tell someone else of her time in the future, knowing with certainty Murray would keep it secret.
“Wonder what’s up.” Murray indicated with his chin and crossed his arms. “They’re not giving much away.” He nudged closer. “One of the team focusing on energy supplies let slip our fuel storage holds next to nothing.”
“Almost out of fuel?” Siobhan lowered her voice. “They’re using a fair amount just getting to this summit.”
“They’ve researched how to convert our vehicles to function with a vegetable-oil-based fuel and the engineers and mechanics are ready to go on a conversion.”
“Vegetable oil?” She gasped. “When we visited Lloyd’s old holiday park in Fife, reluctantly I might add, I noticed rapeseed growing in the fields. You can make canola oil out of that.”
Murray gave a slow nod. “I wish I knew what he did when he went you-know-where in the you-know-what.” Murray flicked his eyes beside him to the personnel nearby.
“Thing is, Murray, we’re just guessing it was him.”
“Oh, it was. Rory said he’d seen him walking to his room later that evening and he was ‘more than his usual cagey self’, to quote your husband.”
Siobhan pulled her mouth to the side. “I suppose so, but we don’t know when he travelled to. We’re just assuming it was forward, because it was when I went.” She whispered her last words.
Bethany and her entourage strode through the doorway to the garages and stood on the loading platform beside them. The PM wore a crisply pressed suit in brown and grey camouflage, her hair pulled back tight and revealing an almost-as-tight expression.
“Good luck, Bethany,” Siobhan said.
Bethany returned Siobhan’s well-wishes with her Prime Minister smile and walked across to her vehicle.
Henderson walked past and acknowledged Siobhan. Soon all summit participants were in the vehicles and the air filled with fumes as engines revved and the convoy drove up the concrete ramp to the outside world. Siobhan stepped through the doorway and back into the stairwell, coughing with the irritating fumes tickling the back of her throat. Murray followed. Her throat tightened again, this time with the thought of these people seeing her husband before she could.
“You okay, Siobhan?” The warmth of Murray’s hand seeped into her shoulder.
She gave a brief shrug in reply, unable to speak.
“You’ll see him soon.”
Tears trickled down her cheeks. She pulled the hanky out of her track suit pants and dabbed at her face.
“Ah, sorry.” Murray’s arm came around her, slow and hesitant.
“It’s okay. Stupid hormones! I’m full of them.” She blew her nose and returned her hanky to the pocket of the only comfortable pants she could fit into.
“What ya goin’ to do today?” Murray grasped for a distraction.
“Walk.”
“But you’ve done that.”
“Yes.” Her shoulders sagged and she paced forward. “And I’ll keep doing it until Jake has finished his day in the nursery. My very pregnant brain isn’t coping with study, reading, or thinking of any kind.”
“You know where I go when I’m like that?”
Siobhan stopped, placed her hand on her hip, and stared up at Murray. “When are you ever too hormonal to think?”
“I mean when I want a break from books and screens?” His eyes rounded.
“Okay, do tell.”
“Hydroponics.” He stepped back and grinned.
Siobhan’s brow tightened. “Hydroponics? Can’t recall having ever been there. Where is it?”
Murray beamed. “Follow me.”
He walked to the stairwell and took one flight down, then took a left and they went to the rear of this corridor where there was another stairwell, which Siobhan hadn’t seen for many years.
“Oh, I recognise where you’re taking me. I haven’t been here since my primary school days.” Siobhan followed Murray and went up this flight of stairs, which serviced the opposite side of the Bunker. They arrived at another stairwell that opened to a short concourse where crates of vegetables lay on pallets awaiting collection and transport to the kitchens.
Murray gripped the handle of the double doors, his grin spreading. “Voilà.” He opened the door.
Siobhan stepped through an exceptionally fine mesh screen covering the immediate entrance to a huge long hall. Green foliage and natural light greeted Siobhan, warmth bathed her, and moisture tickled her face. Large skylights directed daylight into the massive hall. This light was supplemented by rows of daylight bulbs directed downward to the growing plant life.
Murray led her between the first two aisles. She walked by tomato plants tied up to poles. The plants sat in wide, white tubes, which ran the length of the great hall. The music of trickling water permeated the air. It came from the tubes in which the plants grew, and the pipes connected to each row of crops, and lining the walls. Tubes of cabbages, green beans, and lettuce arranged in rows, ran along to her right. A larger space with wider cylinders grew onion, carrot, and potato plants. Espaliered fruit trees lined the far walls, bathed in sunlight directed by especially angled skylight shafts.
An insect buzzed past Siobhan’s face and travelled to the nearby line of flowering plants. Siobhan peered closer. Tiny bodies, in various shades of yellow and black, hovered around the plants. They danced in and out of the flowers, their hum growing louder with her approach.
“Hope you’re not allergic to bee stings.” Murray stood close to a flurry of buzzing creatures. “I could watch them for hours. You know the world nearly lost most of the bee species? The reduction in human activity seems to have increased the populations. Or so the drone watchers say.” He laughed. “Pardon the pun.” He then stood back. The furry buzzing creatures moved away from that plant, legs laden with pollen, and started work on the next one. “There are hives against the far wall. A guy tends to them. He’s not allergic.”
Murray waved to a man in overalls who was holding a narrow, soft brush and stood at the other end of a line of tomatoes brushing the yellow flowers. “Hi, Bob.”
Bob returned the wave, barely lifting his attention from his task.
“The bees don’t get everywhere.”
“This is your secret place?” Siobhan asked.
“Yep. Bet you wish you’d found this when you lived here.”
“I was too busy viewing the drone footage.”
Siobhan glanced down the aisle at Bob. A child’s laugh echoed up to the ceiling then an adult female voice shushed. Bob looked away from his task of pollinating the tomato plants. Murray stopped walking and Siobhan held her breath. Then the giggle happened again.
“So, you’re not the only one who comes here?” Siobhan eyed Murray, who stood stock still, straining to hear more.
Bob had left his post and walked in the direction of the noise. The giggle followed by another shush, occurred once more.
“Kids?” Siobhan suggested. “A school outing?”
Murray’s light brows drew together. “Not whenever I’ve been here during the day.”
“Oi!” Bob yelled.
Murray ran toward his friend and Siobhan followed at a walk, catching up to Murray when he stopped by a row in the furthest corner of the hydroponics hall. In among tall corn, camp chairs lay sprawled and upturned, and behind them, sitting on top of piled bedrolls, were a woman and four children. One child looked at Siobhan and ran to her.
“Aunty Vonn!” The little girl’s voice was so familiar.
“Michaela! Come here,” Cèilidh yelled at her daughter.
“Cèilidh?” Murray had passed Bob and stopped in front of his sister. “What’re you guys doin’ here?”
Cèilidh scowled, ignoring her brother and again called her daughter back, her voice echoing in the high ceiling.
Michaela ran to Siobhan and threw herself onto her legs, then grasped her tight.
“Why’re you hiding?” Murray’s gaze followed his sister’s pursuit of his niece.
Cèilidh reached Siobhan and grabbed her two-and-a-half-year-old by the arms and tried to peel her away from Siobhan, continuing her severe frown at her daughter.
“Are you okay?” Siobhan helped her ease Michaela’s arms from around her legs. “Is everything all right...between you and—?”
“Aye, all’s fine.” Cèilidh didn’t make eye contact with Siobhan.
She marched her daughter back to the campsite.
“Uncle Murray!” Aiden, their oldest nephew, approached his uncle with a beaming face. “We camping.”
“Shush!” Stress laced Cèilidh’s command.
“What’s going on?” Murray put his hand on Cèilidh’s shoulder and turned her to face him. She kept her head bowed, her eyes on her children and shushed any noises they made.
“I’ll leave ye to sort this.” Bob walked back in the direction of his tomato plants.
“Cèilidh,” Siobhan encouraged. “Tell us why you are at the Bunker and hiding from us, your family.”
Cèilidh raised her head, her eyes pooled with tears. “We must talk. But not here...” She glanced at her children.
“Please watch the children while Cèilidh and I have a chat,” Siobhan asked Murray.
He picked up one of the babies crawling into the corn just as her twin headed in the same direction.
Siobhan took her sister-in-law by the hand and led her to the row of runner beans. The children’s delighted laughter lifted to the skylights as they played with their uncle.
Cèilidh faced Siobhan. “I’m sorry, but I think the man I married is not on our side.” She closed her eyes and tears squeezed out.
The skin on the back of Siobhan’s neck crawled. “Has it to do with this summit?”
Cèilidh nodded. Childish shouts continued from the far corner of the huge hall, accompanied by babies’ protests.
“You need to tell me more.” Siobhan placed her hands on Cèilidh’s shoulders.
Cèilidh shook her head, mute.
“Please,” Siobhan pleaded.
“He’s my husband,” Cèilidh sniffed.
“Mine is there too!” Cold trickled down her spine. “What’s going to happen?”
“Nothing bad. Micah says it’ll be okay.” Cèilidh’s expression was unconvincing.
Siobhan dug her fingers into Cèilidh.
“I’m not into politics.” Cèilidh’s eyes widened. “And you understand more than me.”
“What?” Siobhan could barely hear over the thundering in her ears.
“I don’t know what he means. Micah whispered coo last time he spoke to his men in our kitchen, ken?”
“Coo?”
Cèilidh nodded.
Siobhan gasped. The crawling on the back of her neck turned into electric shocks. Cèilidh meant coup.
“Will it happen at Lloyd’s?”
Cèilidh cringed as she nodded again.
“Murray!” Siobhan spun. “We need to get to the CB room.”