Blood Kin by Matt Hilton

Author:Matt Hilton [Matt Hilton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2021-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

He could sense the mass of the hillside looming above him as Po went deeper inside the bunker. At first he’d entered a cavernous space decked out like a loading bay at a large logistics hub. There were several vehicles parked in the area, and Po had wondered if any of them had been used during the abduction of Elspeth and Jacob. A panel van with its rear windows blacked out was a contender, he thought. He had tried checking the van for any clues but it was locked and the tinted windows foiled his view inside; he could have forced the locks with his knife but to what end? Up on the raised loading platform he discovered prints of several distinct pairs of boots and shoes in the dust and had followed them further into the bowels of the bunker. He had hoped to discover where Elspeth and her boy were being held, but the footprints had petered out and since then he’d found no visual clue to where he should try next in the maze of tunnels.

The first chambers he checked turned out to be storage rooms, some of them holding dry goods, others held perishable foods and fruit and vegetables, and one of them had been converted to a butcher’s workshop and cold storage, complete with industrial-sized fridges and freezers. It stood to reason that a community of this size would require stocking up on food, drink and other necessities. Many prepper communities kept similar caches in preparation for the day when society collapsed. It didn’t surprise him when an adjacent storeroom contained all manner of small arms and ammunition. He was tempted to add to his weaponry with a handgun he could tuck into his belt, but in the end he left well enough alone. A gunfight should be avoided at all cost, and besides, if it came to shooting it would be preferable at the distance the rifle already afforded him.

The first bunker was a dead end for his search. He checked his watch and saw that barely thirty minutes of the time Tess had allotted remained. It would take him a quarter hour to get back to the river unimpeded. The man he’d knocked out and tied up would have wakened by now: had he already attempted to free himself, and perhaps raised the alarm? Po got no hint that a hunting party was on his heels. He backtracked through the dimly lit tunnels, and was approaching the room containing the guns once more when he noticed a door he’d missed the first time. A large figure ‘9’ was stenciled on the door but there was no other signage. He tried the handle and found it stiff but unlocked. He pulled the door open and peered into a narrow passage that led as straight as an arrow shot into the darkness. By his reckoning, the passage must extend beyond the hill in which the bunker had been built. He recalled the dotted lines on

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