High Pressure System: First Season Underground (18 page)

“I’m sure I’ll be feeling better soon. You’ve been doing fantastic. I had no idea you were so sharp. You’ve come up with a lot of solutions already. You aren’t alone worrying about how to keep us all safe from another invasion. I’ve been thinking all morning how to seal off that lobby door. I’ll tell you how. But you need to have breakfast first.”

Micah stood and held the curtain open for me. Once I was on my feet, he didn’t let go of my hand. He rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb. “Thank you for staying here. I’m still not sharing my dream with you. I am going to have a hard time letting you go out there on your own today.” He pulled me closer and hugged me.

I closed my eyes so I didn’t cry. “I’m starting to wonder why there are so many nightmares about bad things happening to me.”

“Who else has had nightmares?”

I bit my lip and wished I hadn’t said anything.

“Myself. But that was from all the… stuff… things that have happened.”

“That’s not all, is it?”

“No, Jim has. So has Brandon, he’s had the most nightmares that were about me. That was around the time he saved me in the lobby, though. Now you. Now I’m even more scared.” Getting a hug was very helpful until I was afraid of him letting me go because of mentioning Brandon.

“Perhaps I understand his concern for you a little bit better now.”

Micah and I made breakfast together before I said goodbye to the dogs. I was off to go find all the things on the list he gave me. Nothing big. I only had a door to seal off with all sorts of construction crap I’d never used before to save us all. And there were spiders.

It took some time to convince Marjie that her mild case of the sniffles didn’t constitute a quarantine for her as much as it applied to the rest of her family. I had to admit, her family was in pretty bad shape.

We collected what we needed and Marjie led me to the Harper’s apartment.

“You really need me for this?” Marjie whispered.

I couldn’t even knock. “What do you mean? I can’t even make a fist to knock on the door. They are the last people I want helping us, but we can’t do it alone. It’s not right for them to hide out here healthy while the rest of us are in danger.” I was trying to convince myself as much as Marjie.

“Go ahead then.” Marjie nodded at me to knock.

“I will,” I said rather impatiently. When I was ready. It wasn’t at that minute. Maybe not the next one either. I heard giggling on the other side of the door. I clenched my jaw and knocked.

“Who is it?” T.J. yelled.

I looked at Marjie. She just nodded at me again to answer. I glared at her.

“It’s Rachel and Marjie.” I studied the toes of my rubber boots. Another bot. I squished it.

“We don’t want to let any sick people in.”

“We aren’t sick and we know you aren’t either. We need your help,” Marjie finally spoke up. She covered her nose when she sniffed.

I motioned for her to keep her sniffing silent. She gave me apologetic wide-eyes.

“How do you know we aren’t sick? Everyone is in quarantine, aren’t they? You’re just out breaking rules again and want us to get in trouble too,” Britta said.

“Fricken excuses.” Marjie slid the cards along the crack in the door and opened it.

She and I both stood in the doorway taking in the sight of the fancy decorating in their apartment.

“You must have brought a lot of your trinkets along.” Marjie nudged me with her elbow nodding at the jeweled giraffe on a shelf across the room.

“Excuse us, what makes you think you can barge in?” Britta tightened her robe around her tiny waist.

I dropped the two pairs of boots I brought with me on the floor of their apartment. “We need your help sealing off the lobby door before more of the bots get in. Marjie and I can’t do it alone.” I stomped on another bot before it crawled into their apartment.

“No. No. I am not going out there with those spiders.” Britta was adamant and she sat back down at the table.

“Look, everyone is sick because they fought off the bots while you two hid in here. There are only the four of us that can try to fix it so we aren’t overwhelmed with next invasion. This is the longest stretch without a lockdown. You know as well as I do, it is never only one round. If I don’t get help, it will be much harder to keep thousands of bots out of your apartment compared to the hundreds there are right now.”

T;J. held the edge of the door as if he was going to shut us out. He stomped on another bot.

“I’m having a hard time keeping the little beasts out of here as it is.” T.J. finally looked me in the eye. “How come you two aren’t sick?”

“I was wearing my sweatshirt. So wear layers so you don’t get poked.” I reached into the bucket I brought with me. “Wear these gloves and you can smash them with your hands.”

He was waiting for Marjie to answer.

“I got poked. Not as much as everyone else.” She glanced at me before finding something really interesting on the floor. “I couldn’t take it. I went back to the school first and then I supervised the kids monitoring the doorway on the community floor.”

I looked at her in shock and didn’t know what to say.

“It sounds like a few of us need to earn our keep. We’ll meet you on the stairs as soon we layer up.” T.J. attempted to smile at me. It wasn’t much of one. At that point, I was happy with whatever as long as I didn’t have to defend myself. Perhaps he felt he was the one in need of some redemption.

I tugged Marjie’s arm. We collected our supplies, a few vacuums, and went for the stairs.

There was nothing I hated worse than being near the lobby.

We swept the stairs but that only stirred up the buried bots. Marjie manned the vacuum while I laid out everything Micah told me to bring to seal up the door.

Flexible wire fencing from the farm. Foam insulation in a can. A variety of tools, facemask, and eye protection.

I jumped when a few bots slipped through the crack from the lobby.

“Frick! Stupid eight-legged freaks.” I batted them off the stair and they shattered against the wall. “Marjie, can you stand here?”

“What?”

“Here, stand here.” I pointed at the stair.

She turned off the vacuum. “What?”

We both looked over the rail when we heard Britta’s complaining echo up the stairs.

“What is she holding?” I asked.

“I believe that’s an umbrella?” Marjie’s laughter drowned out Britta and T.J.’s banter.

“It’s not a bad idea but that sure renders one hand useless so she will be more of a hindrance than a help in cleanup.” I sighed. “It might be a long morning.”

Britta fussed over the clunky boots and was afraid to close her umbrella even though she was on the top landing. Marjie handed her a vacuum. Good thing no one could see me roll my eyes when Marjie had to give Britta a lesson on how to use it.

Maybe it was an act. The thing was, she looked the part she was playing. No one had seen Britta’s hair in weeks. She kept it hidden under silk scarves she wound around her head. I only thought rich people in television shows wore their hair that way. It was actually quite comical.

I had to divert my attention back to my job and explain to T.J. what I was doing before he suspected I was laughing at his wife.

“I need you to cut this wire in strips and we’ll spray this foam in the cracks and over the wire. That way the bots can’t get through so easily.”

“Won’t the acid rain eat it away?”

“No, Micah didn’t think so. The foam holds the metal in place. There’s a pretty strong chemical in it that should be resistant. Or at least it should take longer for it to dissolve. Micah doesn’t know for sure. He said at least we can come back and fill it again easlity in between storms if we get more killer rain.”

T.J. wasn’t very handy with the wire cutters. Even with my unskilled hands, I was out-snipping him as I worked through the wire. We were about to spray the foam in place when Jim’s voice filled the stairway.

“We have some odd cloud formations coming this way. Not sure if we are going into lockdown but you might get ready just in case.”

I chucked our tools in the bucket and the spray cans too. We waited in silence for what felt like forever.

“False alarm.” Jim announced.

We got back to work.

“Is it just me or are the bots not all that scared of the vacuums anymore?” Marjie yelled as she chased after a few bots with the vacuum wand.

T.J. and I stuffed wire in the gaps around the metal frame and concrete. I smashed a few bots that were getting in my way.

“She’s right,” T.J. looked overhead.

I froze not wanting to see what was happening.

“Rachel,” Jim’s voice echoed from the speaker. “The spiders are crawling from the vents to the stairs. They are heading for you.”

“Can I just die right now?” Britta panicked.

“Bring us your umbrella.” T.J. emphatically held out his hand as the ones on the ceiling dropped on our heads.

I closed my eyes to calm my panic, wanting to scream, maybe run away. Marjie and Britta would be right behind me.

I shook a can of foam insulation trying to focus. All I could do was keep shaking it.

TJ knocked a few spiders off my hood and held the umbrella over our heads.

“You two, come stand by us and vacuum what you can. I’ll help Rachel if she comes back from wherever she just went. Hello?” He nudged me. “I’ll take care of the spiders that land on you. I don’t know what all we’re doing here, but we need to keep working. We got this.” He waited until I looked at him.

I had to blink a few times to focus. He was actually sincere. My heart was pounding in my chest, and in my ears. He stopped my hand from vigorously shaking the can.

“Come on now.” He motioned for me to start.

I covered my face with the mask and signaled for TJ to do the same. Adjusting the safety goggles, I sprayed the foam in the cracks where we stuffed the wire.  It expanded more than I thought it would. I kept going. The spiders were closing in on the walls where I was spraying. A few were consumed by the expanding foam. The ones that escaped the yellow blob quickly seized up on the ground.

Marjie and Britta’s squeals echoed over their vacuum whine. I bit the inside of my cheek hard so I didn’t do the same when they were crawling up my arms.

TJ finally noticed and flicked them off. I felt one poke my neck.

“My neck, check my neck.” I turned so he could open my hood. He pulled out two and smacked some off his arm.

“Hurry.” His eyes were wide.

I nodded and when I started spraying, the can I had was empty. He pulled the top off the next can and I made the mistake to look overhead. The ceiling was crawling with them, raining down on the umbrella and coming down the walls right where I was.

I closed my eyes. I could still see them crawling everywhere in my mind. “Why spiders?” the next can was in my hand.

I sprayed as fast as I could. I didn’t want to wait any longer. T.J quickly sprayed the other side of the door.

“Let’s go. We got what we can for now. We’ll come back later to see how well we did,” he said.

I grabbed the vacuum from Britta. She was too busy dancing trying to dislodge the spiders on her boots. We went down to the Control Room floor where Jim was. I pushed Britta, Marjie and TJ to go through the doorway. None of them knew where they were going but I had to unplug my vacuum before I could follow. The bots swarmed down the walls after me. I paused. They were only after me. None of them followed the other three.

“No, no, no.” I ran through the doorway and ahead of the three lost causes. I banged on the Control Room door. “Jim, Jim!… Jim!”

Those stupid bots could move fast. They were filling the hall.

He opened the door. I dropped the vacuum and jumped through the door almost at the same time as Marjie. Britta and TJ were on our heels. I slammed the door before Jim had a chance to grab the handle.

The hallway camera showed the bots on the other side as they looked for a way in through the very slim cracks in the door. Marjie, Britta, and TJ sat down slowly on the bed along the wall and watched.

I hugged myself as Jim looked us over.

“That was rather intense,” he said, turning to face the monitors instead of us. “You all look highly traumatized. Good thing you all survived. How’s the crack filling job?”

I chewed on my nail as the camera showed the bots climbing all over each other and we could hear the hundreds of clicks of their legs on the wall.

Jim pointed at something on my shoulder. I smashed the bot to pieces.

“We all need to look each other over. Jim doesn’t need any stragglers in here.” I pulled one off the waistband of Marjie’s coat. She stomped one off her boot and squished it.

“There are far more in the bunker than I thought there were,” TJ said. He pulled a couple out of Britta’s headscarf as she waved her hands and whimpered. “Come on now.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to go out there for good reason.” She folded her arms and pouted at the wall. “I won’t do it again.”

“We can’t let Rachel and Marjie do this on their own. Britta, this is serious. People are dying in here. The only way we can survive is to do our part and help. If we don’t, Brandon has every right to kick us out. He’s thought about it. There will be more than spider robots out there to get us.” T.J. was having nothing of his wife’s pouty mood.

If I wasn’t freaking out still, I would have enjoyed him putting her in her place much more. I watched the monitor and Jim instead. I inched closer to him as the three of them were preoccupied with bot hunting. Marjie pulled one off the back of my leg and I jumped.

I made sure none of them listened when I whispered in Jim’s ear. “Did you notice? The bots were only after me.”

“What makes you say that?” His expression wasn’t skeptical, though.

“When those three went through the doorway and I was still in the stairway, the bots were only coming after me. They should have gone after them too. Once I ran through the door, they took no time filling the hall.”

“I actually noticed, but didn’t want to alarm you.” Jim moved so Marjie could crawl across the floor as she looked for bots. She lunged under the bed and yelped when she hit her head.

“Why would they do that? Why me?” I was relieved as the bots left, scattering down the hall to the vents.

“Hmm…” Jim checked to see what T.J. and Britta were doing under the counter. “It looks as if the bots will allow you all to leave here soon.”

I turned the rolling chair around so I could sit. One of the wheels was hung up on bot parts. I made sure I mashed them to bits.

“Oh, look,” Britta pointed at the screen. “The hallway is clear.” She adjusted her scarf and pulled on her gloves. “Are we done helping you?”

At least she asked.

“I guess. I want to check the foam. It might be better to wait until it’s cured before we attract the bots again.” What I really wanted was for them to go so I could talk to Jim. He didn’t usually encourage people to leave. There had to be something else he wanted to share with me.

“If we’re done, I’d like to go check and see how my family is doing.” Marjie wrung her hands as if she was letting me down.

“You should go to. I’ll stay here with Jim and keep him company a little bit longer.”

The three of them left. Jim and I watched the monitors to see if the bots followed them. There was nothing.

“You have some idea why the bots are following me, don’t you?” I changed the camera view to the stairs. No action anywhere.

“I wanted to show you something. I think it will weird you out though. So I’ll tell you instead. That
was
a storm that rolled in but it passed right over us. It interfered with the cameras, as if it was some sort of signal that messed everything up. The screen on the computer flashed documents across the screen at a pace I’ve never seen them scanned through before. Then when it was done, the bots all swarmed the halls right for the stairs, right for you.”