High Pressure System: First Season Underground (8 page)

I didn’t sit in my apartment sulking after Jim’s news. People watching on the community floor was what preoccupied me. I imagined all the family and friends everyone might have lost on the outside. Rather morbid. I also actively looked for Micah even though I had been avoiding the males that were interested in me because I didn’t want to choose one. He had been scarce since we barely survived in one of the closets. I never did get a chance to thank him properly for the planetarium he made for me, and my students. He called it the Indoor Outdoor simulator and I loved it. Actually it probably wasn’t made just for me and I wasn’t the only that loved the starry skies from the projector. Brandon had created a few educational shows for my science classes. It made us all sad about our shut-in status sometimes. The kids would tell me stories of playing zombies in the graveyard or some such silliness at night, or camping tales.

“So what has you out in public alone and lost in thought?” Marjie pulled up a chair. She had been trying to befriend me since I started teaching. I guess I wasn’t cooperating.

“I’m not alone. The dogs need some playmates other than me.” I did lose track of the dogs while I was daydreaming nightmarish scenarios for everyone’s extended families. “Kind of bugs me the other moms have banished the pups during the day. I can’t check on them during lock-downs.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think that was right either. At least The Farm lets you take them down there.”

“But they come home smelling like crap every day. I have to bath them constantly. If they would just stop rolling in the poop down there, I wouldn’t mind so much.” I turned my tablet on to make myself look busier than I was. Scanning lessons for the next day was what I was supposed to be doing.

“What’s been wrong with your adopted daddy? He hasn’t looked good lately.”

Marjie didn’t miss much. That didn’t surprise me. She loved gossip.

I wanted to shrug and blow her off, but I changed my mind. She might be useful. “This is top secret. I know it’s hard for you to be quiet about something. However, I might need your help.” I waited for her undivided attention. I had to bite the inside of my cheek so I didn’t laugh. She was all too eager with her gigantic eyes waiting for the next word to escape out of my mouth. She looked more like the seven-year-olds in class instead of the eighteen-year-old she was.

“What? You can’t say that and not go on.” Marjie scooted to the edge of her seat.

“Before I tell you anything, you need to promise me you will tell your brother to stop harassing me. I am seriously not interested in him and can’t teach with his ridiculous behavior.”

“He’s harmless.” She waved me off.

“No, it’s annoying and I’m not that great at teaching to deal with his crap.” I was serious.

“All right, I’ll talk to him. Hopefully that’s not all you were going to tell me.” She leaned back in her chair and checked her nails, quickly losing interest.

“No. Jim found out what might have happened to his family and it’s terrible.”

“What, they didn’t make it?”

I could tell she wasn’t grasping the nationwide scale of what that meant. “Most people didn’t make it. He said he didn’t know how many were selected to live in one of these. What that means is there wasn’t enough of them.”

Marjie’s face turned white as she started to catch on. “Wait. What are you saying?” Her voice escalated.

“I’m not saying anymore about it here. Especially if you’re about to freak out and can’t be discreet about the things I’m telling you right now. I’ll tell you when there are fewer people around.” I stood to leave the table and already regretted saying a word to her.

“No.” She grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let me go. “You tell me right now or I will make a scene if you don’t.” I had never seen Marjie be that demanding before and I had seen a few of her scenes since we arrived.

“We have to go elsewhere.” I picked up my tablet and waited for her to follow. I didn’t have to call the dogs or Rocky the Rescue Squirrel. They wriggled out the little girls’ arms and wrestled at my feet. The little girls moaned as they said goodbye. Marjie and my pets followed me to the indoor outdoor simulator. Everyone else called it the planetarium. My pets loved it in there. The dogs basked in the heat from the light that looked like the sun and Rocky had plenty of dwarf fruit trees to explore. I checked the halls before closing the doors. Everyone was gone.

I sighed, feeling as if I should lie. I was terrible at that. “You can’t share this, you can’t use it make a scene, and you can’t try to blackmail me because I shared this with you.” I fiddled with my sweatshirt zipper.

“Why would I do all that?” she asked, miffed at such restrictions.

“Because you do that sort of thing. You like gossip, you know everyone’s business, and sometimes you don’t understand when something should be kept to yourself. You lack a filter.”

She looked at me open-mouthed. I could tell she was sorting out how she should feel about my accusations. Her eyes watered a little and then her cheeks reddened. I couldn’t help it. I tapped her chin so she would close her mouth.

“I’m sorry if you thought that was mean. That’s why I haven’t wanted to get too close to you. I want to tell you what I know, I really do. You absolutely can’t blab this to anyone.”

She nodded slowly.

“You have to promise.”

“You haven’t wanted to be my friend because I over share?”

“You over share without thinking about who you might be hurting when you do that. You thought for sure a couple of married people were having affairs. They have kids. Everyone started to talk and watch. Even when I almost killed everyone accidentally, I heard some of what you speculated was going on with me and Brandon. Not everyone here is out to have secret trysts. We are all trying not to die.”

Marjie’s eyes couldn’t hold the tears back anymore. “I was just trying to distract myself from what I couldn’t control. I really do want to know what happened to some of the others. My boyfriend and his family went to the West lot. He told me he didn’t think we were ever going to see each other again. I wanted to get on his bus. I tried risking missing my own and they wouldn’t let me.”

“What I’m about to tell you isn’t going to help you feel any better. Partly because I don’t know much about how we ended up here.” I clenched my jaw before I said anymore.

“I need to know.”

“I don’t have detailed information and you’ll just imagine horrible things like I have been doing all day.”

She grabbed my arm. “Just tell me.”

Now I was teary eyed. I thought about Brandon and all he knew and was keeping from us. No wonder he couldn’t share this. “Not all the buses were going to bunkers like this. Jim thinks his family was sent to some random location and that they were sent there to die. There weren’t enough bunkers. Jim and Micah say we pretty much won the lottery. That’s why we are here. None of the bus drivers knew where they were headed, what kind of shelter they were going to.”

“So was our lot the survivor lot?” Marjie wiped her eyes.

“I don’t even know that. Jim doesn’t have any idea. It’s in the archives on the computer somewhere, I guess.”

“Brandon likes you, surely you can find out?”

“Look, I only want to be Brandon’s friend and I’m trying to be careful.” Marjie’s sad eyes swayed me. “Jim asked me to find out something else and that’s why I need your help. I guess if you decide to help me, you could be my partner in unraveling some mysteries. You can use your information finding skills for something better than gossip.”

Marjie smiled a little. “Something to do other than herd little kids to the bathroom and cleaning up after them would be nice.”

“Good. Do you remember the construction worker, Micah?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s dreamy hot. I like keeping an eye on him. He likes to keep an eye on you.” She poked me with her elbow.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to dismiss her keen observations skills again. “I haven’t seen him much lately. Jim says he knows things, that there are secrets here we all know nothing about. Jim asked me to see if I could get Micah to open up to me.”

“Why do you need me? Want me to flirt with him to drive him to you?” She smiled in a manner that made me wonder if I was making a mistake.

“No. I can’t figure out where he lives. That’s what I need to find out. If I can’t find him, and I think he’s avoiding me on purpose, I can’t find out a thing.”

The lock-down siren went off in the hall. Thankfully, the sound buffering tiles had been installed near the lobby and
The William Tell Overture
only blasted up there and in the stairwell. We could faintly hear it in the community room, but in the planetarium, I couldn’t hear it all.

The dogs cowered at my feet as everything in the room shook from the weather assaulting the bunker floors above.

Marjie and I pressed our thumbs on the recognition pad near the door and we were locked in together. We sat on the floor and played with the dogs while we waited out the storm. I didn’t have horrible flashbacks anymore. We had so many storms so frequently that it helped desensitize me. This one went on for a long time, though.

“Do you think he forgot to signal the end of lock-down?” Marjie asked.

The rumbling overhead had stopped.

Jim had been taking on more responsibility in the control room near the lobby as Brandon supervised the construction of the new control center closer to the bottom floors. Maybe they were asleep on the job.

“I don’t know. I wonder if Jim is okay.” I was starting to feel a little anxious. I had too many close calls in or near the lobby and the control room was in the current danger zone.

“I have to pee. We need to get out of here.” Marjie fumbled through her shoulder bag and pulled out a card. “About the only thing this is good for anymore.” She slid the credit card down the crack in the door, held it near the thumb pad and slid a second card where the door latch was and the door opened with ease.

“How is it that easy to open the door?” I couldn’t believe it could be that simple.

“The strip cancels out the sensor in the door. When we’re on the inside of the room it is much easier to undo the latch.” She checked the hall. I was right behind her listening for the music. We were probably too far away to hear it.

I shut the dogs and Rocky in the room and we walked together to the bathroom. No one had been given the all clear so everywhere on the busiest floor in the bunker was silent and empty. Once Marjie finished her business, we went to the stairway door.

I turned my head to listen for the music. It was hard to hear but it was still playing high above. What was drowning it out was what sounded like the rushing sound of a waterfall.

“Look.” Marjie pointed to the floor near the door. The carpet was not only wet, it was dissolving away.

“Don’t step in the water.” I pulled Marjie back.

“We need to see what’s going on.” She grabbed a chair. Pushing it onto the wet carpet that was melting away, after she climbed on it, she opened the door a crack. “What the …”

I stepped on the chair, caught my balance before I fell and was in shock over what was happening in the stairway.

Water rushed down the stairs and it was milky white. Where the water pulled away from the sides when the current lessened, I could tell the concrete was washing away with the water.

“That water is full of acid or something.” I pushed the door shut to keep the water out of the room. Sure enough, puddles were forming where the water had seeped in eating away at the concrete floor.

Jumping off the chair, I looked for the call button on the thumb recognition pad. I thought for sure there was one someplace on the system set up in common areas. I found it.

“It’s eating through my shoe.” Marjie kicked her ballet flat across the room and jumped off the chair far from the water soaked carpet.

“Jim, Brandon?” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping I wouldn’t be reprimanded for leaving a room during lock-down. That would be three strikes, right? “Jim or Brandon?”

“This is Jim. You aren’t where you’re supposed to be.”

“I know. There’s water running down the stairs and it’s eating away the carpet and the concrete.”

“Security called that in. They are sandbagging the entry to The Farm as we speak. We can’t let the animals get into that.”

“What should we do?”

“Stay put. That’s why no one has been released from lock-down yet.”

“My shoe.” Marjie showed me where the sole had been eaten through.

“That’s the least of our worries if the rainwater is now trying to kill us.” I retrieved a tablet from the media room and searched acid proof materials. I was somewhat reassured that it wouldn’t eat through the metal. I chewed on my lip lost in thought.

“How are we doing to get out of here if it’s going to eat through our shoes?”

“We could strap a bread pan to your foot.” It wasn’t a bad idea to try that until the water dried up and went away.

“You know what? I bet your pretty boy is down there sandbagging.”

I kept my head down engrossed in the tablet, scanning through information. She was probably right. I had an idea.

“Come on,” I said and headed for the kitchen. I rummaged through the cupboards until I found what I was looking for. Big bowls, sheet pans, what else could we stand on? I pulled them out of the cupboards and handed some to Marjie.

“You weren’t kidding.” She made a face as if I was a lunatic.

“Do you want to sit here and wait for them to let us out? We can go back to the planetarium. I can’t let the dogs do anything in here until the water is gone. Or we can roam the halls while we wait.” I set my stack of pans on the counter.

“The library is where I’ve been dying to spend some time without everyone making it a zoo in there.”

“Really? The biggest gossip in the building brings up that Micah could be a few floors below us and you want to read a book?”

“He did tell us to stay put and that stuff ate through my shoe. I don’t see how we are getting down there by attaching these pans to our feet.

“No.” I laughed. “That was a good idea though. I was going to use them to get to the rails and then we can climb down on the metal. Maybe.” Maybe it was a bad idea.