High Pressure System: First Season Underground (6 page)

“Yeah, well Brandon gave me some insight before the evacuation orders were sent. I only hope it was enough to save my family. He had no control over evacuation assignments and there was something regarding how that was worked out that really disturbed him. I never spoke to him much after I was able to arrange for my family to relocate before the evacuation day. I wish I knew how they’re doing now.”

I must have been desensitizing from the rattling and constant booms. I relaxed a little, but I was still feeling weepy. “I’m almost twenty, how old are you?” Changing the subject might help.

“I’m twenty-four,” Micah answered. “Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you off the other day. I figured out who you were because of the dogs and the squirrel. Everyone was talking about the squirrel when you took it in. Our own bunker Doolittle, you know.”

“Oh, I thought you knew who I was because everyone was spreading rumors about how I was responsible for locking us in for good.” I scratched the side of my face to hide my flaming cheeks from view.

“Ahh, that was you?” he asked in shocked disbelief and turned to lean closer to me. “I thought the one who locked us in would look more heroic or even devious rather than like such an innocent.” He smiled when I looked at him wide-eyed. “I was relieved to hear that the person responsible didn’t die. When that old man wasn’t there, people were pushing their luck for outside time long before you saved the cat. By the way, I would have saved the cat too.” He squeezed my arm and turned his head to listen. “I think it’s over.”

I nodded suddenly not wanting this lock-down to end. “So what kind of things have you been doing when you’re not working?”

“It’s just a thing. A thing that I do. Yeah.” Micah went for the door. “I gotta get back to work. I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Sure.” Darn it all. I was hoping he’d invite me to join him or something. I made the dogs sit until he was down the hall and out to the stairs again. Hmm … He was keeping something from me. That kind of thing always made me curious. Of course, the other day curiosity almost killed that cat and me. So I needed to be careful. Brandon did say someone was up to something when the storms came and Micah wasn’t where I expected him to be in the stairwell when the lock-down alarm went off. It could be him and I could get to know him better to find out. If it was him, maybe I could find some redemption. Or maybe it was nothing. Even at that, at least it was something to do.

Roaming the halls, trying to find where the construction workers and their families were living was my new hobby when I wasn’t helping the new teachers prepare a school for the children. I wasn’t sure that was the right place for me. At least my job wasn’t in the kitchen. I would surely be a disaster in there.

Micah was hard to find. Storm damage was keeping him busy I guess. So much for figuring out what his secret was.

When the first day of our little school started, I was surprised at the number of children there were. The teens were too close to my age and I made sure the other teachers knew I didn’t want to teach them, but they gave me science since my recent college classes made me the most qualified. I had no choice at that point. A tablet with all the science Brandon had access to was left on my table the day before our first day.

“I’m Miss Gardener and I will be teaching you basic science for the time being.” I gripped my tablet so the kids wouldn’t see that my hands wanted to tremble whenever I let it go. There were introductions. I was pretty sure one of the older boys winked at me. I tried not to notice as we took a vote on what they were eager to learn about. When I was done teaching, I was overwhelmed.

I sat in the cafeteria reviewing all the material I could possibly use. There was too much. I had no idea where to start with the little ones and how advanced I should be with the older kids. I jumped when Jim moved a chair to join me.

“How was it?”

“I think I was far more nervous than those kids were. My first-day jitters were worse than any I have experienced.”

“Kids are so forgiving though. Make it fun and entertaining so even if you mess up, you at least had fun.” Jim patted my arm.

“That’s good advice. I don’t even know where to start though.” I pressed my fingers against my forehead where a headache was building.

“What interests you the most right now?”

I had to stop and think. I skimmed through a couple of pages of info on the tablet. “I don’t know all that much about it, but I’m thinking Astronomy because of how much I miss the stars right now.”

There was a tap on my shoulder. I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face when I saw it was Micah.

“You have a tablet outside of the tech room?” Micah leaned closer to look at the screen and his cheek was just inches from mine.

My heart unexpectedly flipped in my chest. He smelled like sawdust and good manly smells. I had to get a handle on a potential swoon as I reminded myself to keep the butt in the chair.

“Brandon put it together for her.” Jim gave me a sly smile. “Don’t worry. She’s not getting special treatment or anything. She needs it for teaching.”

Micah pulled up a chair. “He did that? So I just needed to be a teacher to get my own device?”

“It has to stay on this floor. I can’t take it home.” Which I realized would be difficult for me to absorb everything I needed to. There would always be too many people around disturbing me. I skimmed through a few more pages of information. If I looked at Micah, I would smile in a ridiculous manner or blush. The swooning must stop.

“So what are you going to teach?” Micah leaned on his elbows and rested his chin on his fist, genuinely interested.

“I’m teaching science, but I have no clue what I’m doing.” And I had no clue how to handle Micah staring at me. How was I going to handle a bunch of kids?

“She said she wants to start with Astronomy. Wouldn’t it be cool if she had a room that was like a planetarium?” Jim was still giving me little mischievous looks.

I felt like shrinking. I didn’t know what he was doing. Probably playing matchmaker. He stood up and patted the top of my head, intentionally messing up my hair.

“I gotta go. My night in the control room. Nice to see you, Micah. Maybe you can help Rachel with her studies.” Jim winked before he walked away.

I slouched and rubbed the redness from my face.

“That is a cool idea. Can you ask Brandon about the whole planetarium thing, Jim?” Micah sat up taller in his chair. “I think we need something like that for everyone. Maybe it will help being shut in.”

“Can’t forget that there needs to be a nighttime breeze and cricket sounds too before it will fly for me,” I said imagining fresh air blowing through my hair while gazing at a full moon and star filled sky. I closed my eyes to picture a perfect night under the stars … with a certain someone at my side.

A hand rested on top of mine and I opened my eyes to see Micah grinning at me. “You don’t realize who you’re talking to. I might be able to make that happen.”

“Really? How about some grass on the ground and a few trees to rustle in the wind to complete it?” I challenged him.

“Okay.” He held his palm in front of his face and wrote notes with an imaginary pen. “Stars, wind, trees, grass, crickets, maybe a little heat for sun. All right. I need to draw up some plans while you figure out what you’re going to teach in the great indoor, outdoor simulator.” He winked at me.

“I was wondering if I would ever see you around again. I thought maybe you were a figment of my imagination or something.”

“I’ve been keeping busy. There’s a lot going on near the surface floors. All the lock-downs aren’t helping, but we are making progress.”

“How about your other thing?” I figured I would put it out there since running into him was such a rare thing.

“I don’t have much time for that. I think with the changes we are making up there, lock-downs will get easier for everyone so there is a huge push.”

“What is it?” I was all for improved lock-downs.

“I could show you.”

“What, now?” I still had lots to figure out but I would go if he wanted me to.

“How about I get some dinner and then I show you. I’m just on break right now. Can I join you?”

“Sure.” I got real engrossed in the tablet to hide my joy in Micah hanging out with me outside of a lock-down. He left to get food and when he came back, he pulled up a chair beside me so he could look at the tablet while I read for my lessons. I wasn’t absorbing anything I was reading. His presence was too distracting. All that man smell filled my nose and made me think things that had little to do with science and more to do with the awkward parts of health class.

“It looks like your dogs are the bunker mascots now.” He leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs and laughed at Dobbers and Yodels antics with the kids on the other side of the room.

“I think when I went into hiding it was only the dogs everyone missed.” I took the opportunity to finish my carrots while his attention was diverted from me.

“Hey, at least they noticed. Since I’m on my own, no one seems to know I exist. I can disappear for days and no one says a thing.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Nope, not one bit. Gives me plenty of time to work on my stuff.”

“So what stuff?”

“I’ll show you sometime. But it won’t be today. I need to get back to work. Are you coming? If you do, you might want to leave your dogs behind.”

“Okay. How long will I be?”

“However long you want.”

“All righty then. Let’s take the dogs home.”

Micah took my plate with his to the dish collection window. Once I put my tablet away, we went to my apartment.

I just barely let the dogs in the door and closed it before Micah could see the mess inside.

“Not much of a housekeeper, huh?”

“Not lately.” I flushed again and stuffed my hands in my sweatshirt pockets.

“There’s no squirrel hiding in your hood?” he asked before we headed back down the hall.

“No.”

“So you’re wearing Rachel trademarked attire?” He tugged on my hood.

“Pretty much.” If there were any sun, my constant shade of red could easily be mistaken for sunburn.

“Sorry, I keep embarrassing you. I’m not all that clean myself and if I wasn’t working, I would be in my most comfortable clothes which would be basketball shorts and a t-shirt. Just so ya know, I think you’re kind of cute.”

“Thanks.” That was the most flirting I had experienced in some time and I didn’t quite flourish as I thought I would with that kind of attention. Why did I want to hide in a dark corner somewhere and become like the wallpaper? What was wrong with me?

With all the stair climbing, talking became a struggle so we focused on that and we passed the floor where Brandon’s control room was.

“Where are we going?” Panic started to grip my chest and I stopped.

“The storage facility below the lobby.” He reached for my hand. “I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

I reluctantly let him guide me up the stairs the rest of the way. I focused more on how much his hand enveloped mine. How gentle he was and how well he paid attention to how I felt. Why was self-absorbed Brandon so fascinating to me again?

The storage room was massive and rather dark with stacks and stacks of assorted piles of things filling all the space. Mostly building materials on one side, and mountains of boxes on the other. In the back corner, scaffolding reached up to the ceiling and there were some long skinny windows near the metal beams.

“I guess I’m early returning from dinner. That always happens. They all have spouses and kids.”

“What are you working on in here?”

“We are installing speakers against the lobby walls and building a new drop ceiling with tiles made by the 3D printers to deflect any sound or electronic device signals from escaping. We are doing this floor and the one below. That’s lots and lots of tiles to install. When we get done, we won’t have to hear the music from lock-downs on the lower floors.” Micah led me to the end of the room where the scaffolding was. But that’s not what he wanted me to see. He climbed the ladder that connected to a short walkway along the wall and waited for me to follow. When I was standing beside him, he showed me the view through the long skinny window that was just above the carpet in the lobby. Leaves, dirt, and other debris were scattered across the floor. The fake ficus tree was lying on its side against the wall with sand building up against the base and the branches were mashed against the floor. A couple of gaping holes in the walls gave us a clear view of the sky. I grabbed Micah’s arm. “Why is this window here when there is so much damage out there?”

“This is a high strength, unbreakable window. We need to see what the storm is doing out there. We are installing a camera right here as well. Most of the protected cameras outside have been destroyed. Brandon wants to see what happens in the lobby when we get hit hard. The intensity has let up for some reason lately and he told the boss that he thinks we are about to get hit hard again soon. He wants the lobby repaired eventually. With so many cameras down, it’s not safe so we are doing what we can in here for now.”

“Well, I hope you aren’t the one who gets sent out there.” I wrung my hands as I felt the horrible dread knotting up my gut.

“So you care about me already?” He batted his eyelashes at me in a rather silly feminine manner.

“I just don’t want someone to feel what I felt that day and actually die from it.” Why didn’t I just humor him? Instead, I had to be all serious.

“Ah, man. I didn’t remember that. Maybe bringing you here was a bad idea.”

“No, don’t say that. I’m fine. What I don’t understand is the reason why we were all moved here, why was it kept a secret from everyone?”

“It would have created a wild frenzy of desperate people trying to find shelter. This place would have been overrun. You have no idea the amount of secrets I have learned. I know more than I would like to know. I know that Mother Nature isn’t in charge of the weather anymore and neither are we. There are so many secrets in this building alone and I have learned them by paying attention to all the little details. There are secret places and people here you don’t even know about. Actually, you could learn a lot by what is being stored in this room. The worst part is you might even hate Brandon and everyone else that sent us here if you knew how that grand evacuation day plan worked. Being selected to come here is as good as winning millions in the lottery. Consider yourself very lucky. We are literally in an underground Noah’s ark.”

“I don’t know much about the selection process in how I got here. What I do know is that artificial intelligence has taken over the weather. Brandon told me his role in that mess. The worst part is I have seen what’s out there trying to get us. I have a hard time forgetting how it felt.” I got a chill when I had a flashback of tornado tentacles searching for me.

“That’s a good thing you know more than most of those complaining ignoramuses down there.” Micah pulled on the rail as if he was angry. “All we can do now is try our hardest to survive as long as we can.”

The sunlight that poured through the holes in the lobby walls disappeared at the same time the music started and it was deafening in the open warehouse.

Micah swore as he pushed me to the ladder. “We gotta go. Hurry.”

I chewed on my lip as I climbed down the ladder as fast as I could. My foot slipped on one of the bars and I whacked my leg hard. Micah nearly stepped on my hand. He jumped down over me and I hugged the ladder until he landed. I jumped off from there. He pulled my sleeve as we ran for the door.

“Where are we going?”

“There’s no safe room here.” He pulled me down the stairs and the platform above our heads closed off that floor. “We won’t make it down before the next one shuts.” He pushed me into the hall on the next floor.

I could feel the air suck away through the door even though the platform closed everything off. My hair lifted from my back. I gripped Micah’s hand tighter. Lightning struck so close, I felt the impact as much as I heard it. The creaking and screeching of metal from above hurt my ears. The lights went out before we got to the door of the safe room. The panel on the wall was barely lit, glowing just enough so we weren’t in total black.

“Let’s see if the emergency power is enough to let us in.” Micah pressed his thumb on the pad, but it didn’t work. He tried again with no luck. A wind pulled at my clothes and I hovered near his shoulder, prodding him to hurry. He unhitched a key from his waist and used it on the door. The door swung open. He pushed me inside and pulled the door shut. The suction in the hall was so strong, he needed my help getting it closed long enough to lock it manually. We were in pitch black. He fumbled around, knocking into me until he found my arm. We sat on the bench and slid away from the door. I could tell he was trying to find the light on the wall. I started to hyperventilate when I could hear something in the room slide towards the bottom of the door just like the paper did that day. Then there was a huge crash above us. I jumped when Micah touched my face. He was trying to find my ear. “I’m sure that was the scaffolding. Hey, breathe slow, in and out.”

“I can feel it pulling my shoes. It’s sucking all the air out of here.”

“We can’t suffocate.”

“Yes, we can.” I slid closer to the back wall, far away from the door when the room rattled from the noises above us.

Micah turned on a mini flashlight. He searched the room until the light shined in my eyes, blinding me until he pointed it at the wall to turn on the battery light.

He pulled me to my feet and squeezed my arms. I still couldn’t breathe. He tilted my chin up so I had to look at him, breathing in and out slowly until I followed his lead.

There was another crash overhead and dust from the unfinished, sheetrock walls filled the small room. Micah wrapped his arms around me and he pulled me to the floor when the next crash made the ceiling tiles give way. They tumbled down on us. He held me tighter as more air sucked out of the room even faster. It cleared the dust but made it difficult for us to inhale.

A piece of ceiling tile was sucked to the crack under the door and it eased the tug just a smidgen, but I noticed. Another one plugged the rest of the gap and it was slightly easier to breath. I pulled away from Micah and picked up all the tiles I could, placing them all around the gaps in the door frame. Micah helped until all the cracks were covered. We could breathe much easier.

There was another huge lightning crash up above and the entire support system for the ceiling fell on us. Micah pushed me to floor and covered my head. The falling tiles and metal grids knocked down the emergency light and buried it. I found the light and placed it on the bench.

We couldn’t stop coughing from the dust that filled the room again. I pulled one tile off the wall that covered the cracks around the door. The dust was sucked out so fast, it was scary. I quickly covered it back up once we stopped coughing.

Micah pushed all the tiles to the door clearing out a place for us to sit near the back wall. We huddled side by side, cowering with each crash that shook us too. There wasn’t much else in the room that could fall on us except for the fireproofing material on the beams and pipes above us.

“You know what this is like? It’s like we are little ants in an anthill about to be exterminated,” I said. However, I didn’t mind at all that Micah’s arm rested on my shoulders and that he was pulling me closer to him because we were both so freaking scared.

The pipes overhead rattled from the ceaseless attack from the lightning strikes. The light on the bench illuminated all the details of the ceiling quite well and we watched as the pipes shook so hard from every impact that the fire sprinkler head opened up and sprayed water all over the room. We jumped to our feet, turning our backs to the spray, but we nearly tangled up our legs in the metal from the drop ceiling, trying to avoid getting sprayed in the face.

Micah stepped carefully over the metal pieces until he was under the sprinkler. He stood on the bench working on the sprinkler head, struggling to figure out how to stop the spray. It just sprayed with even more intensity right in his face.

I opened all the cupboards, but there was nothing in them. I pulled off my saturated sweatshirt.

“Here. Tie this around the spray head.”

“It won’t stop the water.”

“It will keep it from spraying on us, though.”

“True.” He wound the sweatshirt around the sprinkler head and soon the water was running straight down as a steady waterfall in the center of the room.

However, the tiles we placed around the door trapped the water in the room and the storm was still pulling the tiles against the cracks. We had to carefully step our way through the sharp strips of the metal grid to the door so we could remove some tiles to let the water out. It already covered our feet.

“Either way we suffocate,” I said.

“No, we won’t. It will be over before that happens.” He made sure I looked him in the eye.

The tiles near the floor were so water logged that we could only pull small chunks off.  But the chunks weren’t over the cracks.

“You work on that side. I’ll keep at this one,” Micah said with the panic rising in his voice. The water took no time to get to our shins. I pulled a dry one off. Then I went for the one below it that was partially water soaked. I got the driest part off and air instantly sucked out of the room. It also acted like a vacuum taking water with it. I tried to get my fingers through the soggy section of tile. I couldn’t pull enough of it away. Some dry strands of my hair sucked through the crack in the door and must have gotten stuck on the hinge. I couldn’t pull away.

“Micah!” I panicked nearly ripping my hair out. Water sprayed in my face as it was sucked through the crack.

He tugged on the strands until I wasn’t stuck anymore. When I could stand upright again, Micah moved some wet hair off my face before pulling me into his chest. I was shivering.

“I don’t want to pull anymore tiles off, it’s already hard to breathe, and we have stopped the water from getting any higher. Why won’t this end?” He looked up as if he was asking the storm directly.

It sounded as if heavy metal was being yanked across the floor above. I stood there shivering in Micah’s arms while we waited out the rest of the storm with the water plunging down beside us, soaked all the way through.

When the storm finally eased up, the tiles dropped one by one from the door frame, floating on top of the water.

I jumped when the canister lights dangling from the ceiling came back on.

Micah struggled to open the door and when it did open, water flooded out into the hall, taking us with all the metal pieces and tiles. “Good thing it opened out instead of in.” Micah stopped himself from falling on the opposing wall and grabbed me before I landed on the floor.

“What a mess. Not really much of a safe room is it?” I asked as I stumbled over the tiles.

“None of these top floors are considered safe anymore. There is a team making a new control room just above the cafeteria and community floors. A new storage warehouse is being planned too. This bunker is about to spread further underground. Even more like an elaborate ant farm.” Micah jogged down the hall. He opened a panel and turned a red handle on a pipe. “That takes care of the flooding for now.”

My tennis shoes squished with every step I took. I salvaged my sweatshirt and wrung it out with my trembling hands. My jeans clung to my legs. I pushed my wet hair out of my eyes and wondered if I should just go straight home. Micah startled me when he grabbed my shoulders.

“We made it! I told you it wouldn’t last forever. Nothing is injured, right?” He looked me over.

“I don’t think so. I’m so uncomfortably wet, I can’t tell.” I sighed. We stood there gazing at each other for what felt like a really long time. I looked away first and held out my shaking hands. “Still shook up pretty good though.”

He showed me his hands. They were trembling too. “I’m sorry I brought you up here. You already went through something like this once already.”

“If I wasn’t here, you would have gone through this alone.”

“True.” He ran a hand through his wet hair, flinging water off it afterward.

We both leaned against the wall trying to collect ourselves.

“I want to check what damage was done upstairs real quick.”

“Don’t you think it might still be close? Maybe it hasn’t blown over yet and it’s like the eye of a hurricane or something. I’ve been reading up on those.” I wanted to go home, but I was reluctant to leave Micah and did want to know what had happened up there. Curiosity was about to get me again. Cats and I would probably get along real well. At the moment, I probably used up two of my nine lives since living in the bunker.

“Come on.” He motioned for me to follow him.

I held the rail, determining whether I would go up or down.

“We won’t stay long. Just long enough to know what to write down on the damage report.”

I squished up the stairs behind Micah. He turned the hand crank to the platform that had closed during lockdown. Once it was open enough for us to pass, he made me wait while he moved some debris out of the way.

The storage room was a disaster. There was no way to even get in the door. No wonder there was so much racket during the storm. Once Micah could see the windows were still intact, we headed back down the stairs.