High Pressure System: First Season Underground

by K. D. Kinney

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.”

  “Okay,” I said as tension knotted up my back some more.

  “Remember what that NALA computer said before Brandon cut it off? When it was talking to you?”

  “Said something about me being the one. I don’t know what that means. That’s stupid though.”

  “Brandon made it stop because it was going to say you were selected for him specifically.”

  “Brandon told me something like that already.” I couldn’t look at Jim while my cheeks burned. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, there have been some data breaches while the spy was here.” He paused and snickered. “That’s interesting. It must have been a spy-der. Ha! Anyway, I’ve tried to avoid Brandon’s personal files. However, after one of the sessions of screen scrambling, at the time that’s what I thought it was, I figured out it was actually information gathering. His personal diary was left on the screen. Back when he was all worried about you, when everyone was talking about you. I could tell Brandon has some feelings for you from his posts. What I mean by that is he worries a lot about you.

  “Now I wonder if that big computer is using that information. Sending the bots after you because it will hurt Brandon the most. It’s a wild guess. Be mindful that I’m saying this after the bots followed you once. It could have been because you were blocking the way in for more of their buddies. Oh, now I’ve meddled, said weird things to make you feel awkward around him.”

  I had to sit down and think. “No… That can’t be it. I mean, you told me he has information on everyone. That really doesn’t make sense that it would just be me.”

  “Let me explain this clearer. Yes, he has information on everyone. Knows lots about all of our lives before we came here. But you, it is far more than that. Just believe me, it’s more.”

  “Like creeper more? Like he has a camera in my room more?” I got a shiver just thinking about a camera in my room.

  “No, not like that. There is enough information about you, or his thoughts about you, littered all over his hard drive to where a super smart computer if it found access would easily link that he has a huge soft spot for Rachel Gardener. He’s not that soft and squishy so that’s saying a lot.”

  I rubbed my eyebrows. If I rubbed them off would Brandon still like me? “This is just more awkward and ridiculous.” I scooted my chair over to the computer and grabbed the keyboard. “Prove it.” I scrolled to search through his documents.

  “Give that back.” Jim took the keyboard from me, rolled me across the room, and laughed. “Now you’re curious, huh? You should probably find out if the bots chasing you was a fluke or something you need to worry about.”

  “That’s easy for you to say as you stay in the most secure room in the building. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “I do too. If the tornado storms come back, they can still suck the air off this floor. I have had a few scares and I’m all by my lonesome when it happens.”

  “Fair enough.” I cinched my hood around my face and pulled on my gloves. I squinted at Jim. “All right. Here I go.”

  “Where are you going first? If they do go after you, you should have a plan.”

  “Hmm… Right to the source of all our problems. To the medical floor to check on Brandon. They’ve made sure the bots can’t get in and it’s halfway where I really want to go.”

  “Where’s that? You’re apartment is closer.”

  I started to speak and clenched my jaw. “Yeah, well. It’s not safe there.” Tread careful. I almost spilled the beans about Micah’s secret garden. “The school is though and maybe I need to visit the printer guy, Steve and see if he can make me protective suit out of this stuff.” I tugged on the cuff of my glove before I gripped the door handle. Hanging onto the handle wasn’t going to get me out of the room. I took a deep breath before exiting. Wasting no time, I jogged down the hall.

  It wasn’t long before bots woke where they were lined up along the walls. I thought they were dead ones. The room was alive, as if it was waiting for me. I had no time to check my handiwork on the lobby doors, I was heading down. Running the stairs was too slow. I rested my butt on the railing and slid down nearly crashing into the wall when I reached the landing. Progress was faster even though I nearly sacrificed myself for it.

  I slid down the second railing, trying to slow my momentum with my hands, forgetting the rubber would probably slow me down more than I intended. I adjusted my grip and stopped just short of launching off the end of the rail on the next landing. Bots were scrambling up towards me as much as they were following me down.

  “Don’t look, don’t look.” I slid down the next rail, easily cleaning the bots off as I went. When I moved faster, they weren’t having an easy time tracking me and they were moving in disorganized chaos. Perfect.

  I made to the medical floor, burst through the door, ran down the hall as bots clicked against the vent. Thank goodness they blocked the one in the hall too. Checking behind me, there were only a few hundred that past though the door with me. I should have forced the door shut. It was nothing like the number of them I left in the stairs, crawling all over the window in the door, scraping on the vent screen in the hall. I stopped to let the ones that followed me gather around me feet and stomped-danced all over them while laughing rather maniacally, not thinking much about whether the medical staff could hear me on the other side of the door. It was all too satisfying to murder the little beasts that were out to get me.

  When I stomped on the last twitching leg, I entered the waiting room. Everyone was staring at the door as I walked in and burst out laughing. I wanted to burst out in tears. I swallowed hard and smiled. “I think I got them all.”

  One of the nurses was looking at the top of my head.

  “Okay.” I grabbed
the bot with my glove and smashed it between my fingers. “I need a look over.”

  A couple of nurses made me turn around and they found three more.

  “I thought the bots were in hiding,” Nurse Becky said. That’s what was on her name tag. I should probably get familiar with the medical team.

  “Not when I’m around.” I pulled off my gloves and tucked each one in a back pocket of my jeans.

  She gave me a puzzled look.

  “I’m the life of the party I guess. Suddenly popular with the eight-legged-crowd.” I shrugged. “How is Brandon today?” Might as well go make my glorious presence known to the one who started it all.

  “He’s the same as yesterday. Which unfortunately not only frustrates him, but us too as he complains relentlessly. As if we have the cure for the most common health issues.”

  “Can I see him?” I cast my eyes to the floor. She knew Micah and I were something. I hoped she didn’t think I was something with Brandon too.

  When I glanced up, she gave me a smirk.

  “What is that for?” I asked and my cheeks were on fire.

  “He talks about you. A lot.”

  “I didn’t ask him to.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.”

  I reluctantly followed Becky.

  She turned to face me before opening the door. “Don’t worry. I don’t start rumors. It’s my job to keep quiet.”

  “There’s no rumor to spread.” My eyes watered.

  “I see that.”

  “Do you? Or are you unseeing what you think you saw? Because what you think you see now is not the truth.”

  “What? That he is obsessed with you and you like someone else? I can see the difference in your eyes when you’re here to see him and when you were here with the other guy.”

  I exhaled the biggest sigh of relief. “You can see the difference, huh?”

  “Yes, but I would never tell him that. No sense making him hopeless when he needs hope to get better.” She winked.

  I nodded, bewildered as she let me in the room.

  Brandon was complaining to the walls as I walked in.

  “Why won’t they let me leave?” he yelled.

  I ducked as if he hurled the words at me.