Twelve
1840 Words
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
The alarm is the first thing I hear the next morning.
Waaaaaahhh!
Then the crying.
Mommy! Make Jaelyn stop!
Then the complaining.
Waaaaaaahhhh!
More crying.
Oh great, now Rilynn's starting!
More complaining.
It's like a baby choir! Wah wah wah wah wah, wah wah! wah wah!
After that, it's Toby cracking jokes about baby choirs.
Oh my gosh shut up!
And Peyton telling him to shut up.
Daddy! Turn off the alarm!
One of the little kids starts complaining about the alarm. I can't tell who. There's so many of them.
Why is there always so much noise in this house?
Toby asking an obvious question,
BECAUSE THERE'S TWELVE KIDS LIVING HERE!
and Peyton responding harshly with the obvious answer.
It's vacation day, and we're taking all of the kids to the MainLand.
Oh boy.
"Everyone pack your bags, we're leaving in an hour." Nicholas' voice comes through the intercom system.
His expectations of us aren't that realistic.
If we're lucky, we'll be ready to go in two hours.
I let out a deep sigh and climb out of my cube and down the ladder. Nicholas has retreated to the other room to help my mom pack for the babies, which means I'm in charge of manhandling the other kids.
"Okay everyone, listen up!" I clap my hands to get everyone's attention, and surprisingly, it works. I see the other 8 faces staring up at me, waiting for me to say something.
"In order to do this as fast as possible, it has to be organized. And how do we make this organized, you ask? Well, it's simple. Each of the little kids will be assigned to a big kid. That big kid is in charge of making sure they have everything packed and ready to go. Kapeesh?"
"Kaposh." Only a couple of them are still listening to me at this point, but in reality I don't expect them to. They're only kids.
"Here are the assignments." I made a list last night in case this happened, and here we are. You can never be too prepared. I pull out the list and clear my throat.
"Abby and Mason, you guys will be with Toby. Toby, make sure they get all of their meds packed and help them pick out outfits."
Toby nods and takes them to get their suitcases.
"Peyton, you're in charge of Patrick and Noah. Charlotte and Devyn, you guys are with me. Any questions?"
"Nope." Peyton lifts her hand up to her forehead and thrusts it outwards. "Aye aye, captain."
"Great, now let's hurry. Nicholas will flip out if we're even running a minute behind." I respond, nodding.
I pick Charlotte up and take Devyn's hand, then bring them over to the closet. We each have our own section separated by dividers so our clothes don't get mixed up with anybody else's. I set Charlotte down. She starts to whimper a little, then eventually runs out of the room and down the hall to my parents' bedroom.
Fine. I didn't need her help anyway.
I grab Charlotte's bag and start searching through her closet for clothes. I don't know how long we're staying, so I just throw a couple outfits and a pair of pajamas in.
Good enough.
I do the same thing with Devyn's bag, then retreat to the bathroom to get their toothbrushes.
Just as I'm about to enter the bathroom, I hear Nicholas' voice coming from next door. It sounds like he's talking to someone on the phone.
"Yes, we're leaving today. Yup, my whole family's coming. "
There's a pause.
"Yeah, I know there are a lot of them. Do you want me to come or not?"
Silence.
"It's either I bring my family or I don't come at all. We travel as a pack."
Aww, that's actually kinda sweet.
"What do you even want me to do when we get there? I still don't understand. You only told me about this yesterday."
Another pause.
"You want me to do what? No!" He pauses yet again.
"Okay, okay. Fine. I see what you're getting at. How much is on the line, here? A million? Okay. Consider it done."
Never mind.
He hangs up the phone.
"Honey, did you pack the bibs?" I hear him shout to my mom, walking over to their bathroom to talk to her.
I lean up against the wall, totally bewildered.
What the heck just happened? What was Nicholas talking about? And why is he getting paid a million dollars to do it?
Nevertheless I keep walking until I get to the kids' bathroom, my head still spinning. I grab Devyn and Charlotte's bathroom bags and proceed to pack their toothbrushes, toothpaste, hair brushes and ponytails, then sprint back to the kids room.
I pack the girls' bags and set them by the front door, then work on packing my own. We're almost ready to leave.
This took less time than I thought.
Yayyy.
"Okay everyone, we have to be ready to go in ten minutes. You hear that? Ten minutes. Move it, move it! Go go go!" Nicholas' voice echoes throughout the entire second level of the house.
Ooh, I'm so intimidated. The mayor is yelling at us.
Ahhhh.
His intimidating voice clearly isn't scaring the kids, either. All of them are either running around playing tag or crying.
The only ones who are crying are the babies.
About an hour later, everyone has their suitcases packed and we're ready to load the mini bus.
We load using our regular procedure, older kids in the back and younger kids towards the front. Once we're all in, we do role call and take off.
As we back out of the driveway, I lean over and whisper to Toby, "I don't have a good feeling about this."
Looking straight ahead with a blank stare on his face, he replies, "I don't either."
Our "dome" is made out of high-strength indestructible glass, which means that nothing gets in, and nothing gets out. So, how do you even get to the MainLand, you ask? Well, let me enlighten you with my knowledge.
When Nicholas built the dome, he specifically told the crew to make it indestructible so that nothing gets in and nothing gets out. Here's the catch, though. He told them to make a tunnel that leads to the MainLand.
The only person that has access to it is him.
The tunnel is located beneath an old auto parts garage. To enter the tunnel, you go into the garage and if you press a big red button, the floor will descend and reveal a tunnel. The tunnel is about a mile long, and not very well built, from what I can tell. I've been outside the dome once and it felt like the whole thing was about to collapse.
It still does.
The tunnel itself was carved from dirt, so the floor, the ceiling and the walls are all made of dirt. There are a few steel beams on the sides, but they don't help. To me, it seems like a really stupid idea to build a tunnel completely out of dirt, but who am I to judge? I'm no engineer.
But I am smart.
It seems like that's the one quality the workers didn't have.
I don't judge, though.
Mmmmmm....actually, yes I do.
It's just who I am.
At this point in our ride, we're nearing the auto parts shop. Nicholas pulls into the turning lane and swings into the parking lot in front of the garage. He opens the doors to the bus and gets out. We all watch him go to the side of the giant, metal door and push the button. Once the door opens, he reenters the bus and closes the doors.
It's literally a five foot difference, but whatever.
Safety first, I guess, right?
Nah, I'm not buying it.
He puts the van in gear and drives into the garage, and keeps moving forward until the van is centered on what looks like a giant metal square, because it is a giant metal square. He gets out of the van again and pushes another red button, which closes the garage door.
All of a sudden, we hear an automated voice come through speakers we can't see.
"Now preparing to lower the lift. Please make sure you are inside the vehicle at all times or injury may occur. Tunnel status: stable. Safe to travel, but rubble may fall. Air quality: unsatisfactory. Please take the masks from the upper compartment of your vehicle and strap on securely over your nose and mouth. Press button again when ready."
My mom immediately stands up and retrieves our masks from the overhead compartments. She goes down the aisle, handing one to each of us until she gets to the back, and then goes back up front to help the little kids with theirs. For the babies she takes three tiny masks and puts them around their faces.
In our city you always have to have a mask for each individual in the family, whether they're 9 months old or 90 years old.
When the quality of air outside the dome got really bad, they started custom fitting the mask to match your face so you know exactly which mask is yours, and you can find it easily in the event of an emergency.
Once everyone has a mask on, my mom gives Nicholas the thumbs up and he presses the button again.
The voice comes on again. "Ramp will begin its descent in twenty seconds. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen..."
Nicholas runs back over to the van and climbs in, then shuts the door and puts the mask on his face. I admire how quickly he does it because it took me about 5 minutes just to figure out how to put on the mask.
"Ten, nine, eight..." at this point, the little kids are bouncing up and down in their seats, waiting for the lift to start descending. It starts going down when we reach 5 seconds, descending at a rate of about 5 miles per hour. Once we get down to one second, we're completely underground.
The tunnel itself is damp and dark, and I can already see rubble falling from the ceiling.
My mom is literally biting her nails up front because she's so worried that this tunnel will collapse on us.
She's not the only one.
Nicholas takes off at lightning speed down the tunnel. Apparently, he's worried, too. It doesn't take us long to get to the other side, which is evidently the MainLand.
He stops at the end and parks the van on a metal platform. This plate detects weight so we don't have to push a button to make it go up.
As soon as we start ascending onto the MainLand, I look out the back window.
It looks like we made it out just in time, because the whole tunnel has just crumpled underneath its own weight.
- Writer
