CHAPTER NINETEEN
RUSSIAN ELEVATOR
Their screams continue to fill the air as the elevator continues to plunge down below Hawkins. Abby has managed to encapsulate both Erica and Dustin in a protective hug as the two gather around the buttons, battling over dominance. They shout back and forth as Dustin continues to pound on the button as if he's hoping that something will change now. Abby knows this part of a dream, where you're falling and falling and then suddenly there's a kick and you rise from your sleep state. She waits for this, she waits for every muscle in her body to sieze, for her legs to kick out and for her eyes to snap open in her dark bedroom. But the isn't a dream that she can wake up from. She is trapped in a plunging elevator.
Abby lets out a yelp as the elevator pulls to a sudden, jarring stop. She stumbles back into the boxes, leaving Dustin and Erica seemingly unscathed by the sudden landing. Robin lets out a pained groan as she puts a hand to her head in the spot that had collided painfully against the nearby shelf. Steve lets out a shout from the ground where a box had toppled on top of him. Abby pushes herself up shakily as she takes a few deep breaths and looks around at her fallen companions. Her skin stings where the edges of the cardboard boxes have scratched into it, but it's nothing that she can't handle.
"My groin," Steve groans from where he lays pinned to the ground. "It fell on my groin."
Steve's cry lands on deaf ears as the remainder of the group push themselves up from the ground to stare around in horror at the room that they're trapped in. Abby glances around apprehensively, waiting for the floor to rumble again, or for the door to slide open and reveal the Russians standing outside of it.
"Dustin!" Steve yells. "Get this off of me!"
Dustin scrambles over to Steve and easily hefts the box off of the older teen and drops it down atop another stack of boxes with a groan. Abby is quick to offer Steve a hand and heft him up. Steve is quick to grasp it and uses his other hand to stabilize himself as he stands shakily. They don't release their hands right away, they only stand there for a few moments, reminding themselves that they at least had the company of the other.
"Is everyone okay?" Robin asks from where she still sits on the ground. Abby scrambles over to her next and offers a hand to Robin who grasps it gratefully.
"I think my brain's still rattling a little," Abby answers.
Steve throws his hands in the air. The distress is clear on his face, there's a vein popping in his forehead, his eyes are widened in some sort of craze as he flails arms. "Yeah, I'm great, now that I know that Russians can't design elevators!"
He shoves Dustin out of the way as he lunges for the buttons and sends the boy stumbling backward. Robin lets out a sigh and calls, "I think we've clearly established that those buttons don't work!"
Steve turns back to Robin and snaps, "They're buttons! They have to do something!"
"Yeah," Robin agrees as she gestures toward the buttons. "If we had a keycard!"
Steve turns back toward Robin. "What?"
"It's an electronic lock," Robin explains. She crosses the room to join Steve. "Same as the loading dock door. If we don't have a keycard, it won't operate, meaning—"
"We're stuck in here," Dustin finishes.
"Yeah," Robin confirms with a nod.
"Just so you nerds are aware, I'm supposed to be spending the night at Tina's, and Tina always covers for me," Erica announces. The rest of the group only let out exasperated sighs as Erica continues, "But if I'm not home for Uncle Jack's party tomorrow, and my mom finds out your four are responsible, she's going to hunt you down, one by one, and slit your throats."
This seems to be the end of the line for Steve, who for so long has been teetering on the edge of hysterics, but now he finally seems to snap as he slams his hands down on the box in front of him. "I don't care about Tina, or Uncle Jack's party! Your mom's not going to be able to find us if we're dead in a Russian elevator."
Erica's jaw drops slightly as she stares at Steve in stunned silence. It's then that Abby lets out a defeated sigh and leans back against the heavy metal wall. It's finally registered that they're doomed, that they've just gotten their death sentence and here they'll rot in the bottom of a Russian elevator. And she'll never be able to pick a college. Of course it woudn't be this easy. There's always a catch. There's always something just slightly out of place, unnoticable until it's too late and they're already plunging six feet under ground. Despite everything they had tone to attept to prevent it, they had irrevocably circled back to square one. They don't know where they are, they don't know where the elevator has taken them, and nobody knows where they are.
"Hey," says Dustin, interrupting the silence left in the wake of Steve's outburst. He points up toward the hatch ceiling as their eyes land on him. "What if we climbed out?"
Dustin and Steve's expedition through the hatch of the roof brings grim news. They've fallen much farther than they've initially thought, they lay several miles under Hawkins. They aren't climbing out of the elevator anytime soon and there aren't any other options. They just have to wait and hope that they don't get caught by the Russians who are sure to roam just beyond the elevator.
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The rest of the night is filled with soft chatter from Abby, Steve, and Robin as they discuss various ways they can try to open the door the keeps them in their confinement. Steve spends most of the night still in hysterics, blabbering about how he hates small spaces and how Alex doesn't know where he is. By the second hour, Robin and Abby have managed to calm him down, and by the third hour they are all suggesting near impossible ways to get the doors to open, and by the fourth, Erica and Dustin had fallen asleep. Abby, Robin, and Steve followed not long after.
Dustin spends the morning pacing back and forth on top of the elevator attempting to reach someone with his radio, but to no avail. Dustin persists regardless of the clear absence of a radio signal, and finally, Steve climbs onto the roof to warn him of the weaning battery power. Robin and Abby are huddled by the door once more as they stare down at the buttons.
Behind them, something splatters against the wall. Abby isn't sure she wants to know what the sound is, but she whirls around anyway. She's met with the sight of a liquid hitting the wall and wrinkles her nose.
"Oh, gross," Abby mutters.
"Can you redirect your stream, please!" Robin calls.
As directed, the stream moves across the wall, leaving a trail in the corner. Robin gags and Abby shudders before they return their attention to the buttons. Before they can say anything, however, the sound of metal hitting metal fills the air. Abby whirls around to see that Erica has removed one of the cylindrical canisters from her backpack and is trying desperately to crack open the glass against the rim of one of the metal barrels that lines the wall.
"Erica!" Abby exclaims as she immediately jumps into action and swipes the canister from Erica before she manages to get the thick exterior of glass to crack. "What are you doing? We don't know what that is!"
"Exactly, it could be useful," Erica responds.
"Useful, how?" Robin questions as she joins Abby's side.
"We can survive down here a long time without food," Erica answers, "but if the human body doesn't get water, it will die."
"I hate to break it to you, but this is not water," Robin replies.
Erica lets out a scoff. "No, but it's a liquid, and if it comes down to me drinking that shit, or dying of thirst, I drink."
"Either way, we should not be drinking foreign green glowing substances," Abby voices. "It would probably be worse than dying of thirst."
There is a soft humming the pricks Abby's ears, just barely heard through the thick walls of metal, but she knows that it's there. She freezes with the back of her neck prickling as the sound draws ever nearer. It's a warning. Something is coming. She exchanges a glance with Robin who dashes to the wall and presses her ear up against it, straining to listen through the metal of the walls.
Robin hoists herself up through the hatch in the ceiling to warn Steve and Dustin of their impending doom. Abby's heart thuds loudly in her chest as the soft whirring draws closer and closer, but with the combined efforts, they're able to pull each other through the hatch and onto the roof. Abby holds her breath and clutches onto Robin's hand like her lifeline, and Robin clings back as they watch through the grate in the elevator top as two of the Russians enter the elevator, oblivious to the trespassers who hid just above them. Wake up, wake up, wake up. But clinging to the hope that she's suffering through a dream is useless.
Abby feels Robin's grip tighten around her hand as the Russians trade two quips. They both know the risks that they are taking. One wrong move, one small noise, and they were deer caught in headlights. They aren't the hunters in this situation, though perhaps before, they were. But the roles have been reversed, they're the hunted. Their predators are just below them. It only takes one whiff for them to catch onto their scent. They have to play through this carefully.
Steve holds a finger to his lips as the Russians exit and the whirring begins again. He glances at Erica and then down at the container of green liquid still clutched tightly in her hands. Erica doesn't hesitate to hand the container to Steve. She knows that they're in a dire situation, and she knows that she wants to be able to survive through the day. Quickly, silently, cautiously, Steve drops down from the hatch to the elevator floor and slides across. He reaches an arm out just in time to wedge the cylindrical container in between the steadily closing door and the metal ground.
"Let's go!" He calls.
Erica's backpack is dropped down first and pushed through the small gap. Erica comes next, crawling frantically through the small gap. Then Dustin slides easily underneath. The glass begins to crack and with it, Abby's calm patience. She pushes Robin forward next and watches with growing anxiety as the glass continues to crack and Robin rolls underneath. Abby comes next, heart pounding and hands shaking as she scrambles under the door. The sound of the glass cracking seems amplified, but soon, she out from under the door and on her knees in the hallway outside. Steve slides under the door last, there's a wild panic in his eyes as the spider-web of cracks travels further up the sides of the container.
Abby lets out a breath of relief as Steve rolls into the hallway just split seconds before the container crumbles beneath the weight of the door. The small shards of glass go flying across the ground but are soon vaporized by the bright green substance that oozes out. Erica lets out a sound of amazement at the sight of the glowing green chemical that spills out across the floor. Abby, on the other hand, only stares down in horror as the chemicals consume the floor. Steam rises from the green puddle and a pungent smell hits her in a wave.
"Jesus Christ," Steve murmurs as the five scramble to their feet and peer at the chemicals.
Robin turns to Erica with a bemused smile and asks, "You still want to drink that?"
"Holy mother of god," Dustin gasps.
The rest of the group turns around slowly to see what Dustin has fixed his gaze on. Abby's lips part slightly as she stares down into the never-ending hallway before them. As it stretches further beyond them, the features of the hallway become muddled. The end it seems is only a distant dream. It seems that they're going to have to fight with every ounce of energy that they have left to get out of the labyrinth that they've found themselves trapped within.
"Well ... I hope you guys are in good shape," Steve finally says. He pats Dustin on the chest as he steps forward. "I'm looking at you, roast beef."