Chapter 2
-Blue-
I had many responsibilities now I controlled the school. It was my job to keep everyone in order, to ensure peace was kept between kids and that fights were broken up ASAP. It was my job to decide on the rations, whereby if there were food shortages, I had to decide who missed out and who didn’t. It was my job to think up “rules” that would keep our small, slowly withering, ever-declining community in check.
It was not my job, however, to let an innocent fifteen year old girl die for something that she could not prevent.
“Where did you say you saw them?” I asked Chip, a twelve year old with long, sandy hair and a face that looked like he’d just seen someone shoot a kitten. He raced along besides me, half walking, half running to stay with me as I marched down the corridor.
“Round the East side of the school,” he exclaimed, chewing on his lip. “They were dragging Lindsay down the steps into the end corridor of the building, and Dylan was leading them.”
“Did they have weapons with them?”
“Most did,” Chip confirmed. “I don’t think that Faith, the one holding Lindsay, had anything, but they were running too quickly. I’m not sure what I saw.”
“It’s alright,” I muttered, turning a bend sharply and pushing open two creaking, wooden doors on barely functioning hinges. “I’ve got all the information I need.”
“Do you want me to come in with you? I could be your backup.”
“I’m good, thanks,” I said, fixing him with a sideways glance. “You should stay back here so you don’t get hurt.”
“Are you sure?” he nagged. “Because I’m stronger than I look. I throw a good punch too.”
“I’m sure,” I replied with a smile. Chip exhaled, slowing his speed until he fell behind, looking glum and deflated. “It’s better this way. They all have weapons. You don’t.”
“What about you?” Chip called. I reached down to my belt, pulling my trusty crow-bar out of one of the hooks and twirling it between my fingers.
“If any of those bastards mess with me I’ll smash their knee sockets in, see how they like that.”
Chip released a strangled laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. Nodding firmly, I winked in his direction before rounding the corner where he disappeared from sight.
The school was dark at night and with no electricity, no lights or anything, it was hard to see where I was going. There were solar powered torches back at the front of the building, but I didn’t have time to waste when Lindsay could be dead any second. That was, if it hadn’t already happened.
I wasn’t sure I was going to make it on time. I knew Lindsay. We used to be friends when the foundations of this colony were being built, when I was twelve and she was eleven. It was when Dane and Links, our leaders – well, until now – split the school into two different tribes, taking their separate paths to combat the virus. Dane tried to protect us by keeping every kid who was too young to catch the Black Sun virus indoors. And by working with people like Harley the Genius, he created decontamination gases that he fed through the vents and cleansed the air with. Links took the opposite approach, sending kids wearing full body protective suits outside of the school grounds to look for supplies, new medicines, even other survivors. It was hard though, to find people who were still alive, because the virus didn’t spare adults. Not our mum’s. Not our dad’s. It was only us, the children left. And six years after the terrorists that created the disease released it into the air, our numbers were dying out fast.
