I'm King

5) Get Going

They all stood looking into the dark pool of water.

"Well?" Gia directed her question to Jared, "What now?"

"I have no idea," The Grade 11 replied. After last night they all felt a lot closer to each other. Speaking about so much and nothing in particular. Turns out Jared was only 16, turning 17 in 2 months. "But I will figure it out."

Aly had managed to set up a sign-up sheet for everything so Jared had a team here to help him figure out what to do with the water plant. Gia could at least tick 'start at the water plant' off of her checklist.

"Then I will leave you too it," she squeezed his arm before climbing down and heading towards the kombi where Kiki waited for her.

"And?" Kiki asked while shielding her face from the sun.

"He has no idea. But he's at least got an extra day. You have today to figure out how to keep the power on today."

"I did not sign on for this." Kiki rolled her eyes with a cheeky tone. and got into the van. Gia laughed and did the same.

~

The power plants were fucked. But they expected nothing less. Loadshedding was definitely a thing but they wanted to make it a thing of the past.

"I can get it going again," Kiki wiped her hands on an old rag. Thank God her dad worked at a power plant and had taught her how to work things. On the qt of course. Kids were not supposed to be in the power plant. "But I'm have to shut some zones off. And we'll need to either find an alternative power source or start mining coal."

"We're sending people into the universities tomorrow, you included, to start looking through all of the engineering things. Maybe we can find a way to get solar power up and running?" Gia bit the inside of her cheek as she thought.

"I don't know how we'll get there but I'll try, G." Kiki bumped her shoulder which made Gia give her a tight smile in response. Her confidence from yesterday had worn off. How were they going to do this? "Now off you go! It's Conrad's turn with you now."

Gia started to walk away and shouted a Thank You over her shoulder.

~

Gia arrived at the police station to find Conrad and a couple others outside.

"You're late." Conrad said in way of a greeting.

"There was traffic." Gia shot back.

The lot of them headed into the police station. Lucky for them there were a lot of guns and other very useful things.

"It's not enough." Conrad said as he came down the corridor from looking in the last room.

"Aren't there shops that sell guns and walkie-talkie radios?" Gia asked.

"A walkie-talkie?" Conrad looked down at her with amusement as he took up a spot next to her against the wall. "It's a handheld-receiver. And we actually need long range ones."

"Can we get those?" she asked optimistically.

"I will see what I can do."

"Thank you." Gia pushed off the wall. "I now have to go back to the school and see how things are going there."

"Drive safe." he called as she walked away.

"You too." she called back.

~

Gia arrived to a bit of a mess at the school. Seren had ambushed her when she'd driven into the front drive. They had rushed over to Aly who was arguing with a bunch of what looked to be Grade 10's.