🔥- UPRISING -🔥

CHAPTER ONE

The door to Ruby's office opens, as Robby walks in. The door closes behind him with a thud, as he slides a lock into place. He turns to face her.

"Ruby. The tech room's been struck. Only three survivors." He mutters under his breath.

Ruby sighs and plants her head on the table. How many more are they going to lose before they can get out of this?

She looks back up at him.
"Right, you take your team, and I want you to fortify the science hallway and the art room. And, if possible, I want you to take Petunia to the gym to salvage any sort of sports equipment we can use."

Robby nods, as he heads out the door.
Ruby looks down as she pulls up another document, labeled "casualties". She reluctantly adds another five tallies to the list, before closing it. She now brings another document up, a map of the school. She crosses off the tech room with red marker, before switching to a yellow marker, and coloring in the science hallway and art room. They've been constantly losing ground since the beginning.

It's only been three days since the start of the uprising, and they've already lost twenty-two kids. She can't help but feel responsible. Is her position as a commander feeding into this? Are her orders getting people killed? She should've let someone else do this. Maybe then they would still be alive. 

She shakes off the feeling. There's no time to feel sorry for herself. Lives are at stake here. She turns to look out the window, before remembering the school's lockdown system is active, and a metal gate is shut over the window. She longs for the day she can feel the sun on her screen again.

Robby saunters around the pool, once a place bustling with joy, where very fond memories were made, now replaced with people standing around in silence, anxiously checking their surroundings every couple of seconds. Their awareness has gotten them pretty far.

He looks around the place for his team, consisting of Skell, Petunia, and a handful of other kids he doesn't know the name of. He walks past each of them, tapping their shoulder, signaling it's time to go. The reluctantly pick themselves up, and follow him out the door.

They stop by the door, where a rack of weapons is located. Petunia almost cheerfully takes hold of a few sharpened hockey sticks. Those are definitely her favorite. She's able to lob them ridiculously far with an almost concerning amount of force. The other kids just grab some scissors and heavy items, like fire extinguishers.

They say a quick prayer, then head out the door, into the abandoned hallways. They assign two students to the rear of their formation, keeping security from the back, as Petunia and Skell watch the sides. Robby takes point, taking his nailgun submachine gun off of its sling. He's used his mechanical knowledge to fix up an old powder-actuated nailgun and turned it fully automatic, making it a devastating weapon in close quarters.

It doesn't take long for them to reach the science hallway. The stop at the corner, as Petunia reaches for her radio, and signals to Cubbie.

"Cubbs, how we looking?" She whispers into the radio. A few seconds of silence pass, then the radio beeps again.

"Mmmmmyep, you're good, get those barricades set up, quick." Her voice crackles over the radio.

The two unnamed students wheel in the cart of wood supplies, and take a plank from the cart, holding it up to the fire doors blocking the hall.

Robby takes his nailgun, and shoots a nail into the wall, securing it well. They repeat this process a couple of times, with the rest of his team providing rear security. When they finish up, they decide to take the right wing through the art room towards the gym.

As they walk through, the air feels stagnant. Dried paint stains the unfinished canvases, the smell of clay permeates the room, making them cringe a little.

Petunia stops and stares at the canvases hoisted along the wall. She remembers when school was normal, and she yearns for the time she could sit down, and just relax as she let her worries float away as she created something beautiful on the blank paper. A voice echoes from behind her.

"Petunia. We gotta keep moving, we're vulnerable here."
A student shakes her shoulder. She picks her spear back up and keeps walking.

It doesn't take them long to reach the gym. Robby turns around and addresses the group.

"Alright, we don't know how long we're gonna be locked out from here, because we've been given orders from Ruby to lock down the art room after we're finished looting here. So I want every man we got to carry as much stuff as they can, understood?"

Everyone agrees, and they make their way to the equipment closet.

Good god, it's a jackpot.

The walls are lined with bats, hockey sticks, golf clubs, compound bows, and other objects that could be useful with a little tweaking.

One small problem. These items are locked behind gated doors, they're not gonna be able to get through these with their current gear.

"Shit. Jacob, run back and grab a welder, will you?" Petunia points back at a random kid, who promptly jogs away. Around five minutes later, he returns with a kid wearing a welding mask, carrying a blowtorch. Thank god for those welding classes.

He kneels down in front of the door, and begins melting the lock keeping them out. A few minutes pass, and they've opened all of the doors.

"Alright, let's get this onto the cart, double time, hustle!"

They begin loading all sorts of possible weapons onto the cart. Robby notices that Petunia hasn't come out for a while, so he peeks his head in to see what she's up to.

She turns around, her face now covered by a metal mask. She grabbed some catcher's gear from the baseball locker and thrown it on herself pretty hastily.

"Robby, help me out here, I can't reach the straps on this." She says, turning around. The short boy saunters over, sighing. He clicks the strap in, and she turns around, thanks him, and grabs a couple of baseball helmets from a locker, before heading back out to put them on the cart.

A while later, the majority of the locker is cleared out. Only a few pieces of useless equipment remain. Stuff like soccer balls, hula hoops, and pool noodles.

They load everything onto the cart, and head back, barricading the art room on their way.

The crowd in the pool celebrates their return. They inch closer to the cart, eager to know what they brought back. They start handing out weapons, and it's only then they realize just how much weapons they have. They see children arming themselves with hockey sticks, golf bats, knives, scissors, and some even have crafted rudimentary crossbows, now switching them out for the more accurate compound bows.

A curious someone sits in the back, not moving along for a weapon like the rest of the crowd. Robby looks a little closer. It's Engel.

He doesn't use a weapon. He doesn't have the stomach to kill someone, but he's not entirely useless. He's probably the only one in this group that knows any sort of first-aid, so he's the medic around here. Not too long ago, they looted the nurses office to get him some medical supplies, which aren't exactly fit for the types of  life threatening wounds people are getting here, it works nonetheless.

Petunia feels a little guilty for him, so she takes a baseball helmet from the cart, and trots over to him.

"Hey." She mutters. Engel looks up at him, awakening from his day-dream.

"We got some supplies, weapons and stuff, figured you might want this." She hands him the helmet. "To keep those brains in your head a little longer."

"Thanks, Pet. You're amazing." He sets the helmet beside him.