Survivor Steve

Dual Leadership

What's the first thing you do when you get asked weird question by strange mechanical beings? You hit it with a bat. Well, I did at least. Of course, just because of my stupid luck, the metal bat bent around the robot, as I began to call it, and was absorbed into it.
"We're dead," I said, backing away. But in my peripheral vision I saw something lining the walls. Very large guns. The robot swung an appendage at me, which I ducked under and dove to the side, landing next to a wall. I stood quickly and grabbed a gun, but the robot was to close for me to figure out the gun and shoot it. It made a punch at me, which I ducked and it got stuck in the wall. I scurried to the side, pointed the gun at the robot, and pulled the trigger. And of course a bayonet comes out instead of a bullet. Frustrated with this new development, I pulled the trigger three times and was rewarded with three bucks from the gun as it discharged at the robot, which fell to the floor in pieces.
"Next thing you know, they're going to have a statue of Steve somewhere," Brooke said from the stretcher. Tim was still standing over her protectively, a wild, angry look in his eye.
"Hey Tim, take deep breaths bro," Torin said gently, which was something I didn't really expect from him. He usually made some sarcastic comment by this time. I looked around and found a sign that said, 'Armory'.
"Well, looks like we fell in an armory. I say we arm ourselves and see what else we can find and use," I suggested.
"Are we sure we want to trust these weapons? They had to have been designed by that crazy scientist dude," McKenna said, glancing at the guns on the walls nervously. That's when the voice in our heads returned.
"I see you've found the armory, excellent. It is actually one of four rooms designed to provide your every need. Living quarters, a hygiene area, a medical center and this armory. I'd suggest that you use this as a sort of, HQ I suppose. There should be a generator in the living quarters," the voice of Mr. Crazy Creeper Man.
"I say we listen to him," I said. As much as I didn't like Mr. Crazy Creeper Man, he seemed to be doing his best to try and get us to succeed.
"Why? What has he done to help us?" McKenna asked. It seemed an argument was about to ensue.
"Nothing. But now that we're in his little experiment-" I began to explain.
"It's not really that little to me," Sarah interrupted.
"Anyway, he seems to want us to succeed, and we should use what he's given us to our advantage," I continued.
"Kind of like what Tim was saying about the night vision," Brooke brought up.
"Exactly," I agreed.
"I still don't see how we can trust him," McKenna said.
"How about this, right now, these guns are the only way we can defend ourselves. Plus, we can use the other three rooms for anything we need. I'm betting he provided some sort of way to provide food and medicine after a few centuries," I explained.
"I think we need to make a decision on who our leader should be," Corey said from out of the blue. We all looked at him, confused.
"It makes sense, right? We have a big group now, we need to pick a leader," Corey elaborated.
"Well then, we need nominees. I say whoever has led a group before should be the nominees," I suggested.
"So that would mean McKenna for ours," Tim said, nominating her. No one else argued with that.
"Corey would be ours. Or Jeremy," Zak said, indecisive about which one. We decided to make them both nominees.
"Alright so we should-" I said, trying to start the voting.
"What about you Steve?" Brooke asked.
"What about me?" I asked back. I was worried that they were going to try and make me a nominee.
"I just think you should be it, since you kinda didn't belong to a group before," Brooke suggested. I tried to argue with it, but no one would really let me.
"Fine! Fine! But we should make the vote anonymous by writing it down on pieces of paper and put them in my hat," I said. I was a little glad that my hat had stayed with me the whole time, but then I refocused on the matter at hand. I distributed paper and handed Tim a pen, which he used to write down his vote. And we went in a circle until my hat had 18 pieces of paper in it. I'm going to skip the lengthy process in which we took 8 votes for McKenna and 8 votes for me and go to the debate on the tie.
"What do we do now?" Emily asked.
"We could vote again," Emily suggested. I noticed she hadn't done any spitting lately.
"No, maybe we should have two leaders," Jeremy spoke up.
"Why? Wouldn't that cause problems?" I asked, then I figured out where he was coming from.
"Like in Rome. They had two leaders right? And they ran a government that grew into an empire," Jeremy explained.
"Wait, didn't Rome fall? How do we know this will work for us?" Katie asked, deepening the discussion.
"That's because it got too big for the kind of government it had, they were too spread out. Our group is a good size for this kind of thing, as long as we don't add too many people to it," I said, trying to be as logical as possible.
"Well, I'm in. So long as you act somewhat maturely from now on," McKenna said, directing that comment at me.
"I can do it," I said confidently. McKenna held out her good hand, like for a handshake, and I shook her hand.
"So, about the four rooms provided for us by Mr. crazy Creeper Man?" I asked cautiously.
"We can use them as long as we're careful. I can't use those guns anyway, they're two handed," McKenna said, agreeing finally.
"Done! Let's see what we can find, shall we?" I asked, excited for the first time in a long while.