Flash Virus: Episode One (7 page)

I turned one corner, turned another and then suddenly I was back to the exact same place where I had started from.
 

That’s right - I was back in my history classroom.
 

It was almost funny.
 

I thought about how Old Man Jenkins was always telling me that if I didn’t listen hard enough to learn my history that I was doomed to repeat it – and I guess he was right.
 

I had bounced into the doorway and straight into the classroom before I could help myself.
 

Nothing much had changed.
 

Old Man Jenkins and Principal Feltspur were still standing in front of the whiteboard.
 

One of the stormtroopers was carrying a big wicker laundry basket with red ribbons bowed around the handles. The basket used to hold art supplies but I guess they’d emptied it out. Meanwhile, another stormtrooper was carefully picking up each of the free cell phones and placing them into the basket. He must have been afraid they were going to bite him or something – because he was wearing a pair of heavy industrial green rubber gloves – like the cell phones were roxically poisoned, or something.
 

And maybe they were.
 

They were throwing some of the cell phones into a waste bucket. I guess those were the real cellphones that the kids had brought to school with them – or else they were broken or used up. I was guessing at most of this. Nobody had ever told me what would happen if an army of headphone-wearing stormtroopers, Black Masks and creep-out albinos had invaded our school before.
 

I just wasn’t prepared for any of this.
 

Captain Albino was in the classroom too – as well as the two towering Black Masks - and it did me good to see how shocked he looked to see this sixteen year old kid come crashing into the classroom that he thought he had perfect control of.
 

“What?” Captain Albino asked.
 

What? What? What?
 

The Black Masks kept on echoing everything Captain Albino said.
 

They must have been connected somehow or another.
 

Captain Albino stared at me – waiting for an answer - and I almost laughed out loud seeing just how surprised the cold-hearted creep looked.
 

He looked so stupid standing there staring at me.
 

I was just about to yell “Surprise!” at him when he turned and smiled directly at me.
 

“Do it,” he said.
 

Do it. Do it. Do it.
 

Do it?
 

Do what?
 

What was I supposed to do?
 

Which was right about when one of the stormtroopers finally DID it – just like Captain Albino had ordered him to do.
 

He started shooting.
 

Surprised?
 

Surprised was freaking right.
 

I sure was.
 

It turns out I wasn’t nearly one-one-hundredths as surprised as I was about to be.
 

Captain Albino was about to show me just how truly evil he could be.
 

At the point of a gun.
 

The guns started firing.
 

I stood there waiting for the bullets to hit.
 

Waiting to die.
 

To be continued…
 

Who is Captain Albino?
 

What are the Black Masks?
 

Why has Briar Gamble’s school been invaded by stormtroopers?
 

Want to find out what happens next?
 

Be sure to pick up Episode 2 of VIRUS FLASH by Steve Vernon – available in two week’s time!!!