Flash Virus: Episode One

by Steve Vernon

  Chapter Three – Holy Freaking Rambo

  Now usually when the freaking principal of our freaking high school walks into the room everybody shuts up freaking-fast. It’s not like we’re afraid of him or anything like that. It’s just that we’ve been conditioned, is all.

  You don’t believe me – just go and look it up on Google. I’m talking conditioning – like Pavlov’s dogs. You remember – those dogs that were trained to drool every time the dinner bell rang?

  Old Pavlov – he’d ring that bell every time he fed the dogs. After a while it got so that he could ring that bell and those dogs would drool like he was carrying t-bones and pork chops – even if there was nothing on that plate.

  Of course, what the science books never told you was that sooner or later those drooling dogs were bound to bite old Pavlov in the leg – and maybe work their way up to his ear-bones.

  That’s how it was for us.

  We were conditioned.

  The principal would walk on in and you would shut up.

  Then the principal would walk on out and you could get back to talking.

  Sooner or later you figure out the more you shut up the sooner he walks out and the faster you can back to doing what you wanted to do in the first place.

  See?

  Conditioning.

  Only today when Principal Feltspur walked in to our classroom there was about a gazillion red-blue-green cell phones lying on the classroom floor playing “Here Comes Santa Claus” and our state of conditioning fell completely apart.

  Everyone was talking at the very same time.

  “You’d think that with all of these freaking cell phones somebody would dial 911,” I said.

  “Maybe that’s just a little too close to mathematics,” Jemmy replied.

  “That doesn’t add up to me,” I said.

  The first thing Principal Feltspur saw was Billy Carver, Susie Diamond and Tommy Puckers standing at the windows, staring at their cell phones like three ugly wildflowers – except for maybe Susie who wasn’t anywhere close to being ugly – all leaning into the sunshine and praying for rain.

  “Let’s see what he does,” I said to Jemmy.

  I knew he’d do something. That was the principal’s job. If something was going on that shouldn’t be happening then you could bet that the principal was going to do SOMETHING about it.

  A riot in the schoolyard?

  The principal would DO SOMETHING about it.

  Didn’t do your homework?

  The principal could DO SOMETHING about that too.

  Nuclear warfare?

  Well, he’d probably do something about that as well.

  The second thing that Principal Feltspur did was to grab Billy Carver’s cell phone from him.

  Billy Carver went almost boneless, fell on the floor and started to shake like he was having some kind of a seizure. Every nerve in his body was twitching uncontrollably and his face twisted like he had chewed upon the mother of all sour balls. His mouth frothed up and his eyeballs rolled back inside his head and I think he might have been chewing on his tongue.

  “Oh my god,” Principal Feltspur shouted. “Someone do something.”

  The problem was when he shouted that he was looking straight at me.

  Remember what I’d said about conditioning?

  I was conditioned to do what the principal told me to do.

  So right away I stepped up and did something.

  I grabbed Billy Carver’s cell phone from Principal Feltspur’s hand – which was easy on account of he wasn’t holding onto it all that tightly. In fact it looked almost as if he was getting set to drop it on the floor. Maybe he felt that whatever was in that cell phone might get into him. Maybe he just was completely freaked out about seeing one of his students flopping around on the floor like Billy Carver was. I mean I know that teachers and principals are trained to handle this sort of thing usually – but you have to add in about a kazillion red-blue-green flashing cell phones yodel-smashing “Here Comes Santa Claus”.

  Given that sort of confusion I guess you couldn’t blame anyone for getting a little freaked out and letting stupid get in their eyes.

  I knelt down beside Billy and I almost laughed at loud seeing him in the state that he was in.

  I didn’t really want to see Billy Carver suffer, you understand. It was just sort of peculiarly pleasant – not doing any suffering of my own – and yet still being close enough to Billy Carver to spit on him – which I honestly thought of doing but I didn’t on account of spitting would have been rude – and besides, you never could tell just when Billy Carver might wake up out of what ever had got hold of him and do me some serious bodily injury.

  Namely, hurt me.

  I put the cell phone in Billy Carver’s twitching hands.

  Have you ever seen an octopus grab onto something to eat? The way that it kind of wraps its tentacles around what it is grabbing right before squeezing on tight? That’s just how Billy Carver’s fingers looked to me after I had put the cell phone back into his hand. His fingers kind of closed around the cell phone and like magic Billy’s twitching stopped and he kind of rose up from the floor like there was a rope tied to the top of his head and someone was pulling him straight on up towards the ceiling.

  He was smiling and he looked all calm – in spite of that little trickle of spittle rolling down his cheek - and he went back to standing beside Susie Diamond and Tommy Puckers and the rest of them – staring calmly at his cell phone and whisper-whisper-whispering without missing a single solitary beat.

  Next thing you know everybody is looking at me like I’m some kind of a freaking hero – and that is the last thing I want to be. You get to being a hero and pretty soon everybody in the whole world expects you do SOMETHING about ANYTHING that happens to happen.

  You might as well be a principal.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said, pointing straight at Principal Feltspur. “It was all HIS idea.”

  And then I just ducked my head and walked on back to Jemmy, who was staring at the cell phone like it was some weird kind of beetle that he’d found in the schoolyard.

  “I guess Santa is still coming,” Jemmy said. “They’re definitely playing his song.”

  “I guess he is,” was all I’d give him. “Maybe he’s figuring on bringing us presents.”

  “Maybe we could try to take out the cell phone battery,” Jemmy suggested. “I bet you that would stop it.”

  “It’s worth a try,” I said. “Stomping on it sure doesn’t seem to be helping much.”

  By now Burt Hertle had started jumping with both feet on that ringing cell phone – which was truly a sight to see. Burt was a little what you’d call glandular – meaning he was sliding into the chunky side of life. His Mom was forever filling up his lunch bag with rice cakes and celery and putting him in yoga class and dance school and on the badminton team in hopes of burning off enough calories to turn him into something that he wasn’t. People are funny that way. Always trying to turn other people into something they never were in the first place.

  “I can’t get the battery compartment to open,” Jemmy said. “Maybe it’d be safer if we just threw them into the garbage bucket.”

  “Throwing something in the garbage doesn’t make it go away,” I said. “It just changes where you keep it, is all.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Jemmy said – smiling at me like I’d surprised him. “That’s the law of conservation. Throwing something away doesn’t change a thing.”

  “Whatever, Greenpeace.”

  Right now - I was torn right down the middle.

  You see - my Dad just didn’t make enough money for me to buy a cell phone. We just depended on that old black thing that hung in the kitchen and only rang when the telemarketers were calling. I didn’t want to give up my new free cell phone. I mean, who was to say that this whole thing wasn’t some sort of advertising gimmick and any minute someone would jump out from behind a door with a camera crew and
a microphone and ask us how we felt being scared stupid by a children’s Christmas song and a red-blue-green flashing light.

  Only Jemmy wasn’t so certain about that.

  “I think the whole thing was done by terrorists,” Jemmy Daniels said. “I’ll bet you anything that’s what it is.”

  Like I told you before - Jemmy was my best friend. Friends are important here in high school – maybe the most important thing there is. A friend can be a little like a life preserver in the middle of a shark-filled ocean. A good friend won’t necessarily protect you from all of those sharks – but at least they’re good company while you are getting chewed on by bullies.

  And Jemmy was a really good friend.

  What struck me a little funny was that I didn’t see any of Billy Carver’s so-called friends getting anywhere close to Billy up there by the windows. You would think that if he was their friend then all that they would want would be to make sure that he was all right – but I could see that Lonnie Tarkins and Bigfoot Hansen - whose real name was Ben – were both standing just about as far away from Billy Carver as was humanly possible.

  “So what do you think?” Jemmy asked.

  What do I think?

  Heck, I was standing closer to Billy Carver than either Lonnie or Bigfoot were and it didn’t bother me one bit at all. The fact was I was kind of enjoying seeing him doing something else for a change besides stealing my lunch money, throwing my toque into the toque-eating tree or swirly-dunking my scalp into a peed-in toilet bowl.

  “I think we’re all right so long as we don’t answer one of those phones,” I said. “After that, I’d bet that all bets are off.”

  The only real difference between Jemmy and me was that Jemmy always seemed to be able to find the funny inside of every lousy situation that the bullies put him into. He’d just stand up from the toilet bowl following his swirly-dunk and he’d give his head a little dog-shake – even if someone had actually just peed in the toilet bowl that his head had been dunked into – and then he’d say something like “Thanks for the free shampoo” or “Do you want fries with that?”

  “I mean about who did it,” Jemmy asked. “Who do you think is behind this?”

  “How the heck should I know?”

  I knew it was the Black Masks. I expected Jemmy knew that too – but sometimes when you’re scared absolutely to freaking death the very best thing that you can do is to ask a buddy just what he was thinking about.

  “I think you might have a theory, at least.” Jemmy went on.

  Only I didn’t know.

  Which made me angry.

  “I think you think too much,” I replied. “That’s my theory.”

  “Think again,” Jemmy cracked. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  So did I – but I didn’t want to worry him any more than he already was.

  You see – Jemmy was one of those kinds of people whose feelings were mostly right – every time.

  Let me put it this way.

  If Jemmy told me that he had a feeling it was going to rain – I’d run for an umbrella.

  “Do you have a theory on that?” Jemmy asked. “I know that I do.”

  When it came to fighting with words Jemmy could out-talk a dictionary. I don’t know if Jemmy was some kind of a secret evil genius or else the worst sort of mentally depreciated loser. I wasn’t even sure if Jemmy was getting just as big of a kick as me out of seeing our nemesis – and how’s that for a dictionary word - Billy Carver looking like he did – standing there and whispering to a red-green-blue flashing cell phone.

  “It’s got to be terrorists,” Jemmy said. “Secret terrorist hackers who are trying to ruin the Christmas season for all of us kids.”

  “Terrorists with free cell phones?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Jemmy said. “Terrorists with cell phones. What better way to spread terror. Probably tomorrow they’ll crash the internet and then later on they’ll put out a press release proving that the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are something that dentists dreamed up.”

  “What would a terrorist be doing at our little high school?” I asked. “Stealing copies of the final exam?”

  “I don’t know,” Jemmy said. “Maybe this is just a trial run. Maybe these Black Mask dudes are secretly practicing to hack into the cell phones at the White House.”

  “They don’t use cell phones at the White House,” I said to Jemmy.

  “Well, what DO they use then?”

  “I don’t know what they use,” I admitted to Jemmy. “Something better than cell phones, I bet.”

  Jemmy shook his head like he was trying to break it off at the hinge-bone.

  “It’s terrorists for sure,” he said. “They’re probably out there in the woods, just past the baseball field. Just the other night I was out there and I heard trucks and what sounded like a couple of tanks.”

  “What, like oil tanks?”

  “No, like tank kind of tanks. You know – the kind with treads and armor and cannon and machine guns?”

  Tanks?

  Who was Jemmy trying to kid?

  “Now what would an armored tank be doing out at the baseball field?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jemmy admitted. “I guess I was too scared to go and look.”

  I guess I couldn’t blame him for being scared if his story was true – but there was no way that I could believe that he was actually telling the truth about those tanks.

  “Jemmy – you are so full of ripe old horse manure that they ought to sprinkle you on the golf course to help the grass grow green.”

  I had had about enough of Jemmy’s wild-assed theories. As near as I could tell the whole classroom was having a moment dedicated to freaking out – all day long. The last thing we needed in here was for a panic to break out. As it was I was thinking it might be a good time to sneak out of class and go home and watch some Bugs Bunny cartoons.

  “SHUT UP!!!” I shouted.

  I hadn’t meant to shout that loudly but the truth was I had been wanting to shout my head off ever since about Grade Primary.

  It worked, anyway.

  Everyone in the whole class stood still.

  The only sound we could hear were the cell phones Santa Clausing and the half a dozen taken kids standing over at the window saying their whisper-whisper-whisper prayers.

  “It isn’t terrorists,” I said loudly. “Just you wait and see. Whoever is behind this is probably sitting in his mother’s basement at his home computer, hacking into the county cell towers, sucking on an economy jumbo sized tin of Pop Rocks flavored Red Bull and leaving little orange Cheese Doodle fingerprints all over his keyboard.”

  Some of the kids were actually listening to what I was saying. I almost wanted to laugh. I had never dreamed that so many kids would listen or even care about something that I had said here in high school – or anywhere else.

  “Oh yeah,” Jemmy said. “So what are THEY doing out there?”

  He pointed out the window just as the biggest armored battle tank that I had ever seen outside of a video game pulled up into the school parking lot.

  A freaking track-tread-driving, cannon-wielding, machine-gun-toting, I’m-going-to-die-in-a-hail-of-gunfire-and-explosions tank!

  Holy freaking Rambo.

  We had just been invaded.

  I made up my mind fast.

  This was no time to hesitate.

  “Come on!” I said to Jemmy. “We’re getting out of here.”

  Only I’d waited just a little bit too long.

  I stepped towards the classroom door – figuring on making an escape.

  Just before someone kicked the door down.