by Steve Vernon
Chapter Six – In Which I Surprise Captain Albino
Have I ever told you just how much I absolutely HATED to go to gym class?
I mean, take a look at me. I’m stringy in all of the wrong places. My elbows don’t seem to be connected to my hands – so that every time I try and catch a basketball or a baseball or a football my hands go in the wrong direction that I intended them to.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
It’s a whole lot easier than just admitting that I am an absolute and total kind of anti-athletic klutz.
Being escorted to the gymnasium by a small platoon of stormtroopers didn’t help my mood much at all. The only good thing was that there were more of us kids than there were of the stormtroopers – which meant that they had to spread out – about one for every six or eight students - which meant that there was about ten or twelve feet from me and any of the stormtroopers who were marching us into the gymnasium.
Did you follow all that or do I need to wait for you to read that paragraph over one more time?
“Do you think he really meant it about cancelling lunch?” Jemmy asked.
Jemmy was a big fan of lunch. For a little guy he could eat an awful lot. I know that he was more worried about missing out on a meal than he might have been worried about death-by-terrorists – but right now I figured that I didn’t have any more time to waste on keeping Jemmy company.
“I’m not sticking around here to find out,” I said.
Just as we turned the corner in the hall I pushed the kid in front of me. He fell forward against the kid in front of him and we all got tangled up – like a centipede tripping over a row of toppling dominoes.
So I bolted for it.
“HEY!” One of the stormtrooper soldiers shouted out.
I didn’t stop to hey him back.
I just took off running for the lunch hall, which had about three or four doors that I figured I could get to.
The way I figured it one of those three or four doors was bound to take me to where I exactly needed to go.
So I ran into the lunch room and hit the side door into the kitchen.
The door swung open.
Mrs. Mabel was working in the kitchen.
She was a big heavy woman that looked as if she might have had a couple of gallons worth of cave troll blood pumping through her circulatory system. Her main distinguishing features were a head full of iron gray hair with a chin that could have served double-duty as a snowplow – and a hair net that I swore was growing into her scalp.
I thought for about half of a second about asking her for help but she had troubles enough of her own. I counted three of the stormtrooper soldiers standing there and watching her cook.
One of the stormtroopers had his assault rifle sort of half-pointed at her.
Another half dozen stormtrooper soldiers stood outside of the kitchen – either keeping watch or maybe waiting for lunch.
One of them looked up and saw me standing there.
“Hey!” he said.
Maybe they practice that too. Maybe they practiced saying hey, right after they practice pushing kids around and smiling and doing their push-ups, sit-ups and jumping jacks.
“Sorry,” I said. “I made a mistake.”
I ran out the first door I could get to and headed directly for the nearest exit.
I figured if I could just get to the school yard it was big enough for me to avoid being recaptured. I could clamber over the fence a whole lot faster than a stormtrooper soldier in full military gear. About the only thing that could stop my flight at all was if they shot me.
Only they wouldn’t shoot a kid.
Would they?
Only there were more stormtroopers standing at each of the exits so I turned and headed the other way, just as fast as my feet could manage to carry me.
Two more of Captain Albino’s stormtroopers “heyed’ me. I still didn’t bother heying them back on account of I didn’t think they would hear me with those big headphones covering their ears.
I just kept on running. I kept my arms pumping like I was trying to win a gold medal in track and field. My sneakers were slapping loudly against the tile floor of the school hallway and I was absolutely certain that they could hear me coming from miles away.
By now I’d got myself completely turned around.
I know that sounds stupid. I’d been going to this school for three years and you think that I could run through it blindfolded – and I probably could – but I had never tried to run through it while being chased by a squad of armed stormtroopers.
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!
ALSO BY STEVE VERNON
Flash Virus: Episode Two
Flash Virus: Episode Three
Flash Virus: Episode Four
Tatterdemon
Devil Tree
Gypsy Blood
The Weird Ones
Two Fisted Nasty
Nothing to Lose: The Adventures of Captain Nothing
Nothing Down: Further Adventures of Captain Nothing
Roadside Ghosts
Long Horn, Big Shaggy: A Tale of Wild West Terror and Reanimated Buffalo
Midnight Hat Trick – Three Canadian Horror Novels
Sudden Death Overtime: a novella of hockey and vampires
Steve Vernon’s Special Edition Gift Pack – Volume 1