Flash Virus: Episode One Read Online Free PDF Page A

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