Free Flash Virus: Episode One by Steve Vernon

Introduction
    Who remembers those three magic words – to be continued?
    I first read them in a Marvel comic book. As I recollect, The Hulk was just about to put his fist directly through the head of Thor, God of Thunder.
    Now, that didn’t bother me that much. I always was more of a Hulk-rooter than a Thor fan. What can I tell you? The dude with a hammer – how sissified was that?
    But I still remember the feeling of reading those three magic words.
    To be continued.
    Words like that caught you by the throat and dangled you over a pit full of man-eating crocodiles – with a school full of pet piranha.
    Words like that made you gasp and want you to hold your breath.
    Sometimes you read them at the end of a comic book and you knew that you would have to hold your breath for an entire mouth. Other times you read them at the end of part one of a two-part television episode. Steve Austin was just about to be dismantled by Bigfoot – who was really Jean Ferre, no matter how many times they called him Andre The Giant.
    Words like that were a little frustrating, sure, but the cool thing was that words like held an innate promise of splendor to come. You just knew that you would have to derail your entire train of personal existence until you caught that next episode and found out whether or not Steve Austin was going to be sent to the Six Million Dollar Junk Heap in the sky.
    Authors like me use those three words to a limited degree at the end of every sentence, chapter, and paragraph we write. Their always has to be that little nugget of suspense that encourages the reader to keep on reading.
    “I’ve just got to find out what happens next.”
    So – without any further hoopdoodlery or fol-de-rol – (two great words that I heartily encourage you to use just as often as you can) – allow me to introduce my very first – and hopefully not my very last – fiction serial.
    Every two weeks I will unleash another episode in the continuing adventures of Briar Gamble as he goes toe-to-toe with Captain Albino’s forces of evil.

Chapter One – How Does High School Suck, Let Me Count the Ways
    So as near as I could tell the end of the world began roughly about the time that Billy Carver’s butt rang - about halfway through the War of 1812.  
    All right – so his butt didn’t really ring – but the brand new cell phone that he was carrying in his butt pocket went off awfully sudden and unexpected.  
    It was absolutely the weirdest ring tone that I had ever heard – kind of like a crossbred mix tape of rap-music-gargling and stained-church-glass-yodeling but I recognized the tune right off.  
    There wasn’t a kid on the planet who didn’t know that tune.  
    The tune was Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.  
    You know – better not pout and checking his list twice, watching when we’re sleeping – which is really kind of creepy when you stop and think about some fat old bearded man peeping at kids in their Sponge Bob Square Pants pajamas – not to mention that whole bit about rooty-toot-toot and rummy-tum-tum.  
    Whatever the heck that meant.  
    In any case, that was the tune that Billy Carver’s butt was playing - which – when you think about it is a pretty weird tune to hear playing in the middle of the month of May – even if it was coming from a free butt-covered cell phone – which each of us had been given by a guy in a pair of fish bowl sunglasses.  
    Which I’ll tell you about in just a little bit.  
    Right now we are talking about Billy Carver’s butt.  
    Mind you – I was not looking at Billy Carver’s butt when his cell phone rang.  
    That’d be just weird.  
    Maybe not as weird as Santa Claus peeping – but weird just the same.  
    What I was actually looking at – the same way as I had looked at it for five days a week and nine months of the year for the last entire decade - was the classroom wall clock.  
    In fact, as far as I can calculate I have been sitting here for about a hundred