Chapter 3

Back at the other apartment Ridley, Mac and the others have gone back into the apartment. They decided to go online and read the news. Unfortunately they discovered that they had no internet connection…

“How long do you think it has been down?” Sasha said.

“I don’t know, last time I used it was to check my email – but that was this Monday, I think.” Ridley said.

“I can’t believe we haven’t used our internet in one week!” Mac exclaimed, looking at Asher.

“Don’t look at me, I just thought it was the network again, and I didn’t have time to fix it.”

“And when was this?” Mac looked very annoyed.

“Wednesday.”

Everyone looked at Asher.

“And Friday night.” He admitted with a guilty look on his face.

“Well, that doesn’t matter now. We need to find out what is going on.” Sasha said.

“And how are we going to do that?” Mac wondered.

“We need a newspaper.” Ridley answered. “I’ll go and look in the Metro-box at the bus stop.” He said and started to move towards the door.

“Wait! It could be dangerous!” Sasha said and grabbed his arm to stop him.

“I’ll go with you.” Asher said, and stood up from the couch he had been sitting in. “It will only take a minute.”

The boys went into the hallway, put on their shoes and quietly opened the door.

“We’ll just run there as quickly as possible, grab a paper (if there is any) and run back, ok?” Ridley said.

“Sounds good.” Asher agreed.

They opened the front door and started running across the field towards the bus stop. Both of them suddenly wished they hadn’t, because they felt very exposed. But it did not take long to reach the bus stop.

“Damn! It’s empty.” Ridley whispered.

“Look! ‘Virus spreads across the country” Asher read from the front-page of the box.

“Oh, look at this.” Ridley was pointing at an official notice in the booth.

The sign informed the citizen that the military was enforcing a curfew in order to stop the virus from spreading. Any citizens that were found outside would be taken into holding, and quarantined.

“Oh my God! That sure doesn’t sound good!” Asher commented, looking around himself nervously. “We’d better get back ASAP.”

Ridley managed to remove the poster from the board without tearing it, and they started running back to the apartment. Halfway across the field their hearts nearly stopped as they suddenly heard a lot of noise. A few seconds later they realized that it was just one of those flocks of jackdaws. They quickly opened the door and ran inside.

“Did you find one?” Mac asked.

“No, but we found this.” Ridley said and showed them the poster.

“Oh my God! What are we going to do?” Sasha exclaimed.

“What kind of virus is it? The swine-flu?” Mac asked.

“We don’t know.” Asher said. “But we should find out.”

“But how are we going to do that?” Mac wondered.

“We need to find a newspaper.” Ridley said.

“Maybe we can go to the store. We need more food anyway.” Asher said.

“But what about the curfew? The store should be closed.” Sasha said.

“It says on the note that we should call this number for provisions.” Mac said.

“But the cell phone networks are out of service, look!” Sasha said and showed them her cell phone. It was indeed emergency calls only.

“But this is an emergency, call them.” Asher said.

“Ok.” Sasha said and placed the call. All she got was static.

“Oh no! It seems not even that works.” She said and started crying.

Ridley hugged her and said “We’ll have to go out in the night, when it’s dark.”

“Yeah, but where to?” Asher asked.

“To the store, of course.” Ridley said.

“But don’t you think they’ll be guarding that, against looters and stuff?” Mac asked.

“Oh, right.” Ridley said.

“But where else can we find food and a newspaper?” Asher asked (rhetorically)

“Schools.” Sasha said between sobs. “They have food and newspapers in schools.”

“Yes!” Ridley exclaimed. “They do. And I know just how to get into one.”

They all looked at him with a mixture between surprise and suspicion.

“I’ll just climb in from the roof. Me and Boris did that a couple of months ago and they have windows in the roof.” Ridley said and smiled.