"Novak!"

He turned to the desk behind him. Alan poked his arm.

"'Need to talk to you after class!"

Novak was about to answer, but the bell rang, and Alan jumped out of his desk.

"Nah, I don't really need to say nothin'," he smiled.

"Oh, awesome." Students rustled around, pulling all of their things together and leaving school for the last time until next year. Next year, they'd be in Eighth grade.

The two followed as they stopped at their lockers to gather their things. Novak opened his locker, and examined his short black hair that curled off his head in all directions, and his light blue eyes. In the mirror, he spotted Lily and some of her friends. Novak dusted his 'Nirvana' band t-shirt in her presence.

"C'mon, let's go to my house."

He jumped as his friend Nikolai wrapped on his shoulder. Nikolai snuck up on them all the time, and tried to make it seem unintentional.

"I-I can't," Novak said. "How 'bout we go to mine?"

Alan and Nikolai nodded.

They exited the school with the current of students, escaping to their break. The weather was cool, and wind pushed and swayed the green trees shadowing the streets of the suburban town of Aldereit.

The three walked down the block to a medium-sized home, that kind of leaned to one side.

Novak opened the front door with his key that was tied to his jeans. He led them inside. The lights were already on, because his mother was there.

"Hi, Mrs. Novak," Alan and Nikolai recited.

"Hi, boys," she called back from the kitchen, where she was occupied with other matters.

Novak took his friends upstairs to his room, where the walls were lined with band posters. Not just any, but Classic rock posters. 'Led Zepplin', 'The Who', 'The Beatles', Jimi Hendrix, 'Heart', and more. He turned on the small box television, and it glew a bright blue color, with words passing by, and a monotonous on-going tone.

Alan punched the television repeatedly.

"Stop punishing my TV!" Novak pushed Alan, and he landed on the cot.

"Why don't you read what it says?" Nikolai suggested.

Novak did so, and turned around, scanning the words that ran across the screen.

"Attention, citizens of Washington," he began, "please go to your city's recreational center for information regarding a nationwide incident involving your area." Novak turned to Nikolai. "What's that mean?"

"It means we gotta go to the gym because something happened in the country that involves us," he said.

"Always something," Alan sighed.

()

"I am sorry to say to you all," the Mayor said, as more people entered and reluctantly sat in the iron folding chairs in the gymnaisium, "that the United States of America has had an epidemic of a virus, that is extremely fatal, extremely contagious, and currently has no treatment. To completely terminate the disease, the U.S. is taking action by Quarantining the southern region of the U.S. from the states California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, South Carolina and south, which is currently heavily infected with the Cyano virus."