“Somehow I don’t think that’s the worst of our problems right now, Stanley,” Miranda said.
26
MIRANDA FIGURED THEY COULD SEARCH THE school faster if they split up, so she sent Stanley to look in the basement while she combed the top floors again. But when he got down there, the scene that confronted him stopped him in his tracks. The entrance to the kindergarten room was covered in blood-red smears!
Terrified of what he’d find, Stanley had to force himself to look inside. . . .
All over the classroom, little zombies in pigtails and short-pants were scratching, strangling, bashing, biting, mugging and mauling each other. There were kinderzombies in the sandbox, burying one another in sand . . . kinderzombies in the Story Corner, munching on their favorite books . . . a crowd of kinderzombies clawing and drooling around a glass terrarium full of nervous caterpillars for the class butterfly project. . . .
“Alice,” Miss Mellow said in her usual calm honey tones, “we don’t put Simon’s head in our mouth.”
In the middle of all this chaos, one little zombie stood patiently picking his nose—until a little girl zombie saw and lurched hungrily in his direction.
“Mrhrnghrmdrn . . .” the little girl zombie groaned, choking him.
“MRGHNHRRGLLRR!” the little boy zombie roared, choking her back.
“Use your inside voices,” Miss Mellow gently reminded them.
Stanley backed out of the classroom in horror. Behind him, the hall was filled with a shrill, tuneless racket coming from down by the Music Room. It sounded like mice squealing, crows shrieking, geese quarreling, cows bellowing, donkeys braying, cats hissing, snakes yodeling, and a dog with its tail stuck in a door.
“Wonderful, children!” Stanley heard Mrs. Bernstein shouting from inside. “Louder!”
Stanley knew before he looked that it would be just like the kindergarten class. Sure enough, the room was full of zombies: zombies munching on ukuleles, zombies banging violins against their music stands like hammers, zombies blowing into the wrong ends of their trumpets—and none of them following the tune at all, except for one pair in the corner who were bashing each other over the head with cellos in time with Mrs. Bernstein’s baton . . . .
It was the same upstairs in the gym where the third graders were playing floor hockey. They swarmed around the ball, battering one another with their sticks, while Mr. Straap stood on the sidelines shouting encouragements.
“Good hustle, Speckley,” he called as a tall girl hacked her way through a pack of classmates.
Another boy stumbled after the ball, dragging a weirdly bent and twisted leg behind him.
“That’s it, Puffler,” Mr. Straap cheered. “Don’t give up on the play!”
But then one of the zombies inadvertently scored a goal and play was stopped while the goalie fished the ball out of the back of the net and ate a chunk of it.
27
BUT STANLEY AND MIRANDA DIDN’T FIND ANY SIGN of Zombiekins, and by the time they met up again at last recess, the playground was swarming with zombies. Some were just staggering around, aimless and vaguely menacing, like teenagers. Others were playing normal recess games—except their reflexes were so slow they got tangled up in skipping ropes, and games of catch turned into games of fetch, and every serve in foursquare bounced off somebody’s chest and rolled across the yard out into traffic.
Stanley and Miranda were tossing a ball around by themselves at the back of the yard when two zombies stumbled through the flower garden beside them, choking and biting each other.
“Mind you don’t trample the tulips, boys,” tutted Mrs. Plumdotty.
“We have to tell her,” Stanley said. “This is out of control.”
“Tell her what? That you accidentally turned all the kids in school into zombies?” Miranda replied. “You’d be in detention till you’re eighty.”
Stanley noticed she didn’t say “we.”
“Let’s just worry about finding Zombiekins for now,” Miranda went on. “Then after school, we’ll go ask the Widow about the antidote.”
She tossed the ball lightly to Stanley, but it bounced through his legs and rolled away under the dumpster by the back fence.
“Don’t worry,” Stanley said reassuringly a moment later, lying on his stomach. “I see it.”
It was dark and filthy as a cave under the dumpster but Stanley thought he could just make out a shadowy bump way at the back that might be a ball. He started to crawl under to get it. His head bumped against the bottom of the dumpster with a loud thunk!