Zombiekins 2(21)

Stanley and Miranda took cover behind a table at the back of the room as the clamor reached its peak. The zombies were right outside the door!

“Mmmhhrrgh!” roared one of them.

“Nnyyyarrrghrggl!” raged another.

There was a pause.

“Mrrghhr?” groaned another zombie, more puzzled than angry.

Stanley held his breath, hoping they would give up looking and go away. But the next moment, the sound of the door handle jiggling made his blood freeze—they were trying to get in!

One of them started pounding on the door . . .

Then another . . . and another . . .

Until soon the door shook with a thunder of thumping and battering that rattled all the junk heaped against it and stirred up a dust cloud from the pile of unmarked homework . . .





But their barricade held.

After a few tense moments, the pounding stopped. Gradually the angry voices dimmed. There was a shuffling of feet outside in the hall, then that too fell silent.

“I think they’ve gone back to class,” Miranda whispered.

“Phew!” Stanley sighed. “Now let’s get out of here and go ask the Widow for help.”

“No, hold on,” Miranda said. “I think we should wait here till school is over and they’ve all gone home.”

Stanley started to object, but Miranda explained:

“It’s the perfect hideout,” she went on. “In all the zombie movies I’ve ever seen, the heroes always hole up somewhere just like this. Somewhere with only one way in, where you’d never expect the zombies to find them. . . .”

“But what if they do find us?” Stanley asked. “Doesn’t that mean there’s only one way out, too?”

“Oh, they always find you,” Miranda said, matter-of-factly. “But trust me, this is just the way it’s done.”

Stanley couldn’t argue with her. He never watched scary movies because they made him see monsters in the shadows cast by his nightlight for weeks after.

So they tried to relax and look for ways to pass the time until school was over. Miranda went around checking the windows for an escape route, but they’d all been sealed shut to prevent teachers from climbing out onto the ledge on rainy days when the children were kept indoors for recess.

As for Stanley, now that he wasn’t being chased by flesh-eating zombies, he realized he was pretty hungry himself. He never did get a proper lunch, after all. But even though the Teacher’s Lounge was full of old pizza boxes and empty glasses with little umbrellas in them, he couldn’t find a crumb of anything to eat. Finally he got so desperate he decided to eat some of the Widow’s taffy from his knapsack.





“Hey,” Stanley said, peeling the wrapper off a piece of taffy with a loud rrrrrrrrrrip, “how come we never thought to look for Zombiekins in here?”

As soon as the words left Stanley’s mouth, an awful thought struck him. He tried to push it out of his mind—but he could tell by the way Miranda was staring back at him that the same idea had just occurred to her....





And then, from somewhere nearby in the room, with timing so pat it was downright eerie, they heard it:

Stump!—scri-i-i-i-i-itch . . .





From out of a broom closet by the door, Zombiekins appeared. . . .

Stump!—scri-i-i-i-i-itch . . .





Slowly but steadily, Zombiekins advanced across the room toward them, one leg dragging like a dead limb. . . .

Stump!—scri-i-i-i-i-itch . . .





Slowly but steadily, it came bearing down on Stanley and Miranda like some monster out of a horror movie. . . .





. . . Like some really short monster . . . Which also happened to be really slow . . .

But it wasn’t long (well, not that long, anyway) before Zombiekins had crossed the room and was almost upon them.

Fortunately Stanley and Miranda managed to escape in the nick of time by taking a couple steps backward.

“W-what should we do?” Stanley asked Miranda.

“Catch it in your knapsack,” Miranda said, inching back another step.

That had been their plan all along—but it didn’t seem so easy now that they found themselves trapped in a room with a killer teddy.

Zombiekins just kept dragging itself steadily after them, and Stanley and Miranda kept edging away, and edging away, until finally on their third lap around the room Miranda made a suggestion.

“On second thought,” she said, “maybe we should sneak out of school while the zombies are stuck in class. . . .”

They made a dash across the room and started digging through the barricade, item by item.

Zombiekins turned and followed them, slowly and menacingly . . . .

Stump!—scri-i-i-i-i-itch . . .

“It’s following us slowly and menacingly!” Stanley said.