Zombiekins 2(24)

Miranda tossed the taffy at their feet, and while the teachers pounced on the candy and devoured it like piranhas with a sweet tooth, she and Stanley ducked down behind an upturned table.

Within moments, the antidote started to take effect: The zombified teachers shivered, quivered, then popped back to normal.

Suddenly themselves again, Mr. Straap and Ms. Mellow stared around them in bewilderment at the wreckage of the staff room. For a moment, the two of them looked guilty as cornered criminals. Then, realizing they were alone, they relaxed a little, and a strange new look came over them....

Mr. Straap gazed into Ms. Mellow’s eyes and sighed, “Oh, Marsha!”

And Ms. Mellow goggled him back and whimpered, “Oh, Jacques!”

Then Mr. Straap swept Ms. Mellow up in his arms, and she hefted him in hers, and their lips met in a kiss.





Crouched behind their upturned table, Stanley and Miranda winced and averted their eyes.

“Ewwww!” Stanley shuddered. “Now that was scary.”





34



STANLEY AND MIRANDA HAD NO TROUBLE SNEAKING out of the staff room past Mr. Straap and Ms. Mellow. But out in the halls, they soon discovered their problems weren’t over yet. In classroom after classroom, half the kids were still zombies—and in a few minutes, school would be over and they would all scatter to their homes.





“What can we do?” Stanley asked. “We’ll never sneak the antidote to all these kids without getting caught.”

And as long as there was one zombie left, it meant the whole plague could start all over again.

Fortunately, Miranda had a plan. She led Stanley down the stairwell to the playground door—the door where all the kids would exit at home time.





They didn’t have to wait long. Almost as soon as the bell rang, the stairwell started to shake and rumble as if they were in the middle of an earthquake. Suddenly a stampede of children came barging, charging, rushing, racing, hustling, hurtling down the stairs, leaping three steps at a time, sliding down the handrails, shoving, jostling, dashing, darting, whooping, hollering, barreling, bounding, bustling, and finally bursting through the playground doors to freedom.

Just as suddenly, all the kids were gone and the stairwell fell silent.

Then came the zombies. A long procession, filing down the stairs in a slow, orderly manner. None of them hurrying, none of them yelling, none of them pushing or trying to budge each other in line.

At the sight of Stanley and Miranda, they growled and snarled and licked their zombie chops.





But Stanley and Miranda just lured them through the door and fed them taffy on the other side. A few minutes later, the playground was full of kids scratching their heads, and there wasn’t a zombie in sight.

Walking home, Stanley and Miranda talked about what to do with Zombiekins.

“You have to give it back to the Widow,” Miranda urged. “As long as you don’t know what made it come to life, you never know when this zombie mayhem might start up all over again.”

“I guess you’re right,” Stanley said glumly. “But I was really starting to like the little guy. . . .”

He gazed fondly at Zombiekins. It was actually kind of cute—in a macabre, half-dead way.

Miranda was the one who noticed the wedge of cardboard sticking out of a shrub by the edge of the sidewalk.

“Hey, look,” she said in surprise. “It’s Zombiekins’ box—and the instructions are still in it.”

“Weird,” Stanley said. “I’m sure I threw that in a trash can. How could it have gotten here?”





35



THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL, IT WAS AS IF NOTHING had happened. All the kids were back to normal again, except Felicity was off with a stomachache and Knuckles had developed a phobia of stuffed animals and dollies.





After school, Stanley hurried straight home. Fetch met him at the door, barking and tugging on Stanley’s shirt in a panicky way.

“Hi, Stanley,” Baby Rosalie called from the playroom. “Want to play tea party with me?”

But Stanley ignored them both and headed for his room. He had something he needed to do.

Fetch jumped in front of Stanley, barring his way, making desperate gestures and pointing down the hall toward the playroom. When Stanley reached to open his bedroom door, Fetch flung himself around Stanley’s feet with a pleading yowl.

“Not now, boy,” Stanley said. “I’m too busy to take you for a walk.”

He pushed Fetch aside and opened the door.





Fetch hid whining and whimpering under the bed as Stanley unlocked his closet with a key from under his pillow, lifted a metal box down from the top shelf, then opened it with another key he shook out of his piggy bank.