Zombiekins - Kevin Bolger [18]
Next to kids who walked up the wrong side of the stairwell, there was nothing Mr. Baldengrumpy hated more than mumbly public speakers.
Marcus just stared back blankly, wobbling and drooling.
“Hrng grgl glrrdd ngghrrr . . .” he moaned.
“Much better,” said Mr. Baldengrumpy.
Halfway through the period, Miranda signaled Stanley to meet her at the back of the room.
“This is out of control,” she said. “We’ve got to find Zombiekins and bring it back to the Widow after school. Maybe she can tell us what the antidote is.”
“But we can’t both leave class to go search,” Stanley pointed out. “There’s only one bathroom pass.”
At that moment, their classmate Bryce came staggering down a nearby aisle carrying a pair of scissors, tripped over a kleenex and fell on his face. Slowly and clumsily, he dragged himself to his feet and looked around for the scissors—but he couldn’t find them because they were stuck in his chest.
“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