The car squealed around the corner and flew onto the highway leading out of town.
Behind it came a pick-up truck with five kids in the back. The kids hung on tight as the truck skidded around the corner and sped toward the highway.
“Those people are going to get speeding tickets,” Karen declared.
“Yeah. But I don’t see any police cars around,” I told her. “Except for that one.”
I pointed at the blue car parked at the curb. Actually, it wasn’t exactly parked. Its front wheels sat on the sidewalk. Its rear end stuck out into the street.
Other cars had been parked at weird angles, too. The radio in one of them blared loudly through the open driver’s-side door.
The cars looked as if they had been parked in a hurry—and then abandoned.
That crawly feeling on the back of my neck grew stronger. “What is going on around here?” I asked. I waved my arm. “Look at all the houses.”
We had entered the neighborhood where we live, and the front door of almost every house stood wide open. They swung back and forth in the wind, and slapped against the houses.
No one came to close them.
A leaf blower lay in a yard, buzzing noisily.
No one came to turn it off.
A dirt bike lay at the end of a driveway with its engine sputtering. Black smoke spewed into the air.
No one came to check it out.
“See what I mean?” I said. “Nobody is around.”
“Yeah. And it’s like they all left in a hurry,” Karen agreed.
I felt a chill roll down my back. I saw Karen’s chin tremble.
That made me even more nervous. After all, I’m the one who gets scared and has nightmares. Not Karen. If she’s scared, then something is seriously wrong.
I checked over my shoulder again. No zombies. But no people, either.
We hurried across the street to the next block. The houses looked the same—deserted. As we turned the corner onto our block, we began to run.
“Don’t worry!” Karen gasped. “There has to be some explanation!”
Sure, I thought. But what?
We split up when we reached the middle of our block. Karen ran to her house, and I dashed across the street to mine.
Our minivan stood in the driveway. The front door of the house was closed. Alright! I thought. Mom and Dad are home. Now I’ll find out what’s happening.
I banged through the door and stumbled into the hall. “Mom! Dad!” I shouted. “I’m home! And something really spooky is going on outside!”
I paused to catch my breath. Why is it so dark in here? I wondered. The hallway light was off. All the lights were off.
“Hello! Mom?” I hollered. “Dad? Zach?”
My voice echoed in the front hall.
But no one answered.
My heart skipped a beat. I froze, suddenly cold all over.
They have to be home, I thought. The van is here.
I jumped when I heard a voice. From the den at the back of the house.
The television! That’s where they are, I thought. They’re all watching TV in the den.
I hurried down the hall and peered around the door.
The den lights were off, too. The only light came from the TV. It flickered on the wall, casting weird shadows around the room.
My parents and Zach sat on the couch. Zipper, my dog, curled on the floor in front of them.
A man on the TV held up a bottle of pills. “Folks, try the Extra-Energy Vitamin tablets and give your life a boost!” he boomed. “In ten days, I guarantee you’ll have more bounce in those bones than in the past ten years!”
I frowned. An infomercial?
Mom and Dad never watch those things. And Zach only likes cartoons.
“Hey, I’m home,” I declared. “How come you’re all sitting around in the dark?”
I reached around the door and flipped on the light.
And opened my mouth in a scream of horror.
I gaped at my dad. At his sunken eyes, his slack jaw. The green skin sagging from his face.
My mom’s eyes drooped from their sockets, hanging by veiny threads. Her lips were fat and swollen. A chunk of her hair lay in her lap. I could see some of her skull through the wide bald spot in her head.
Zach stared blankly at me. His mouth hung open. His teeth were gone. His nose dripped dark yellow pus. A patch of skin had fallen from his cheek, and a jagged bone poked through.
Zipper’s fur had fallen off. His skin was as green as everyone else’s.
Zombies. All zombies.
I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. It can’t be true! I told myself. They’re wearing make-up. They sprayed themselves green. It has to be a joke. A really sick joke.
“Hey, you guys, this isn’t funny,” I choked out.
No one answered.
Then Dad slowly lifted his hand and scratched his ear.
“Ohhh!” I uttered a cry as the ear fell off!
Dad moaned. He picked up the ear from his lap in green, bony fingers and stared at it blankly for a second. Then he tossed the ear to Zipper, who wolfed it down hungrily.
My heart drummed in my chest. My mouth went dry and my legs trembled.
This is no joke! I realized. There are such things as zombies! Somehow, Zombie Town has become real!
And I was living in it!
That’s why the bus and the cars had been going so fast. They were trying to escape.
That’s why the Kwikee-Mart was empty. The owner abandoned it. He didn’t even take time to grab all his money.
That explained the empty houses with their doors flung open. The deserted cars. The abandoned dirt bike and leaf blower.
Everyone had run. Run for their lives. Because the zombies were taking over the town!
But not everyone made it out, I realized. Some of them must have been eaten.
And some of them became zombies.
Like my family.
Zipper suddenly snarled, snapping me out of my terrifying thoughts.
I stared down at him. Blue-green mold already covered the dog’s teeth, but they still appeared sharp. And those sharp teeth were clamped around a bone.
A long, thick bone, with chunks of flesh still dangling from it.
My stomach flipped over. Was that a human bone?
Snarling hungrily, Zipper held the bone down with one paw He ripped off a fat chunk of flesh and sucked it into his mouth.
My stomach lurched.
Zipper growled.
Mom and Dad and Zach turned their heads and stared at me, as if seeing me for the first time.
Slowly, the three of them rose from the couch. Zipper lumbered to his feet.
Mom raised a bony hand toward me. Reaching for me. Her swollen lips rippled. “Unnnnh!” she moaned.
“Unnh! Unnnnh!” Dad and Zach began moaning, too.
Zipper growled.
Then all four of them began staggering toward me, moaning with hunger.
“No!” I screamed. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true—my own family was coming after me!
They were zombies now. Hungry, flesh-eating zombies.
And they wanted to eat me!
“Nooo!” I screamed again. Then I forced myself to move. I spun away from them and tore down the hall to the front door.
I flew outside and skidded on the wet front porch. I somersaulted down the steps and hit the sidewalk with a thud, flat on my back.
“Unnnh!” I heard a zombie moaning close by. Too close.
Zombies can’t move that fast, I thought. It couldn’t be Mom and Dad, not yet anyway.
I leaped to my feet and glanced around.
Mr. Bradley stood in his yard next door, gazing at me across the hedge. His sagging skin was a dull green. His sunken eyes glowed with hunger.
“They’re all zombies!” I screamed. I sprinted down the sidewalk.
As I raced into the street, I saw a crowd of zombies lurching toward me. The one in front had an empty eye socket
oozing with yellow slime.
I blinked. I recognized them. The zombies from the movie!
“Karen!” I screamed. I raced across the street toward her house. “The zombies are taking over the town. We have to get out!”
I leaped onto her porch and burst through the front door. “Karen!” I shouted. “Karen!”
Karen stepped out from one of the rooms. She stood at the end of the hall, gazing at me.
“Unnh!” she groaned and licked her lips. Patches of green mold had already started growing on her face. Drool spilled out of her torn mouth. She moaned again. “Unnnnnh!”
I raced back to the front door.
Mr. Bradley lumbered onto the porch. Behind him came my family. Zipper staggered ahead of them, growling. The movie zombies lurched up the sidewalk.
I spun around. Karen still stood at the end of the hall, blocking the back door.
I heard a thump—and whirled around. Mr. Bradley’s arm had dropped off. He howled and kept staggering toward the door. Zipper lunged for the arm with an evil, vicious snarl.
“Unnnnh!” Karen moaned. She took a heavy, plodding step toward me. Another. Another.
The zombies shuffled across the porch, crowding around the front door.
I dove into the hall and tumbled into the living room. I hopped to my feet and ran through the archway into the dining room. As I raced around the table, I grabbed bananas and apples from the fruit bowl and scattered them behind me.
Maybe it will slow them down, I thought. Maybe they’ll slip and fall. They won’t eat the fruit, of course. They need flesh. My flesh.
I slammed through another door and skidded to a stop in the kitchen. I glanced around, gasping for breath.
The only door in the kitchen led back to the hall. To Karen. There was no chance for escape that way.
I could hear the zombies shuffling heavily through the living room. I couldn’t get out that way, either!
Shaking with terror, I climbed into the sink and tried to open the window above it. The window slid up an inch.
Then it stuck!
I pounded on the frame, then tried to lift it again. And again.
The window wouldn’t budge.
“Unnh. Unnnnhhh!” The zombies moaned and grunted. Louder. Closer. They were in the dining room now!
Footsteps shuffled outside the door to the hall. A shadow fell across the kitchen floor.
Karen!
I dropped to the floor and pulled open the cabinet underneath the sink. In a panic, I yanked out soap and sponges, cans of sink scrubber and window cleaner. Then I tried to crawl inside.
I didn’t fit! My legs stuck out. I couldn’t close the cabinet doors!
A zombie lurched through the dining room door.
Karen staggered in through the hall.
They’ve got me, I thought.
I tried to make myself smaller, to squeeze farther into the cabinet. But I was trapped and I knew it.
I’m doomed, I realized. Doomed…
I shut my eyes and waited for them to grab me.
The movie screen went dark. The overhead lights came on in a small, private screening room.
Martin McNair, the famous director of horror movies, rose from his seat and faced a group of twenty-five kids.
The kids all clapped and cheered. McNair smiled. “Thanks for coming,” he told them. “As a director, I like to get an audience’s opinion before the movie opens. So I thank you for coming to see this sneak preview of my new movie, Zombie Town. You were a great audience.”
The kids clapped some more. “So, what did you think of it?” McNair asked.
“It was awesome,” a boy declared. “Especially the dog. I loved the way he chomped up that human bone.”
“The special effects were really cool,” another boy chimed in. “Karen looked really creepy when she became a zombie.”
“But why did she have to turn into a zombie at the end?” a girl asked. “I really liked her.”
“And I think Mike should have escaped,” a boy said.
“You do? Why?” the director asked.
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess because he and Karen were supposed to be the heroes, and they lost. There was nobody left but zombies.”
“Who cares?” The girl sitting next to him snorted. “Does every story have to have a happy ending? Besides, everyone knows there’s no such thing as zombies.”
She heard a cough and turned around. She stared at the weird-looking people who jammed the back row. Their eyes were deep in their sockets. Their patchy skin was green and decayed. Gray bone showed through their scalps. Some had missing ears and noses.
“Hey—!” the girl cried. “They’re not real, are they? There’s no such thing as zombies, right? RIGHT?”
Photograph © Dan Nelken
R.L. (Robert Lawrence) Stine is one of the best-selling children’s authors in history. His Goosebumps series, along with such series as Fear Street, The Nightmare Room, Rotten School, and Mostly Ghostly have sold nearly 400 million books in this country alone. And they are translated into 32 languages.
The Goosebumps TV series was the top-rated kids’ series for three years in a row. R.L.’s TV movies, including The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It and Mostly Ghostly, are perennial Halloween favorites. And his scary TV series, R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, is in its second season on The Hub network.
R.L. continues to turn out Goosebumps books, published by Scholastic. In addition, his first horror novel for adults in many years, titled Red Rain, will be published by Touchstone books in October 2012.
R.L. says that he enjoys his job of “scaring kids.” But the biggest thrill for him is turning kids on to reading.
R.L. lives in New York City with his wife, Jane, an editor and publisher, and King Charles Spaniel, Minnie. His son, Matthew, is a sound designer and music producer.
R. L. Stine, Zombie Town
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