Beast from Beneath the Cafeteria! Read Free

were filled. First-, second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-grade kids. Normal kids.
    Well, thought Liz, as normal as you could get in this school. In this town.
    No, it was something else. Then Liz realized what it was. The kids, nearly three hundred of them, were absolutely quiet. No sound at all.
    The cafeteria, jammed with kids, was silent!
    â€œStrange,” Liz hissed. “Definitely very straaa—”
    Then she saw the reason. Well, she didn’t actually see it. It was more like she felt it. It was the floor beneath her. The floor was humming.
    It wasn’t humming a tune.
    It was—vibrating. A little at first, then a lot. The vibrating turned into rumbling. The rumbling turned into quaking.
    Then the linoleum floor tiles began to crack.
    And split. And pop.
    A bulge heaved up in the middle of the floor.
    â€œThis is new,” said Liz. Holly, Sean, Jeff, and Mike stepped around the hump and over to her.
    Suddenly, the floor itself gave out an awful, grinding, ripping, tearing sound.
    KKRRREEEEEOOOWWNNNCH!
    Chairs and tables went flying. Everybody ran to get out of the way as the floor burst apart.
    And something came out.
    The first thing Liz saw was the thing’s head.
    It was the size of a garbage can. It was green and all scaly, with burning red eyes and a long snout.
    Under the snout was an enormous open jaw filled with teeth as long as bananas.
    Sean looked over at the head twisting in the hole. He tapped his sister, Holly. “Is that Dad surprising us in one of his monster costumes?”
    Just then the cafeteria doors swung open and Mr. Vickers appeared with a movie camera on his shoulder. “Hi, kids. I’m here to film!”
    That’s when the silence broke.
    â€œAhhhh!” screamed everyone at once.

4
    Smile!
    â€œR RRROOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRRR!”
    The creature sticking out of the floor blasted up and leaped into the cafeteria.
    It was eight feet tall, all scaly, had jagged spikes running down its back to a long thick tail, and clawed feet.
    â€œWhoa!” screamed Sean. “It looks like a dinosaur! Only smaller. And weirder!”
    â€œAnd here!” yelled Jeff.
    The huge scaly head swung around, drooling and snorting.
    â€œIt sure is ugly!” shouted Holly.
    â€œIt’s got way bad breath, too,” Mike added, holding his nose and backing away.
    They were right. It was ugly. And it did have bad breath. But worse than that, the ugly, bad-smelling thing seemed to be mad at something.
    â€œRRRROOOOAAAARRR!” It booted a table out of the way with a huge clawed foot. The table soared across the room and crashed through the windows into the parking lot.
    â€œWait, do that again,” Mr. Vickers said, dodging behind a water fountain and trying to focus his camera. “I didn’t get the best angle.”
    Whoom! A chair sailed inches away from Mr. Vickers’ ear and hit the wall.
    â€œNever mind!” the director yelped.
    Suddenly, the creature’s tongue unrolled like a party noisemaker. It flicked down into the room and— “SLURRRK!” The huge tongue sucked up nearly every single crumb of food from every table, from the floor, even right out of kids’ hands!
    The suction was incredible.
    â€œHey! That thing stole my lunch!” cried Jeff.
    It stole everybody’s lunch!
    Hundreds of sandwiches, thousands of potato chips, dozens of hamboogers with spackle sauce, and every other piece of food in the cafeteria got slurped up into the beast’s ugly mouth hole.
    And with each slurping mouthful the beast grew bigger and bigger. And it blasted its stinky breath farther and hotter with each belch.
    â€œI’m gonna faint!” gasped Jeff, staggering.
    But the beast was still hungry. It licked its slurpy jaws and looked around for more food. It stepped toward Liz and her friends.
    â€œDon’t you dare, you big creep!” Liz whirled around and saw her two apples still on the lunch table. She grabbed