Terror at the Zoo Read Free

large sign said, WOODLAND PARK ZOO.
    Bingo.
    That’s where he would spend the night. A zoo would have dozens of hiding places and no people around at night.
    He crossed the zoo parking lot and watched the entrance. Three elderly women bought tickets and went in.
    Tony frowned. The ticket booths were the only entrances and he didn’t have any money. Brick wallsextended on either side of the booths and when the wall ended, chain link fence began.
    A group of schoolchildren and their teacher came out of the zoo through an exit turnstile. The turnstile was like a revolving door and the kids laughed and hollered as they tried to see how fast they could push it.
    Rowdy little monsters, Tony thought. They reminded him of the kid who had tipped off the cops and got Tony arrested. Who would have guessed that a ten-year-old boy, watching out his bedroom window, would get the license plate number of Tony’s car and turn him in? If it hadn’t been for that lousy kid, Tony would never have done time. Tony hated kids even more than he hated animals.
    Well, his time in prison was finished now and they’d never catch Tony Haymes again. Never.
    A bus pulled up and forty or fifty people got off. On the side of the bus large green letters spelled out, CLASS ACT TOURS. The people all wore round green buttons. A man in a green jacket headed straight for the ticket booth. The other people milled around, talking and reading colorful brochures.
    “This way, please,” the man in the green jacket called. “The zoo closes in just two hours, so we need to hurry.” He went through the gate and the people in the group trailed after him.
    And that’s when Tony saw it, lying right on the curb beside the tour bus: one of the round green buttons. Trying to look casual, he strolled toward the bus, picked up the button, and walked away. The button said, ClassAct Tours. As he hurried toward the gate, he pinned the button on the front of his overalls.
    The woman in the ticket booth didn’t pay any attention to him as he followed the rest of the group into the zoo. She only looked at his Class Act Tours button.
    Once inside, it was easy to leave the group. They were busy consulting their maps of the zoo and deciding which way to go first. No one noticed Tony, as he slipped away.
    The Indian summer sun glowed golden through the leaves as Tony walked past the Elephant Forest, the Feline House, and the African Savanna.
    I did it, he thought triumphantly. I’m free. There wasn’t a cop in the world who would look for him in the zoo.

3

    E LLEN looked at the clock again. “Where
are
they?” she said, as she walked to the window for the third time in five minutes. “Even if traffic was bad, they should have been here by now.”
    “What if their plane crashed?” Corey said. “Or maybe it was hijacked.” He began to talk fast, the way he always did when he was excited by some story he was making up. “What if the plane took off on time and then a band of terrorists threatened to blow everyone up if the pilot didn’t fly them all to—” Corey hesitated, trying to decide the worst possible place.
    “Stop it,” said Ellen. “You sound like you want Mom and Dad to get hijacked.”
    “I would have them escape,” Corey said. “I would have them trick the hijackers and save all the people and get their pictures in the paper. Besides, it was just a story.”
    Ellen sighed. Her brother was always making upstories; the least little thing set him off. Her parents were sure he was going to be a famous writer some day.
    She snapped on the television. That was the trouble with Corey’s stories. They always seemed plausible. There was just enough truth in them to make people think that the events he described might really have happened.
    She flipped from channel to channel. If an airplane headed for Seattle had been hijacked, the TV stations would be covering the story. Reporters would be broadcasting from the airport. Instead, there were the usual talk