Zombie Town Read Free Page B

horror, as I felt the velvet curtains behind me. This is as far as we can go.
    We pressed ourselves into the thick curtains. I closed my eyes. The zombie smell sickened me. Their horrifying moans rang in my ears.
    I heard a loud click.
    And the wall gave way!
    “Whoaaa!” I cried out as Karen and I fell backwards. We thudded to the floor in a tangle of velvet curtains.
    “A door!” Karen cried, struggling to untangle herself from the curtains. She scrambled to her feet. “Another emergency door!”
    I glanced back through the open door. A zombie stared back at me with one eye. A trail of yellow slime oozed from its other eye socket.
    The other zombies crowded behind it.
    Karen and I took off, racing down the stairs to the lobby.
    Please, let the front doors open! I thought as we stumbled across the slick lobby floor. Please!
    We slammed against the metal bars—and the doors flew open!
    As we burst out onto the sidewalk, Karen slipped in a rain puddle. She landed hard on her hands and knees.
    “Get up! Hurry!” I took hold of her arm and tried to pull her up.
    Karen glanced over her shoulder at the theater.
    “Hurry!” I repeated.
    Karen finally stood up. But she didn’t move. She kept gazing at the theater with a frown on her face.
    “What are you waiting for?” I shrieked.
    “Nothing. I’m thinking,” she told me.
    “Oh, great! Why don’t you think about getting out of here?” I took her arm again and tugged her across the street.
    “I’m not so sure we have to hurry.” Karen pointed to the theater. “Look, Mike. The lobby is still empty.”
    “So what? The zombies are slow, remember?”
    “Not that slow.” Karen stared at the theater. Then at me. Then she burst out laughing.
    “Are you nuts?” I hollered. “What are you laughing about?”
    “The zombies!” she exclaimed. “I figured it out, Mike!”
    “Huh?”
    “I figured it all out,” Karen said.

“I knew it couldn’t be real,” she declared. “The whole thing was a trick. Some kind of publicity stunt for the movie. The zombies were fakes.”
    “But…but I smelled them!” I stammered. “I’ll never forget that smell. You saw how real they were.”
    “Costumes,” she told me. “Costumes sprayed with a disgusting smell, that’s all.” She pointed across the street to the theater again. “The lobby is still empty, see?”
    I stared through the glass doors. Karen was right.
    “If the zombies were real, they would have been downstairs by now,” Karen declared.
    “But what about the locked doors?” I demanded. “And why were we the only ones in the place? What happened to the ticket-seller and the popcorn guy?”
    “All that was part of the stunt, I guess. It had to be,” Karen insisted. “I mean, everybody knows there’s no such thing as zombies.”
    I kept staring into the lobby. No zombies appeared. Was Karen right?
    “That was so cool.” Karen laughed again. “I was scared out of my mind. They really fooled us, didn’t they?”
    I didn’t know what to believe. The zombies seemed so real! My heart still raced and my hands were still shaking. All I wanted to do was get home, fast.
    I glanced down the street. Good. The bus was only two blocks away. The sooner I got away from here, the better.
    The bus rumbled toward us. It bounced through a pothole and swerved to the side, almost hitting a lamppost.
    “Whoa!” Karen cried. “That thing’s really flying!”
    The tires squealed as the bus swerved back to the middle of the street. I waved my arms, but the driver didn’t slow down. He blasted the horn, then gripped the wheel with both hands and kept speeding toward us.
    The bus zoomed closer. The engine roared. The bus jolted over another pothole and swerved again.
    The headlights swept over us. I gaped in horror.
    “Karen—jump!” I screamed. “It’s going to hit us!”

I grabbed Karen. Leaped back from the curb. And threw myself against the brick wall of the store behind us.
    The horn blared. Tires