Beast from Beneath the Cafeteria! (3 page)

That was as far as he got.

The green scaly head instantly lunged, the long tongue flicked out, and—
SLOOOORRP!—
in one slurp, Mr. Bell was gone.

Only his shoes were left.

6

A Silver Bullet! Well, Okay, a Tin Bucket

“R
RROOOAAARRRRR!”
The enormous green beast bellowed. It swallowed hard and whipped its neck back, gashing a hole in the ceiling.

Then the beast bent over and swung its head slowly from side to side, sniffing at Liz and her friends.

“He's deciding who to eat next!” Mike yelled. “I hope it's not me!” He made a dash from the aisle through one of the rows to a side door.

The beast's big red eyes followed Mike as he stumbled between the seats. It lifted its powerful claws to swipe at him.

“Mike! Watch out!” Liz yelled. Without thinking, she dived off the stage, jumped over the first three rows of seats, grabbed Mike, and pulled him to the floor in the side aisle.

Whoosh!
The beast swiped at empty air.

“Oww!” Mike groaned. “Where'd you learn to tackle like that?”

“I used to be on the softball team,” Liz huffed.

Mike was quiet for a second. “But you're not supposed to tackle in softball.”

“That's why I
used
to be on the team!” Liz grinned. “Come on, everybody. Let's beat it before we all get tackled by drool boy over there!”

Holly, Jeff, and Sean raced for the hole where the back doors used to be.

Mike didn't have to be told twice, either. In a flash he was leaping up the aisle to the side door.

Liz was right behind him.

But the beast was right behind all of them. It stomped up the main aisle and blasted through the back wall. Not through the back door, through the wall!

Bricks tumbled and scattered as the wall burst.

“RRRRRR!” Thwump! Thwump!
The beast kicked cinder blocks out of the way and chased the five kids down the hall toward the gym.

“It's gaining on us!” yelled Sean. “It ate Mr. Bell, now it wants dessert!”

It was true. With each huge stride the dinosaur beast got closer and closer.

“Hurry, or we're history!” cried Jeff.

“Prehistory, you mean!” yelled Holly.

Suddenly—
Wham! Clunkety-clunkety-clunk!

The supply closet door on one side of the hall flew open. A gray metal bucket on wheels shot out of the shadows and stopped in the middle of the hall. There was a mop sticking out of the bucket.

“Yecch!” cried a voice from the closet. “Such a mess!”

“Mr. Sweeney!” yelled Liz, screeching past him. “The beast is right behind us. And he ate Principal Bell!”

“Yes!” hooted the janitor. “I'm in control now!” He pulled the dripping mop from the bucket as the kids raced past him.

Errrrch!
The beast skidded to a stop in front of Mr. Sweeney. It lowered its head. It snarled at the janitor.

“Arg!” the janitor snarled back.

And the fight began!

The beast swatted with its claws, but the janitor twirled to one side and poked the beast's scaly hide with the moppy end of the mop.

“Take that, you school wrecker!”

“Arrrggggg!”
roared the beast.

“That's my line!” Mr. Sweeney shouted as he dipped the mop into the bucket again and whipped it up at the beast's face. A spray of dirty water splashed into the beast's big red eyes.

“He's good with that mop,” said Jeff.

“Yeah,” said Mike, huddling behind a water fountain. “Do you think he's done this before?”

“Years of unthanked service!” Mr. Sweeney yelled, batting the beast's legs with the mop.

“Ohhhh!” moaned a voice behind the kids. Liz turned. There was Miss Lieber-man, stumbling up the hall behind them, moaning and cradling a pair of goopy shoes in her hands.

“Pah!” cried the janitor. “No use crying over your Mr. Bell. It's my school now!”

Suddenly, the beast jerked its head back to the ceiling, swatted its snout, shut its eyes, and—

“Phhh-toooeeee!”
it exploded in a huge spray of green slime!

Something goopy shot through the air and down the hall, screaming all the way. A moment later, there was ooze all over Mr. Sweeney.

“My uniform!” cried the janitor.

“Leonard!” cried Miss Lieberman, running over to the oozy glop all over Mr. Sweeney.

Liz turned to Holly. “Leonard? Who's Leonard?”

“Pah!” snarled the janitor. “He's back again!”

The ooze was Mr. Bell! He was alive!

But he was a mess. “Excuse me, everyone,” the principal mumbled. “I've just been in the mouth of—of—that!”

CRUNNCH!
The beast whirled around, slamming his heavy tail down on the janitor's bucket. The bucket was as flat as a pancake.

“Without my bucket, I am nothing!” cried Mr. Sweeney. He ran down the hall. Principal Bell and Miss Lieberman shuffled off after him.

The beast stretched, snorted, and punched a hole into the school store. It did another slurping thing with its tongue and ten boxes of candy bars disappeared into its teeth-filled jaws.

“Come on, guys,” said Holly, edging away from the beast. “I think we'd better get out of here while we can.” Jeff and Sean followed her.

Liz stood there, gazing at what she was seeing. She knew it was Grover's Mill. She knew it was a zone of total weirdness, the center of everything that's strange in the galaxy. But still her brain asked her, “Hey, what's with the big monster?”

She grabbed Mike by his shirtsleeve and pulled him up to her nose. “A beast, Mike! A huge, scaly, green beast thing in our school!”

“I see it, I see it!” he nodded. “But everybody else is escaping and I wanna go, too.”

Too late.

KRACHOOOOOM!

The beast whipped its giant tail down with such force that the front wall of the school toppled!

Sending tons of bricks and cinder blocks crashing down.

Right onto the two kids!

7

Goo-goo! Ga-ga! GoRGA!

W
hoosh!
Something flashed quickly between the tumbling wall and Liz and Mike.

Liz felt herself being pulled up into the air.

“Hey, we're flying!” yelped Mike.

An instant later, the two kids were standing safely in the gym as the front wall of the school crumbled behind them like toy blocks.

“You kids okay?” said a voice from the swirling dust and crumbling stone.

Before them stood a man. He wore a sun helmet, dusty goggles, brown field pants, and boots. He snapped the handle of a leather bullwhip and it unwound from an overhead light. He coiled it back onto his belt.

“Um, we're not dead,” said Mike. “So, yeah!”

The man pulled the goggles up onto his helmet, flipped Liz's hair, and laughed.

Then he put out his hand to Mike. “Duffey,” he said. “Kramer Duffey.”

Mike's jaw sank to his chest. “Liz, this is your dad? Wow! He looks like, I mean, you look like—you know who!”

Liz knew who. Her father was an adventurer.

A dinosaur hunter. A danger kind of guy.

Kramer Duffey pointed over his shoulder at the beast as it stalked off into the parking lot. “Sent home for bad behavior?”

“He was under our school,” said Mike.

Kramer Duffey nodded. “It figures. I found a dinosaur egg deep in a cave and brought it to my tent. The next morning it was just little bits of broken shell and”—he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand—“then I saw footprints.”

CRASH!
The beast hoisted an empty school bus in each giant claw and clapped them together like blackboard erasers.

“Footprints?” asked Mike.

“Tiny ones, heading for your school,” Mr. Duffey told them. “The other funny thing was the weather that night. A big green cloud came floating across the desert.”

“RRROOOAAARRRRR!”
The huge beast growled and dropped the crumpled mess of yellow bus metal to the ground like last week's bad spelling test.

Liz's mind began to work.
Clank!
—
Clunk!
—
Fizzz!
It didn't get very far. “But dinosaur eggs don't just hatch after sixty-five million years.”

“Weird, huh?” Kramer Duffey said.

“Ahhhh!” Yelling and shrieking came from outside the school.

About a hundred kids were screaming as they all raced out of the building.

Liz turned to see Mr. Vickers running backward across the parking lot, looking through his movie camera. Sean, Holly, and Jeff were right behind him.

“Excellent screams, children!” Mr. Vickers called out. “But a little more fear around the eyes, please!”

A moment later, they were all gone.

“Wow, that beast knows only one thing,” said Mike. “To eat and to destroy!”

“That's two things,” said Liz.

“Don't get technical,” Mike snapped.

They watched as the beast uprooted the flagpole from the ground and used it as a toothpick.

“I call him Gorgasaurus,” Mr. Duffey said. “Gorga, for short. Like it?”

“Gorga …” muttered Liz. “It sounds … big!”

It
was
big! And just then the big thing tore into some power lines near the school and began to chew them. After that he tramped after a crowd of townspeople who had come to watch.

“Gorga's heading into town,” said Mr. Duffey. He turned to Liz. “You kids take cover. Gotta keep big boy away from your mom's diner.”

“But Dad, wait a sec—”

Before Liz could say another word, Kramer Duffey, world-famous paleontologist, dashed into the street, unhooked his whip, and snapped it high. The end curled right around the huge beast's neck.

“Ya-hoo!” Mr. Duffey yelled as Gorga pulled back suddenly and Mr. Duffey went flying up. “See you later, Liz! Nice meeting you, Mike!”

Mr. Duffey swung wide and high over Main Street. He finally let go of the whip over the roof of Duffey's Diner.

“Wow!” muttered Mike. “Cool whip.” Suddenly, a frown flashed across Mike's forehead. “Cool whip? Hey, I never ate lunch today.”

Liz gave him a look. “Later, Mike. We've got to see where Gorga's going next. Come on!” The two kids dashed up School Road.

Bong!
The big clock on top of the Double Dunk Donut Den rang the hour.

Sssss!
The oversize pan atop Usher's House of Pancakes hissed the hour.

“RRROOOAAARRRRR!”
went Gorga. He stopped stomping and headed for the center of Grover's Mill, drooling at the restaurants.

“Uh-oh,” gasped Liz. “He wants a snack. He's going to get bigger again. Let's get out of here!”

But Gorga had other ideas. He spotted the two tiny figures running down the street. He rolled his big red eyes. He licked his long teeth.

The ground thundered.

A dark shadow fell over the two kids.

“Gorga!” screamed Liz. “He's going to squish us!”

8

What Science Never Does

S
plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!

Well, almost!

Just inches from the two kids, Gorga's enormous clawed foot stopped. A sudden squealing sound pierced the air. Gorga turned to listen.

It was a motorcycle screeching around the corner from Main Street.

And driving the motorcycle was—Miss Lieberman!

“Whoa, she really gets around!” gasped Mike, jumping out of the way.

Miss Lieberman spun to a stop right in front of the two kids. A head popped up from a sidecar attached to the motorcycle.

“Principal Bell!” shouted Liz.

“Don't worry, children” said Mr. Bell, leaping out of the sidecar. He was dressed from head to toe in an army uniform. “We've got an oversized school wrecker on the run!”

Just then, the beast's huge foot slammed down, causing a huge crack in School Road.

“Yeah, on the run!” shrieked Mike. “Not!”

Mr. Bell jumped back into the sidecar. “Miss Lieberman, step on it!”

“Before Gorga does!” yelled Liz.

The assistant principal nodded, pulled down her goggles, and gunned the engine. The motorcycle screeched off with Gorga in hot pursuit.

“And don't forget the writing contest!” Principal Bell called back. “All entries due tomorrow!”

“What was that contest again?” Mike asked.

“It doesn't matter, Mike,” huffed Liz. “I don't think we're going to make it to tomorrow!”

In the distance, Liz spotted the domed head of the Welles Observatory. It looked safe. “The Observatory!” she yelled. “It's our only chance!”

“Great!” said Mike. “My folks can help us!”

The two kids took off down Main Street.

Bong!
The oversized donut clock on the roof of the Double Dunk Donut Den rang out again.

It was the last time.

In one quick swipe, Gorga tore the thirty-foot clock right off the Den's roof and took a bite.

“SPAH!”
Gorga coughed, spitting wood chips and heaving the giant wooden pastry down the street right at the two kids.

“That's another one for my list!” cried Liz, ducking as the donut shattered on the street. “No Big Food Signs!” Two minutes later she and Mike were dashing up the wide steps of the Welles Observatory and Science Museum.

At the top of the steps, Liz looked back.

Gorga dunked his head through the open roof of the Donut Den, slurped in a mighty slurp of donuts and crullers, and grew ten feet taller.

Then he stomped the Den flat!

“Grover's Mill!” cried Liz. “It's being destroyed stomp by stomp and slurp by slurp!”

“Well,” said Mike, “you said you wanted things to change. Come on!”

Sure, thought Liz. She'd even made a list of things to change. But was this what she wanted?