Terror at the Zoo (2 page)

Corey, who was leaning over her shoulder, read the words out loud and then let out a whoop.

“No kidding?” Ellen said. “We get to stay overnight at the zoo?”

Ellen loved the zoo. Grandma and Grandpa had given
her some good presents before but never anything like this. She forgot all about her hair.

“The zoo is closed at night,” Corey said. “How will we get in? Are you sure they’ll let us camp there? What if the zoo people call the police and have us arrested for trespassing on private property and what if we get taken to jail and locked up with the drug addicts and . . .”

“Whoa,” Grandpa said, holding up his hand to silence Corey. Ellen knew Grandpa wasn’t being rude. Sometimes you have to interrupt Corey when he gets started on one of his what-if stories. Otherwise he’d babble on all night.

“The camp-out was one of the auction items this year,” Grandma explained.

Ellen knew which auction she meant. It was a charity auction, an annual event which benefited several community organizations. Grandma and Grandpa went to the auction every year and they always bought some unusual item donated by the zoological society.

Once they paid four hundred dollars for the chance to give an elephant a bath. With the elephant’s trainer supervising, Ellen and Corey got to help Grandpa and Grandma wash Hugo, a gentle old African elephant. Another time, Grandma and Grandpa went fishing in the moat inside the lion exhibit. They were on the other side of the moat from the lions but still, it was pretty exciting.

Last year they bought a portrait with a python. Ellen thought that purchase was gross but Grandma and Grandpa had their picture taken with a humongous python draped around their shoulders, and sent prints to all their friends.

“We’re going with you,” Grandpa said. “The camp-out is for four people.”

“When is it?” Ellen asked. “When do we go?”

“September tenth. Since your folks will be in San Francisco that week and we were going to stay with you anyway, we thought it would be the perfect time to do the camp-out.”

“September tenth is Friday,” Mrs. Streater said. “Dad and I will get in late that night. We’ll come to the zoo in the morning to take pictures.”

Corey scratched himself under both arms and made chattering sounds. “I want to sleep in the monkey house,” he said.

Where he belongs, thought Ellen.

“The zoological society will decide where we sleep,” Grandpa said. “Wherever it is, I’m sure we will have quite an adventure.”

“Thanks, Grandpa and Grandma,” Ellen said, as she gave them each a hug. Her smile was genuine now. Even though it wasn’t a salon make-over, it certainly wasn’t a babyish gift, either. Her parents still liked to go to the zoo. Lots of adults do. An overnight camp-out at the zoo would be wonderful, even if Corey was there, too. She went to the calendar and drew a big red circle around September tenth.

T
ONY HAYMES
waited until a woman with two small children entered the secondhand store; then he went in, too. Kids would distract the clerk. Tony didn’t know if the story of his escape from prison was on the news yet but the last thing he needed was for someone to recognize him.

He went straight to the housewares section and examined several trays of kitchen utensils before he spotted what he wanted: a sturdy butcher knife. Tony felt the six-inch blade with his thumb. Good. It was sharp and strong.

While the salesclerk helped the woman shopper find shoes that would fit her children, Tony slipped the knife up the sleeve of his jacket and left the store.

Too bad he’d lost the first knife, the one he stole from the prison kitchen, when he jumped. The rest of his plan had worked perfectly. He had crawled through the secret
hole he’d cut in the roof of his cell, then slithered across the rafters in the attic and out onto the roof.

The jump from the roof to the top of the prison wall had been the big gamble. For weeks, Tony worried that he would miss, that he would fall and break a leg and be carried back inside the prison walls on a stretcher.

But September tenth was his lucky day. He had planned the escape for his birthday, thinking it would bring him good fortune and it did.

He didn’t fall. All of the knee bends and push-ups in his cell, night after night, had resulted in a lean body with powerful muscles. When his hands hit the top of the wall he had swung easily over the top. Except for losing the knife, it was a perfect leap.

He dropped to the ground, landed running, and didn’t quit until his breath came in such painful gasps that he thought his chest would burst if he didn’t stop.

After that, everything went his way.

The clothesline was an incredible piece of luck. He had planned to look for a do-it-yourself laundromat near one of the motels on the outskirts of town. People often put their clothes in the machines and leave them unattended while they go somewhere to eat or shop. He could help himself from one of the clothes dryers.

But as he walked toward the city, staying in the ditch of the old, seldom-used road that had long since been made obsolete by a freeway, he saw a white farmhouse. In the yard, rows of clothes fluttered dry in the breeze.

He circled the house and approached it from behind. A shaggy yellow dog barked once from the back porch; Tony flattened himself in the grass.

The dog came closer, its ears back.

“Go away,” Tony hissed. “Scram! Get out of here.”

The dog gave a low growl. Tony hated animals and they always seemed to sense his feelings and return them.

In the grass, his finger closed around a small stone. Tony flung the stone at the dog. It hit the top of the dog’s head and bounced off. The dog yelped. It turned, put its tail between its legs, and slunk back to the porch.

Tony stayed low in the grass a few minutes, in case someone came to see why the dog had barked. His ears strained to hear possible footsteps.

Nothing.

Slowly, he raised his head and looked in all directions. The dog was curled up beside the back door; it appeared to be asleep. Tony saw no one and heard nothing. He stood and walked quickly to the clothesline. He jerked the clothespins loose with one hand and grabbed the clothes with the other. A faded pair of overalls. A bright red shirt. A khaki jacket.

Later, when he was safely away from the house, he hid in a clump of bushes and changed into his new clothes. The sleeves of the red shirt were an inch too long, so he rolled them partway up. The overalls were a bit big, too, but overalls are always loose fitting. The length was just right. Whoever owned those overalls must be very close to Tony’s height of six feet one inch.

He found a large rock, dug a hole in the dirt beside it, and put his prison clothes in the hole. Then he sat on the ground and, using his feet, pushed the rock over the hole.

Dressed in his red shirt and overalls, with the khaki jacket tied around his waist, Tony returned to the road.
This time he didn’t stay low. He hiked in plain sight along the shoulder and when he heard a vehicle approach, he boldly put out his thumb.

An old pickup whizzed past, then slammed on its brakes and backed up. A young man, seventeen or eighteen years old, was driving; two girls of about the same age were with him. The girls giggled as they looked at Tony.

“How far are you going?” Tony asked.

“Seattle,” the driver said. “If you don’t mind riding in the back end, hop in.” The girls giggled again.

Tony put one foot on the back bumper and swung his leg over the tailgate. It was perfect. He could lie down, where nobody could see him. And he didn’t have to talk to anyone, didn’t have to make up a story about who he was or where he came from or where he was going. By tomorrow, the kids in the pickup wouldn’t even remember what he looked like.

The truck roared off again. Tony cushioned his head on his arms and tried to brace himself when the truck hit rough spots. Soon the bumpiness ended and, peering over the top of the truck bed, Tony saw they had reached the freeway on-ramp. It was smooth riding all the way to Seattle.

At the first red light after the truck had left the freeway, Tony hopped out. The three people in the pickup were putting a new tape in the tape deck. They didn’t notice when he left.

Two hours later, Tony slipped the knife up the sleeve of his jacket and walked out of the secondhand store.

He had dreamed of this day for months, ever since he was convicted of armed robbery. No way was Tony
Haymes going to stay locked in prison. Forget it. Old Tony had plans for his life and they didn’t include years behind bars. No way.

This time, the cops wouldn’t find him. This time, luck was with him. First the clothes. Then those kids in the pickup. And now the knife. Everything was going exactly the way he had hoped. Even better. September tenth was definitely his lucky day.

He walked briskly away from the secondhand store. Next he needed to find a safe place to spend the night. Not a room. Even if he had money to rent a room, he didn’t want to talk to any room clerk.

A park bench would do, or a tree to lie under. The weather was mild for September and it wouldn’t be the first time Tony had slept all night on the ground. But it had to be someplace where he could be sure no cop would come nosing around. The last thing he needed was for a cop to think he was a drunken wino and try to take him in.

Tony sauntered up the street, sizing up doorways, watching for back alleys.

Ahead, a 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 walls
extended 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, Class
Act 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.

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.”