Terror at the Zoo (3 page)

“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 up
stories; 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 shows. Relieved, she turned the TV off.

“I’m going to call the airport and see if the plane landed on time,” she said. She took her parents’ itinerary off the kitchen bulletin board and read which airline and flight number.

“I’m sorry,” she was told, “that flight has been delayed. I’m not sure what time it will arrive.”

Ellen hung up. “Their plane isn’t in yet,” she said.

“But what about the zoo?” Corey cried. “Mrs. Caruthers will be waiting for us.” He plopped down on the sofa and socked one of the pillows. “Mom and Dad should have come home sooner,” he said. “Grandpa shouldn’t have taken Grandma to the doctor today.”

“It isn’t Mom and Dad’s fault if their plane doesn’t arrive on time,” Ellen said, “and Grandma can’t help it that her leg hurt.”

Corey punched the pillow again.

Two weeks ago, Grandma broke her leg; she was in a cast. Grandma and Grandpa had still come to stay while Mr. and Mrs. Streater were in San Francisco, but they
couldn’t do the camp-out. It was hard for Grandma to get around on her crutches and sleeping in a tent was out of the question.

Since Grandpa didn’t want to do the camp-out without Grandma, Ellen’s parents had rearranged their schedule to catch an earlier flight. They were supposed to be home in time to pick up Ellen and Corey and get to the zoo by five.

That’s when they were supposed to meet Mrs. Caruthers, the representative of the zoological society. She would have their picnic supper and would show them the tent where they were going to sleep.

Ellen looked at the clock again. It was almost 4:30. She wondered what her parents would want them to do.

Corey’s bottom lip trembled. “We’re going to miss the camp-out,” he said.

I’m the adult, Ellen thought. I have to be mature, to take charge. “We’ll go to the zoo,” she said. “Mom and Dad know what time we’re supposed to be there. They’ll probably assume that Grandpa will drive us to the zoo and they’ll go straight to the zoo from the airport. We’ll take their sleeping bags with us and meet them there.”

“How are we going to get there? It’s too late to take a bus.”

“Maybe Mr. Zither will drive us.” Mr. Zither was the Streaters’ next-door neighbor.

“Mr. Zither isn’t home. I saw him leave.”

Ellen dialed Mr. Zither’s number, just in case he had returned. There was no answer.

“I told you he wasn’t home,” Corey said, as Ellen hung
up the phone. “How come nobody ever believes me?”

Because you’re always telling stories, Ellen thought. But all she said was, “I’m going to call a cab.”

Corey hopped off the sofa and threw the pillow in the air. “Get one of the limousine cabs,” he said. “A white one. They’re about a hundred feet long. When we drive up, everyone will stare and think we’re TV actors. Maybe someone will ask me for my autograph.”

“Limos are too expensive,” Ellen said.

After she called the cab, she took money, to pay the cab driver, from the “emergency envelope” that her mother kept in a kitchen drawer. She had never taken money from it before but she felt sure she was doing the right thing. Grandma and Grandpa had spent several hundred dollars for the zoo camp-out, and Mrs. Caruthers was waiting for them. It would be terrible not to show up.

She hoped she was guessing correctly that her parents would go straight to the zoo. What if they didn’t? They might think that Grandpa would go on the camp-out, in which case they would come home to be with Grandma, instead of going to the zoo.

Prince whined and sat by the door.

“Take Prince out, while I leave a note,” Ellen said. “Grandma and Grandpa will probably eat dinner out after they see the doctor. They might not get back until late.”

While Corey took Prince outside, Ellen wrote a note, just in case her parents came home instead of going directly to the zoo.

Dear Mom and Dad:

We are waiting for you at the zoo. We have your sleeping bags. We took a cab because Grandma had trouble with her cast and Grandpa took her to the doctor to have it checked. Grandma says to have fun on the camp-out and not to worry about her.

Love,
Ellen 

She placed the note on top of the telephone answering machine. Her parents always checked the answering machine as soon as they got home, to see if there were any messages. Ellen believed her parents would go straight to the zoo from the airport, but if they didn’t, they would find her note and go to the zoo then.

As Corey and Prince came in the back door, the cab honked in front of the house. Corey dashed outside. Ellen gathered sleeping bags in her arms, locked the front door, and left.

Mrs. Caruthers was pacing outside the zoo’s south gate, where they were supposed to meet her, when the cab pulled up. “Thank heaven you’re here,” she cried. “Just before I left home to come to meet you, I had a call from my son-in-law. My daughter has gone to the hospital to have her baby.”

Ellen paid the driver and he helped them unload their sleeping bags.

“Where are your parents?” Mrs. Caruthers asked.

“They’ll meet us here,” Ellen said. “Their flight from San Francisco was late.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Caruthers said. “Oh, dear.” She bit her bottom lip. “The tent is all set up for you, in the North Meadow. I was hoping . . .”

“You don’t need to stay with us,” Ellen said. “We’ll wait inside the gate for Mom and Dad and we know where the North Meadow is. We’ve been to the zoo lots of times.”

“I can’t leave you here alone,” Mrs. Caruthers said.

“Mom and Dad will be here any minute,” Ellen said.

“Maybe your daughter will have twins,” Corey said. Mrs. Caruthers’s eyes widened. “Maybe even triplets! If she has triplets, she’ll win lots of prizes, like diaper service and cases of baby food. She might even get her picture in the paper, with all her babies.”

“This is my first grandchild,” Mrs. Caruthers said. She sounded a trifle breathless.

“Then you should hurry along to the hospital,” Ellen said. “We don’t want you to miss the birth of your grandchild—”

“Or grandchildren,” Corey interjected.

“Because of us,” Ellen finished.

“I’ll have someone else wait with you until your parents arrive.” Mrs. Caruthers led the way to the ticket booth. “Your tent is on the far side of the North Meadow,” she said. “I’ll get a map for you from the ticket booth.”

“We don’t need a map,” Corey said. “The North Meadow’s that way.” He pointed. “The monkeys are that way, and . . .”

“There are flashlights in the tent, and a first-aid kit and an ice chest containing your picnic supper.”

“I hope there’s plenty of dessert,” said Corey.

Ellen poked him in the ribs with her elbow and said, “Shh.”

“The night security guard will pass the North Meadow around midnight and again at three. If you need anything, he’ll help.” She stopped at the ticket booth. “These are the campers,” she said to the woman in the booth, as Ellen and Corey proceeded into the zoo. The ticket seller nodded without looking up from the novel she was reading. “They’re going to wait here with you until their parents arrive.”

Mrs. Caruthers stepped inside the ticket booth and picked up the telephone. “I’ll call the zoo office,” she said to Ellen and Corey, “so they know what’s happened.”

“Here come Mom and Dad!” cried Corey.

“Thank goodness,” said Mrs. Caruthers, as she hung up the phone.

“Where?” said Ellen.

“There,” said Corey, as he pointed to the far left side of the parking lot. “They just drove in. They’re parking the car over there, behind that bus.”

“In that case,” said Mrs. Caruthers, “I’ll be on my way. Tell your parents I’m sorry I had to rush off.” She patted the ticket person’s shoulder. “We don’t need your help, after all,” she said.

“We’ll read the paper tomorrow,” Corey said, “in case it’s twins. Or triplets.”

Mrs. Caruthers gulped. “Have a wonderful time tonight,” she said, as she turned and dashed toward the right end of the parking lot. Seconds later, she drove out of the lot.

“You shouldn’t have upset Mrs. Caruthers like that,”
Ellen said. “She’s probably worried enough about her daughter, without you cackling about twins.”

Corey looked innocent. “Maybe her daughter
will
have twins,” he said. “Or triplets.”

“People who are going to have more than one baby know it ahead of time,” Ellen said.

“Always?”

“Almost always.” Ellen peered across the rows of cars in the parking lot. “I don’t see Mom and Dad,” she said.

Corey looked at his shoes and didn’t answer.

Ellen scowled at her brother. “Corey Streater! Did you make that up, about seeing them?”

Corey put his finger to his lips. He took Ellen’s arm and led her away from the ticket booth. “Mrs. Caruthers was going to put that dopey ticket lady in charge of us,” he whispered.

“You lied to Mrs. Caruthers.”

“She really wanted to go,” Corey said. “I just made it so she wouldn’t feel bad about leaving us. And Mom and Dad will get here any minute. You said so yourself.”

“Still, it was wrong to pretend you saw them.”

Corey hung his head. “I guess it was,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

Straight ahead was a partially enclosed viewing area where the zoo visitors could watch the African animals. Ellen and Corey carried their gear to a wooden bench and sat down. “We might as well watch the animals while we wait for Mom and Dad,” Ellen said. “We can take turns going back to the gate, so we don’t miss them.”

“Let’s look through the telescopes,” Corey said,
pointing at one of the coin-operated metal telescopes that were mounted on each side of the enclosure.

“They cost a quarter and I don’t have any money.”

“Didn’t you get change from the cab?”

“I let the driver keep it. You’re supposed to tip the cab driver.”

“Look,” Corey cried. “Giraffes! Maybe the giraffes sprout wings at night and fly all around the zoo and we’ll jump on their backs and ride them.”

For once Corey’s wild imagination didn’t irritate her. She was too excited about spending the night at the zoo to be bothered by her brother. Except for his storytelling, he wasn’t so bad, for an eight year old. By the time he was mature, like her, maybe he would learn to control his tall tales.

A small child began crying and Ellen went back to the entrance area to see what was wrong. It was a little girl who didn’t want to leave the zoo. Her parents kept telling her they’d come again another day but the child sobbed as they carried her through the exit turnstile.

Quite a few people were leaving. Three old women. A young couple. A whole group of people wearing green buttons that said, Class Act Tours. A man in a green jacket hurried the tour group along, calling, “The zoo is closed! The bus leaves in five minutes.”

Ellen glanced at the entry again. The ticket booth was empty. She looked out toward the parking area. There was no sign of her parents.

“Maybe they won’t show,” Corey said. “Maybe their plane crashed and . . .”

“Stop it!”

“. . . and they were the only survivors who weren’t hurt and they can’t call us because they’re busy helping the injured. Mom and Dad will be heroes and get their pictures in the paper.”

Ellen had noticed that Corey’s stories often ended with the person getting his or her picture in the newspaper.

She wondered whether to wait where they were or go to the North Meadow where they were supposed to camp. She decided to wait awhile longer. Surely her parents would arrive at any moment.

A giraffe nibbled hay that hung from a strap, high in a tree. It always astonished her that such large animals were so graceful. She gazed up at the long, slender neck.
How beautiful you are
, she thought.

The giraffe quit eating and looked down at Ellen. Was it possible that the giraffe had received her message? Without planning to, had she communicated with an animal besides Prince? Maybe she could experiment with the zoo animals while she was here. That would add a new dimension to her science project.

She looked up, directly into the giraffe’s big brown eyes.
How beautiful you are.

“Ellen! Come quick!” Corey’s excited cry came from around the corner, out of sight.

She left the enclosed viewing area and hurried along the path toward the sound of his voice. She found him standing on a big rock, pointing in delight. “The zebras,” he said, “are doing the hula.”

Ellen looked. Two zebras stood in the field, swishing their tails and moving their rear ends back and forth. Probably trying to get rid of flies, Ellen thought.

“At night,” Corey said, “all the animals dance. When there are no people watching, all the zebras do the hula. And the bears boogie.”

Ellen giggled. Maybe her parents were right; maybe Corey would be a writer some day.

While Ellen watched the zebras wiggle their rear ends, Corey jumped off the rock and disappeared again. Soon he came dashing back. “I found Hugo,” he said. “He’s just around the corner.”