Zombie Town (5 page)
Authors: R.L. Stine
The movie screen went dark. The overhead lights came on in a small, private screening room.
Martin McNair, the famous director of horror movies, rose from his seat and faced a group of twenty-five kids.
The kids all clapped and cheered. McNair smiled. “Thanks for coming,” he told them. “As a director, I like to get an audience’s opinion before the movie opens. So I thank you for coming to see this sneak preview of my new movie,
Zombie Town.
You were a great audience.”
The kids clapped some more. “So, what did you think of it?” McNair asked.
“It was awesome,” a boy declared. “Especially the dog. I loved the way he chomped up that human bone.”
“The special effects were really cool,” another boy chimed in. “Karen looked really creepy when she became a zombie.”
“But
why
did she have to turn into a zombie at the end?” a girl asked. “I really liked her.”
“And I think Mike should have escaped,” a boy said.
“You do? Why?” the director asked.
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess because he and Karen were supposed to be the heroes, and they lost. There was nobody left but zombies.”
“Who cares?” The girl sitting next to him snorted. “Does every story have to have a happy ending? Besides, everyone knows there’s no such thing as zombies.”
She heard a cough and turned around. She stared at the weird-looking people who jammed the back row. Their eyes were deep in their sockets. Their
patchy skin was green and decayed. Gray bone showed through their scalps. Some had missing ears and noses.
“Hey—!” the girl cried. “They’re not real, are they? There’s no such thing as zombies, right? RIGHT?”
R.L. (Robert Lawrence) Stine is one of the best-selling children’s authors in history. His Goosebumps series, along with such series as Fear Street, The Nightmare Room, Rotten School, and Mostly Ghostly have sold nearly 400 million books in this country alone. And they are translated into 32 languages.
The
Goosebumps
TV series was the top-rated kids’ series for three years in a row. R.L.’s TV movies, including
The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It
and
Mostly Ghostly
, are perennial Halloween
favorites. And his scary TV series,
R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour
, is in its second season on The Hub network.
R.L. continues to turn out Goosebumps books, published by Scholastic. In addition, his first horror novel for adults in many years, titled
Red Rain
, will be published by Touchstone books in October 2012.
R.L. says that he enjoys his job of “scaring kids.” But the biggest thrill for him is turning kids on to reading.
R.L. lives in New York City with his wife, Jane, an editor and publisher, and King Charles Spaniel, Minnie. His son, Matthew, is a sound designer and music producer.