Thrill Ride Read online

  Then it grabbed my head with one hand.

  It grabbed Frank’s head with the other hand.

  And it smashed our heads together—hard.

  My head was killing me. There was a woodpecker sitting on my shoulder and pecking me over and over with its beak. It hurt like crazy, but I couldn’t lift my arm to shoo the bird away.

  “Frank.”

  Seriously, I had a splitting headache. I glanced over and saw that it wasn’t a woodpecker after all. It was Playback, my parrot. “Zombie!” he squawked. He kept pecking me in the head.

  “Frank.”

  I recognized my brother’s voice, but I didn’t answer him. My head hurt too much. And Playback wouldn’t stop pecking me.

  “Frank, wake up.”

  I’m dreaming, I thought. Playback isn’t pecking me.

  “Frank!”

  “I am awake,” I muttered. “Leave me alone. My head hurts.”

  I tried to remember if I had any aspirin nearby. My bedroom is only a few feet from the bathroom, and there would probably be aspirin in the medicine chest. But my head hurt too much. I didn’t want to move.

  “Frank, open your eyes,” Joe commanded. “Now.”

  I opened my eyes. I waited for the sunlight to hit me and make my headache worse, but instead all I saw was darkness. I blinked.

  My eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  This wasn’t my bedroom. And I wasn’t in bed.

  I was sitting up. In a hard chair. And my hands were tied behind me.

  “What’s going on?” I cried. “Where are we?”

  “I think we’re in a dungeon,” Joe’s voice said.

  Wait a minute. Where was he? I could hear him, but I couldn’t see him. I turned my head to look around—and the headache got worse. “My head is killing me,” I said.

  “Mine too,” Joe answered. “That zombie smashed our heads together. Who would expect it to hurt so much?”

  “It knocked us out,” I guessed. “He must’ve hit us pretty hard.”

  “No kidding,” Joe’s voice said.

  “Where are you?” I asked. “I can’t see you.”

  “I’m behind you,” he told me. “We’re back to back, I think.”

  “Can you move?”

  “Nope,” Joe said. “My hands are tied behind the chair. And my legs are tied to the chair legs.”

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to ignore the pain in my head. I couldn’t afford to be out of it right now. I tried to move my legs. No good. They were tied to my chair. I tried to move my arms, and felt the ropes bite into my wrists. Now that I was paying attention, I could hear Joe moving around behind me.

  I looked around the dim room. The only light came from a fake window up near the ceiling. The “window” had bars over it, and behind it was a tiny patch of what was supposed to be the sky—a pale, yellowish light that didn’t actually illuminate anything.

  The rest of the tiny room was painted gray, with walls that were supposed to look like blocks of stone. Rusted old manacles hung from the walls on all sides. One set of them had a skeleton hanging by its wrists. A pile of bones and a skull lay in one corner, and an animatronic rat sat and twitched its whiskers at us.

  “So I guess our friend wasn’t a friend,” I said finally.

  “Guess not,” Joe said. “We knew it might be a trap.”

  “We should’ve been more careful,” I said. “We didn’t take that zombie seriously enough.”

  “We have to figure out how to get out of here,” Joe said. “I really need to get to some aspirin.”

  “This looks like part of the haunted house,” I said. “If we can get out of this room, we should be able to find our way outside.”

  “Yeah, but first we have to get free of these ropes,” Joe pointed out.

  The deep, evil laugh we’d heard earlier reverberated through the room. Was it part of the haunted house outside?

  “I hope you’re enjoying the Hall of Horror,” the deep voice cackled. “You’re going to die here!”

  “Is he talking to us, or to the whole haunted house?” Joe murmured.

  “I’m talking to you, Frank and Joe Hardy,” the voice answered as if it heard him. “You’re going to die!”

  “Who are you?” I yelled, even though it hurt my head.

  “I’m a zombie!” The voice laughed maniacally again. I didn’t see what was so funny.

  “Why are you doing this? Let us go,” Joe called.

  “I’ve had enough of your meddling,” the voice boomed. “You have no right to snoop around here and make trouble.”

  “You’re the one making trouble,” I replied. “We’re just trying to help.”

  “You’ve helped yourselves into an early grave!” the voice cried. “I’ll teach you a lesson about sticking your nose into other people’s business. You’re going to become a permanent part of this haunted house!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’re going to stay where you are, tied up, with no food and no water … until you die.” The voice laughed again, echoing off the walls. It really hurt my head.

  “Don’t bother calling for help,” the voice added. “People will only think it’s part of the Hall of Horror experience.”

  A door creaked as if it were opening. It was hard to tell what was real in this place, and what was just part of the scary attraction. “Hey!” I called. “Don’t leave!”

  “I hope you enjoy your deaths,” the voice replied. “You only get to die once.”

  And then the door slammed.

  “Hello?” I yelled. “Are you there?”

  “We’re not done talking to you!” Frank called.

  No answer.

  The zombie was gone. Or at least he wanted us to think so.

  “Do you think he’s really gone?” Joe whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “It’s impossible to tell. Did you recognize his voice?”

  “No,” Joe said. “I think he was using a voice distorter. It could have been Uncle Bernie, or Big Jim, or anyone.”

  “Well, I think we can cross Chris Oberlander off the list,” I said. “He couldn’t pull off something like this. This is an inside job. Whoever is doing this obviously knows his way around the haunted house.”

  From somewhere outside the room, a scream split the air. It was followed by some of the creepy organ music.

  “I can’t believe it,” I muttered. “This ride is actually open for business with us stuck inside it.”

  “Well, we have to get unstuck,” Joe said. “How do we untie ourselves?”

  I hesitated. For all we knew, the zombie was still listening in on our conversation. But we didn’t have much of a choice. We had to try to escape.

  I forced myself to think, even though it made my head hurt.

  “We’re back to back, right?” I whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “So if we get closer together, we should be able to reach each other’s hands, right?”

  “Right,” Joe said. “And then we can untie each other’s ropes!”

  “We’ve done this a million times,” I said. “No problem.”

  “Unless the zombie’s still here,” Joe murmured. “We better move fast.”

  I couldn’t move my feet very well, but I managed to push my toes along the ground enough to shove the chair back an inch or so. It made a loud scraping sound against the floor.

  “Quiet!” Joe hissed.

  “I don’t have many options,” I replied. I shoved the chair back another inch. Behind me I heard Joe doing the same.

  After five more shoves, I felt my arms bang into Joe’s chair. We maneuvered ourselves sideways until our hands were right next to each other.

  Now that I had something to concentrate on, my head didn’t hurt as much. I focused on the ropes around Joe’s wrists. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the zombie had used a basic square knot. Once I knew that, I had the ropes undone in a few seconds.

  Joe
quickly untied his legs. Then he came over to my chair and untied my hands. I took care of the ropes on my legs.

  We were free!

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. I stood up and started rubbing my wrists where the ropes had been.

  “Not so fast,” Frank said. “Sit back down.”

  “Why?” Didn’t his head hurt as much as mine did? I had zero interest in spending any more time in this dungeon.

  “We still don’t know who that zombie is,” Frank pointed out. “Our mission isn’t over until we catch him.”

  I sat back down. “How are we gonna catch him by staying in here?”

  Frank tossed some rope at me. “Tie it around your wrists—loosely,” he said.

  I was beginning to understand his plan. “We pretend we’re still tied up?” I asked.

  “Yeah. That zombie guy has to come back and check on us, right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said as I formed the rope into two loops, like handcuffs. “He said he was just going to leave us here to die.”

  “Yeah, but he can’t really do that,” Frank said. “At least he has to come back to make sure we haven’t escaped. And when he comes back, we’ll jump him.”

  I stuck my hands through the rope and put my arms behind the chair. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was better now that the ropes weren’t cutting off my circulation. Still, I wasn’t convinced that Frank’s plan would work.

  “Last time he didn’t come into the room,” I said. “If he still doesn’t come in, how can we jump him?”

  Frank thought about it.

  “Maybe if we pretend we’re asleep or unconscious again, he’ll come in,” Frank said.

  “Why would we be unconscious?”

  “From the blow to our heads,” Frank suggested. “Or we could just be exhausted with hunger.”

  “I guess so,” I mumbled. “I am exhausted with hunger. How long do you think we’ve been in here?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” Frank said. “It’s so dark in here that it feels like the middle of the night, even though it’s probably still daylight outside. Wait.” He twisted his wrists out of the rope and pressed the backlight button on his watch. “It’s about five.” Within a few seconds he was back in the rope.

  “I hope he comes back soon,” I said.

  But he didn’t. We must’ve waited at least an hour, pretending we were tied up, listening to the sounds of people screaming and laughing in the halls of the haunted house. Nobody came near the dungeon, though. The zombie must’ve closed it off somehow.

  Finally the screams of people outside stopped. The creepy organ music went away. Everything grew silent.

  “It seems like the ride is closed,” Frank whispered.

  “Could be,” I whispered back.

  Suddenly we heard footsteps in the hallway outside.

  “Play dead,” Frank whispered.

  I closed my eyes and let my head fall forward onto my chest as if I were deeply asleep, or just passed out.

  I heard the jingle of keys, and then a door was opened. I kept my eyes closed as someone entered the dungeon. The footsteps were heavy, and I could hear him breathing.

  “Now!” Frank yelled.

  I jumped up and shook the fake bonds off my wrists. Frank did the same.

  The zombie jumped in surprise, but he didn’t back off. Instead he pulled a knife from inside his costume and held it out toward us.

  I froze. I hadn’t been expecting a weapon. And I figured Frank would be surprised too. We’d been planning to rush the guy, but right now that didn’t seem like such a good idea.

  The room was so dark that I could barely make out the steel glinting in his hand. With the three of us in there, the place was too small to maneuver. If we tried to run or to fight him, chances were good that one of us would get stabbed.

  The zombie laughed. He was going for that same deep, maniacal laugh as before. But he didn’t have the voice distorter now—probably he had to use the haunted house PA system to do that.

  “You didn’t expect me to come armed, did you?” he asked.

  He was still disguising his voice, but it wasn’t as deep as it had been through the distorter. It sounded familiar … but was it Uncle Bernie’s voice? Big Jim’s? I couldn’t tell.

  “I decided starvation was too good for you,” the zombie went on. “It would take too long, and then I’d have to keep the dungeon closed off.” He gave another deep laugh and lunged at me with the knife.

  I jumped backward. The knife flashed through the air a few inches from my throat.

  “And the dungeon is everybody’s favorite part of the Hall of Horror,” he continued. “Don’t you like it?”

  “No,” Frank said.

  The zombie laughed again. “Too bad. It’s the last place you’ll ever see.”

  This time he brandished the knife at Frank. Frank twisted away and jumped over next to me. “We can’t keep doing this,” I whispered. “The room’s too small. He’ll hit one of us soon.”

  “I have a plan,” Frank murmured.

  But before he could say anything else, the zombie lunged at us with the knife. I couldn’t see much in the darkness, so I just spun away from Frank and tried to get behind the dark figure of the zombie.

  He’d come through a door—where was it?

  I glanced frantically around the room, searching for the way out. But all I saw were the fake stone walls. The door must be hidden in one of the walls.

  The zombie gave a roar and lunged forward again. At least the darkness was working against him, too.

  “Joe,” Frank called.

  “Over here,” I replied.

  “Remember Vijay!” he said.

  Huh? My guess was that Frank was trying to let me in on his plan, but I didn’t understand what he meant. Remember Vijay?

  I forced myself to keep calm and think it through, even though the zombie was still two feet away holding a knife on us.

  Vijay. Vijay Patel, the guy who’d delivered pizza—and our last mission—to the house? What did I know about Vijay?

  He was an ATAC trainee.

  He was originally from India.

  He thought Frank and I were heroes.

  He’d given us a pocket strobe light.

  That’s it! I thought. Frank must have the pocket strobe with him.

  Leave it to my brother to be totally prepared at all times. That’s why he’s such an excellent ATAC agent.

  “I remember,” I called.

  “Now!” Frank yelled.

  I closed my eyes. Even through my eyelids I could see the flash of bright blue light as Frank hit the button on the strobe.

  The zombie let out a yelp of surprise. He’d been blinded by the light in the dark room. I listened to where the yell came from so I’d know where he was in the darkness.

  “Now!” Frank yelled again.

  This time I didn’t close my eyes. I was ready for the flash of light. When it came, I had a brief view of the guy in the huge zombie costume as he stumbled backward. The knife in his hand glinted in the blue light.

  I kicked it out of his hand.

  The knife clattered across the floor.

  Frank hit the strobe again. In the light we saw the zombie running toward the wall. I tackled him to the ground. A second later I felt Frank jump on top of him as well.

  “Tie his hands,” Frank cried, shoving some of the rope toward me.

  We wrestled the guy’s hands behind his back and tied them together. It wasn’t easy in the darkness.

  As soon as we had him tied, I decided it was time to let a little light in.

  “He was going for the wall over here,” I told Frank. “The door must be hidden here somewhere.”

  Frank flashed the strobe again, and in the split second of bright light I spotted the outline of a door cut into the “stone” wall.

  I felt for it in the darkness and managed to find the edge. Feeling downward, I found a tiny latch. I threw the latch and yanked the door open.

&n
bsp; Outside, the halls of the haunted house were lit with work lights—the kind they only turn on when the ride is closed.

  Compared with the dim light of the dungeon, it seemed like the brightest sunlight I’d ever seen.

  “Okay, let’s see who this zombie is,” Frank muttered.

  I helped him push the guy over onto his back, and then I sat on his chest to make sure he stayed down.

  Frank pulled off the zombie mask.

  I watched anxiously. Was it Big Jim? Uncle Bernie?

  “Get off of me,” the zombie whined.

  I stared in disbelief.

  It was Little Bernie.

  “I should’ve known when I saw how tall the zombie was,” Joe said, shaking his head.

  I shrugged. “I figured that was just the costume.”

  “You guys are in big trouble,” Little Bernie whined.

  “Get up,” I told him. “You’re the one in trouble.” We dragged him to his feet and led him through the haunted house. He cried the whole way. He was such a big guy it was easy to forget that he was still just a kid.

  Joe found a door labeled EMERGENCY EXIT and pushed it open.

  I was shocked to see sunlight come streaming in. When we stepped outside, the park was as crowded and bustling as ever.

  “I thought the park was closed for the night,” I said.

  “It’s only two-thirty,” Joe said, checking the big clock over the concert bandstand. “Little Bernie must’ve just closed the haunted house so he could deal with us.”

  “What’s going on here?” Uncle Bernie demanded. He came storming up to us, three security guards behind him. When he spotted Little Bernie, he gasped. “Son? What are you doing in that costume?”

  “He was trying to kill us,” I said.

  Uncle Bernie’s eyebrows shot up. “What? That’s impossible.” He looked his son up and down. Little Bernie kept crying. “He was probably just working in the haunted house, and he tried to scare you. That’s the job of the zombie.” Uncle Bernie didn’t sound too certain.

  “The haunted house was closed, remember?” one of the security guards put in. “That’s why we were coming here to check it out.”

  Uncle Bernie’s face fell. “It shouldn’t have been closed in the middle of the day,” he said. “Why was it, son?”

  Little Bernie just sobbed even harder, snot and tears rolling down his face.