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there to be found.

CHAPTER 4

    The second grader was sobbing and screaming - at least whenever she could catch her breath long enough to do it. She'd managed to stay ahead of the alligator until now, but wedged into a corner between the school building and the fence that surrounded the yard, there was nowhere left to run. The huge, white predator closed in, opening its jaws.

    "Not so fast, Albert!" called a voice from behind the beast.

    In a flash, the ghostly gator was wrapped up tight in the grip of an ion stream. At the other end of the beam, Venlunan hoisted the howling monster up over the second grader's head. He maneuvered it over to the monkey bars, where Winston triggered the trap that swallowed it up in a burst of light.

    "...and they were everywhere!" Off to one side of the schoolyard, the hysterical principal was babbling at high speed, a mile a minute. "The children were in a panic! The staff, too! They - they train us to deal with fire drills, but something like this..."

    "Understandable," Egon replied.

    "It - it was all we could to evacuate the students! We - we called animal control!"

    "And when did you start to suspect that this wasn't a natural phenomenon?"

    "W-when they started flying!"

    Sure enough, three of the creatures were airborne. They flew in a fairly tight circle, buzzing a small, plastic playhouse where a burly man in a uniform labelled ANIMAL CONTROL was hiding inside and whimpering.

    A short distance away, Ray snagged another alligator in an ion stream and guided it toward Winston's trap. "Y'know," he called to his comrades, "As fun as this is, we can't keep doing it one at a time. There's just too many of them!"

    "Do you have a suggestion?" Venkman called back, steering another gator into the trap.

    "I've got an idea," Winston called back.

    A few minutes later, he was standing in the middle of the schoolyard, his nutrona wand sheathed and his hands empty.

    "Hey, you walking handbags!" Winston yelled. "You call yourselves predators? I've seen worse on Forty-second Street! Come over here, and I'll make shoes out of you!"

    One by one, the alligators lifted their heads and turned in his direction. It wasn't clear whether they understood his words, or whether the blind creatures were simply responding to the sound of his voice. Either way, he was catching their attention.

    "Yeah, that's right!" Winston continued. "I'll kick your tails right back to the bayou!"

    He definitely had their attention now. The snarling predators were coming toward him, snapping their jaws. As they approached from all sides, they formed a moving circle around Winston, leaving him nowhere to go.

    "Oh, you're gonna eat me?" Winston yelled. "I'll have you for breakfast! No wonder you taste like chicken!"

    The circle was tightening around him like a noose. Winston could start to feel their breath on his body. Sweat poured down his brow and his voice started to get a little shaky, but still he continued. "You're as ugly as you are stupid! But hey, what can you expect from something that comes out of the sewer?"

    "Now!" cried Egon.

    Winston shielded his eyes as brilliant white light shot up all around him. Being blind, the alligators hadn't seen the ring of ecto-traps that lay on the ground all around him. But now that they were directly over the traps, they could certainly feel their effects.

    They roared in helpless rage as they were sucked in; then, just as suddenly as they had opened, the lids of the traps slammed shut. The roars of the gators vanished, replaced by a series of small electronic beeps as the indicator light on each trap switched from green to red.

    "Nice one," said Egon.

    "Thanks," said Winston.

    "Yeah, but we're not done yet," said Ray. "We've still got to clean up any strays inside the school."

    "Can't we just let the cafeteria food kill them?" Venkman asked.

    Despite the tired protests, the four Ghostbusters cautiously approached the large metal doors of the school and entered the