The Battle of Zombie Hill

  This book is not authorized or sponsored by Microsoft Corp, Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or Scholastic Inc., or any other person or entity owning or controlling rights in the Minecraft name, trademark, or copyrights.

  Copyright © 2015 by Hollan Publishing, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews and articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are from the author’s imagination, and used fictitiously.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

  Cover illustration by Stephanie Hazel Evans

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-996-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-998-5

  Printed in Canada

  For my miner and redstone friends at

  Reynolds Learning Academy,

  Nick, Sean, and Colton

  . . . and for Ken, Marc, and Charles

  The cavalry commander watched the last of his troops hurry into the hidden Nether portal with their horses. The ragged soldiers had come such a long way from their days as solo players. How had they reached this point? Now a trip to the Nether was safer than a moonlight trail ride.

  It had been the wildest night ride of Roberto’s life. What had begun as a snap, a cinch—a midnight run, for goodness sake—had become a massacre. Diamond-armored zombies, enchanted skeletons, and immortal griefers had forced his battalion into a stranglehold, putting their artilleryman and the villagers in mortal danger. It had been his decision to ride uphill, and now there was no way down. One wrong move would have been the end of them all.

  At the last moment, Rob had to cut his losses to prevent any more bloodshed. Fleeing the Overworld, he realized, might be the only way to someday save it. As much as Rob pined for his home, this place deserved to be released from griefer tyranny and the people free to go where they would. Stormie had shown him that.

  Rob led Saber toward the Nether portal and took one last look at the sky, all purple-black, aglow with twinkling stars. He might not be of this world, but he was in it. And he would defend it . . . wherever that might take him.

  CHAPTER 1

  ONE MOMENT ROB WAS LEAFING THROUGH THE in-flight magazine, glad to be returning home to the ranch—and the next, he was falling. Something had gone terribly wrong with the plane. But where was he now . . . ?

  And where were the other passengers?

  Although he had never fallen from thirty thousand feet before, that was clearly what was happening.

  I should be more afraid, he thought as he plummeted through the spotty cloud cover. The land below unfolded like a map: blue ocean bordered by white sand, a stripe of green trees. And—beyond—swaths of open meadow broken by rock formations. His face dampened as he caught the tail end of a rainstorm and then instantly dried as he dropped through the atmosphere, heading for the ever-looming landscape below. He was going to fall into the chunky waves, he realized.

  Suddenly, debilitating fear knifed through him. Gravity drew his body downward at a speed he had never experienced before, even at the fastest gallop. His desperate screams disintegrated into thin air—perhaps because there was no one else to hear them. As the shifting blue floor rose up to swallow him, Rob felt, rather than heard, the all-encompassing splash. Down, down, down he plunged, his brain churning up a final, if useless, thought: Travel ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

  *

  Wicked fear, the impact, and a lack of oxygen had caused Rob to blackout, but it couldn’t have been for long. When next he was aware of his body, he was still underwater, surprised to be alive. That shock activated his arms and legs, and he began kicking and flailing his way back to the surface. Something brushed against his rib cage, and he felt a long, gelatinous body swipe past. What the heck was that? he wondered, then answered his own question with a vague memory from science class: a squid!

  The next thing Rob knew, he had popped above the churning waterline and was coughing and gulping in air. He couldn’t pause to concentrate on breathing, though. As soon as he stopped kicking, he began to sink. Instinctively, he resumed swimming, hauling in ragged breaths until his heart stopped feeling like an exploding boulder. Through watery eyes, he peered in all directions, seeing nothing but rolling blocks of liquid. He figured he had two choices: panic or don’t.

  He summoned up the worst scenario he had ever faced—riding a bucking bronco through a nest of rattlesnakes—and decided to do now what he had done then. Just stay alive, he told himself. Best focus on the job at hand.

  Rob rolled over and noted the position of the sun in the sky, resolving to swim in the opposite direction until he found help. He had lost his cowboy hat and boots, but still wore his chaps, shirt, and vest, which now clung to his body. Funny, this water seems warm, too. No, just . . . not cold. At least hypothermia wouldn’t add to his woes. He continued to make his way through the tepid waves, away from the sun, which was just past its high point in the sky.

  Minute after minute he pushed himself on. Every now and then, he flipped over to rest on his back for a count of ten, then resumed his slow but steady progress. But progress toward what? Anything at all?

  He wondered if there were sharks, stingrays, or other animal mobs in this version of the world. Would there be dry land, a boat, or some other form of rescue?

  As recent events had reminded him, he would only find out what came next by encountering it.

  *

  Stroke after stroke, Rob cut through the ocean chunks, thoughts of his home on the range spurring him on. The water gradually cooled as day slipped toward dusk, and he wondered if he would have to spend the night at sea—cold, hungry, and tired. Could he survive that?

  “Can’t never could do anything,” he muttered. He resolved to stay positive, no matter how bleak the horizon might look.

  He rolled over onto his back to rest for ten seconds and to ensure he was still swimming in the right direction. It felt so good to float. Maybe an extra second or two won’t hurt, he thought, admiring the deepening palette of the sky, which had turned bronze and taken on pink and purple tinges. The extra rest made it harder to flip over and resume paddling, though he forced himself to do so.

  In the distance, a white stripe appeared to seal off the ocean. Was he seeing things? Gathering his fading strength, Rob pulled himself up on the next stroke and gasped. It was land!

  Relief, excitement, and desperation surged through him, propelling his limbs ever faster in an attempt to reach the end of today’s rainbow. But hours of swimming had taken their toll. Rob could barely feel his fingers or toes. And I’m so hungry, he thought. Luckily, he didn’t know how low his food bar was. He pushed harder, his shortened strokes barely inching him through the surf. But at last he saw breakwater. The beach was real! He would be safe for the night.

  Once in
the shallows, Rob half-stood and half-crawled his way to shore. The ordeal was over. He would live.

  He lay on the sand gasping like a fish, thinking he had never seen a more beautiful sunset.

  *

  The cool air dried the last drops of seawater from his shock of black hair but left his clothes damp. Rob slowly rose from the beach and staggered in a circle. The dunes stretched inland quite a ways, but he could see square tufts jutting upward in the distance—trees—a forest or jungle of some kind. There’ll be food and water there. But he knew he didn’t have the energy to cover any more distance that day. The sun’s light was fading, and all he wanted now was to stop moving and sink into a deep, sound sleep.

  Even so, the prospect of dozing on the open beach made Rob nervous. Any cowpoke worth his salt knew to cover his back at night, preferably beside a nice, warm campfire. He scanned the empty shoreline. Not a scrap of burnable driftwood or even dried seaweed in sight, and the open expanse offered no natural shelter. Rob was on his own. He smiled. Solitude had its pros and cons; at least there was nobody to bother him.

  Still, he considered it a good idea to sleep up off the ground, if he could. The only resource around was sand, and plenty of it. So he decided to pile some up to form a shelf. That would get him off the ground and ward off . . . whatever needed warding.

  But as he started handling the sand, he found that it wasn’t loose the way it was back home in the dry gulch. He couldn’t push it into a tower. In fact, it was already held together in neat blocks. Maybe he could stack the stuff into a pillar?

  His days of performing tricks with a lasso on the ranch had made Rob a good jumper. With nearly the last of his strength, he leapt up in the air, grabbed a block of sand, and settled on top of it. For good measure, he placed a second sand block beneath his feet just as the sun dove below the horizon.

  “Now I can catch some z’s,” he said, and the next moment he did.

  But it wasn’t long before a strange noise woke him.

  “Uuuuh . . . oooh . . .”

  The low moaning was like nothing Rob had ever heard on the ranch—not the lowing of a cow in distress or the whining of his favorite dog, Jip.

  “Uuh-oohhhh . . .”

  The otherworldly groan seemed to pierce the air. Rob’s eyelids felt like concrete and had crusted shut with salt and sand—but he forced them open. As his vision cleared, he made out a shape coming toward him in the dark. The groaning grew louder as the creature approached in a jerky shuffle that sent Rob’s heart knocking into his teeth. He sat straight up on his sand pillar. The intruder spied him and increased its pace.

  It’s still a ways off, Rob reasoned. Maybe I can build this tower up a little higher before it gets here. His body was heavy with sleep and weak from hunger and thirst, but Rob managed to pillar jump and add another block of sand beneath his feet. Still, the bellowing creature came closer.

  In the moonlight reflected from the ocean surface, Rob could make out a green form that looked human, but sure didn’t act like it . . . and acted, but sure didn’t look, alive. He sniffed the air and retched at an odor not unlike the inside of his neglected refrigerator back home. With less juice than usual flowing to his brain, it took Rob a while to recognize the sunken eyes, decomposing flesh, and lurching gait as signs of the undead. Every zombie flick he’d ever watched came flooding back to him.

  A zombie! The thing stunk like a science experiment. And there was nowhere to run.

  The flailing monster clearly wanted Rob: to rip his limbs off; kill him; or—worst of all—turn him into one of its own kind. Rob didn’t know whether the hideous thing could reach him three blocks up or not . . . and he didn’t want to find out. Alone, afraid, and weaponless, Rob would be at the zombie’s mercy if it decided to attack. It wasn’t something a good cowboy would do, but Rob squeezed his eyes shut tight and waited for the end.

  The noise of the zombie’s cries and lumbering advance had covered the movements of another visitor. When, at last, Rob cracked open an eye, he was shocked to find a second two-legged enemy already at the foot of his pillar. Its mottled, green skin was intact, but its eyes and mouth bulged huge and dark. Rob had seen nothing in the movies like this.

  “Go on, get out of here!” he shouted, as though he were back on the range, trying to scare off a coyote.

  His cry had no effect. For a brief instant, he hoped the two intruders would fight it out between themselves. But, to his horror, the one that had crept up unseen began to quiver and hiss loudly. The zombie ignored the creeper, trying in vain to swipe at Rob, who still crouched on his tiny island of sand just above the demon’s head. The creeper began flashing pulses of light in the darkness, and Rob saw it inflate to twice its size.

  He gulped bile. This is it! he thought, preparing to die.

  Then the thing exploded with a deafening boom.

  Rob was just high enough to escape harm from the blast, but his relief at not being blown to smithereens lasted exactly a nanosecond. Once again he felt himself falling helplessly, right toward the hideous zombie!

  At least the creeper had taken itself out along with Rob’s makeshift bedroom. Sand flew in every direction as the homemade pillar fell apart. The castaway cowboy seemed to fall in slow motion in a descent every bit as drawn out as the one from the airplane that had spawned him into this deadly zone. He had plenty of time to dread his end.

  Finally, he thudded to the ground. “Oof!”

  He waited. There was no answering moan.

  His arms and legs were still attached to his body.

  He wasn’t dead.

  And—he made a quick mental check—he was pretty sure he wasn’t a zombie.

  Yet, Rob had suffered some injuries and could barely move. In the dim moonlight, he saw the sand pile—all that remained of his pillar. Suddenly it shifted. Something was writhing underneath.

  Rob sprang back as a muffled groan accompanied another bump from the pile of sand. Then the ground was still; the moaning abruptly ended. The falling sand must have suffocated the zombie.

  Disturbing the body was the last thing Rob wanted to do. But he had to know for certain that the zombie had been neutralized. Just like old Jip, he crawled on his belly and began pawing the pile to unearth the rotten corpse. To his intense relief, it moved no more. He was about to abandon the pile when he felt a small, hard item in the sand. A few more scoops revealed a long, triangular object—a carrot! The zombie had dropped the vegetable when it expired.

  Misfortune turned to luck, and Rob hastily crammed half of the raw carrot into his mouth and chewed, his food bar and health improving by an increment. If he had been able to start a fire and come up with some beef, he would have cooked a stew for greater benefit, but the carrot was a start. He felt better, stronger. Maybe he would survive the night after all.

  Just as he was starting to relax, a wave of groans floated toward him. “Uuuuh, oooh . . . !”

  More zombies? The monster must have called on its friends for help before being completely suffocated by sand.

  This time, Rob knew what to do. There was no telling what other hostile mobs were out there in the gloom, coming his way—or what their powers might be. With his remaining strength, he’d have to rebuild his pillar better and higher.

  He worked into the night, clumsily digging down through the sand until he hit natural sandstone. Eureka! These blocks would make a more stable foundation that could withstand damage, though probably not an explosion. Rob hoped he wouldn’t be visited by another creeper tonight.

  He dug, placed, jumped, and stacked, until he stood atop a sand pillar twelve blocks high. The sandstone at the base created a solid platform. Rob felt confident that whatever might be lurking out in the darkness wouldn’t be able to scale his new sand tower.

  He sneaked a look over the side of his structure.

  Nothing.

  But, just to be safe, he’d stay awake a while longer to keep watch.

  *

  Rob crouched on his pillar, mun
ching the other half of his carrot and hoping dawn would arrive before anything else did. What had seemed unimportant this morning had now become critical. He wished he had the knife he always carried with him back home. He should have eaten that bag of food on the plane. He should have brought his bedroll—he could’ve used it to keep off the chill. But, most of all, he should’ve have paid more attention to where he was as he fell from the sky. Yep, the things he had taken for granted before could help him stay alive now. . . . At least long enough to find his way home.

  A sharp pang of loneliness cut through him.

  He started humming the little tune he always sang to Jip before leaving him in his doghouse for the night. Then Rob thought about the foal he’d just started training to lead and the pony he had broke to saddle. He wondered if he would ever see them or his beloved ranch again. Back home, the air smelled sweet, not salty like the beachfront here. On the range there was plenty of room to roam, but he’d never felt vulnerable like he did here, even twelve blocks up above the ground. Most of all, life on the ranch was peaceful—he’d fall asleep to the chirping of crickets, the bay of a lone coyote, or the low of a wayward cow, not to groans and explosions and toppling pillars of sand.

  He sighed.

  Then he blew out a more determined breath. One that meant business.

  “I will go home again,” he vowed, buoyed by the sound of his own voice. “I survived the plane crash, I survived being adrift in the ocean, and I survived two dangerous monster attacks.” He balled up his fists. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get back to the ranch!”

  He curled up on top of his sandy bed and drifted off to sleep.

  *

  Although Rob heard moaning in the night, he was so exhausted that he didn’t get up. He knew he had done all he could to safeguard himself.

  Toward morning, a rank odor poked at his nostrils, making him toss on his pillar. But he was unprepared for what he saw.

  The zombie mob had arrived. They milled about below the pillar, their undead eyes searching for Rob. As the sun’s rays crept over the horizon, the zombies tried to take cover in the shade cast by the tower, but the sun was not high enough to produce any shadows. Rob watched as the gang of monsters burst into flame: Poom! Poom! Poom! They shook and crackled and sizzled before finally burning up and disappearing.