by Mark Mulle
with a battle cry, wielding a sword. It struck the undead horrors again and again, severing their cold flesh until they toppled over and faded into smoke, leaving nothing but bits of rotting flesh behind.
The whole thing had taken less than a minute.
Steve stared as the figure turned to him. In the light from the village, it was revealed to be a girl with pale skin, green eyes, and reddish-gold hair tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing a leather tunic with leggings dyed green and thick gray boots.
At the moment, Steve thought she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Well,” he said slowly. “I’m alive.”
“So, that’s a yes, then?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Listen, do you have any weapons on you?”
“If I did, I think I’d be using them.” He didn’t mean to be smart about it, but he was feeling a little punch-drunk after his near-death experience.
She frowned.
“Newcomer, huh?”
He nodded.
“Listen, where are we? How’d I get here? What’s…”
“No time for that!” she said sharply. “The Mobs will be on us any minute! Here…”
She tossed her sword to him, and he caught it.
“We need all the help we can get, so come on.”
“I’m almost out of health,” he said. “One more arrow and I’m done.”
The girl sighed in exasperation.
“You didn’t pick up any apples or anything on your way? Never mind; here you go.”
She tossed him a few loaves of bread, which he devoured hungrily. He nearly choked when she suddenly drew her bow and shot something over his head.
“Spider,” she explained. “Now get up and head to the village. As soon as your health picks up, come and give me a hand. I’ve wasted too much time with you already.”
And the next minute, she was sprinting back in the direction of the circle of buildings, firing arrows as she went.
Steve picked himself up, shook his head to try and steady his mind, and then hurried after her, sword in hand. The sword, he found, was a blunt thing made of stone and already heavily damaged, but it was a whole lot better than bare hands, and he felt better for it. His health had begun to come back, and now that he was fully in the light of the village, he felt safer and calmer than he had the whole day.
Which was saying something, since the village was swarming with zombies.
There seemed to be dozens of them, all slouching through the streets or crowding around the doors to houses, trying to bash their way in. There was a perfect chorus of moans and growls and low rasping snarls as the undead horrors seethed and writhed through the streets. Steve saw smaller figures; zombie children racing about among the legs of the adults. They seemed no less bloodthirsty than their elders.
“Well, come on!” said the girl, who had thrown up a short pillar of dirt from which she could fire down upon the hoard. “I’ve only got so many arrows, and the villagers can’t do a thing for themselves.”
She was kind of bossy, Steve thought. On the other hand, she had saved his life. Besides, he didn’t want the village to get eaten either, though the idea of attacking a massive hoard of zombies with a blunt, damaged stone sword was not appealing. Still, what choice did he have?
Selecting a smaller group that was occupied with trying to find a way for all of them to hack at the same door at once, Steve crept up behind the nearest zombie and took a swing at its neck. The sword struck hard, but the creature whipped around and lunged at him. Steve backed up a couple steps and slashed at it again, then finally took it down on the third blow.
By this point, however, its fellows in the pack had noticed and, forgetting about their attack on the door, they all turned and shambled after him, three of them. Steve backed away, hacking at each one as it got too close. Two of them dropped before he backed up against something; something cold and soft and mobile. Steve whipped around at the same time as the zombie he had just bumped into. It threw itself onto him, and he fell back onto the ground, knocking the other zombie off its feet as he thrust the sword up into his attacker. It snarled and tried to tear at him, but an arrow suddenly landed in its head and it was gone, leaving behind several chunks of rotted meat and, oddly enough, a potato.
Steve didn’t have time to puzzle about what a zombie would be doing with a tuber. He had to deal with the last member of the pack he had assaulted, which was now crawling toward him. He rolled out of the way, scrambled to his feet, and struck the zombie dead – well, deader – with another blow.
There was a sudden yelp of pain, and Steve turned to see that the girl had been knocked off her post by an arrow. Not only off her post, but about five or six blocks back from it. She got to her feet, wincing, just as another arrow struck Steve in the back and sent him flying as well, skidding face-first through the gravel street.
That one shot had taken nearly a third of his health.
He rolled over and beheld a remarkable figure. For a second, he couldn’t make out what it was; the upper part was blue, and shimmered and glowed as if with a light of its own, but the lower part was black, bulbous, and hairy. But as the light around them grew, he realized what it was. It was a skeleton clad all in bright blue, glowing armor, armed with a bow that was likewise glowing faintly, and sitting astride a spider the size of a small horse.
An arrow whizzed over Steve’s head as the girl took a shot at it, but the missile simply bounced harmlessly off of the creature’s armor. It laughed; a high, breathless laugh that sounded almost as if it were choking, or as if the bones of its throat were simply clicking together like bits of flint. It raised its bow again…
“Get down!”
The girl tackled Steve from behind, throwing him behind the shelter of a building while the shot struck her through the arm, again knocking her back several blocks. She got right up, though, and scrambled over to join him.
“Do you have any self-preservation instincts at all?” she snapped.
Rather than answering, he asked “What is that thing?”
“That’s Draugr,” she said. “He’s someone to avoid.”
Steve looked around the corner. The hoard was much diminished, but still in evidence. Draugr had vanished.
“He’s gone,” he muttered.
“Of course,” she said. “He never sticks around long; just pops over every now and again to remind me that he could tear me to pieces any time he wanted. Besides,” she added, nodding toward the east. “He doesn’t like the sun much.”
Steve turned in that direction and saw the great square block of the sun just separating itself from the horizon. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a more cheering sight, but of course he should have known; the light had been increasing for a few minutes at least. He simply hadn’t stopped to think what it meant.
As the sun climbed and the light grew, suddenly the remaining zombies burst into flames. Hissing and snarling, they shambled about, looking for cover or water or anything. A couple took refuge in the village well, and another managed to duck under the shelter of the blacksmith’s shop, but the rest were quickly consumed by their own unnatural fire.
“Now it’s easy,” said the girl with a malicious grin. Without missing a beat, she shot the two in the well before finishing off the one in the blacksmith’s. This done, she put her bow away and stretched.
“Oh, man, I’m tired!” she said. “Up another night! Seems there are more of these things all the time.”
“Yeah, it seems to have been a rough night all around,” said Steve, who couldn’t help enjoying the sight of her stretching. “Thanks, by the way, for saving me.”
“Twice,” she amended. “It’s kind of my job around here. By the way, we haven’t been formally introduced, have we?”
“Don’t think so,” he said, holding out his hand. “Name’s Steve.”
“Alex,” she said, taking it.
“So,
Alex,” he said. “I don’t suppose you could tell me anything about where we are or just what in the Nether is going on?”
She shrugged.
“I can tell you some,” she said. “Not much. But let’s not do it here. Come on; my stronghold’s not far from here.
Alex’s ‘stronghold’ turned out to be a rough wooden structure three blocks high and maybe ten square, with space only for a bed, crafting table, furnace, and a single doublewide chest. In fact, it was considerably smaller and less elaborate than some of the village structures. It had a dirt floor, a flat roof, and a couple of windows that were nothing but single block gaps in the wall.
“Work in progress,” she said, a little defensively. “But it’s a roof and a bed, and the Creepers haven’t blown it up yet, so that’s something.”
“Creepers?”
“Man, you really don’t know anything, do you?” she said. “I’d think you’d know about Creepers, though, seeing as how one of them nearly blew you up last night.”
“Was that what that was?” he said. “No, wait; I still don’t know what that was. What’s a ‘Creeper’?”
“It’s…well, I guess it’s like an ambulatory plant,” she said. “Think of a bush or a small stunted tree with a face that creeps up to you and then explodes. Don’t ask me why they do that; they just do. They explode and, if they don’t take you out, they take out whatever you were standing next to. It’s a real pain. I’ve had to help the villagers rebuild parts of their homes a couple times after Creeper attacks.”
“Okay,” he said. “So now I know more
