by Nancy Osa
Awesome! Rob pumped his fist a few times, feeling like he was in a movie himself. Then his stomach growled. Maybe they’ve left more carrots I can eat, he thought, scrambling down from his sandy perch.
But when he reached the beach, all he found were a few mounds of rotten flesh. “Ugh! Disgusting!” He wouldn’t even feed such slop to Jip. Rob left the junk on the sand and set out to find the tree line he’d spied yesterday. At least he remembered one landmark that might be useful.
Rob crunched over the dunes as the sun rose, casting a warm glow on his shoulders. It made him think of the sunny days he’d spent riding fences on the ranch, whistling to one of his horses as Jip trotted along beside them. Maybe across the line of trees he would find the mountainous region he’d spotted from the air yesterday. He wished he could recall what direction it had been, but there was no use crying over spilt milk. . . . Mmmm, milk, he thought, savoring the idea of a warm drink, fresh from the cow.
Lost in his daydreams, he nearly missed a strange sign. Placing his foot in a depression in the sand, he did a double take. The hollow spot was the exact shape of his foot! It was unmistakably a footprint—someone else’s footprint.
Rob’s chest tightened with hope and fear. A footprint could be good if it meant he’d found a friendly person who could help him. But it could suck if that person were an enemy who wished him harm. Still, it could be good if he were able to secretly follow that person to resources or food he could use. . . . Yet, it could be extremely sucky if it belonged to a member of a hostile mob.
Rob quickly hunted for a matching footprint or signs of others having passed this way. There were none. “Who the heck leaves a single footprint?” he wondered aloud, fear winning his battle of emotions.
He felt more exposed than ever on the lonely stretch of beach. He crouched, glancing over both shoulders. Then he pushed off from the sand and sprinted as fast as he could for the tree line in the distance.
CHAPTER 2
THE COPSE OF LEAFY, GREEN TREES WAS EVEN farther away than Rob had thought. Running used up his body’s fuel, and his food bar depleted. He slowed to a jog, then a shuffle, then a crawl. He stopped and listened a moment. Paranoia swept over him. It was quiet . . . too quiet. He could be wrong, but it felt as though someone were watching him from the trees. Yet he saw nothing but plant life and heard nothing but the ocean waves breaking onshore behind him.
It seemed strange not to hear the calls of birds or even the buzzing of flies, the way he would have in his world. “I’m definitely not on the range anymore,” he murmured sleepily, not realizing how close he was to both starvation and salvation. The empty sands had created a mirage—not of a fabulous oasis, but of more empty sand stretching before him. The vision threatened to pop Rob’s bubble of hope. Would he never reach the lush trees?
The answer literally slapped him in the face.
Wham! The cowboy collided face-first with a tree trunk. He slumped to the ground and then felt a second, smaller impact. An apple had been jarred loose and fallen, tapping his shoulder before rolling a few blocks away.
Rob groggily recognized the fruit, crawled forward, and grabbed it, cramming it into his mouth, seeds and all. His food bar refilled ever so slightly. As he finished the apple, Rob got to his feet.
He looked up. Foliage towered above him, vines cascaded down tree trunks. The oak tree that had stopped him in his tracks was one of several that grew in the area. Between the jungle treetops, the morning sky appeared faded, while down on the biome floor, it was shady. The sun’s rays filtered through the dark green gloom. In the ominous silence, Rob could almost hear someone—or something—watching him.
He shook off the feeling and concentrated on exploring his new environment. Where there was one apple, there might be more. I’d rather not pick them with my face, though, Rob thought, rubbing the spot where he’d been hit.
He punched at one of the trees, and some wood dropped, though no fruit. He put two of the wood planks together and formed a stick. Perfect! He whacked at the leaves and was rewarded with two apples falling to the ground. He quickly ate one and saved the other in his inventory for later, along with the stick. He had a feeling he was going to need them.
Standing around in the semidarkness wasn’t going to get him any closer to home, so he set off through the trees. The going was slow over the leaf-strewn ground. Rob didn’t know what he was looking for, but as he walked, a plan began to take shape in his mind.
“What I need to do is get to a vantage point,” he said to himself. “Get up high, get the lay of the land. Maybe then I’ll be able to find my way out of here or at least find somebody who knows where I am.” He was unaware that he was moving farther away from his spawn point every minute.
But the apple had restored his spirits along with his health. He hummed a little under his breath as he plowed through the brush, hoping to reach a break in the tree cover. Yet, even with his positive mood, the sensation of unseen eyes following him was unnerving.
At last Rob came upon a small clearing in the bush trees, where only gigantic jungle trunks held up the canopy overhead. He was surprised to see a square of stone blocks, obviously not natural. Cautiously, he approached, half expecting some demon to shoot out at him. But nothing blocked his progress toward the open doorway.
Rob peeked inside. There lay another carrot. A guy couldn’t have too much food, he figured, so he entered and reached for the edible prize . . . and a door slammed shut behind him.
Not only was he trapped, but as he turned the root vegetable around in his hand, he realized that it was just a triangular wood block dyed to resemble a carrot. He’d been duped. And he had no idea what the person—or thing—that had corralled him was going to do with him.
*
“Surrender your supplies, griefer!” came a harsh voice that sent chills up Rob’s spine.
The next second, he felt some of the tension roll away. His captor was human. Still, Rob was smart enough to hang on to the only possessions he had. “No way!” he yelled.
“Then I’ll have to kill you. . . .”
The door swung open. There stood a girl, her hair tucked up beneath a brown leather cap. Her olive green skin and camouflage outfit blended in with the flora behind her. She wielded a large sword, which reflected the low jungle light when she moved.
Rob backed away as she advanced into the stone trap. He peered into the corners but saw no cover, and gritted his teeth as she stepped toward him, brandishing the sword above her head. Then, without warning, the girl collapsed, her sword flying toward him, and she hit the ground.
Rob grabbed the weapon but could not imagine using it on another person. “Are you all right?” he asked.
The girl’s eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t seem to see him. “So . . . weak,” she muttered. “So hungry . . .”
Indeed, she appeared to be near death. Rob rummaged in his inventory and produced the apple and gave it to her, hoping it would be enough.
She ate, and her vision returned. She watched Rob from beneath her leather cap, sizing him up, trying to decide whether he was a threat. “What do you want with me, griefer?” she finally said.
“N-nothing,” Rob answered. “Otherwise, why would I give you my last apple? And what’s a—? I don’t even know what a griefer is.”
She looked unconvinced.
“Uh, here’s your sword.” He held out the weapon. She grabbed it and jumped to her feet, her energy having surged back with the small meal.
“Explain yourself, stranger!” she commanded, backing Rob into a corner.
He doubted that his stick would be a match for her sword, so he dropped it, too, in a gesture of surrender. “I’m . . . lost.” Maybe honesty would save his skin right now.
The girl snorted. “You’re an idiot!” She swiped the stick and put it in her own inventory. “I’ve been watching you all day. You’re wasteful, you’re slow, and you’re not too bright. You walked right into my trap!”
Rob couldn’t ar
gue with that. In fact, he had to admire her clever decoy. “A fake carrot,” he said, tossing the wooden vegetable in her direction. “What were you trying to do, tame a wooden rabbit?”
She caught it and added it to her inventory as well. “Yeah. A big, dumb one. And I have to say, buddy, you’re about as helpless as a fluffy bunny.”
Rob’s stomach churned. He was not used to being defenseless, much less called dumb by a girl. “Hey, I told you I’m lost. I was lucky to survive the night. Did you know there’re zombies loose around here?”
“Well, duh,” she retorted. “What were you doing out at night? Of course, you’re not doing so great during the day, either. You wasted all kinds of food and supplies. I had to pick up the rotten flesh and gunpowder that the zombies and creeper dropped when they died so it wouldn’t go to waste. But then it made me sick.”
“R-rotten flesh?” Rob repeated. “And I didn’t see any gunpowder.”
“It was mixed in with the sand. Look, what’s your name? That way I’ll know what to put on your tombstone.”
“I’m Roberto. You can call me Rob. What about you?”
She eyed him, unsure whether to trust him or not. These were the very tactics employed by griefers. But there was something innocent about this player. “Well . . . you did give me your apple. Which was stupid!”
He nodded.
“They call me Frida.”
“Who does?”
“The people who matter,” she said. “Listen, there are griefers all over the place. That’s how I ended up so hungry. I had to sprint forever just to cross over the last biome boundary to get away from them. It was heavily guarded by skeletons.” She shuddered. “I might never leave the jungle again.”
This roused Rob’s curiosity. “What’s the next biome over? I’m trying to find a really high hill. Or some mountains.”
“Are you out of your mind? You’ll never get there. Not with Dr. Dirt’s armies in the way.”
Armies? That didn’t sound good.
“Look, pal—er, Rob.” Frida’s voice softened as she moved away. “You want to stay alive? You’d better stick with me. At least until you learn how to take care of yourself in this version of the Overworld.”
“Um, thanks, Frida. Don’t mind if I do.”
*
The two acquaintances spent the rest of the afternoon gathering and storing items that Frida said they’d need. She crafted a chest and placed it in the small stone enclosure, telling Rob what to put in it. She showed him how to make a wooden axe for chopping wood and how to use the axe as a weapon. “Until you get something stronger, it’s better than nothing.” Rob heartily agreed.
They crept through the jungle, chatting as they worked.
“Who’s this Dr. Dirt?” Rob asked.
“More like, what is he?” Frida hacked away at a mass of vines with her own stone axe. “He’s a griefer. No—he’s the king of the griefers. They’re masters of deception. They act all sweet, fish you in, and then, bam! They steal your resources or burn your house down. Dr. Dirt commands a whole slew of them. And they’ve somehow enchanted hostile mobs. Dirt’s that powerful. Believe me, you don’t want to meet him. And you won’t, if you stay in this biome and keep to yourself.” Her axe broke, and she groaned.
Like lightning, she crafted herself a new one, using Rob’s stick and a piece of iron she had in her inventory. “That’s my last iron ingot!” She sighed, then returned to the cowboy’s question. “Griefers took most of my supplies. Dr. Dirt and his underlings control the skeleton mobs and are using them as shields while they take whatever they can find from whoever they can find.”
Rob’s head was spinning. Thieves and walking skeletons, not to mention zombies and exploding creepers! There sure was a lot of danger to watch out for in this world. “Then why not get as far away from these griefers as possible? Like, the next biome over?”
“Tried that.” She rooted around in some ferns for useful items. “Dr. Dirt is commanding the skeletons to attack travelers at every biome boundary I’ve come across. They’re armed and dangerous.” Then she cried, “Woohoo!” and backed out of the thicket. “A melon block!”
As Rob watched, she busted up the block into half a dozen melons. They each ate one immediately. Rob spit out the seeds.
“Don’t do that!” Frida scolded. “We can plant them later. Listen, Rob. First rule of survival: Don’t waste anything!” She saw his clueless expression and cracked a small smile. “Even if you don’t know how you can use it.”
They each ate another melon and then put the extras and the seeds in the chest. “It’s good to have a stash here,” Frida told him, “in case we have to hole up for a while.”
“You mean, this isn’t your home?”
“Heck, no!” she said. “These low walls wouldn’t keep a spider out. But I ran out of cobblestone when I was building it.” She glanced up at the sky through the trees. “Yikes. We’d better be heading back to my place. It’s getting dark.”
“And that’s when the zombies come out,” Rob said with a shiver.
Frida looked at him. “That’s when the zombies come out,” she echoed. “You’re getting it, pardner.”
Rob felt like he’d learned something for the first time since he landed in the ocean. It was supremely satisfying. Plus, he’d have somewhere to sleep for the night.
Frida took off through the jungle. “Follow me!”
Rob hurried to keep up. He noticed a tiny tattoo of an apple with an arrow through it on the back of her neck and used it to pick her out among the greenery. In his old life, he had often gone days without seeing another soul while riding fences, but now, spending a night alone was the last thing he wanted to do.
“So, where’re you from?” Frida asked over her shoulder, as though reading Rob’s thoughts.
He paused. “I used to tell people I was from the West, but now I’m not so sure anymore. Yesterday I fell out of the sky.”
“Then it’s going to be awfully tough to get back to your spawn point. You’ll probably have to find an enchanted portal or just die to get back there.”
“Oh, I’m dying to get back there,” he assured her, knowing nothing about spawn points. “Back home to my ranch. What I was thinking is, if I got up on a high point someplace, I could get a better idea of where I am and where I came from. See, I was on my way back from vacation when my plane went down—or went somewhere.” He had never actually seen it go down, but he thought that a vantage point might give him some clue as to what had happened.
“Well, you’re not going to find anything high enough to help you around here,” Frida said, “and getting to the extreme hills is going to be way too dangerous. You’d have to cross several boundaries, and Dr. Dirt’s armies are running amok between here and there.”
“So? We’ll find a way.” Rob sounded determined.
Frida stopped short. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“Well, you seem pretty brave.”
“Brave, yes. Stupid, no.” She wheeled around again and picked up the pace. “Cowboy, let’s go!” she called. “We’re burning daylight.”
They hustled on, stopping only briefly to add fallen apples to their supplies.
Rob hadn’t traveled this far on foot since . . . ever. “How much farther is it to your house?” he asked.
“Cave,” she corrected. “It’s just over that—” She pointed to a rise, and then grunted when something hit her from above. She sagged as the weight of a full-grown human landing on her shoulders pulled her to the ground. The creature let loose a bloodcurdling yell: “Aaaughhh!”
Rob jumped back, watching helplessly while the intruder raked at Frida’s head with its arms and gouged at her sides with its legs. Her leather cap protected her head, but her unarmored sides took a beating. With a leap, she threw the man off and began showering him with debris: leaves, dirt, even precious apples. This gave her enough time to reach into her inventory for her sword. She fumbled and bent down to grab it. Her assailant was t
oo quick, blocking her arm, then splashing her with a potion of slowness. Now her sword was even more unobtainable . . . to her.
Rob watched—horrified—as her attacker reached down and retrieved the weapon. He stepped menacingly toward Frida, and Rob noticed his muscular arms and heavily tattooed skin. He knew he should do something to stop this maniac, but what?
Thinking fast, he made a loud click sound and stuck a finger in the man’s back. “Drop it and reach for the sky!”
To Rob’s surprise, the muscle-bound man did just that. Rob hesitated a moment, shocked that his ploy had worked, then recovered Frida’s sword. “Are you okay?” he asked his new friend.
She nodded slowly. “It’ll wear . . . off . . . soon.”
Nobody moved.
Then Frida said to her assailant, “You . . . win. You’ve got . . . one . . . on me.” She turned in slow motion to Rob, and a grin spread across her lips. “Rob: Meet my friend . . . Turner.”
*
Soon the spell had worn off. Frida explained to Rob that she and Turner had an ongoing rivalry—whenever they met, they each tried to out-ambush the other. The two were laughing and joking as they continued on their way across the jungle floor, Rob trailing behind them. He was put off by their behavior—if that’s how friends greeted each other around here, he sure didn’t want to make any enemies.
“Turner here keeps me sharp,” Frida said, referring to the surprise attack. “That was a good one, Meat.”
Turner seemed to take the nickname as a compliment. “Same to you,” he replied. “Survivalists have to do all we can to stay alert, sharp, and strong.” He looked the part, with his cargo pants, ripped T-shirt, and buzz-cut hair.
“Especially in the jungle,” Frida added. “Mobs can spawn here in the daytime in the dimmest areas. Glad we didn’t meet any today.”
