“Oh, they’re fine,” TheVampireDragon555 said, as if Maison and I were in the middle of a really simple job. “Besides, there are only two zombies left now.”
“This is wrong!” Destiny said loudly. “I don’t care what you say. I’m going back and I’m—”
“Do you know what I think, Destiny?” TheVampireDragon555 cut her off. “I think now that we’re in the Overworld, you’re no longer of any use to me.”
And he shoved her into the arms of a zombie.
CHAPTER 6
I RAN TO TRY TO STOP THE ZOMBIE FROM GETTING HER, but it was already too late. I heard a zombie’s moan, a girl’s scream, and then Destiny fell to her knees on the ground, trembling and choking, her head thrown forward so her long hair covered her face.
Bellowing in shock, I leapt up and stabbed the zombie that had gotten her, then stabbed it again. It vanished into the eternal night at the same time Maison took out the other remaining zombie.
TheVampireDragon555 chuckled lightly. “Being a zombie is a perfect career for you, Destiny,” he mocked her shaking form. “You never could do things on your own. You always had to follow someone else’s lead. Well, you know what? Your choice in following me around wasn’t exactly your smartest decision, huh?”
“How … how could you …” her voice croaked.
“What did you say?” TheVampireDragon555’s smile had disappeared.
“How … could …” The croak in her voice was slightly louder now.
Destiny slowly, shakingly rose to her now-grotesque feet. Her hair fell back in place, but her skin had turned a rotten green. Her eyes were a deep, dark red, and they showed how stunned and shocked she was. Then her chapped lips cracked open and she gurgled in that strange, otherworldly voice, “You pushed me right into that zombie.”
TheVampireDragon555 bent in front of her. “You can talk!” he said, spellbound. He seemed to be really thinking through what all of this might mean.
This impossible night was becoming even more impossible: zombies could never talk! Every now and then a zombie attack on a village would go bad, and we’d end up with zombie villagers. They’d still look like themselves, only with green skin and red eyes, but here’s the thing: even they couldn’t talk. It didn’t matter that they’d been human before. Once they’d been bitten and turned, they could only moan and wander mindlessly.
“Say something,” TheVampireDragon555 coaxed. “What is the square root of eighty-one? What is the closest planet to earth? How many fingers am I holding up?”
Destiny looked at him with uncertainty. Her cracked lips parted again. “Nine,” she rasped. “Mars. Four fingers.”
TheVampireDragon555 took a step back as if he were scared Destiny might burn him. At the same time, he was fascinated by what she had turned into.
Three more zombies appeared out of the darkness then and Maison and I readied our swords, but TheVampireDragon555 and Destiny were too distracted to pay much attention.
“Did I code something wrong?” I heard TheVampireDragon555 murmur to himself. Maison and I rushed to take care of the new zombies while he continued to talk to himself. “No, no code. Couldn’t be. It must be … it must be because we’re not from this world. Our bodies respond differently. We keep our minds. We …”
He stopped talking, deep in thought. As I battled one of the zombies, I got a glimpse of TheVampireDragon555 over the zombie’s shoulder. A dark cloud had gone over his eyes as he took on the real meaning of this. I realized what he was going to do, but by the time I did, it was too late to reach him.
He threw himself into the arms of one of the zombies.
“Stop him!” Maison screamed.
Maison and I each destroyed the zombie in front of us, but neither of us had time to get to the third zombie, the one TheVampireDragon555 went to. TheVampireDragon555 fell against the zombie, and this time, instead of a scream we heard laughter, a shrieking laughter that echoed over the vast landscape.
CHAPTER 7
MAISON AND I JUMPED FORWARD AND STABBED the last zombie. It disappeared, but the damage was done. TheVampireDragon555 dropped to his feet, trembling, overpowered by the change coming over him. He had his hands clutched in his hair as he was bent there, the long fingers changing from skeleton pale to zombie green under the moonlight.
Then slowly, with legs that were gradually growing more steady, he stood up to his full height, towering above us. He still wasn’t a vampire or a dragon, but he was most definitely a zombie now. He opened his mouth and said, “Perfect. It worked just the way I wanted it to.”
Destiny gaped at him. “What have you done?”
“The only thing that makes sense,” he replied, flexing his hands and finding they still worked just fine. “I was going to keep myself clear of zombies and just let them attack the people here. But look at this! I still have my human mind, plus all the powers of a zombie.”
He turned and grinned hungrily at Maison and me.
Maison poised her sword out at him. “You’re still just a zombie,” she said fiercely. “Stevie and I know how to handle zombies. Don’t we, Stevie?”
It probably would have been helpful if I’d given a brave, “We sure do!” answer right then. But I was struck speechless. I didn’t know how to handle this. I didn’t know how to handle any of this.
“You can put that sword away,” TheVampireDrag-
on555 told Maison coolly. He was eyeing her stone sword as if it was some silly little toy that couldn’t do anything. “I’m not going to attack you. At least not yet, anyway.”
“What do you want, VampireDragon?” Maison demanded. “You found me. Aren’t I the one you want?”
“Of course I don’t want you,” TheVampireDragon555 said. He sounded offended that Maison had thought that. “Destiny’s the one who has a grudge against you. Me, I just wanted to figure out where all those zombies came from.”
“What do you mean?” I gasped.
“Trolling people online gets boring after so many years,” TheVampireDragon555 said.“I hurt their feel-
ings, I probably make them cry, yeah, yeah, yeah. They could just ignore it if they weren’t so sensitive. But here … here I can really troll and grief. Here, you can’t just turn off your computer to get away from me.” A dark expression came over his face. “Tonight is where the fun begins.”
“We have to get to the village!” I whispered in Maison’s ear. “We have to warn them and get my dad!”
She nodded, her eyes not leaving TheVampireDragon555.
“I know what you’re thinking,” TheVampireDragon555 said. “It won’t do any good for you to warn the villagers, I can promise you that. But I’m not going to stop you. Go, go.”
Maison and I only looked at each other for an instant. And then we were running, running as fast as we could toward the village.
CHAPTER 8
IT WAS A TERRIBLE SIGHT THAT AWAITED US.
“No!” I exclaimed. “Where are the iron golems?”
Iron golems are meant to protect the village, but they were nowhere in sight. Had TheVampireDragon555 removed them somehow with his computer codes? He’d definitely put something else in their place: the village was overrun with zombies, their moans and hisses filling the air. On top of that, some of the buildings were on fire. Yellow and jack-o-lantern-tinted flames roared out of broken windows and colored the sky.
Maison was beside me, gasping for breath. “Where are the villagers? Are they hiding in their houses?”
My eyes scanned the buildings. There was a villager—with green skin! There was another one, and another, and another—and they all had green skin!
“It’s too late,” I said. “The villagers have already turned. They weren’t prepared, with the iron golems gone and the sudden night.”
Now I knew Dad really was our only hope left. He was probably here somewhere in the maze of buildings, fighting off zombies and rescuing people. That would explain why he hadn’t made it back to the tree house yet. If zombies had been unl
eashed on the village, he’d save the village first, figuring Maison and I were much safer up in our tree house and far away from all this madness.
But how would we find him without being attacked by zombies? What if we went into one section of the village and he was in another? What if we went in just as he was going out? In Maison’s world, they had cell phones where people could talk to one another in an instant, no matter where they were. In our world, we didn’t have anything that useful for situations like this.
“Dad!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, hoping he was close enough to hear me. Sometimes Dad almost seemed superhuman because he was so good at solving problems. For all I knew, he had super-hearing, or some sort of magical device in his brain that would tell him when his son was in trouble. “Dad!”
“I think we might have to go in there,” Maison said. “But I don’t know how we can get in and come back out without … without …”
Without turning into zombies, I said in my head for her.
“Maybe we can run around the edges of the village,” I said. “And keep calling him that way?” Then I saw a familiar shape in the crowd in the village. It was the blacksmith! But when he turned his head, I saw the greenness of his face and my stomach dropped. I knew that Dad was supposed to be with the blacksmith today.
Maybe the zombies got here before Dad reached the blacksmith, I thought desperately. There’s no way Dad would let the blacksmith get hurt if he was there.
Maison and I began to rush along the edges of the village, with me shouting, “Dad!” while she shouted, “Steve!” The more we had to shout, the more our voices hurt from the screaming and the smoke. And the more desperate we sounded.
“Stevie! Maison!” a boy’s voice called from behind us.
We turned, but it was only TheVampireDragon555, calmly making his way up toward the village. Destiny was nowhere to be seen.
“I forgot to mention one teensy weensy detail,” TheVampireDragon555 said. “You can’t warn the villagers because I already used codes to unleash a bunch of zombies on them. Oops, that was probably an important detail to tell you. Oh, and I took care of the iron golems, too. They were in my way.”
And that’s when I just snapped.
“You did this!” I yelled, coming at him.
He held up one green hand, palm out, signaling me to stop. “I wouldn’t come closer if I were you,” he said.
“Why?” I said. This bully wasn’t going to harass Maison online, break into our world, turn it into night, and set zombies loose on the villagers. And somehow, what made it worst of all was how pleased he seemed during it. At least zombies attacked mindlessly because it was their nature. TheVampireDragon555 was in full control of what he was doing.
“Are you going to bite me?” I demanded. “You don’t have a sword. Maison and I will stop you with our swords before you even get close to us.”
“Ooh, you sound violent,” he said, enjoying this.
“No, you’re violent!” I said. “We’re just trying to protect ourselves. I only fight when there’s no other choice for our safety.”
“How noble,” TheVampireDragon555 said, making it sound like a bad thing. “But you never let me finish what I was saying. It turns out keeping my brain isn’t the only amazing thing that happens to people like Destiny and me when we get bitten by zombies in the Overworld.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I’ve been doing some experimenting with my powers, and it seems we also have powers over zombies.”
“Powers over zombies?” Maison repeated, a hitch of fear in her voice.
“Yes, watch,” said TheVampireDragon555. He turned to a group of zombie villagers in earshot of us. “You seven!”
The seven zombie villagers turned their dark red eyes on him.
“Get them!” TheVampireDragon ordered, pointing toward Maison and me. “Get them by any means necessary! Don’t let them escape!”
At once, the zombies obeyed, lurching toward us.
CHAPTER 9
“RUN!” MAISON SAID.
“Zombies!” TheVampireDragon555 hollered, catching the attention of zombies farther down. They all looked toward him. “Get those two!”
Zombies were coming at us from all directions but one. Seeing we had no other choice, Maison and I took off down a street into the village, the zombies at our heels. But as we turned down that street, more zombies popped out of the buildings in front of us.
We skidded to a stop, panicked, and dove into one of the buildings. Maison slammed the door shut. However, it wasn’t an iron door, just a wooden one, and the zombies began to pound on it. I knew it wouldn’t take long for them to break through.
“Quickly!” I said. We ran across the building to the other side of it. There was an open window we could squeeze through. I put my head out the window, looked in both directions, and said, “It’s safe.” For the moment, anyway.
Just then the front door gave way and the zombies broke in, moaning. I jumped on the windowsill and pulled myself out, Maison a second behind me. Our feet hit the ground outside.
“Which way?” Maison gasped.
“I think we need to get out of the village,” I said.
“What about your dad?”
Wildly, I shook my head. I didn’t even know where to begin looking for him. Our only hope was to flee from here. It’s not as if we could save the village, anyway. Not two people against all these zombies, not two kids with stone swords.
“He’s probably headed back home,” I said. At this rate, he would also see that the village was a lost cause and he had to get reinforcements elsewhere. The tree house was on the way home. He’d see we weren’t there and continue on to the house to make sure we were safe and then find people from other villages to help.
Hissing, a zombie reached its arm out of the window and swung for us, barely missing. That was all the motivation we needed. Maison and I turned down the street, racing to get out of the village.
But we should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. When we were just about to reach the end of the street, several zombies came out from hiding in the buildings. They had the exit blocked off.
“This way!” I said. We veered around, but zombies were behind us there, too. And none of the other buildings around us looked safe, either. Zombies were reaching out of windows toward us, clawing to open doors from the inside out.
“We’re trapped!” Maison yelled. “We’re going to have to fight our way out!”
I looked around, trying to figure out which batch of zombies would be the easiest to take out. More zombies were by the exit of the village, so we couldn’t go that way. Only three zombies were on the street if we went deeper into the village. It wouldn’t help us in our mission to get out of the village, but going deeper in was our only option right then. We’d have to find another way out.
“Let’s get them,” I said.
Maison didn’t need any more directions. We charged the zombies, hitting them square on, knocking them to the side. We didn’t try to finish them off and make them disappear; we just needed to get past them. If we took the time to finish them off, that only gave the other zombies more time to surround us.
Once we knocked those zombies back, we skidded into an alleyway that was darker than the rest of the village.
“We’ll loop around,” I said, “if there aren’t more on the other side!”
But I knew the odds of that. Turning out of the alleyway, we looked left and we looked right. Zombies on the left. Zombies on the right. Advancing on us. Moaning.
“The house!” I said. The house directly in front of us had no zombies in the windows. There still might be some inside, but it was our only hope.
Maison and I burst into the house, throwing the door shut behind us. She dragged some furniture against the door to create a swift, makeshift barricade. It would keep the zombies out longer, though not by much.
Again we reached for the window. And we couldn’t believe what we saw outside.
No zombies! The street w
as dark and terrible, but there wasn’t a mob in sight.
“I think we’re going to make it,” I said to Maison, panting. “We’ll turn left, run a few streets, and we’ll be out of the village.”
I pulled myself out the window, balancing the sword. Maison followed a moment later. While trying to be as silent and quick as possible, we rushed down the inky black street, aware of the zombies a street away crying out for us.
I could see the plain green grass ahead, the grass that meant the end of the village. With each leaping bound of our feet, we were getting closer to the grass. A few more houses and we’d be there. A few more houses and we had a chance.
That’s when the door in the house next to us exploded with a thunderous splintering. Shards of wood flew everywhere. I saw the swarm of zombies break through, so many of them that they were almost tripping over one another. The zombie in the front was the tallest and strongest looking of all, a diamond sword clutched in its hand. The sword swung out at me, straight at my head, and the only way for me to dodge it was to throw myself forward. I hit the ground with a thud, my stone sword flying from my hand and landing uselessly out of my reach.
I struggled to get on my feet, but it was too late. The big zombie stood over me, lifting its diamond sword high above its head. All I could do was flip over. I looked up into the big zombie’s face, and even though the face was green, and even though it was transformed into a zombie’s blank hunger, I would recognize him anywhere.
“Dad!” I cried, holding out my arm. “No!”
CHAPTER 10
EVERYTHING WAS GOING IN SLOW MOTION, AS IF I was outside of my body, watching the horror of the scene. Dad continued to raise his diamond sword, my words lost on him. Vaguely, I could see zombie villagers bursting out of the door of the house on the other side. They surrounded Maison, her sword slashing at them, but there were too many of them for a single person. It was over for her. It was over for me. TheVampireDragon555 had won. He had taken over the Overworld.
Attack on the Overworld Page 3
