Attack on the Overworld

by Danica Davidson

  “You know what else is bugging me?” Maison said. “Why do you keep calling him ‘TheVampireDragon555’? You know his real name. Call him that.”

  Destiny opened her mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again and said, “I call him that because that’s all I think of him as anymore. Like I said, he’s always been a bully. But somehow once he got to griefing and trolling online, he just got a lot worse. I think it’s because it was easier for him to get away with it since he could use a fake name and all that. It’s like he became this vampire dragon that just wants to destroy because he thinks it’s funny.”

  She paused again and went on, “This probably sounds crazy, but I also think he doesn’t know how much damage he’s doing. He wrecks things online and laughs, but he never knows if the person on the other computer is crying or really messed up because of what he’s doing.”

  “I never thought of that,” I said. “But he has to see all that he’s doing here!” He could look into the eyes of the villagers he turned into zombies. That was way different from typing something in a computer and then walking away.

  “I think if he realized the damage he does, he might stop,” Destiny said. “I just don’t know how to get through to him.”

  None of us did. Feverishly, we kept working on the potions, desperate to be ready before his zombie army was upon us.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE POTIONS WERE READY. THE COUNTDOWN WAS Now.

  “Can I?” Destiny asked timidly, looking over the potions and golden apples. “I want to be human again.”

  I wondered what that would be like, to be a zombie and know you were one. With the regular zombie villagers, they weren’t aware that their skin was green and their eyes were red and they were being controlled. Destiny could look at her skin and feel her body changes and know something was wrong. It had to be really creepy.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

  I also wanted to make sure the potion would work before we set ourselves up in the tree house. Dad had told me many stories about turning zombie villagers back into villagers, but those stories had all come from before I was born. I had never seen the transformation myself, and I had definitely never made a Potion of Weakness before. Even though Dad had gone over potions with me a million times and I had his book with ingredients, I was still scared we might have done something wrong.

  I splashed Destiny with the Potion of Weakness and then gave her a golden apple to eat. That’s how Dad and Dad’s book said you were supposed to do it.

  Thankfully, the change started almost immediately. First little curls of smoke began rising from her body, though I knew that was natural and not something to worry about. Then her body began shaking, and then little red lights began to sizzle around her once she’d gotten the golden apple down. I watched, anxious, hoping.

  “How do you feel?” Maison asked.

  “I feel funny,” Destiny replied. She was still croaking in that dry, zombie voice. A bad sign.

  For three minutes Destiny trembled, and those minutes felt as if they might as well have been days. Maison and I watched closely, holding our breaths.

  “This seems to be taking a long time,” Maison said in distress.

  “My dad said it might take a few minutes or so,” I said.

  “What if it doesn’t work?” Maison whispered to me.

  I thought back on my lessons with Dad. We were sitting at the table with him grilling me about potions again, and he had said, “Now, Stevie, what happens if the Potion of Weakness and golden apple don’t cure a zombie villager?”

  “You try again?” I’d said brightly, hoping I was right. I wasn’t.

  “No,” Dad said. “You use your sword.”

  By that, Dad meant it was all over and all you had left to do was save yourself. So now I said to Maison, “We just hope it works.”

  “Oh!” Destiny said. “Oh!”

  And then the transformation was complete. She was standing there again with her natural brown eyes and body, the red and green all gone.

  Maison and I cheered and hugged her.

  “I can’t believe it.” Destiny was gasping and her voice sounded like a normal person’s voice again.

  “I’m so glad you’re better,” I said. “Now you won’t try to eat your fingers anymore.”

  “Huh?” Destiny said, confused.

  “You tried to eat your fingernails earlier,” I reminded her. “I thought it was some zombie thing.”

  Maison shook her head, but it was like I’d said something funny. “What?” I said, not getting the joke.

  “I was biting my nails because I was nervous,” Destiny said. “It’s a bad habit, not a zombie thing.”

  “Oh.” I looked down at Destiny’s hands and my alarm shot up. “Oh, no!” I picked up her one hand. “It didn’t work all the way! Your nails still have black splotches on them.”

  That’s when Maison patted me on the back like she was humoring me. “Let’s go, Stevie,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I think we have a real problem here.”

  “It’s nail polish,” Maison said dryly.

  Destiny looked at her fingernails. “They are kind of chipped.”

  “Nail polish?” I repeated, at a loss. “Is that some kind of potion?”

  “No, it’s nothing,” Maison said. “We’ll explain later.” She was hefting up piles of golden apples. “We need to get these to the tree house.”

  Destiny’s nails still looked pretty funny to me, but I dropped it. As we began hauling stuff out the door, I heard a mew.

  “Ossie!” I said. She was rubbing against my legs. “We have to take her with us!”

  “Why?” Maison asked. “Wouldn’t she be safer here?”

  “Because …” I didn’t want to say why. We had good signs on our side: tons of potions and the proof the potion worked on Destiny. Still, that didn’t mean we’d be ready for an entire zombie army. If anything happened and we needed to flee, I had to make sure Ossie was with us. We wouldn’t have time to run back and get her and then run for the portal.

  Both Maison and Destiny got it and they nodded in agreement.

  “Come on, Ossie,” I said, and the little cat followed us. Maybe she remembered her life before as a wild ocelot and was ready to get out there and take on the world’s dangers. Her presence would also protect us from creepers if any tried to get close to us.

  I pulled one of Dad’s minecarts out of the shed and we filled it with potions and apples. There wasn’t enough room for us too, so we pushed it all the way to the tree house. A night wind rustled through, moving Maison and Destiny’s hair like silky spiderwebs. My hair stayed in place like a block, but the wind still gave me shivers. I knew it wasn’t much longer now.

  Ossie climbed up the tree and into the tree house on her own, while Maison, Destiny and I dragged up the supplies. Torches were lit around the tree house, letting us see. When we got all the potions and apples ready, we stood on the balcony. Destiny clutched the wooden sword I’d made her earlier, and Maison had her stone sword. I held Dad’s diamond sword tightly.

  Please, I thought, holding the diamond sword, please let me do the right thing and save the Overworld.

  Destiny inhaled a sharp breath and looked out over the horizon. I jumped to alertness, searching for what was out there. I couldn’t see anything yet, but my ears could pick up on the sound of many footsteps rumbling the ground. And the sound of hisses and moans. The zombie army was coming, and we could only hope we were ready for them.

  CHAPTER 19

  THEVAMPIREDRAGON555 WAS HAUGHTILY APPROACHING with his army behind him, their feet rumbling the ground. He’d put some cloth over his shoulders like a cape, I think to make himself look fancier. There was also a diamond sword in his hand, one he must have stolen from the village. The cape swirled out behind him in a powerful way.

  Right at his heels were the rows and rows of zombies. Some of them were zombie villagers. Some of them were regular zombies. Many of them wer
e holding weapons and wore armor.

  “All right,” I breathed. “This is what we do. When they get close enough, we start throwing the Potions of Weakness at the zombie villagers. We need to save them. The regular zombies were probably made from coding. We just need to defeat them.”

  “I’m good at throwing,” Maison said. She swung her arm like a baseball player warming up for practice. “That’s not going to be a problem.”

  I looked to Destiny. “Do you think you can help me fight the real zombies?”

  She gave a long swallow. “I can try.”

  “Good,” I said. “When the zombie villagers turn back, some of them will already have weapons to fight the regular zombies. When we defeat the zombies, if they leave a weapon behind, we need to get those to the weaponless villagers who have changed back.”

  Destiny nodded. “Right.”

  Maison, Destiny and I stood very close together, trying to look brave, trying not to show any fear as the rows of zombies continued to draw closer and closer. There were hundreds of them and three of us. Just like Destiny said, Dad was in the front row, right behind TheVampireDragon555.

  TheVampireDragon555 stopped before the tree house, waving his cape out behind him. “Destiny!” he crooned in a singsong voice. “Don’t tell me you betrayed me!” But it sounded like he found this amusing.

  “You’re the one who betrayed me!” Destiny shouted, not finding this amusing at all. “You knew I was vulnerable, so you talked me into doing all sorts of crazy things to make you happy. Troll people online. Break into Maison’s computer. I’m not going to be your minion anymore. It stops now.”

  “And you’re going to defeat me with that little stick?” TheVampireDragon555 said and laughed, pointing at her sword.

  “No,” Maison said. “With this.”

  With a perfect arch of her arm, she hurled a Potion of Weakness at Dad. It hit him dead-center and immediately he began to shake and have curls of gray smoke come out of him. Before TheVampireDragon555 could even figure out what was going on, Maison had thrown a golden apple directly at Dad for him to eat.

  “So you’ve been playing with potions!” TheVampireDragon555 said. Before he’d even finished his sentence, Maison, Destiny and I had all thrown more potions and apples out. The zombie villagers were starting to shake and change. But I saw that my first hunch was right: Maison was the best thrower out of the three of us, hitting her mark every time.

  “Those potions won’t do much!” TheVampireDrag-

  on555 crowed. “I can just make more and more zombies!”

  “Not without your computer, you can’t,” Destiny called down. “When I did the codes to make the potion ingredients, I couldn’t find a way to stop what you had already done. So I just locked you out of your computer. There’s no way you’ll find out how to get back in before the sun rises.”

  “You what?” TheVampireDragon555 thundered. “Why, you good for nothing—”

  Ossie jumped up on the balcony and hissed down at him.

  With a roar, TheVampireDragon555 came charging to the tree house ladder, diamond sword raised high above his head. He quickly scaled up the ladder.

  “We have to stop him!” Destiny exclaimed.

  I threw myself partway down the ladder, hitting TheVampireDragon555 with my sword and knocking him back to the ground. By the time he pulled himself to his feet, I’d landed on the ground a few feet from him, sword out.

  TheVampireDragon555 wiped his mouth and eyed me. “Father’s sword?” He was being snarky.

  “Better than the sword you stole,” I shot back, and charged him. Our swords clashed.

  “Well, aren’t you brave,” TheVampireDragon555 sneered, bearing his sword down toward me. I realized then that I might have overestimated myself. I was better at sword fighting, I was sure, but TheVampireDragon555 was bigger than me and physically stronger. My feet were digging into the ground as we strained our swords together, trying to knock the other off.

  “I’m not someone who uses a computer to attack people,” I snapped.

  “Of course not.” TheVampireDragon555 yanked his sword back. Not expecting this, I stumbled forward and almost fell. “I have a whole army. Zombies, get him!”

  I whirled around. A row of zombie villagers were coming at me, moaning, their red eyes standing out in the darkness. But before they could reach me, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of them got hit with potions, all in order. The zombie villagers stopped and began to shake. Maison threw golden apples down to all of them.

  I was about to holler to Maison, “Good timing!” when I heard Destiny cry, “Stevie, look out!”

  I turned just in time, barely missing TheVampireDragon555’s sword. He had used the zombies as a distraction so he could hit me from behind. I felt the whir of the sword against my arm and fell to the ground. The force of the drop momentarily stunned me.

  TheVampireDragon555 raised his sword to go after me again. That’s when Destiny jumped between us, throwing out her wooden sword to counter TheVampireDragon555’s attack. The wooden sword stopped the attack, but the sword splintered. Another hit and it would be broken.

  “Get away from him!” Destiny said.

  “Risking your safety for someone you barely even know?” TheVampireDragon555 teased. “Why, Destiny, you really will follow anyone rather than think for yourself.”

  “That’s not true,” Destiny said, slashing out at him with her sword. He took a step back, dodging her. “Stevie’s my friend.” She swung again.

  This time their swords hit, and Destiny’s broke. The force of it knocked her to the ground. TheVampireDragon555 loomed over her, smiling.

  “You might have locked me out of my computer,” he said. “But I still have the upper hand here. I can do a lot of damage before the sun rises.”

  Destiny kicked him in the shin and he hopped back in pain, favoring his leg. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she said, rising. “We won’t let you. You’ve done enough damage.”

  When he came after her again, I was up on my feet and ready. I slammed into TheVampireDragon555, knocking him back.

  “The villagers are starting to change!” I heard Maison shout from overhead. “Villagers!” she called to them. “You’ve been turned into zombies and that tall zombie with a cape is the one who did it. Turn the other villagers back! Stop the real zombies! Get their weapons! The sun will rise soon.”

  I couldn’t look over my shoulder at what was happening, but TheVampireDragon555 took a look and his green face filled with rage. He hit me hard with his sword, knocking me down again. But instead of attacking me, he ran into the middle of the zombie army, ordering, “Zombies! Zombies, obey me! Get anyone who isn’t a zombie! GET THEM!”

  “Stevie!” Dad said, running to my side. He helped me get back on my feet. “My sword,” he said in confusion, seeing it in my hand. “What is going on?”

  The red eyes were gone. The green skin had turned to its normal brown color. His eyes were his eyes again, looking at me with wild concern.

  “It’s just what Maison said,” I replied. “We have to turn the villagers back and stop the zombies. The zombie with the cape is the one who started it all.”

  Behind us was chaos. Zombies were charging toward the newly-changed villagers. Maison was hitting more and more villagers with potions and apples. She’d gotten almost all of them. And villagers were seizing up weapons that zombies had dropped, and were going into battle mode.

  I couldn’t see TheVampireDragon555 in the horde, though I could still hear him screaming, calling orders out to the army of zombies.

  “We need to stop him,” I said, rushing toward the crowd.

  “Stevie, wait!” Dad called, but he was right behind me, picking up a sword he found on the ground.

  I pushed my way through the villagers. A real zombie reared up in front of me to block my way. I slashed the diamond sword through it, making it disappear immediately.

  “Where are you, you vampire dragon?” I yelled. “
Stop hiding behind the zombies like you hide behind a computer screen!”

  From out of the zombie swarm I heard him yell, “Get him! Get the one called Stevie!”

  Maybe he thought once he’d taken me out, it’d be clear sailing for him. But his plan backfired. All the zombies tried to circle around me, and this made the whole scene less confusing because they were all heading in the same direction now. Dad and the other villagers circled around me too, each hitting the zombies one by one before they could get to me.

  Now most of the zombies in the army were taken out.

  TheVampireDragon555 must have noticed this, because suddenly he shouted, “Clear off! Clear off!”

  “Stevie, I see him!” Maison hollered from the tree house, pointing. “He’s over there.”

  I broke through the circle of villagers, running in the direction she pointed. TheVampireDragon555 was just ahead, only a handful of zombies at his heels. They were all regular zombies now, no zombie villagers. Destiny was in front of me, going at him with a new wooden sword.

  “Put that down, Destiny!” he said. “I won’t hurt you if I don’t have to.”

  “Liar!” Destiny shot back. “You’re just a coward and you know you’ve lost!”

  Her words inflamed him even more. He swung his sword back to hit her, but he made a terrible mistake. His sword knocked into a zombie next to him. He didn’t hit the zombie hard enough to make it disappear, though he hit it hard enough to make it angry. As soon as the first zombie got angry, the others did, too, like a chain reaction. They were all hissing and roaring. Sometimes when one mob attacks another, it throws them off and they attack their own kind.

  And just like that, all the remaining zombies turned on TheVampireDragon555, ready to destroy him.

  CHAPTER 20

  “NO!” THEVAMPIREDRAGON555 SCREAMED. IN HIS panic, he slashed out furiously toward the zombies, with no sense of what he was doing. He made one zombie disappear, but only enraged the others more. They dove on top of their prey.