by Max Brooks
“Well, all right,” I exhaled, “At least I have the power to drop things.” Not a huge win, I know, but something. Some tiny bit of control.
I watched the little dirt cube hover at my feet for a second, then reached out to pick it up again. I didn’t flinch the second time it jumped to meet me.
“Okay,” I said, taking a cautious breath. “If I can drop you, maybe I can…” I moved the cube down to one of the pouches on my belt, and sighed deeply as it obediently dropped inside.
“So,” I said, smiling down at the belt, “stuff—well, dirt, at least—shrinks small enough for you to carry it. Weird, but maybe useful in this w…dream.” I couldn’t say “world” yet. I was still way too fragile.
GRRRP, bubbled my stomach, reminding me it was still there.
“Right,” I said, and took the cube back out of my belt. “And since I can’t eat you, and can’t think of a reason to carry you around…”
I held the shrunken box out to the hole where I’d dug it up. At maybe a pace or two away, it jumped right out of my hand, swelled back up to its original shape, and snapped into place as if nothing had happened. Well, almost nothing; digging it out had taken off its green cover.
“Hmmm,” I hummed and tried digging it up again. Sure enough, a few punches drove it right into my hand. When I put it down this time, I tried setting it next to the hole instead of inside it. Again it sprang back to its normal size, sitting securely on the ground.
I hummed again, my newfound calm allowing the wheels to turn. Something about setting the block down in a new place reminded me of a buried memory. I don’t think it was a memory specific to me, but rather to the not-dream world. Something about little kids playing with blocks, making things, building.
“If everything here is made of blocks,” I said to the newly replanted cube, “and all these blocks keep their shape, could I stack them into things I want to build?”
GRRRP, came a particularly angry protest from down south.
“Right,” I told my stomach, and turning to the block, said, “Maybe later. I gotta eat.”
I figured I’d give the grass one more try before moving on. I’m glad I did. On this fifth attempt, the vanishing clump left a collection of hovering seeds. Finally, I thought and tried picking them up. One weird minor quirk of this dream was that I could only grab all six seeds at the same time, and wasn’t able to hold them individually. Another weird, and ridiculously major, quirk was that I wasn’t able to consume them. My hand just froze there, inches from my mouth, and wouldn’t let me eat.
“Really?” I said, and tried to move my face to my hand instead. That didn’t work either, like an invisible force field was holding them apart.
“Really,” I repeated sarcastically, feeling all the frustration and anger rising up. “Fine!” My arm cocked to throw the seeds away.
What stopped me was the block of dirt I’d just been experimenting with. When I’d set it down a few minutes ago, the green cover top was missing. Now it was back. The turfy layer had re-grown.
That fast? I thought, looking down at the seeds. Do all plants grow that fast? Maybe I could try planting these seeds.
And boy did I try! I tried every way I could think of. I dropped the seeds back onto the ground, but they just hovered. I punched them into the soil, but that just unearthed another block. And after setting that block down, in a new position aboveground, I even tried pushing the seeds into the side. Nothing worked.
“Why won’t…” I hissed through clenched teeth, then stopped myself. Going down the “why” path would lead me right back to a full-blown meltdown.
“Keep going,” I said with a huff. “Don’t give up.”
Dropping the seeds into a belt pouch, I desperately looked around for another option. Any other food source, any distraction…
The trees!
I ran over to the closest one, trying to peel away sections of the bark. Do people eat bark? Maybe, but I couldn’t. My hands wouldn’t let me grab the light-and-dark-striped brown cover. They also wouldn’t let me climb the waist-thick trunk up to the square bunches of small, mini-cubed leaves.
I didn’t give up; I couldn’t afford to. “If this is a dream,” I said, “then I can just fly up and get some!”
Fist raised, eyes up, I leapt into the air…and came down just as quick. But in that crucial moment, suspended in midair, something truly magical happened. I tried punching at the leaves above me, and even though they were a block or two away, I felt my fist impact.
I began hesitantly striking up above me. “I can reach?”
Sure enough, though my actual arm didn’t stretch, from four full block lengths away I could still hit the dappled cubes above my head. “I can reach!” I shouted and began bashing at the leaves. Creeping insanity faded with each empowering punch. “Yeah!” I belted as the first cube vanished, dropping a red, shiny, semi-rounded fruit into my hand. “THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!”
And this time, my body let me eat. Maybe that’s the key, I thought, crunching on the fruit’s crispy sweetness and feeling the juice run down my throat. Maybe my hand will only let me eat what’s edible.
It might not have looked exactly like an apple, but it tasted just like one. And if I thought the scent of the earth was comforting, this new sensation was so overpowering, I actually felt a sting at the corners of my eyes.
“Keep going,” I said as the entire apple disappeared into my welcoming stomach. “Never give up!”
Without realizing it, I’d just learned something. Call it a mantra or a life lesson or whatever, but they were words to live by, and they’d be the first of many on this strange and wonderful journey: Never give up.
Using my new “power,” I knocked out the other leaf blocks on the rest of the trees. I not only came away with two more apples, but a critical discovery about my belt and pack.
It happened right after the first apple, when I was boxing the leaves. Instead of dropping fruit, I got a small sapling. “On strike again?” I asked my frozen hand, and dropped the mini-tree into my belt. Seconds later, when I got a second one, I absentmindedly stuffed it into the same pouch. That’s when I realized that they’d not only shrunk, but flattened and stacked themselves together like playing cards. “Well now,” I said with a smile, “this might actually be helpful.”
That turned out to be an understatement. By the time I’d finished stripping all three trees, I managed to stack twelve compressed saplings in just one compartment. And, I might add, at zero weight!
Looking over the additional pouches in my pack, I thought, I can carry a whole warehouse worth of stuff! Which means…
“Which means,” I said, scowling at the belt, my mood deflating like stacked saplings, “Until I find stuff worth carrying, you’re as helpful as a wind-powered fan.”
There’s gotta be more apple trees, I thought, staring up at the cliff. Through panicked eyes, it’d initially looked like an impassable barrier. Now, calmer, confident, and well-fed, I could see that it was more like a steep slope than a sheer wall.
Who knows what else is over there, I thought, hiking up square dirt cubes. If I’d only thought clearly instead of being such a total dweeb, I wouldn’t have trapped myself on this side of the island in the first place.
In fact, maybe it wasn’t an island after all. Maybe this beach was the start of a whole continent! Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t abandoned the notion of all this being just a dream. But still, part of me couldn’t help wishing to come up over the top of the hill to see a ranger station, or a town, or a giant city, or…
There wasn’t.
I stood on the even, green summit and stared with crushing disappointment at the rest of an uninhabited island.
The land stretched out like a claw, two wooded pincers nearly enclosing a round, shallow lagoon. I couldn’t judge how large the island was. By that point, I still wasn’t very good at measuring by blocks. But it couldn’t have been too big because I could definitely see the end of it under th
e late afternoon sun. And with the sinking orange square, so went my spirits as well.
Just like in the water, I thought I was alone.
And just like in the water, I was wrong.
“Moo.” The sound made me jump.
“Wha…?” I said, nervously looking all around. “Who…Who’s there?”
“Moo,” came the sound again, pulling my eyes to the base of the hill. It was an animal, black and white, with a body as rectangular as its surroundings.
I picked my way down the western slope, which was easier and more gradual than the treacherous eastern side, and walked right up to the fearless creature. Studying it more closely, I could see that it wasn’t entirely black and white. Gray horns, pink inside the ears, and a pink shallow sack below the stomach…
“You gotta be a cow,” I said, and the “moo” I got was the best sound I’d heard all day. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you,” I sighed. “I mean, hey, I know it’s still just a dream and all, but it just feels so good not to be—” the word stuck in my throat, stinging my nose and eyes—“alone.”
“Baa,” answered the cow.
“Wait, what?” I asked, stepping closer. “Are you, like, bilingual or…”
“Baa,” said the animal, but not the one in front of me. I looked up and past the cow, toward the sound’s true owner. It was rectangular—duh—but a little shorter and practically all black.
I’d almost missed it in the dim light of the early evening. Now, as I approached the darkening woods, another animal, as white as the clouds above, stepped out from behind its black twin. Despite their straight, flat outlines, I could see the barest details of woolly coats.
“You’re sheep,” I said, smiling, and reached out to pet one. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to punch.
The animal yelped, flashed pinkish red, and took off running through the wood. “Oh, sorry!” I called after it. “Sorry little sheep!” I felt so bad that I turned to its unfazed friend and babbled, “I didn’t mean it, really. I still don’t know how to use this body, ya know?”
“Cluckcluckcluck,” came an answer to my left. Two small birds, each about a block high, were pecking the nearby ground. They had short, skinny legs, plump bodies covered with white feathers, and small heads ending in flat orange beaks.
“I’m not sure if you’re chickens,” I told them. “You do have kinda duckish features.” They glanced up at me for a second and clucked. “But you sound like chickens,” I continued, “so I guess calling you chickens makes more sense than…chickeducks.”
The word gave me a little chuckle, which quickly became a real guffaw. It felt good to laugh, to let out all the crazy tension of the day.
That’s when I heard a new sound.
“Guuugh.”
It was a throaty, phlegmy gargle that sent chills up my spine. I looked all around, trying to figure out the source. Sound on this island seemed to be coming from every direction. I stood there listening, wishing the chickens would shut up.
Then I smelled it. Mold and rot. Like a dead rat in an old sock. I didn’t see the figure until it was only a dozen or so paces away. At first I thought it was another person, dressed just like me, and I took an automatic step forward.
Then, just as instinctively, I stopped and backed away. Its clothes were ragged and filthy. Its flesh was a mottled green. Its eyes, if you could call them eyes, were nothing but lifeless black points in a flat, unmoving face. Memories flooded my mind, images of creatures I’d known from stories but had never seen in person. And now here it was, approaching with outstretched arms.
This was a zombie!
I tried to retreat, bumping against a tree. The zombie closed. I dodged. Rotted fists smashed into my chest, throwing me back. Pain shot through my body. I gasped. It lunged. I fled.
Numb with fear, I sprinted for the hill. I wasn’t thinking, wasn’t planning. Terror drove my every step. Something “clacked” in the darkness behind me, followed by a noise like whipped air. Something smacked into the tree in front of me. A feather-tipped, quivering stick. An arrow! Was the zombie armed? I hadn’t noticed. I just kept running.
Something red flashed to my right: a cluster of eyes followed by a clipped hiss. I scampered up the slope of the hill, glancing back only when I was at the summit. In the pale light of a rising square moon, I could see that the zombie was still coming. It was already at the bottom of the slope and beginning to climb up after me.
Throat closing in fright, I tore my way down the eastern cliff. I slipped, fell to the bottom, and heard a sickening crack.
“Rrrr,” I hissed as bolts of agony stabbed through my ankle.
Where to go? What to do? Should I jump back into the ocean and try to swim away? I froze at the edge of the blackened water. What if that squid was still out there, and what if it’d gotten hungry?
Another moan echoed across the starry night. I turned to see the zombie’s head poke over the top of the hill.
Frantically I looked for somewhere to go. Someplace to hide.
My eyes flicked back and forth, settling on the single block of earth I’d dug out earlier in the day. From it came the spark of a desperate idea. Digging!
As the zombie started down the slope, I ran to the cliff below it and furiously tore into the earth. One-two-three-four punches and the first block in front of me came away. One-two-three-four and the one behind it popped free.
I could hear the ghoul approaching, each groan growing louder. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. I cleared four earthen blocks right in front of me, two above and below. Just enough for me to squeeze into the space.
Deeper, my mind screamed. Get deeper!
And if fate could talk, it would have sneered and said, “You’re not going anywhere.”
My fists bounced off something cold and hard. I’d hit solid rock. A few pointless punches told me I was trapped, the monster barely seconds away.
I spun, saw the zombie, and set down a block of dirt between us. The ghoul reached over, smashing me in the chest. I flew back, hitting the stone cliff. Chest aching, gasping for breath, I jammed the second soil cube on top of the first.
Darkness fell. I was buried alive.
My tomb shut out light but not sound. Zombie moans still rang in my ears. What if it could dig? What if I’d only delayed death by seconds?
“Go away!” I shouted helplessly. “Please just leave me alone!”
Gagging growls answered.
“Please!” I pleaded.
Unfeeling, uncaring, unstoppable moans answered.
“Wake up,” I whispered. “I’ve gotta wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!”
In desperation I started jumping up and down, hitting my head against the ceiling, trying to jolt myself awake.
“WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP!”
I fell back against the stone wall, head throbbing, eyes burning, chest heaving in rapid, panicked sobs.
“Why?” I whimpered. “Why can’t I wake up?”
And just then the zombie barked a deep, violent groan. “Because it’s not a dream.”
No, the creature wasn’t talking to me. I’d put words in its decayed mouth, words that I knew I needed to hear.
“This isn’t a dream,” I imagined hearing from the mobile corpse, “and it’s not an injury or a hallucination. This is a real place, a real world, and you’re going to have to accept that to survive.”
“You’re right,” I said to the ghoul, knowing I was talking to myself but still thinking that talking to a dead guy was somehow saner. “This isn’t happening in my head. This is happening.”
The fragment of a half-remembered song floated through the fog of my amnesia. Something about finding yourself in a strange place. I couldn’t remember all the lyrics, but one stuck clearly in my mind:
You may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know how I got here or even where ‘here’ is. Another planet? Another dimension? I don’t know, but I know there�
�s no point in denying it anymore.”
And with that acceptance came this huge wave of calm, and with the calm came a new mantra.
“Panic drowns thought,” I told the zombie, “so it’s time to stop panicking and start figuring out how to survive.”
“What’s my next move?” I asked the darkness. Given that I was trapped, literally with my back to the wall, with a snarling corpse just a handful of dirt away, the options seemed pretty limited.
For a long while, I tried to just focus on my breathing, clearing my mind, letting the ideas flow. Ironically the first clear thought I had was that my breathing might be using up all my air.
How much did I have? Was I already suffocating? What did suffocation feel like? I tried to sense any changes in my body, any feelings that weren’t there before. And that’s when I noticed that all the pain from my injuries was gone. Both my head and ankle felt fine. My stomach, on the other hand, felt completely empty. I chomped down another apple, trying to make sense of what was happening.
Am I losing oxygen to the brain, I wondered, or did I just heal super fast? Seriously, am I a superhero? The thought gave me a sudden rush of hope.
The zombie groaned.
“Is that it?” I asked the ghoul. “Does this world give me hyper-healing, and do the apples, or any food, have something to do with it?”
Another noncommittal groan.
“You don’t have to answer,” I said. “I’ll figure everything out, because that’s what it takes to survive here, right? This is a whole new world with a whole new set of rules, like punching from a distance or a little bag that holds a lot of stuff.”
Deeper breathing brought greater calm, and greater calm brought clearer thinking. “I just need to figure out what’s what,” I stated matter-of-factly, “and I’ll do that as soon as I bust outta here!”
On cue, the zombie groaned back.
“And when I do, you’ll be waiting, so I’ll need some kind of weapon to defend myself. A club, or a spear, or—”
