“I hope this works,” said Morgan. He placed the pumpkin on top of the iron.
Their new creation came to life immediately.
Jodi gasped. “What is that thing?” she asked.
Morgan and Harper had created a tall, intimidating figure. It was iron-gray, with long, powerful arms and soulful red eyes.
“It’s an iron golem,” said Morgan. “It’ll fight off the hostile mobs. It’s on our side!”
“And just in time,” Harper said, noting the low sun. “We’d better get into position.”
* * *
They stood in a row at the foot of the mountain. Although she was an avatar and none of them needed to drink in the game, Jodi could swear her mouth went dry.
“Get ready,” her brother said. “They’re coming.”
He was right. The sun had barely set, and already a group of zombies had crested the mountaintop. There were at least a half dozen of them, and more appearing every few seconds.
“The golem’s up first,” said Harper. “Stand back and let it work, people.”
As soon as a zombie was in range, the golem moved forward and attacked. It swung its arms up, launching the zombie into the air.
“Ha!” Po said. “Look at ’im fly.”
Within moments, the golem had waded fully into the swarm of monsters. Every few seconds, another zombie went flying.
But there were too many. The golem wouldn’t last forever.
“All right,” said Morgan. “Let’s show these mobs how we play.”
* * *
When morning came, Jodi breathed a sigh of relief.
It had been a long and grueling night. But they had survived it.
She watched as the last of the mobs disappeared into the trees. Caught in the sunlight, a surviving zombie burst into flame! She chuckled at the sight.
It was hard to feel too triumphant, however. The village had been thoroughly wrecked. Doors had been broken open. Two houses were missing chunks of their walls thanks to creeper explosions. Arrows were sticking out of every surface. And the village’s crops had been trampled.
“That’s right!” Po called after the retreating mobs. “Flee!” He had dressed like a Viking warrior for the battle. “My berserker fury is satisfied at last.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” said Morgan. “But I don’t know how we can survive another night like that.” He held up a wooden pickaxe. “My sword shattered midway through the attack. I’ve been fighting with this thing!”
Harper shook her head. “If only we’d been able to enchant some of our gear. Maybe next time…”
“Does there need to be a next time?” asked Jodi. “Maybe we should just move on.”
“And leave the villagers?” asked Ash.
“Maybe,” Jodi said. “I don’t know! I wouldn’t abandon real people. But they’re not real. Are they?”
“They’re as real as Beau and Beep,” said Ash.
Jodi sighed. “I guess so.”
“And anyway,” Morgan added, “I’d like to get to the bottom of this. It’s not…well…It’s not normal, is it?” He sighed. “I still don’t believe that those bats came from the game. But there is enough weird stuff happening here that we have to imagine it’s possible. We need more information.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” said Ash. “Look at what happened to the crops. I know some of the updated beast mobs can trample crops, but I’ve never seen a zombie mob ruin farmland before.”
“Me neither,” said Morgan. “But I’ve read about it happening. In the first editions of Minecraft, all mobs could trample crops.”
Harper looked up. “We noticed the villagers were out-of-date, too. Are we in the original version of the game?”
“No.” Morgan shook his head. “Everything else seems up-to-date. I suppose it could be a mod.”
“Mod?” asked Jodi.
“It’s short for modification,” explained Ash. “Programmers can change aspects of the game with mods. It’s not too complicated. But who would change a detail like that? And why?”
“Or…,” said Harper. “Is this the sort of glitch Doc Culpepper warned us about?”
“Hard to say.” Morgan shrugged. “Like I said, I want to stick around here and learn more.”
“Aye!” cried Po with gusto. “My blade hungers for zombie flesh!”
“I’m almost hungry enough to agree,” said Jodi. “But I’ll settle for apples. Again.”
“And then we need more iron,” said Harper. “I have a feeling we’ll be going through more swords before this is over.”
Ash removed her goggles. They’d been in the game for a whole day and night, but very little real time had passed. Ms. Minerva was in the nearby office. Ash could just make out her curly hair on the other side of the windows. Knowing the teacher, she was probably absorbed in a book. Ms. Minerva was a creature of habit.
So were bats. Weren’t they? Ash had been giving the school’s strange infestation some thought.
“There must be a reason the bats are here,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
Po replaced his pair of goggles on their peg. “Taco Tuesday?” he suggested.
“I don’t think they’re here for the cafeteria food,” Harper said. “Although you might be onto something. Maybe there are a lot of tasty mosquitoes in the area?”
Ash looked at the clock. She had an hour before she had to be home for dinner. “Are you all free for a little longer?” she asked. “I want to do some investigating. Maybe see this park that Morgan mentioned.” She tapped her Supersleuth Scout badge.
“I’m in,” said Jodi. “But first I need a snack that isn’t a digital apple.”
“Tacos!” said Po.
* * *
Ash hadn’t been to the park yet since moving to town, but she’d heard it was a great place to spend a weekend afternoon. She was expecting endless fields of grass, flowers of every color, and a pond where ducklings swam in little rows.
She was not expecting a giant bulldozer and a crane. The construction vehicles stood at the edge of the park, right beside a densely wooded area. A large section of trees had already been cleared.
“How long has that been going on?” she asked.
“It must be new,” said Morgan. “I was here a few weeks ago. That area was nothing but trees.”
“Let’s check it out,” suggested Harper.
“Can someone push me, though?” asked Po. “This grass is killer to wheel over.”
“I gotcha,” said Jodi.
They made their way over to the construction vehicles. There was a long chain-link fence blocking off the area. The trees were gone, and the ground was a mess of dirt and broken roots.
“Wow, just look at this section of the park,” said Morgan. “They made a real mess.”
“It’s a shame,” said an old man. He was seated on a park bench with a newspaper in his lap and a sleeping pug at his feet. “I come here every night to watch the bats, but now they’re gone.”
Ash’s heart sped up. “Did you say bats?”
“That’s right.” The man nodded. “You wouldn’t even know they were here during the day, but they filled the trees. At dusk, they’d all wake up and fly off to find dinner. Sometimes a hundred of them took flight all at once. It was a spectacular sight.” He sighed. “I’m sure the condominiums they’re building will be just as beautiful. Not!” Then he returned to his newspaper.
“So that’s what happened,” said Harper. She grew more excited as her mind raced. “That’s why the bats are in our school. Their habitat was destroyed.”
“We have to stop the construction!” said Jodi. “Maybe if we explained the problem to the construction workers…?”
“It’s too late,” Po said sadly. “Look at it. The damage has
already been done.”
“Their home is just…gone,” said Morgan.
Ash was stricken with sadness at the thought. Not even the sight of a sleeping pug could cheer her up.
Po got to school early the next day. He figured that would be his best opportunity to talk to Ms. Minerva.
He found her in homeroom and told her all about the park and the bulldozed habitat. The explanation was obvious: the bats had nowhere else to go!
“That’s why they’re here,” he finished. “It’s not the bats’ fault. They probably don’t even really want to be here. They just needed to find someplace to sleep during the day.”
Ms. Minerva smiled at him. But it was a small, sad smile.
“I’m impressed that you and your friends were able to learn all this,” she said. “And I’m impressed with your compassion for the bats. But this doesn’t really change anything, Po. Regardless of why the bats are here, they are here. And we need them to not be here anymore.”
“But…,” Po began. He didn’t know what else to say. He’d already made his argument.
“I’m sorry, Po,” said Ms. Minerva. “The exterminator will be here tomorrow. And there’s nothing you or I can do to stop him.”
* * *
“I just can’t believe it,” Po said later. They were in Minecraft, preparing for another siege. He had taken the form of a construction worker. “I refuse to accept there’s nothing we can do.”
“I know, buddy,” said Morgan. “I want to stop the zombies from attacking, too.”
“I’m not talking about the zombies,” Po said. “I’m talking about the bats! You know, real life?”
“Oh, uh, sorry,” Morgan said. If they could blush in the game, Po thought Morgan probably would blush now.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Po said. “I’m just frustrated that learning the truth about the bats didn’t help anything.”
“Wait a minute,” Harper said. She put away her pickaxe and went still.
“Uh, Harper?” said Po. “Is everything all right?”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
“Are you…thinking about pizza?” he asked.
She gave him a look.
“Is that a no?” he asked.
Harper shook her head. “No. I’m thinking: What if the bat problem and the zombie problem are the same problem?”
Ash narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Think about it,” Harper said. “We keep saying that the monsters are attacking the village. But are they really? They trample the stuff in their path. They fight us when we stand in their way. But otherwise?”
Ash nodded slowly. “Remember the night we hid in the library? They just walked right through town and into the woods on the other side, didn’t they?”
“So did the ones who got past us last night,” said Jodi. “They ran off into those same woods.”
Po’s mind reeled at what they were saying. “You think the zombies and skeletons are…relocating? Like, they’re moving from one habitat to another?” he asked.
“I think maybe they are,” said Harper. “They’re relocating from the mountain to the forest. And the village happens to be right in their way.”
“Oh man,” Morgan said. He hopped in place. “If that’s true, then we’re not helping the village when we fight the mobs. We’re making things worse!”
“But knowing what we know now, we can make it better,” said Harper.
“Finally,” said Po. “A problem we can actually solve! But, uh, how do we do that?”
“We stop fighting the monsters,” said Harper, “and we start helping them instead.”
Just as they’d done the night before, the kids worked through the daylight hours to prepare for the nighttime siege. But this time, Harper led them in a different kind of preparation. This time, they had to build.
They started with a bridge—a wide, floating walkway that began at the mountain’s peak and went right over the village. They had a lot of “junk” material left over from digging for iron the night before—dirt and several varieties of stone. They used it all now. Harper decided the bridge should have a high ledge so that falling from it would be less likely. The last thing they needed was for zombies to take the bridge and then fall right off it. She imagined the chaos of zombies plummeting onto the village like hail.
An engineer imagined problems like that, then worked to avoid them.
The bridge was a good start. But they couldn’t possibly make it large enough to divert every mob.
So they dug a tunnel. It led from the foot of the mountain, under the village, and into the woods beyond. With any luck, most of the mobs that missed the bridge would end up in the tunnel.
Finally, for any strays, they dug a trench around the village. It was deep at the front but became shallow near the rear. Any mobs that fell into it wouldn’t be trapped. But they wouldn’t be able to jump out until they’d bypassed the village.
Even working together, it was a lot to do. They barely finished before the sun went down.
“It’s not the prettiest bridge I’ve ever seen,” said Po.
“It doesn’t need to be pretty,” said Harper. “It only has to work.” Please let it work!
“So what do we do now?” Jodi asked.
“We get out of the way,” said Harper. “Our presence could mess everything up. If they see us, the mobs might still come after us.”
“Back to the village library, then,” said Morgan. “To hope for the best.”
“And to talk about our other problem,” said Ash. “The real-world one.” She grinned. “Because I think Harper’s solution here might help us save those bats, too.”
“Harper, you’re a genius,” Ash said as soon as they were back in the real world. “I’m so glad that worked!”
Harper smiled bashfully. “I’m glad, too.”
The plan had been a perfect success. Though they waited near the library’s window throughout the night, not a single mob came into view. The zombies had definitely been out there. Their groans had been audible in the distance. But the zombies steered clear of the village. The crops and houses remained untouched.
“I hope our next plan works just as well as the last one,” said Po.
Morgan pointed to the clock. “It’s almost dusk. The bats will be leaving the school soon.”
“And Ash’s Wildling Scout troop is meeting in the gym in half an hour,” said Jodi. “Ash, are you sure we’re allowed to come with you?”
“I’ll explain everything to my troop leader,” said Ash. “I’m sure I can convince him to hear us out. But we’ll need all the scouts to agree to help us. Otherwise, I don’t think we’ll get this done in time.”
“We’ll call our parents and let them know what we’re up to,” said Morgan. “We should get a teacher’s permission, too.”
Po pointed to where Ms. Minerva was visible through the window as the teacher stood and stretched. “I know who to ask,” he said.
* * *
Half an hour later, Ash stood at the head of a crowded table. She rubbed her Awesome Orator badge for luck.
“Hey, everybody,” she said. “I’m sorry to take over our meeting like this. Especially because I’m new here. But I could really use some help.” She gestured toward Morgan, Jodi, Harper, and Po, who were lined up just behind her. “We could use your help,” she amended. “How many of you are students here at Woodsword?”
A few of the scouts raised their hands. “All right,” said Ash. “Well, for those of you who don’t go here, let me tell you: It’s been an unusual week. Our school has been totally overrun by bats. They’ve been sleeping in the gymnasium’s rafters.”
Everyone looked up at the ceiling.
“Don’t worry. They’re not here now. The s
un has set, so they’re all out hunting. They eat mosquitoes and gnats. They’re actually quite helpful!” She rubbed her badge again. “Despite that, they’re not exactly welcome in a school. So while they’re away, I’m hoping you all can find the little cracks and holes they’re using to come and go. If you can fill those holes tonight, they won’t be able to get back into the school at dawn.”
One of the scouts raised her hand. “But where will the bats go then?” said the girl. “Doesn’t that just make them someone else’s problem?”
“Good questions,” said Ash. She nodded at her friends. “Just leave that part to us.”
Po was at school on Saturday morning. Saturday! Not only that, but he was excited to be there. If someone had predicted that a few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have believed it.
But he wouldn’t miss what happened next for anything.
As he rolled up, he could see that his friends were there, too. They were hanging out on the sidewalk when a van pulled up to the front of the school. The vehicle was decorated with images of bats, bugs, and mice. All the creatures were covered with big red slashes.
Ms. Minerva came out of the school building. She saw Po and the others and gave them a big thumbs-up. Then she turned toward the exterminator as he shuffled forward. He moved slowly under all his heavy gear.
Night of the Bats! (Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles #2) Page 4