Spawn Point Zero

by Nancy Osa

  “Midnight snack, anybody?” Turner called.

  The troopers ate on the move. They rode in pairs now, gnawing on rabbit parts and becoming talkative again as their food bars filled. Discussion turned to Frida’s latest discovery with Crash in the Beta caverns.

  “What would it take to mine every bit of gold from even one reach of that cave?” Frida mused. “I mean, you’d need some serious manpower. I don’t see how anyone could’ve done that without our knowing.”

  Turner said, “Only living soul I know could do it is that crazy sister of De Vries’s. Ever think of that?”

  Frida shot him a glare. “She’s on the level.”

  “If not her, though, then who?” Kim put in. “We have to ask ourselves if it’s somebody we know. Could it be an inside job?”

  The very thought made the captain queasy. The peace-loving cowboy wanted to think the best of people he met. Sure, he’d known his share of shifty types back in his old world. But this place . . . What with griefers and sorcerers and hostile mobs, the Overworld population leaned heavily toward characters who were less than truthful, or who’d just as soon kill you and take your stuff as say howdy. The healthy suspicion it took to evaluate folks’ motives was simply not in Rob’s toolbox.

  That was why he appreciated Frida’s survivalist skills. She made it her business to read people. “I know we went over this before, Vanguard. But now what do you think?” he asked her.

  Frida had signed off on the integrity of Crash and her brother soon after they’d signed on with Battalion Zero—as travelers, before the Beta project had begun. But things could change. “I still get the same good vibes from our team,” Frida said. “Maybe we ought to check up on the crew De Vries hired. He said he knew them from previous jobs, but what were they doing in the meantime?”

  Kim said, “Lady Craven could’ve bribed them, or threatened them.”

  “Or both,” Turner added. “That’s how I’d do it.”

  Frida turned to raise eyebrows at him.

  “Not that I would,” he said abruptly.

  It had been a long time since the sergeant had last tried to pad his inventory at the expense of his cavalry mates. Rob wondered if Turner’s dark side was resurfacing. Still, the virtuous commander preferred deduction to suspicion and did not rush to judgment.

  “A mole in camp would explain how somebody could plant that silverfish egg,” Rob reasoned. “Lots of people heard me order a supply trip over the hills.”

  “But De Vries’s construction crew was staying with him, in town,” Frida said. “And I don’t see how they would know about the gold strikes. Crash did all the mining on her own.”

  Turner grunted. “Bringin’ us back to my original point. Bet it’s her.”

  There was a pause. Nobody else wanted to think ill of the industrious miner.

  In the silence, Rob heard a rumbling behind him. He halted Saber and Rat, to make sure the sound wasn’t coming from the packhorse carts. He could make out distinct hoof beats. His body tensed.

  “Squadron! To arms!” He felt something sharp press into his neck.

  “Too late.”

  Rob knew that voice.

  “All o’ youse. Drop yer weapons.”

  Rob drew back to see a blade aimed at his throat. Two riders hustled up on horses to join his captor, who held him at saber-point from the back of her own mount. In the final shards of daylight, the captain picked out a woman’s sharp features.

  “Precious,” Rob said conversationally. “Fancy meeting you out here.”

  The troopers had halted and dropped their arms, but now Turner and Frida edged their horses toward Rob. They both recognized the rustler gang they’d run into twice before. A faint sound of bone clacking drifted through the darkening gloom, but the thieves were enjoying themselves and didn’t pay the signal any mind.

  Precious’s two goons trained modified crossbows on the group.

  “Git down,” the leader ordered. “We’ll be takin’ them ponies now.”

  Rob, thinking to distract the griefers, said, “Well, only one of them is really a pony.” He took his time dismounting. “Rat, here, is a hair too big. And you remember Norma Jean.” Kim and Rob had appropriated both animals from the gang at their first encounter. “She’s a horse-sized . . . mule.”

  Rob reached out and clapped the mule on the rump. Norma Jean opened her mouth wide and bellowed with a series of outraged brays, followed by one very large gaseous explosion.

  The smell and chaos covered the advance of a mixed band of skeletons and zombies, which had appeared suddenly and now attracted the bead of the rustlers’ crossbows. This gave the troopers a chance to lunge for their inventories, where extra arms were stashed.

  The melee that followed was a blur of moving targets as the combatants tried to decide which victim posed the greatest threat. Rob’s marksmen, however, were more experienced than Precious’s gang—and the skeletons and zombies were unable to multitask, let alone prioritize.

  The squadron let the rustlers waste ammunition on the hybrid mob while they silently checked in with one another. Rob eyed Turner and cocked his head at the rustlers. Then he motioned for Frida and Kim to fall back with him, where they would have more room to wield their bows.

  “Now!” he cried.

  Turner let fly two stone axes, one at each of the goon’s trigger fingers, sending their weapons sailing. Four skeletons fell on the disarmed men and killed them.

  Seeing this, Precious wheeled her horse and galloped off. The last standing zombie lurched after her. Rob, Frida, and Kim engaged the remaining skeletons with arrow fire, taking the odd hit but firing faster and more surely. One final skull dropped to the ground before the hoof beats of Precious’s horse and the zombie’s cries had faded away.

  “After her!” Rob yelled. “We can’t let her get away this time.”

  He and Kim left the pack train there. The four riders grabbed the weapons they’d dropped and lit out after the fleeing rustler, moonlight now glinting off the snowy ground to show the way. They followed the dark tracks in the snow at a flat-out run until, at last, they heard the sound of a galloping horse moving up ahead. Precious and her mount must have shaken the zombie.

  “She’s mine!” Turner called, urging Duff past Ocelot.

  Then Frida noticed the hoof tracks cut off to the left. “No, wait! Turner, don’t!”

  Before she could rein in Ocelot or warn the others, Turner and Duff suddenly dropped from sight. Saber, Ocelot, and Nightwind could not stop, and ran after them. Suddenly, Rob felt Saber fall out from under him. Then his own body tumbled forward, out of the saddle. It rolled through midair as though catapulted from a giant slingshot.

  The horrible memory of another unexpected fall—from thirty thousand feet and the comfort of his coach seat—flitted through his mind. Only, this time, his scream had company.

  Then the lights went out.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE HORSES’ MOVEMENTS JOSTLED ROB BACK TO consciousness. Something cold and wet filled his eyes and nose. He snorted along with the animals, which were getting to their feet. A quick pat down of his own arms and legs showed some fall damage, but the snowy landing must have minimized it.

  “Aaugh!”

  “Turner?” Rob couldn’t see much. A heavy bower of spruce trees sliced the moon’s rays to slivers.

  “Get off my foot, you knot-headed beast!” It sounded as though the sergeant had entangled himself with a horse.

  “S-squadron?”

  “Here, sir,” came Frida’s voice. This helped Rob distinguish her shape in the gloom.

  Kim checked in and struggled to stand nearby. Turner swore soundly at the pain. Rob heard the horses blowing and swaying restlessly, but there seemed to be nowhere for them to go. They had plunged into a hole of some type.

  “Vanguard! Can you get a look out?”

  “I’ll try,” Frida said, groping about in the dark for Ocelot to use as a step stool. But the mare’s saddle had turned “turtle�
� in the fall, and Frida’s snow-dampened hands could not work the girth straps to right it.

  “I’ll boost you up on Nightwind,” Kim offered. “He’s the tallest, anyway.”

  Frida shimmied into the stallion’s saddle and stood up, putting out her hands to feel for a ledge in front of her. She found purchase and pulled herself up a ways.

  “See anything?” Turner asked.

  “Seems to be a classic pit trap, folks. Broken spruce branches must’ve covered the top. It all caved in when Duff hit it.”

  “So, now it’s my fault,” the sergeant said defensively.

  “We ran at it blind,” Rob asserted. “Could’ve been any one of us.”

  Frida dropped down next to him. “It’s a good thing Jools didn’t build the trap, or we’d all be shish kebabs right now.”

  “Well, at least two of us would’ve respawned back in camp,” Kim said. “Doesn’t that give you food for thought?”

  Frida said nothing.

  “Ain’t you lot high and mighty?” Turner groused. “Bet you’re about to say you told me so, eh, Captain?”

  Rob hesitated. “I’d think a near-death experience would be all the telling you needed.”

  “Can we stop second-guessing things and work on getting out of here?” Frida said crossly.

  There was a rustling, and then a beam of light illuminated the pit. Rob saw Turner’s face in the glow of a yellow leather miner’s cap he was adjusting on his head.

  “I borrowed it,” Turner explained, catching Rob’s disapproving stare. “I’ll give it back.”

  “Sure you will.”

  In this case, though, they were all grateful for Turner’s light fingers. The headlamp allowed them to find the weapons they’d dropped and let Frida attend to Ocelot’s saddle.

  Kim surveyed their prison. “We could probably all climb out, but the horses’ll need help.”

  “’Fraid I’ll need some help, too,” Turner said. “Duff’s mangled up my foot somethin’ awful.”

  Rob winced. Getting stepped on was no fun. “Fortunately, you don’t need two feet to ride.”

  Kim returned to solving the problem at hand. “If the rest of us all move into one corner, someone can mine out a wall of snow blocks and stack ’em to form a ramp.”

  “I’ll do it,” Rob said. He borrowed a diamond axe from Turner and got started.

  The captain made short work of the wall and began stacking a sloping terrace that the animals could navigate. Meanwhile, in their corner, the horses stamped and fussed—but the three troopers holding them kept well away from their hooves. Then Ocelot’s head went up, and she gave a long, shrill whinny.

  As if in answer, low moans crescendoed: “Uuuuhh . . . ooohh . . . ooohh! Turner swung his headlamp up to reveal a line of zombie heads bobbing at the edge of the pit. A familiar stench drifted downward.

  Rob’s stomach tightened with fear. He had just built the zombies a staircase!

  The first two mobsters lurched down the ramp and took swipes at him.

  “Oof!”

  Before Rob could get to his sword, another set upon him and began gnawing on his arm. He screamed and backed away, but all three zombies clutched at him. Rob could see the flaps of their rotting flesh swinging back and forth, wafting the stink of death into the pit.

  Suddenly, Frida was there, silently slitting the feeding zombie’s throat. Rob shook his mauled arm to loose its clenched teeth, which rotted away to nothing.

  “Die! Die! Die!” yelled Kim, throwing herself at the other two monsters as she wielded a golden axe in each hand. She kept chopping even after they’d expired, turning their dropped potatoes into french fries.

  But in came another wave.

  “Get down!” yelled Turner, and the other three troopers dropped to the ground. With the frightened horses milling and half-rearing behind him, he knelt on his bad leg and sent arrow after arrow at the hideous foes, knocking off flesh until what little remained could no longer support their beings.

  The gruesome noise stopped.

  Again, the four troopers waited in shock, to be sure that the battle had ended.

  Rob slowly regained his footing. “Good shooting, Sergeant,” he said as Turner, exhausted, lost his balance and toppled over. Frida went to help him sit up against the snow wall.

  Kim did what she could to pacify the horses. Then, she threw Saber’s and Duff’s reins to Rob and motioned for him to follow her, Nightwind, and Ocelot up the snow ramp and out to level ground. Frida acted as a human crutch for the injured Turner, and soon the group had gathered at the edge of the pit trap, free once more.

  No one could afford a bout of food poisoning, so the zombies’ rotten flesh was left behind. As the horses nosed in the snow for hidden grass, Rob and the rest hungrily chewed on raw potato bits. This restored their health somewhat—they’d all sustained a lot of damage after the fall and zombie hits. But Rob knew they were still vulnerable. Another attack like that and he’d wish he had changed his spawn point when he’d had the chance.

  After the quick meal, Kim volunteered to go searching for Rat and Norma Jean while Rob and Turner rested.

  “I’ll go with you,” Frida said. She checked Ocelot’s girth one more time before getting back in the saddle, and the two young women rode off.

  Meanwhile, the sergeant and captain leaned up against two spruce trees, their bows and arrows handy. Turner rubbed his ankle. “Wish I could pull my boot off,” he complained.

  “Do that and you might never get it back on,” Rob said. “If only Jools were here with his brewing inventory. Or some milk. Then we could eat that pile of zombie flesh.”

  “Said the man who once caught a pufferfish in his teeth!” Turner was referring to the day they’d met Jools, when the cowboy was still a newbie and thought food poisoning would kill a healthy man.

  Rob chuckled. “Remember when I didn’t know the difference between a ghast and a magma cube?”

  Turner laughed. “I can’t believe you lived long enough to find out. Or stuck it out this long,” he said more seriously.

  Rob contemplated those early days. “I thought I’d find my way out of here in about two weeks. And yet, I’m still here.”

  “Now you’ve changed your spawn point, I reckon the Overworld’ll be your new address.”

  Rob didn’t reply.

  Turner squinted at him sideways. “You did . . . change your spawn point.”

  “Of course I did,” Rob said too vehemently.

  “Of course you did,” Turner said, and fell silent.

  *

  A short while later, the creaking of wheeled carts announced the girls’ return. Nightwind and his rider stepped into view, followed by Norma Jean and her string of carts. “Hello in camp!” called Kim. “We got ’em, Captain.”

  Frida, however, led an unencumbered Rat. They had found the packhorse sweaty and trailing a broken harness, his carts lying in pieces along the path. Kim sorted through the wreckage, which they’d tossed into the mule’s wagon. “If you all can wait, I think I can fix these,” she said.

  While Kim worked, the other troopers hung out, idly chatting and occasionally swatting at spiders that crawled or jumped by. The first soft rays of sunlight eased through the tree cover as the repairs were finished. Rob noticed that he wasn’t even tired.

  I’m getting used to not needing sleep, he thought, and then grimaced. What he needed to do was sleep in a bed—and not just to get his beauty rest. Deceiving his troops was about as low as he could go. “Mount up!” he ordered. The sooner they picked up their groceries, the sooner he could make amends.

  With the sun rising and their food bars stabilized, the players and their equine friends found new energy. They made good time, soon reaching the “three corners” point where the cold taiga met mountain and mega taigas, a short distance from their destination. Rob couldn’t help but climb down from Saber and play with the biome boundaries.

  “Look! I’m in the cold taiga. No, wait! The mega taiga.” He lay
down on the spot. “I’m in three biomes at once. . . .”

  The others tolerated his antics, glad to see their captain in a better mood.

  Once they crossed into the hilly savanna, the landscape came alive with grazing animals. Pigs and chickens trotted by. Rabbits pulled at grass and stared at the horses and riders. Loose herds of cows and sheep appeared to be waiting for something to happen.

  Turner, mounted on Duff with his foot hanging out of the stirrup, dropped his reins and drew a weapon in each hand. “Let’s get busy, folks!” he said, urging his horse forward at a canter. The peaceful cattle in his path didn’t see him as a threat. His iron sword and diamond axe flashed like sushi knives until four cows had become ingredients for four cowhide rugs and a stack of steaks.

  Meanwhile, Frida launched Ocelot at a flock of sheep. Her quick swordplay reduced them to mutton, and spun and knit their wool into darling scarves, which she distributed among her friends.

  “I got a pink one!” Turner cooed, getting a jealous look from Kim.

  Rob and Kim took breaks from leading the pack animals to stalk and kill mobs of chickens and pigs that came close. “Leave the babies!” Kim said, knowing they wouldn’t drop anything edible until they were more fully grown.

  Their inventories bursting, the troopers ceased hunting and headed across the boundary into the plains. They found Swale’s old farm and traded a dozen emeralds for huge stacks of wheat, which they piled into some of the empty wagons. Then the group set out for the flower forest, just over the border, where the pumpkin farmer lived.

  Revisiting places he’d been before drove home to Rob how familiar the Overworld was becoming. Not so long ago it had all been the great unknown. Now, he was looking up “old” friends—or, at least, folks who weren’t complete strangers.

  “Welcome! You’re back!” The wizened woman who ran the pumpkin operation seemed starved for company. They found her in the fields, dressed in the same soiled green coveralls and orange, wide-brimmed sun hat. A string of pumpkin seeds around her neck might have been her lunch. “What can I do for you today?” she asked. It was the same sweet reception she’d given them before.