The Battle of Zombie Hill

by Nancy Osa

  Turner ignored him. “As far as ammunition goes,” he picked up where he’d left off, “we’ve got a long way to go. We could stand to fill our TNT inventories. I’ma work on as many arrows as I can between now and . . . doomsday.”

  Rob flinched. “I’ll pitch in and help,” he offered, nodding at the stack in progress.

  The weapons expert gave him a disparaging glance. “Thanks, but no thanks, Newbie—I mean, Cap’n. Well, you can set to crafting bows, if you like, but leave the other to me.” He picked up a stick from a stack next to him and flexed it. “A bow is basically a bent stick, but an arrow, well. . . .” He retrieved an arrow from those he had been working on and eyed it admiringly. “An arrow is a work of art.”

  Again, relief and confidence flooded Rob. Turner would be working for their side. Still, the day’s chores had ratcheted the stress level in camp up a notch. Although nobody mentioned it, everyone was silently thinking about their next move. When would they make it? How tough would it be? And would it be successful?

  No one really wanted to know the answers.

  As they sat around the campfire working on their pet projects, Kim suddenly chirped, “Great news, Battalion Zero!” She checked the screen on her laptop and smiled. “Aswan came through. One of his traders has the coordinates to a Nether fortress where we can find Colonel M.”

  “Wow!” Frida said. “How does he survive in the Nether?”

  Jools knew the answer. “He—or whatever he uses as a skin if he no longer has a body—rides the most awesome steed in all the Overworld. Or the underworld, for that matter.” He gave Rob a meaningful stare. “It’s said that Nightwind can outrun even the devil himself.”

  CHAPTER 10

  ROB WAS IMPRESSED. THIS COLONEL M WAS A legendary cavalryman—just what they needed to help them devise a rock-solid battle plan.

  “There’s just one problem,” Kim said, tapping her computer. “The trader said the colonel isn’t . . . receiving visitors right now.”

  Turner blew out a breath. “So? We’ll go down there and knock on his virtual door. Can’t nobody get thrown out of the Nether.”

  “Perhaps because only an imbecile would willingly spend any time there—other than the colonel, of course,” Jools said.

  “True,” Stormie put in. “But it rocks as a transportation portal. Before I met y’all, I was considering using it myself to avoid Overworld boundary skirmishes.”

  “It’s not exactly a place where you can put your feet up and relax, though,” Frida explained to Rob.

  “How come?” he asked uneasily.

  “Raging lava falls,” Turner pointed out.

  “And where there’s lava, there’s blaze mobs,” Jools said.

  “Ghasts,” Stormie spat out. “They’ll blow you to kingdom come.”

  “And don’t forget the zombie pigmen!” Kim added.

  Rob’s eyes widened. “Z-zombie pig—what?”

  “You heard right.” Kim nodded. “And zombie pigmen could care less about lava.”

  Rob’s head was spinning. Those all sounded like formidable opponents. He tried to put on a brave face. “Well, at least there aren’t skeletons! That’s a relief.” He chuckled weakly.

  “Oh, there are,” Kim said. “Wither skeletons. Tons of ’em.”

  Frida noticed Rob’s baffled expression. “Captain. Sounds like you need an overview. Okay. Nether 101.”

  She launched into a description of Colonel M’s adopted home. In the underworld, time stood still and maps were of little use. The netherrack terrain was sharp, uneven, and full of holes and trenches. Although traversing it would get you farther along than you could go up on the world surface, netherrack was extremely difficult to navigate. Certain horses and mules might handle it better than human players, though.

  “Beckett, for instance, can hold his own,” Jools said of his sure-footed horse.

  “With a potion of swiftness,” Stormie put in, “because you’ll probably have to flee from super-fast moving mobs and lava flows.”

  Turner laced his fingers together and stretched his hands over his head. “And I hope you like fire,” he said.

  “Who doesn’t?” Rob replied faintly.

  “Fires generate spontaneously,” Turner went on. “Pow! Then there’s things that set you on fire: lava lakes, blazes, magma cubes. . . .”

  “Ugh.” Jools shivered. “Those fire slimes.”

  “Doesn’t sound too hospitable,” Rob concluded. “So, why would anyone move to the Nether?”

  Turner’s eyes lit up. “Loot! Big time.”

  Frida scowled at this evidence of her mercenary friend’s one-track mind. “Or, in Colonel M’s case, no pesky neighbors. The man probably got fed up with the state of the Overworld after all his hard work in the First War.”

  Rob took this in soberly. If Colonel M had given up on the Overworld, what chance did they have of regaining the peace? Then again, the Nether didn’t sound all that hot, either. Or maybe too hot. “Are you sure this Nether isn’t home to fire-breathing dragons?” he asked.

  Jools stared at him like he was crazy. “You’re thinking of the End. That’s where the Ender Dragon lives.”

  Stormie put a hand on Rob’s elbow. “But don’t worry. They don’t breathe fire.”

  “Yeah, just acid,” Turner put in. “But that don’t concern you. I’d say your biggest worry in the Nether ain’t whether you’re gonna burn up, but how.”

  This seeped into Rob’s consciousness like cement into foam rubber. Forget spiders and the pitch-dark; a flaming underworld was definitely something he was afraid of.

  And in no way could he admit that to this group.

  *

  The captain of Battalion Zero sidestepped his fears by focusing on practical matters instead. “We can’t afford the time and resources it would take to visit the Nether,” he informed the players. “Besides getting there and risking manpower and horses, we’d still have to persuade Colonel M that our cause is worthy. And that’s a long shot.”

  Kim’s face fell. Frida, Stormie, and Turner seemed just as disheartened. Only Jools looked pleased.

  “That’s not to say we won’t consult him in the future,” Rob assured them, crossing his fingers behind his back.

  This appeared to restore Stormie’s faith in him. “I get it. Keep him in your hip pocket,” she said. “Like an old boyfriend. Or a secret weapon.”

  “Yeah. A secret weapon,” Rob echoed, thinking how badly they needed one—but one that might not cost them so much to acquire.

  In the next few days, the troopers worked on their training and filling their supply slots. At the next drill Rob showed them how to bombproof their horses.

  “Ya mean, so creepers can’t damage ’em?” Turner asked.

  Rob regarded him with amusement. “It’s an expression. Means that nothing can scare them.” He walked down the line of horses and soldiers. “I’ve noticed that these animals are used to seeing zombies and other nonanimal and nonhuman mobs. But what happens if they have to brush up against them? Or charge them?”

  Stormie understood. “Armor’s brave, but he’s not that brave,” she said.

  So they spent some time desensitizing the horses to uncommon things that they might experience. Rob put skeleton bones in a sack and shook them to make noise as he made his way around the arena. Stormie set off small charges from her TNT cannon as the horses trotted past. Frida got down off of Ocelot and put some meat that had been out in the sun too long in her pockets, then impersonated a zombie’s staggering walk and guttural wail.

  “We know horses can see green,” Rob informed the group, motioning at Frida and the skin color she shared with zombies. “That’s how they can spot grass when they’re too far away to smell it.”

  Frida’s impersonation was so accurate that Ocelot whirled around, resisting, when she tried to remount.

  “It’s working!” Rob shouted. He knew that they wanted to initiate the behavior they were trying to eliminate in horses, or the de-s
pooking would never take. So he had her attempt to mount all the other horses, Saber included.

  In the drills that followed, they practiced skirmishing from horseback as well as dismounting and fighting on foot. Turner and the others found the full-length bows too clumsy to handle from the saddle.

  “I can modify these,” the weapons expert said. Sure enough, the next day, he provided shorter bows that he’d reinforced with cave spider webbing. They were both strong and easy to maneuver over their horses’ withers, allowing the soldiers to shoot from either side.

  “I reckon we’ve learned everything we need to know to take Dr. Dirt’s army,” Turner said after they’d become adept at hitting targets from horseback.

  “It’s a start,” Rob told him. “Now we’ve got to practice working as a team.”

  This would be difficult for everybody. If there was one thing each battalion member shared, it was a self-sufficient streak. It was what allowed them to survive: Kim, alone on the plains at her ranch; Jools, a mastermind among warmongers; Frida, Stormie, and Turner, each bent on a solitary quest for personal gain. Their independence was their greatest strength . . . and their greatest weakness. “In battle,” Rob explained, “acting together makes the unit stronger than any one player. That’s why you see a line of cavalry soldiers charging abreast, not in single file.”

  “Lots more effective,” Jools agreed.

  “Considering we’d have a girl in front,” Turner commented.

  “Can it, Meat,” Stormie warned him.

  He looked her over. “Wish I could,” he quipped.

  Frida hauled off and hit him in the jaw.

  “I’m glad you demonstrated that, Vanguard,” Rob said, holding back a laugh as Turner rubbed his face. “It’s time for hand-to-hand practice. And all we’ve got to practice on is each other.”

  The suggestion was not completely out of line. Frida and Turner had long been sparring partners, and the rest had experienced plenty of melee attacks. In a short time, they were paired off and throwing each other around the arena, pulling no punches. Jools had set up a healing station with various helpful potions and some snacks, which would help strengthen their health bars.

  At last Rob stood back and watched his troops display real skill, on and off their horses. On the ground, they could thrust and parry, feint and lunge, and just plain fight dirty with their teeth if they had to. Mounted, the group could now ride at the same speed in the same direction. They rode boot to boot, without leaving enough space between each other for enemy combatants to attack. They could move their line forward, turn as one, and stop on command—this last one, an important detail. Although he wished he could draw this training out forever, Rob couldn’t deny that Battalion Zero was about as ready as it would ever be to hit the front lines.

  Kim teleported over and nudged him. “Looks good, huh, Captain?”

  He nodded.

  But would good be good enough?

  *

  Rob and his advisers, Jools and Stormie, agreed that their first advance on Dr. Dirt and company would be close to camp, allowing for a quick retreat. “Or a quick victory party,” Stormie remarked.

  Their vanguard had identified a mountainous roofed forest to the northeast where the mesa and savanna intersected. “The cliffs on one side will be too tall for skeletons to scale, but our sure-footed horses can use them as a last-resort getaway,” Frida had said.

  Jools liked that the light level beneath the dense canopy would be low enough for them to strike during the day, when they could fight fresh. “Dirt’s mobs will have the advantage at night,” he mentioned. “And we’ll have the option to retreat to the desert due south of there, bringing them out into sunlight.” He eyed Stormie and Rob. “I’ve run it through my probability calculator. It gives us an 85 percent chance of winning.”

  Rob sucked in a breath. “Or a 15 percent chance of losing.”

  “What about a tie?” Stormie joked, trying to keep things light.

  As they worked up a strategy, Turner, Frida, and Kim undertook the dangerous side trip of capturing and taming some wolves. They faded into the flatland forest just east of their mesa camp, planning to either go undetected by mobs or to subdue them if their numbers were small. The wolves would help them attack Dirt’s skelemobs and hunt down witches, which dropped valuable gunpowder. Their TNT stores were extremely low, and it would take as much gunpowder as they could secure to make more TNT to charge their cannon.

  These tasks were accomplished in a few days. Kim’s deftness at charming animals, plus a few skeleton bones they’d picked up, netted them two loyal wolves, which they named Thing 1 and Thing 2. The group located three witch huts in the swampland at the other edge of the forest, and Frida’s and Turner’s exceptional aim with bow and arrow allowed them to kill two dozen witches without getting close enough to be popped by their splash potions.

  When the three troopers returned to camp, their spirits were high.

  “We are unstoppable!” Turner declared.

  “Then you go fight Dirt’s army,” Jools suggested. “I’ll stay here and play games on my computer.”

  Rob did not take this jest well. “You’ll pack our supply chests to the battlefront as planned, Quartermaster.” He threw Jools a bone. “You can keep a wolf with you on guard until we need it, though.”

  Jools approved of this idea and so did Thing 1. He’d bounded up to beg for the skeleton rib. “Nice doggie,” Jools said, patting the silver-brown wolf’s head.

  Stormie spent the rest of the day crafting TNT, while the others polished armor and horse tack and washed up in the stream. “I run a clean unit,” Rob proclaimed, believing the account he had read in an old war manual that a well-turned-out battalion was more fearsome in the enemies’ eyes.

  At last there was nothing more to be done than get a good night’s sleep before mounting their attack the next day. Rob wasn’t one for prayer, but he did believe in the support of a good friend. He went to visit Saber in the horse enclosure before climbing into his bedroll.

  Saber stood with his head drooping, somewhere between dozing and waking.

  “Well, buddy. Tomorrow’s the big day,” Rob said.

  Saber swished his tail.

  “All I ask is that you watch where you put your feet and follow your heart over every jump.”

  The horse shivered to shake off a modified fly. Then Saber nuzzled Rob’s shoulder.

  “I will, too, Saber. I will, too.”

  With that, the castaway cowboy-turned-cavalry commander headed for bed . . . but not for sleep.

  *

  No one said more than absolutely necessary the next morning as they made ready to leave camp. Armored, loaded, and mounted, Battalion Zero moved out, with Kim riding behind Rob on Saber to ensure she wouldn’t be left behind.

  Their plan was to cross the mountainous border, which would likely be undefended, and then overtake the enemy inside the roofed forest near its eastern flank. The horses obliged, taking them over the mesa’s high points between hoodoos and dropping into the mountain steps, with the two wolves trotting alongside.

  “I feel like a sitting duck,” Turner mumbled as they descended the rock terrace, easily visible from the forest cover below.

  “And so you are,” Jools said. “This is where Kim and I get off.” They would fall back with the extra supplies and horse equipment, and this would be the rendezvous point after . . . whatever happened.

  Thing 1 sat down next to Jools and Beckett, his tongue hanging out and tail wagging.

  Kim slid off Saber and raised a fist. “Go get ’em, Bat Zero!”

  “Tally ho!” Stormie called, and she led the rest of the riders and the second wolf into the unknown.

  At first they heard and saw nothing down in the dark confines of the forest, which offered glimpses only through rare pockets of sparse foliage. As they approached, however, they heard the low moans of zombies and, later, the distinctive jangle of bones.

  “Dirt won’t risk a fire in tha
t closed-in forest,” Frida whispered. “So no creepers. We’ve got that going for us.”

  Rob knew they were as prepared as they could be to ward off zombie and skeleton attacks. He itched under his iron chest plate, and then was glad for the distraction. This caused him to be a hair late in drawing his bow.

  Ka-chang! An arrow glanced off his armor just as the riders hit the forest floor.

  “Ready, battalion!” he cried, wildly searching for the attacker. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the gloom. Thang! Prang! Th-oop! Arrows sailed all around him, and the sound of jittering bones grew louder.

  “Forward, march . . . charge!”

  Turner and Stormie fitted arrows to bows. Frida set Thing 2 loose. Together they rode forward, but immediately the trees in their path broke up their ranks. Rob urged Saber around one oak and then forward, and they leapt a giant mushroom, straight at a pair of armored skeletons.

  Rob could barely swallow. His shot at a skull missed by a foot, but his next arrow went straight through the fiend’s armor and killed it. “Sweet!” he yelled, then felt an arrow pierce his hand.

  “Lucky shot,” Turner growled as Duff took him past, struggling to clear the underbrush.

  Stormie and Frida had gotten hung up behind some rosebushes that their horses couldn’t jump, but the thorny barrier offered some cover. They rained down arrows on the advancing line of skeletons, picking off several but receiving nonfatal hits themselves.

  Poor Duff had backed himself and his rider into a corner of oak trees and mushrooms, with a knot of zombies coming their way. Turner jumped down and drew his iron sword, sending green zombie limbs flying in all directions. He could only slash so fast, though, and two of the zombies caught him with the wooden axes they carried.

  Rob could still shoot, despite the pain in his hand. He and Saber twisted and turned through the trees and rode up to defend Turner.

  “I’ll cover you while you get back on Duff!” Rob shouted.

  But he could not hold off the half-dozen skeletons, which had no difficulty leaping tangled brush to get within firing range.