The Battle of Zombie Hill: Defenders of the Overworld #1
CHAPTER 1 One moment Rob was leafing through the in-flight magazine glad to be returning home to the ranch and the next he was falling Something had gone terribly wrong with the plane But where was he now And where were the other passengers Although he had never fallen from thirty thousand feet before that was clearly what was happening I should be more afraid he thought as he plum meted through the spotty cloud cover The land below unfolded like a map blue ocean bordered by white sand a stripe of green trees And beyond swaths of open meadow broken by rock formations His face dampened as he caught the tail end of a rainstorm and then instantly dried as he dropped through the atmosphere heading for the ever-looming landscape 1
2 below He was going to fall into the chunky waves he realized Suddenly debilitating fear knifed through him Gravity drew his body downward at a speed he had never experienced before even at the fastest gallop His desperate screams disintegrated into thin air perhaps because there was no one else to hear them As the shifting blue floor rose up to swallow him Rob felt rather than heard the all-encompassing splash Down down down he plunged his brain churning up a final if useless thought Travel ain’t all it’s cracked up to be Wicked fear the impact and a lack of oxygen had caused Rob to blackout but it couldn’t have been for long When next he was aware of his body he was still underwater surprised to be alive That shock activated his arms and legs and he began kicking and flail ing his way back to the surface Something brushed against his rib cage and he felt a long gelatinous body swipe past What the heck was that he wondered then answered his own question with a vague memory from science class a squid The next thing Rob knew he had popped above the churning waterline and was coughing and gulping Nancy Osa
3 in air He couldn’t pause to concentrate on breathing though As soon as he stopped kicking he began to sink Instinctively he resumed swimming hauling in ragged breaths until his heart stopped feeling like an exploding boulder Through watery eyes he peered in all directions seeing nothing but rolling blocks of liq uid He figured he had two choices panic or don’t He summoned up the worst scenario he had ever faced riding a bucking bronco through a nest of rattlesnakes and decided to do now what he had done then Just stay alive he told himself Best focus on the job at hand Rob rolled over and noted the position of the sun in the sky resolving to swim in the opposite direc tion until he found help He had lost his cowboy hat and boots but still wore his chaps shirt and vest which now clung to his body Funny this water seems warm too No just not cold At least hypothermia wouldn’t add to his woes He continued to make his way through the tepid waves away from the sun which was just past its high point in the sky Minute after minute he pushed himself on Every now and then he flipped over to rest on his back for a count of ten then resumed his slow but steady prog ress But progress toward what Anything at all He wondered if there were sharks stingrays or other animal mobs in this version of the world The Battle of Zombie Hill
