The Battle of Zombie Hill: Defenders of the Overworld #1
4 Would there be dry land a boat or some other form of rescue As recent events had reminded him he would only find out what came next by encountering it Stroke after stroke Rob cut through the ocean chunks thoughts of his home on the range spurring him on The water gradually cooled as day slipped toward dusk and he wondered if he would have to spend the night at sea cold hungry and tired Could he survive that Can’t never could do anything he muttered He resolved to stay positive no matter how bleak the horizon might look He rolled over onto his back to rest for ten seconds and to ensure he was still swimming in the right direc tion It felt so good to float Maybe an extra second or two won’t hurt he thought admiring the deepen ing palette of the sky which had turned bronze and taken on pink and purple tinges The extra rest made it harder to flip over and resume paddling though he forced himself to do so In the distance a white stripe appeared to seal off the ocean Was he seeing things Gathering his fading strength Rob pulled himself up on the next stroke and gasped It was land Nancy Osa
5 Relief excitement and desperation surged through him propelling his limbs ever faster in an attempt to reach the end of today’s rainbow But hours of swim ming had taken their toll Rob could barely feel his fingers or toes And I’m so hungry he thought Luckily he didn’t know how low his food bar was He pushed harder his shortened strokes barely inching him through the surf But at last he saw breakwater The beach was real He would be safe for the night Once in the shallows Rob half-stood and half crawled his way to shore The ordeal was over He would live He lay on the sand gasping like a fish thinking he had never seen a more beautiful sunset The cool air dried the last drops of seawater from his shock of black hair but left his clothes damp Rob slowly rose from the beach and staggered in a circle The dunes stretched inland quite a ways but he could see square tufts jutting upward in the distance trees a forest or jungle of some kind There’ll be food and water there But he knew he didn’t have the energy to cover any more distance that day The sun’s light was fading and all he wanted now was to stop moving and sink into a deep sound sleep The Battle of Zombie Hill
6 Even so the prospect of dozing on the open beach made Rob nervous Any cowpoke worth his salt knew to cover his back at night preferably beside a nice warm campfire He scanned the empty shoreline Not a scrap of burnable driftwood or even dried seaweed in sight and the open expanse offered no natural shelter Rob was on his own He smiled Solitude had its pros and cons at least there was nobody to bother him Still he considered it a good idea to sleep up off the ground if he could The only resource around was sand and plenty of it So he decided to pile some up to form a shelf That would get him off the ground and ward off whatever needed warding But as he started handling the sand he found that it wasn’t loose the way it was back home in the dry gulch He couldn’t push it into a tower In fact it was already held together in neat blocks Maybe he could stack the stuff into a pillar His days of performing tricks with a lasso on the ranch had made Rob a good jumper With nearly the last of his strength he leapt up in the air grabbed a block of sand and settled on top of it For good mea sure he placed a second sand block beneath his feet just as the sun dove below the horizon Now I can catch some z’s he said and the next moment he did But it wasn’t long before a strange noise woke him Nancy Osa
7 Uuuuh oooh The low moaning was like nothing Rob had ever heard on the ranch not the lowing of a cow in dis tress or the whining of his favorite dog Jip Uuh-oohhhh The otherworldly groan seemed to pierce the air Rob’s eyelids felt like concrete and had crusted shut with salt and sand but he forced them open As his vision cleared he made out a shape coming toward him in the dark The groaning grew louder as the crea ture approached in a jerky shuffle that sent Rob’s heart knocking into his teeth He sat straight up on his sand pillar The intruder spied him and increased its pace It’s still a ways off Rob reasoned Maybe I can build this tower up a little higher before it gets here His body was heavy with sleep and weak from hunger and thirst but Rob managed to pillar jump and add another block of sand beneath his feet Still the bellowing creature came closer In the moonlight reflected from the ocean surface Rob could make out a green form that looked human but sure didn’t act like it and acted but sure didn’t look alive He sniffed the air and retched at an odor not unlike the inside of his neglected refrigerator back home With less juice than usual flowing to his brain it took Rob a while to recognize the sunken eyes decom posing flesh and lurching gait as signs of the undead The Battle of Zombie Hill
