At first, I panic. The world
seems to tilt on its axis under my feet and I find it hard to
breathe. Reflexively, I use the moon to take a bearing and still
firmly in the grip of terror, I start running. Remembering the pile
of bones and the charred stone, I keep running. I run for nearly a
mile and then, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, I come to a
panting stop. Suddenly my back hurts where the rocks in my pack must
have slammed against it over and over while I ran on, unaware.
Scanning the area, I recognize the grasslands around me and the
gentle slope of the ground to the north as it moves toward the edge
of another, smaller lake. I am still far from home, but I'm headed in
the right direction. At least there's no–
My
thoughts and blood are frozen as a piercing shriek cuts the air. In
its wake, I hear the rattle of bones. I know these bones too well:
they live somehow without skin, without organs, powered only, it
seems, by malice. I turn towards the sound and in the moonlight,
silhouetted against the hills to the east, I see the skeleton,
already nocking an arrow and drawing its bow. It's still
too far away, I think to myself
as rationality wars with terror for command over my thoughts. Sure
enough, it fires an arrow – the twang of the bowstring mixing with
a gleeful murder's hiss – and I watch it arc gracefully through the
night sky before it thunks
into the ground twenty feet in front of me.
Suddenly,
a snarl from behind me yanks my attention away from the skeleton. So
there are enemies on at least two sides of me, now.
I need to get to high ground, ascertain the situation, and decide how
to fight my way home. There is a rise to the southwest; I jog toward
it, putting the skeleton at my back but moving at a pace that makes
it certain it won't gain ground on me while my attention is diverted.
The
zombie, of course, is waiting for me at the top of the rise. By the
time I see him, I don't have time to check my momentum, so I dive and
roll under his first swing, ending up behind him. He turns slowly,
but it takes me a moment to shrug off my rucksack and yank my old
sword from its scabbard. By the time I've drawn my weapon, he's
shambling forward to rake his claws across my face. I don't let him,
obviously. I take one step back to put myself out of his range and
then I follow behind his swing with a descending cut of my sword,
hacking off the offending limb.
Zombies
cannot feel pain. Once I did not know this, and that ignorance nearly
cost me my life. Now, though, when the zombie responds to losing his
arm by immediately swinging the other one at my chest, I'm ready.
Snapping my sword back up, I step inside this second swing and cut
the arm off before it gets to me. It slaps wetly against my chest as
it falls away, and I take a step back, putting distance between
myself and the zombie's teeth, which are his last remaining weapon.
He comes at me immediately, as I knew he would. As he does, I hear an
arrow wizz by both of
our heads, but there's no time to worry about that yet. Instead, I
set my feet, grit my teeth, and let the zombie impale himself on my
sword. Then I quickly plant my foot in his chest and kick, sliding my
blade free as he crumples to the ground.
Thanks
to the time I've wasted on this skirmish, there's no point in trying
to develop a plan now. From atop the rise, I can see the countryside
swarming with dark shapes in all directions, and the skeleton is
almost on top of me. By the time I shoulder my rucksack and slide my
sword back into its scabbard, it's already nocked and drawn another
arrow, so I take off as fast as I can to the southwest, running in a
zigzag pattern and hoping it's less of a distance to my house than I
suspect.
The
next two miles are a blur of desperation tinged with fear as I slowly
become aware that I am being hunted, herded by a large group of
skeletons who are – unfortunately – not nearly as stupid as their
zombie allies. Over flat land, though, I can outrun them on foot, and
as the light of torches comes into view slowly but certainly to the
south, I actually begin to think that I'm going to make it home
safely. Then, I top the final rise and see how thoroughly I've been
outmaneuvered. Quite literally at the door of my house wait two
enormous, red-eyed spiders and one of the grotesque, limbless,
mottled-green creatures I've come to think of as “creepers”.
With
who-knows-how-many skeletons closing in from behind me, I don't even
have time to be scared. Leaving my pack on this time, I unlimber my
bow and draw an arrow. The spiders have begun to move toward me, but
seem torn between holding their position and attacking outright. I
make the decision for them by burying my first arrow in the nearest
one's hide. It hisses and comes at me, oozing a brown-black liquid
from the wound. The creeper follows, deliberately, behind it. I
simply wait, patiently putting a second arrow right next to the first
and slowing the spider down a bit more. It is on top of me, however,
before I can draw a third arrow. I drop the bow and draw my sword
instead, slicing off the spider's first questing limb. It retreats
back a few steps, and I do too. Behind the spider, the creeper is
circling to my left, so I move to the right to keep it in view. This
odd dance goes on for a few moments, the spider and I taking testing
swings at one another while the creeper attempts to flank me. As I
hack off a third spider leg, I begin to wonder what exactly is going
on. Then a hiss from behind me makes my mistake painfully clear: in
turning to keep from being flanked by the creeper, I allowed the
second spider to come up behind me unnoticed. And now, I'm trapped
and quite probably dead.
Seeing
the creeper closing, though, I remember the charred corner of my
house and the scattered pile of skeleton bones, and I know that I
have one last chance. Going for the weakest enemy first, I charge the
wounded spider, bringing my sword down in a two-handed, overhead blow
that nearly cuts the thing in half. I try to pull my sword free as my
enemy dies beneath me, but the rusty blade has been thoroughly
mangled by this last, desperate blow and I realize after a moment
that even if I manage to free my weapon, it will be worthless to me.
This is unfortunate, but really doesn't change my
quite-possibly-suicidal plan. The spider behind me hisses again –
much too close this time – as I go for the only other thing I have
that could be construed as a close-quarters weapon: my pickaxe.
I
manage to raise it in a two-handed grip and take a step over the
spider corpse at my feet, which seems to surprise the creeper who was
lurching forward on its four mottled-green legs, perhaps sensing
victory. Before it can recover, I swing the pickaxe laterally,
scoring its hide and driving it back a step. I keep moving toward it,
aggressively. As I bring the pickaxe up for another strike, the
creeper begins to close again, hissing loudly. Throwing a look over
my shoulder, I take a step back – against all of my instincts –
and feel the spider's forelegs begin to close around my waist. With
the creeper coming down on me from the front and the spider's hungry
mouth lurching toward me from behind, I will myself to wait until the
last possible second...and then I hurl myself aside as the creeper's
hiss reaches its highest pitch.
The
creeper explodes – as creepers are wont to do – and the explosion
hits me in the chest, seeming to unhinge my bones from my muscles.
I'm thrown across the front lawn of my house and I land in a bed of
dirt, crushing a row of decorative flowers. The spider, closer to the
center of the explosion, is completely vaporized. I try to stand, but
the ground jumps down away from my feet and I stagger sideways. For a
moment, I simply stand staring at my front door, struck dumb by the
explosion. Then the sizzle of another arrow passing near to my head
puts things into perspective. The skeletons that had been chasing me
over the northern plains have finally caught up. I grab my rucksack
and make a run for the door.
I
fumble with the door lock, and as a result, I almost don't make it.
But the skeletons are consistently poor shots and I finally hurl
myself inside, locking the door behind me as they growl in
frustration, fired arrows zikking
off the stone walls of my home. The torches and the stone walls will
keep them out for the night, and in the morning, if they aren't smart
enough to disappear underground, the sun will melt them where they
stand, leaving little sign of their passing except, perhaps, an
incomplete pile of charred bones.
I pant
heavily for a few minutes with my back against the door, knowing that
the hisses and growls I hear outside will continue for most of the
night and that, at some point, I'm simply going to have to just
ignore them and go about my usual business of cooking and preparing
the furnace for smelting another pile of iron ore.
Today,
this world has shown me both of its faces: joy, in the exploration of
a bounteous wilderness and in the feeling of hard work well done, and
terror, in the persistent threat the night creatures pose to my life
and all that I've built here. Ultimately, I am free to make my own
life here, but it is a life that is earned, not given.
Survival
is hardly a game, after all.
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