Escape from the Overworld Read online

  “Oh! Oh, dear!” Ms. Reid said. “Yes, I understand. But are you sure he’s all right?”

  Maison cleared her throat loudly. I said, “Yes, I’m all right. I just ate something that didn’t agree with me. You know, some bad mushroom stew.”

  “I suppose it would be okay for the day,” Ms. Reid mused. “Do you take shop class at your school?”

  “I don’t go to school,” I said.

  Ms. Reid was taken aback for some reason. “You don’t go to school?”

  “What he means is that his dad homeschools him,” Maison said.

  “Ah, I see,” the woman said. “Have you ever worked on equipment like this?”

  “No,” I said. “But I build a lot of stuff with my dad. The other day I was working on a tree house.”

  “A tree house!” Ms. Reid said. “Well, that’s much more advanced than anything we do here. Maison is a really good student, so I want you to stick with her. But don’t touch any equipment without me there. You can get seriously hurt in this room if you’re not taking it seriously. Do you see that saw over there? Why, if you’re not careful, you could lose a fing—” She stopped herself.

  The school roared again and I jumped. Ms. Reid smiled and said, “I guess they don’t use bells in home-schooling, hmm? Why don’t you two take a seat?”

  As I followed Maison to a desk, Ms. Reid said she was happy to see us all for another week and she wanted everyone to meet me, Maison’s cousin Stevie. She said, “And remember, we treat all students equally.” I think she was telling the kids not to make fun of me or stare at me for my “allergy.”

  “We’re going to have an assembly in a little bit so the principal can talk to you about safety,” Ms. Reid said. “But in the meantime, I’d like you to all work on your projects.”

  After she said that, everyone got to work. Maison bent over a design she was sketching and I whispered to her, “Why didn’t you tell her about Dirk and Mitch?”

  “Because that never does any good,” she said. “They’d maybe get detention and they’d know I told and they’d do worse to me.”

  In the Overworld, once you defeated a mob, it was over, but I guessed eighth graders just kept coming back.

  “Is detention like being stabbed with a sword?” I asked, trying to picture it.

  Maison opened her mouth to answer, but then Ms. Reid swooped over me, saying, “Stevie, why don’t you come with me and I’ll show you around the classroom?”

  She took me to a table that had a silver circle in the middle of it. “This is a table saw, Stevie,” she said. When a button was pressed, the circle spun so fast it glimmered. Then she put a block of wood up against it and I watched as the block split evenly in two.

  “Wow!” I said, amazed. “That’s like a really fast blade!” I grabbed a bigger piece of wood next to the table saw.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Ms. Reid chuckled, as if I’d said something funny. But her eyes widened in horror when I put the piece of wood against the flashing silver. “Stevie, no!” she exclaimed.

  “What?” I asked, holding up the wooden sword I’d made.

  “That’s—but—you—it’s—how—I—.” She couldn’t get a single real sentence out.

  Maison jumped up next to my side. “Stevie, maybe you should come sit with me,” she suggested loudly.

  “Yes,” Ms. Reid said, dazed. “Yes, I think that’s enough for today, Stevie.”

  “But I haven’t seen the rest of the room,” I protested. Maison grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me to her desk. Ms. Reid was still gaping in the background.

  “People can’t make stuff that fast in this world!” Maison hissed in my ear. “You’re going to give yourself away! It isn’t like Minecraft here.”

  “It’s not?” I said. But when I sat down and watched how the other kids worked, I realized she was right. They were unbelievably slow—no wonder people here didn’t build everything!

  “You can’t just jump in and use the table saw like that,” Maison was explaining. “It’s not just that you’re too fast. You also don’t have the training and could have gotten hurt. That’s why Ms. Reid was so upset.”

  “Oh.” I glanced at Ms. Reid, who stared at me from her big desk at the front of the room. She was gripping her desk as if she were afraid to let go of it, her eyes big and scared. To avoid her gaze, I put my head down and began cleaning my sword in my shirt. Back home you made a wooden sword with a stick and two planks of wood, though that table saw had let me carve out a sword from a single piece of wood, which was pretty interesting.

  But then Maison looked kind of guilty for getting on my case. “I hope I didn’t sound mean or anything,” she said. “You just have to be careful here.”

  “No, you didn’t sound mean,” I said. “My dad, on the other hand . . .”

  She was concerned. “What about your dad?”

  “Oh, he just never has anything nice to say,” I said, playing with the sword in a fidgety sort of way. I hoped she couldn’t tell her question made me uncomfortable. “He’s always disappointed in me for one reason or another. When he was twelve, he made a diamond sword that he still uses to slay zombies.”

  I looked down at my sword. “And a little wooden toy sword is the best I know how to do.”

  “I think it’s a very nice sword,” Maison said proudly. “I bet you could get lots of zombies with that.”

  I laughed, but I knew she was just trying to make me feel better.

  “My dad saved my life the other day because I couldn’t handle what was going on around me,” I said. “You know that creeper I told you about? I just froze when it showed up. I couldn’t do anything. The creeper blew up the tree house I’d been making and I got hurt pretty bad. Then six zombies came out of nowhere. My dad had to come out and save me. But afterward, he didn’t even act happy that I was okay. He was just mad at me for not doing a better job.” This last part was hard to get out. “He said he’s disappointed in me.”

  “Oh, Stevie,” she said sympathetically. “It sounds like he’s much worse than a creeper any day.”

  CHAPTER 13

  AFTER WE’D BEEN WORKING ON OUR PROJECTS FOR a while, Ms. Reid seemed to come out of her daze.

  “Kids,” she said. “It’s time to line up for the principal’s assembly on safety.”

  “Assembly” was another word I didn’t know, so I cast a glance toward Maison. She explained, “We’re all going to sit in the auditorium, which is a really big room, and listen to the principal lecture us about being safe. The principal is who’s in charge of the school. It’s going to be boring.”

  Judging by the already bored looks of the other kids, she knew what she was talking about. I slipped my wooden sword into my waistband and lined up by the door with the others.

  The auditorium was made up of rows and rows of fold-out chairs and there was a giant stage and podium at the front. Maison and I sat next to each other in fold-out chairs in the first row with Ms. Reid and the other kids from shop class sitting around us. There were a few doors but no windows in this big room, and I looked around the crowd, interested in seeing how all the other kids looked. The way the chairs folded up and out was pretty fun, too. Dad had never made anything like this.

  But then Maison gasped and I glanced over. Farther down the front row sat Dirk and Mitch, who began to smirk and wave at us. Mitch wrung his hands out next to his eyes, miming a crying gesture and Dirk pointed at Maison and laughed.

  My hand itched to go to my sword. Instead, I said, “Can we tell Ms. Reid about them now?”

  “No,” Maison hissed back. “It won’t do any good.”

  She tried not to look at them, but I noticed her sneak a few peeks from the corners of her eyes. Dirk and Mitch noticed each time she did this, and they always made a show for her, pointing and fake-crying.

  A grown woman stepped up to the podium and said something into a black object that was in front of her. Kids started yelling that they couldn’t hear, so
she moved the black object, causing loud pops to ring out through the room. I jumped.

  “That’s a microphone,” Maison whispered to me. “She just hasn’t adjusted it right, which is why we’re getting that popping sound.”

  “How does that work?” But before Maison could answer, the woman on stage spoke again, her mouth closer to the microphone, and this time her voice echoed from every side of the room. This made me really jump.

  “Boys and girls,” she said, “now that we’re entering the second month of our new school year, I want to say how pleased I am to have all of you present. We’re going to have a great year, but we can’t do that without putting safety first. As you know . . .”

  Most of the other kids did look bored. But I was fascinated, and enjoyed learning more about how this world worked. Look both ways before you cross the street. Never leave a science experiment unattended. Don’t get into strangers’ cars. So this was the kind of stuff people in Maison’s world worried about instead of mobs.

  Most of the kids were quiet and listening, but now and then I could hear a hoarse giggle and I’d look over to see Dirk and Mitch. They’d be talking to themselves and cracking up about one thing or another. As soon as they’d see me looking at them, they’d start making fun of Maison again. Finally I decided I wouldn’t let myself look in their direction, no matter how loud they got, because I didn’t want them upsetting Maison.

  I think the principal also noticed Dirk and Mitch, because a few times she’d stop her talk to say, “Everyone, please be quiet.” But she never called out anyone’s names.

  Still, she seemed to get more annoyed as her lecture went on. Finally she said, “Okay, boys and girls, I’ve had about enough. This is an important lesson that will keep all of you safe, but you’re not taking it seriously. I have some of you talking to your friends. I have some of you with your eyes closed. And I have some of you who are looking like total zombies!”

  “Hey, psst, psst, Stevie!” came a half-garbled, giggly whisper from down the front row. Despite my promise to myself, I glanced over. My mouth fell open. Dirk and Mitch were almost in hysterics, pointing to the two zombies sitting next to them.

  “Looks like they’ve got food allergies, too!” Mitch snickered.

  “Only theirs must be worse,” Dirk said, pinching his nose. “They’re all green and they smell awful!”

  Maison glanced over and let out a horrified gasp. She and I were frantically gesturing for Dirk and Mitch to get out of their seats and get away before it was too late. Our fear only made Dirk and Mitch laugh more.

  That’s when one zombie reached out and grabbed Mitch, whose giggle turned into a high pitched squeal of terror. The zombie knocked him to the floor and lunged at him, emitting a shrieking hiss that echoed throughout the whole auditorium.

  CHAPTER 14

  JUST LIKE THAT, I WAS OUT OF MY SEAT. EVERYTHING was in slow motion, but instead of being frozen like I was with the creeper, my body instantly responded.

  The zombie was barreling down on a screaming, panicked Mitch as I ran up, drawing my sword from my waistband.

  “Help!” Mitch cried out, too hysterical to fight back. The zombie was looming right over him, reaching out with green arms. I lifted the sword high above my head and slammed it down on the zombie.

  The second zombie had opened his mouth, moaning, and reached out to seize an equally panicked Dirk. I swung my sword to the side, knocking the zombie across the head. It flew from its seat to the floor.

  All around me the auditorium exploded with cries and screams as people jumped up from their seats, terrified. The principal called for some kind of order but no one was listening. Before my eyes both zombies slowly rose to their feet, their mouths hissing, their attention on me. While Dirk and Mitch hunched trembling, the zombies advanced toward their new goal.

  I swung out wildly. Coming up beside me, Maison leapt into action too and delivered a hard kick into the gut of the second zombie. Our attacks only momentarily stunned the zombies, because the next second the mobs were coming at us again. I swung my sword once more, hit the zombie, and watched it fall back. Without any hesitation Maison delivered another hard kick to the zombie in front of her. Together we knocked the two zombies back and they disappeared into thin air, as if they’d never been there to begin with. And then we stood there, panting, trying to catch our breaths. That was when we finally got a chance to stop and actually think about what had just happened.

  I believe we both had a very cold chill go up our spines. I know I felt that chill go up mine. Maison and I stared at each other in horror and we both whispered, “The portal!”

  She covered her face with her hands. “I left the computer on this morning! They must be slipping out through there!”

  “Do mobs work differently in this world?” I asked, wondering how they could be out and about during the day. And then it hit me. The rain! It was overcast enough that they weren’t being burned up by the sun!

  “If there are two there might be more,” I said.

  “What do we do?” she said, glancing down at where the zombies had vanished.

  “We need to get my dad,” I said. “He’s got the diamond sword. He can handle this. He can help us look for any more mobs that might have gotten out.”

  “You have a sword—” she began.

  “No, a real sword!” I said sharply.

  “What on earth were those things?” Mitch wailed in the background, his arms still over his head like a shield.

  “We have to explain to everyone,” Maison said, and just like that she took off, running up onto the stage. The principal was still trying and failing to get everyone’s attention, and Maison more or less jumped in front of the podium. She said into the microphone, “Nobody panic! Those were zombies, but we have it under control!”

  “Zombies!” the principal shouted. She didn’t look as if she fully believed Maison, but she didn’t look as if she could un-believe it, either.

  “You guys all play Minecraft, right?” Maison continued. There were lots of nods in the audience. “Well, somehow a portal has been opened to the Minecraft world and that’s how the zombies got through. That’s really where Stevie came from, too. But everyone, just sit down and remain calm. Stevie and I are going to go back into Minecraft and get this taken care of.”

  “Stay!” Dirk jumped up in outrage. “Forget that! I’m out of here!”

  “No!” Maison cried into the microphone, her voice throbbing throughout the room.

  Dirk ignored her. He jumped to his feet and ran to the nearest exit, throwing open the heavy doors. But if he meant to save himself, he’d done the absolute worst thing. Once he’d opened the doors and saw the giant, red-eyed spider waiting right there for him, he let out a scream.

  CHAPTER 15

  MORE MOBS HAD COME THROUGH THE PORTAL! There was no time for me to get sick or sit there and think about how bad this was.

  Dirk had fallen back, one arm raised in a pathetic gesture of defense. I came charging toward the spider, hoisting my sword over my head. With great force, I brought the sword down.

  The spider roared and drew back, but it hadn’t given up. Behind it I could see more spiders stalking forward on their eight black legs. And just behind them was a cluster of zombies, lurching in the direction of the auditorium. They were everywhere.

  “Maison! There are more!” I yelled, swinging my sword back at the spider. It dodged, pulling away, then came crushing forward, almost nailing me. I’d leapt to the side in the nick of time so that the spider brushed against me instead of hitting me straight on.

  I didn’t have time to look back, but the next instant I heard her voice. “Block off the other doors!” she called. “Don’t let any more get in!”

  It was too late. I heard a sickening sound coming from the next door on this side of the auditorium. There was no time for me to run there and do anything. Someone was smashing against the wooden door, breaking it. Spiders couldn’t break through doors, though zombies coul
d, and unless someone did something, they were going to break through at any moment. But no one knew how to respond and time was against us, anyway. The door burst to pieces and several zombies staggered through the wreckage.

  “We’re doomed!” Dirk cried, grabbing my shirt and clinging to me. “You can keep them back, right? Right!”

  “Let go!” I tried to push him off. Keeping this spider at bay was hard enough without Dirk grabbing me. But who was I fooling? I knew it was only a matter of time before all the spiders swarmed in on me. The people in this world had no idea how to handle mobs, and I had proven I couldn’t handle a few of them, let alone this many.

  “Everyone, it’s just like Minecraft!” Maison’s voice blared. “Grab things that can work as weapons and hit them back! They’re only attacking this side of the auditorium, so someone go out the other side and get baseball bats from the gym! Someone get out their cell phone and call the police! Hurry!”

  She leapt off the stage, landing square on the spider, giving the final blow needed to defeat it. But there was no time to say thanks—the next spider crawled over to replace it, rearing up at me.

  “Dirk!” Maison said. “Get up and help us fight!”

  “I can’t!” he wailed.

  The other kids didn’t feel that way, though. They were standing in droves to fight back, hitting the spiders and then the zombies with whatever they had on them. Books and backpacks were being used as weapons because that’s all that was available. Off to the side Ms. Reid had a little silver object to her face and was shouting, “911! I’m at the middle school and there are zombies and huge spiders attacking . . . yes, you heard right!”

  As much as the kids were trying to help, there wasn’t much they could do. Even if they played video games, that wasn’t the same as staring directly into the eyes of an attacking mob. Plus they didn’t have any real weapons. The kids were hitting back with their backpacks, smashing up against the mobs as hard as they could. But the mobs were barely taking any damage. And if anyone was seriously injured or died, it would be my fault.