Chapter 2
Panic Drowns Thought

Using my new "power," I knocked out the other leaf blocks on the rest of the trees. I not only came away with two more apples, but a critical discovery about my belt and pack.

It happened right after the first apple, when I was boxing the leaves. Instead of dropping fruit, I got a small sapling. "On strike again?" I asked my frozen hand, and dropped the mini-tree into my belt. Seconds later, when I got a second one, I absentmindedly stuffed it into the same pouch. That's when I realized that they'd not only shrunk, but flattened and stacked themselves together like playing cards. "Well now," I said with a smile, "this might actually be helpful."

That turned out to be an understatement. By the time I'd finished stripping all three trees, I managed to stack twelve compressed saplings in just one compartment. And, I might add, at zero weight!

Looking over the additional pouches in my pack, I thought, I can carry a whole warehouse worth of stuff! Which means…

"Which means," I said, scowling at the belt, my mood deflating like stacked saplings, "Until I find stuff worth carrying, you're as helpful as a wind-powered fan."

There's gotta be more apple trees, I thought, staring up at the cliff. Through panicked eyes, it'd initially looked like an impassable barrier. Now, calmer, confident, and well-fed, I could see that it was more like a steep slope than a sheer wall.

Who knows what else is over there, I thought, hiking up square dirt cubes. If I'd only thought clearly instead of being such a total dweeb, I wouldn't have trapped myself on this side of the island in the first place.

In fact, maybe it wasn't an island after all. Maybe this beach was the start of a whole continent! Don't get me wrong, I hadn't abandoned the notion of all this being just a dream. But still, part of me couldn't help wishing to come up over the top of the hill to see a ranger station, or a town, or a giant city, or…

There wasn't.

I stood on the even, green summit and stared with crushing disappointment at the rest of an uninhabited island.

The land stretched out like a claw, two wooded pincers nearly enclosing a round, shallow lagoon. I couldn't judge how large the island was. By that point, I still wasn't very good at measuring by blocks. But it couldn't have been too big because I could definitely see the end of it under the late afternoon sun. And with the sinking orange square, so went my spirits as well.

Just like in the water, I thought I was alone.

And just like in the water, I was wrong.

"Moo." The sound made me jump.

"Wha…?" I said, nervously looking all around. "Who…Who's there?"

"Moo," came the sound again, pulling my eyes to the base of the hill. It was an animal, black and white, with a body as rectangular as its surroundings.

I picked my way down the western slope, which was easier and more gradual than the treacherous eastern side, and walked right up to the fearless creature. Studying it more closely, I could see that it wasn't entirely black and white. Gray horns, pink inside the ears, and a pink shallow sack below the stomach…

"You gotta be a cow," I said, and the "moo" I got was the best sound I'd heard all day. "You don't know how happy I am to see you," I sighed. "I mean, hey, I know it's still just a dream and all, but it just feels so good not to be—" the word stuck in my throat, stinging my nose and eyes—"alone."

"Baa," answered the cow.

"Wait, what?" I asked, stepping closer. "Are you, like, bilingual or…"

"Baa," said the animal, but not the one in front of me. I looked up and past the cow, toward the sound's true owner. It was rectangular—duh—but a little shorter and practically all black.

I'd almost missed it in the dim light of the early evening. Now, as I approached the darkening woods, another animal, as white as the clouds above, stepped out from behind its black twin. Despite their straight, flat outlines, I could see the barest details of woolly coats.

"You're sheep," I said, smiling, and reached out to pet one. I wasn't thinking. I didn't mean to punch.

The animal yelped, flashed pinkish red, and took off running through the wood. "Oh, sorry!" I called after it. "Sorry little sheep!" I felt so bad that I turned to its unfazed friend and babbled, "I didn't mean it, really. I still don't know how to use this body, ya know?"

"Cluckcluckcluck," came an answer to my left. Two small birds, each about a block high, were pecking the nearby ground. They had short, skinny legs, plump bodies covered with white feathers, and small heads ending in flat orange beaks.

"I'm not sure if you're chickens," I told them. "You do have kinda duckish features." They glanced up at me for a second and clucked. "But you sound like chickens," I continued, "so I guess calling you chickens makes more sense than…chickeducks."

The word gave me a little chuckle, which quickly became a real guffaw. It felt good to laugh, to let out all the crazy tension of the day.

That's when I heard a new sound.

"Guuugh."

It was a throaty, phlegmy gargle that sent chills up my spine. I looked all around, trying to figure out the source. Sound on this island seemed to be coming from every direction. I stood there listening, wishing the chickens would shut up.

Then I smelled it. Mold and rot. Like a dead rat in an old sock. I didn't see the figure until it was only a dozen or so paces away. At first I thought it was another person, dressed just like me, and I took an automatic step forward.

Then, just as instinctively, I stopped and backed away. Its clothes were ragged and filthy. Its flesh was a mottled green. Its eyes, if you could call them eyes, were nothing but lifeless black points in a flat, unmoving face. Memories flooded my mind, images of creatures I'd known from stories but had never seen in person. And now here it was, approaching with outstretched arms.

This was a zombie!

I tried to retreat, bumping against a tree. The zombie closed. I dodged. Rotted fists smashed into my chest, throwing me back. Pain shot through my body. I gasped. It lunged. I fled.

Numb with fear, I sprinted for the hill. I wasn't thinking, wasn't planning. Terror drove my every step. Something "clacked" in the darkness behind me, followed by a noise like whipped air. Something smacked into the tree in front of me. A feather-tipped, quivering stick. An arrow! Was the zombie armed? I hadn't noticed. I just kept running.

Something red flashed to my right: a cluster of eyes followed by a clipped hiss. I scampered up the slope of the hill, glancing back only when I was at the summit. In the pale light of a rising square moon, I could see that the zombie was still coming. It was already at the bottom of the slope and beginning to climb up after me.

Throat closing in fright, I tore my way down the eastern cliff. I slipped, fell to the bottom, and heard a sickening crack.

"Rrrr," I hissed as bolts of agony stabbed through my ankle.

Where to go? What to do? Should I jump back into the ocean and try to swim away? I froze at the edge of the blackened water. What if that squid was still out there, and what if it'd gotten hungry?

Another moan echoed across the starry night. I turned to see the zombie's head poke over the top of the hill.

Frantically I looked for somewhere to go. Someplace to hide.

My eyes flicked back and forth, settling on the single block of earth I'd dug out earlier in the day. From it came the spark of a desperate idea. Digging!

As the zombie started down the slope, I ran to the cliff below it and furiously tore into the earth. One-two-three-four punches and the first block in front of me came away. One-two-three-four and the one behind it popped free.

I could hear the ghoul approaching, each groan growing louder. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. I cleared four earthen blocks right in front of me, two above and below. Just enough for me to squeeze into the space.

Deeper, my mind screamed. Get deeper!

And if fate could talk, it would have sneered and said, "You're not going anywhere."

My fists bounced off something cold and hard. I'd hit solid rock. A few pointless punches told me I was trapped, the monster barely seconds away.

I spun, saw the zombie, and set down a block of dirt between us. The ghoul reached over, smashing me in the chest. I flew back, hitting the stone cliff. Chest aching, gasping for breath, I jammed the second soil cube on top of the first.

Darkness fell. I was buried alive.

My tomb shut out light but not sound. Zombie moans still rang in my ears. What if it could dig? What if I'd only delayed death by seconds?

"Go away!" I shouted helplessly. "Please just leave me alone!"

Gagging growls answered.

"Please!" I pleaded.

Unfeeling, uncaring, unstoppable moans answered.

"Wake up," I whispered. "I've gotta wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!"

In desperation I started jumping up and down, hitting my head against the ceiling, trying to jolt myself awake.

"WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP!"

I fell back against the stone wall, head throbbing, eyes burning, chest heaving in rapid, panicked sobs.

"Why?" I whimpered. "Why can't I wake up?"

And just then the zombie barked a deep, violent groan. "Because it's not a dream."

No, the creature wasn't talking to me. I'd put words in its decayed mouth, words that I knew I needed to hear.

"This isn't a dream," I imagined hearing from the mobile corpse, "and it's not an injury or a hallucination. This is a real place, a real world, and you're going to have to accept that to survive."

"You're right," I said to the ghoul, knowing I was talking to myself but still thinking that talking to a dead guy was somehow saner. "This isn't happening in my head. This is happening."

The fragment of a half-remembered song floated through the fog of my amnesia. Something about finding yourself in a strange place. I couldn't remember all the lyrics, but one stuck clearly in my mind:

You may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?

"I don't know," I admitted. "I don't know how I got here or even where 'here' is. Another planet? Another dimension? I don't know, but I know there's no point in denying it anymore."

And with that acceptance came this huge wave of calm, and with the calm came a new mantra.

"Panic drowns thought," I told the zombie, "so it's time to stop panicking and start figuring out how to survive."