Not much lived in the freezing cold waters of Iceberg Lake, which meant that the vast body of water was usually still, calm and uninteresting. Tonight, however, something very interesting was happening indeed.

As the black water rippled and lapped against the chunks of ice that the lake was named for, the dark, cloudy midnight sky above was lit with bright, inexplicable flashes of orange and red. Loud voices echoed from the clouds, like people arguing or battling. And then, something dropped through the cloud cover, plummeting like a comet through the cold night air, encapsulated in bright orange flames. It shot downward at high speed, and then crashed hard into the lake's dark surface, creating a massive explosion of hot water and steam.

The surface where the impactor had struck boiled and bubbled with heat while a huge steam cloud drifted on the wind... and, with every passing minute, the heat died down a little more. Within an hour, the lake was icy cold again.

TWO MONTHS LATER

In the daytime now, waves pushed forward and back on the coast of Iceberg Lake, carrying with them a large, jagged hunk of frozen water that, with one great surge, was washed up on shore. It was a warm, summery morning, and the light beat down upon the ice, making it shiny and bright as it's surface began to be coated in runny water.

If the two dark shapes within the ice were objects or beings was hard to tell; the ice was murky and dirty. Some of this muck pooled around the miniature berg as it slowly melted, rivulets of water running down and staining the sand around them. On and on this process went, all day, while the iceberg slowly became smaller and smaller, and the figures within more and more visible.

One of them was very clearly human; as time passed he was more clearly distinguishable as a thin, middle-aged man with brown hair and glasses, wearing a dark tweed suit and red bow-tie. He seemed to have been frozen in some state of considerable distress, as he wore a permanent, panicked expression and had his arms out wide as though struggling. The other figure appeared to be a large dog, a Siberian Husky.

And so the ice sat there, in the sun. All day. Morning turned to midday, midday to a balmy afternoon, and as the temperature rose, the ice melted faster and faster, until the man's outstretched hand was actually sticking clear out of his wintery prison, his pale, wet skin slowly regaining color in the warm sunlight. After a time, the fingers began to wiggle. The man who had spent centuries trapped, frozen in time, was beginning to regain consciousness. Which, naturally, led to the immediate realization that he couldn't breathe.

What with his head being surrounded in ice and all.

The hand thrashed as much as it could, the only part of himself that the man could move as he panicked. He exerted as much of his very limited energy as he could, trying his best to force his arm to move... and, amazingly, miraculously, it began to work. The ice, melted and brittle, began to crack as the arm wriggled around, until finally, an entire chunk of the berg broke apart as Simon Petrikov's right arm tore free. Wasting no time (as he was beginning to see spots from his lack of breath) Simon grabbed a chunk of the ice that had broken and brought it upward at high speed, smashing it into the ice around his head.

As the broke apart, and Simon's head was freed, he tried to vain to gasp for air, only to cough up a series of ice chunks, and THEN he was able to get a lungful of air. As he coughed, hacked and gasped, it occurred to Simon that he was very, very cold. It then occurred to him that it would actually be stranger if he wasn't very, very cold. Thankfully, the ice holding him had become too unstable to hold his body weight any more, and the frozen water surrounding the rest of his body fell to pieces, causing him to crash down onto the soggy sand.

For a moment, Simon could only lie there on the wet beach, surrounded by broken (and rapidly melting) pieces of ice as he appreciated the feeling of the warm sun on his sopping back. Having spent what adrenaline he had forcing his arm to move, he found that he just didn't have the strength to move. So there he lie, face-down on the shores of Iceberg Lake, wet and confused and cold, unable to feel most of his body, as the afternoon pressed on.

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

A couple of hours later, as the sun was beginning to cast long shadows, Simon began to stir into movement. He pulled himself into a sitting position, coughed, and looked around. He seemed to be on a beach, likely to a sea or ocean, though he wasn't discounting a large lake at this point. It seemed reasonably warm... and yet, there were icebergs washing up on the shore. He looked at the one he had broken out of; now less than half the size it had been when he regained consciousness, it still contained the Siberian Husky he had been entombed with, one of the dog's paws only now starting to be exposed.

"Where-" his first attempt to speak was cut off by a coughing fit, but once that subsided, he felt he could talk to himself with reasonable ease once more. "Where am I? Warm beaches with icebergs flowing in... hmm... Patagonia? Japan? New England... wait, why would I be... I was in..." he looked down, rubbing his forehead in confusion. He could barely remember where he had been, or what he had been doing right before he was frozen... but he was pretty sure it had been Scandinavia, not Japan or the Americas...

He looked at the dog. "Toto, I don't think we're in Finland anymore..." Looking around, he couldn't see any signs of civilization, not even a picket fence to stop people going down onto the beach. Past the beach, there just seemed to be empty grassland. He reached into his pocket and withdrew his cell phone, relieved to see that it had survived without any water damage, and even worked when he flipped it open, showing an image of him smiling hand-in-hand with a happy, bespectacled woman. "No signal..." he muttered. "And the battery's almost done for... better save it." He turned the phone off and replaced it in his jacket.

The sun was getting low in the sky, and the shadows were lengthening by the second. Simon figured that this beach wouldn't still be as warm after sundown, and that he should probably start a fire. "Bit'a driftwood will work..." he got up, wobbling for a moment on his still very stiff legs, brushed the sand off his suit, and set off down the coast, looking for wood.

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

After about forty-five minutes, Simon had come to be rather impressed with his own supply-gathering skills, and the armful of driftwood he was lugging along proved, in his opinion, that he was right to be. All-in-all, for a man stranded somewhere most likely far from home, with no help or supplies or clue where he was, he didn't think he was doing too bad. Within minutes he'd have a roaring fire, and then he could focus on his next priorities, water and food, respectively. But, one thing at a time.

Simon wasn't completely sure why he decided to bring the driftwood back to where he had broken out of the ice, as he hadn't left behind anything of value and could have set up his camp anywhere. But maybe he just felt that, as the actual place where this whole experience began, it was a decent point from which to touch base and collect himself. And so, with his pile of campfire-to-be held in his arms, he turned right around and started to head back the way he had come.

In Simon's mind, he mostly needed rest tonight, to recuperate from being frozen. He'd scout around a little bit for some food, but he wouldn't go out of his way for it. The higher priority was water, but he had ideas about that. Tonight would need to be restful. Tomorrow was when he'd start trying to figure things out. But the first thing was, as always, fire. Except maybe that flying thing. Maybe that was first thing.

Simon paused. There was something in the distance, flying this way. It was hard to make out in the dark, but it looked too big to be a bird. He looked closely, squinting his eyes and trying to make out the approaching thing, as it screeched. Now that it was closer, it was easier to see... unfortunately.

The man-sized green leech wriggled nastily through the air, flying on a pair of great black bat wings, while a ring of teeth in its circular mouth snapped unpleasantly. "WHAT THE WHAT!?" Simon proclaimed. His eyes widened in shock, and he rubbed them. Surely, he was hallucinating. But when the monster screeched again, he decided that it was most certainly NOT a hallucination. Turning around, Simon bolted, running back up the beach as fast as he could while the creature hissed and snapped.

"What, what, what, WHAT!?" He kept repeating as he ran, before tripping on something and faceplanting, the driftwood scattering. It was well-timed, too, and the leech monster had just reached him, and snapped its teeth right where his head had just been. Moving too fast to stop, the bat-winged beast flew on ahead while Simon looked up at it with an expression of horror; it was turning around and coming back. As it lunged for the man, he reacted on instinct, grabbing the largest log he had dropped and swinging it as a club.

It was a good swing; with a wet SMACK and a pained screech, the leech was knocked back, flipping end over end as it tried to right itself. Simon looked down at his makeshift weapon (now coated in a bit of green slime), and back up at the creature as it regained stability and hovered on flapping wings. Grimacing, Simon lifted the wood and threw it at the monster, javelin style. The leech was quick, flapping to the side and dodging it with a hiss, but decided it had had enough, wheeling around and flying away, out over the water.

Simon panted, out of breath and exhausted. He still wasn't fully restored, and that had overexerted him badly. And what on Earth WAS that thing? He was no biologist, but he had never heard of any such organism existing in the natural world. An impossible thought occurred to him. "Goodness... what if I was in that ice for tens of millions of years, and life has evolved unrecognizably!?" He then quickly shook his head. "No, never mind. That's dumb, and highly unlikely."

Left without answers, he resigned himself to gathering up his firewood and heading back. He stood up and brushed sand off his suit again. "Heh... silly Simon... tens of millions of years... get ahold of yourself, man."

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

Simon returned to the location that he had decided would be his camp to a surprising sight: the dog, despite the cool night air being particularly lenient on the ice, was mostly free. What was more, he appeared to be alive and in reasonable health. Only a small amount of ice was left, with only the dog's hind legs trapped at this point. Drag marks in the sand seemed to imply that the dog could even move around a bit and drag the ice with it, and had been doing so. He looked up at Simon as the human returned.

"Ah." Simon said, looking at the Siberian. "I see you're mostly free now, good job."

"Pfft," said the dog. "Don't patronize me."

"Oh, sorry, I just meant..." Simon paused, staring at the dog in shock. Now he was sure he was hallucinating.

"Hey!" yelled the hound. "Four-eyes! Yeah, you! Are you gonna stand there staring or help me out of this stupid iceberg! Whatever happened to good Samaritans!?"

Simon rubbed his eyes again. The Siberian Husky was talking to him.

"You... you just talked!"

"Yeah, I appreciate the update, but I was actually there for that part."

"You're speaking English!"

"Well it's sure not Portuguese, GET ME THE FLIP OUT OF HERE!"

"I'm sorry," said Simon, "I'm just... I've never seen a... why is your head so small?"

"I don't know, why is your face stupid?"

"I'm sorry, I just mean... well, you're a talking dog, and that's amazing and very impressive, but dogs... dogs don't have speech centers in their brains, so if you can talk, then you must have one, but that means your head has to be bigger, but it isn't, so..."

"Hey. Guy. Listen to me."

Simon was quiet, listening to what the dog had to say.

"Get. Me out. Of the ice."

Simon looked down at the firewood he was carrying. He set most of it down, grabbed a large piece, walked over to the hound, raised the club, and smashed the ice.

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

Later, after sundown, Simon stoked the fire, the Husky lying nearby. Looking at him, Simon decided to make small talk.

"So... what's your name?"

"Declan." he said without looking up.

"Declan, of course, of course... Well, I'm Simon."

"I don't care."

"How exactly can you talk?"

Declan glanced at him. "Y'know, I'm actually not sure? I mean, yesterday I'm a dog, right?"

"Right."

"Head full of dog thoughts and dog memories."

"Sure."

"Then you and I get frozen or whatever, and I wake up on this beach and it's like BOOM, head full of new stuff. I even know what planking is now, though I wish I didn't."

"Huh. Weird."

"'Huh weird?' Is that all you've got? Aren't you some big shot scientist?"

Simon looked at him. "I'm an antiquarian."

Declan returned the look with a deadpan stare. "So, useless?"

Simon furrowed his brow in annoyance, but didn't say anything.

After a couple minutes, he got up and began walking down to the water's edge. Declan watched him go. "What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna see if this water's drinkable."

He knealt down at the edge and dipped his hand in, cupping some water and bringing it up to his mouth. He took it in and tasted it. Clean-ish, at least with no overt weird taste, but not salty. He swallowed it and stood up.

"Freshwater. We can drink it, though we should really find a better source tomorrow."

"No kidding."

Before either of them could say anything else, a screeching sound split the air. "Oh crumbs!" said Simon, looking out over the water, where a dozen or so dark shapes could be seen approaching in the night sky.

"What is it?" asked Declan, getting to his feet.

"Flying leech monsters!" yelled Simon.

Declan didn't even hesitate for a second. "Welp, I'm out!" he turned and bounded away into the darkness.

"Declan!" Simon yelled, but quickly decided to follow the dog's example, sprinting away from the beach and fire and off into the shadowy grasslands, lit only by the stars.

He ran for a good, solid minute before his strength began to fail him; he still hadn't eaten anything since he had awoken from the ice. Scrambling into a stand of tall grass, he crouched down and hid in silence, waiting for the leeches to pass him by.

He waited for a few minutes, but there was no sign of the aggressors. They hadn't passed by, and Simon could no longer hear their calls. "Huh." he muttered to himself in the dark. "I guess they don't like leaving the lake."

Getting up out of the grass, he looked around, seeing nothing but rolling, shadowy hills everywhere. Shrugging, he picked a random direction and started walking.

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

After several hours of walking, Simon was cold, hungry, exhausted, and growing increasingly confident that he would be walking the entire night without finding help. He even missed Declan; the canine was at least someone to talk to.

He was thrilled, naturally, when he spotted the glow of torches over the next hill. Moreso when he heard the yelling. Less so when he heard the screaming. Nevertheless, he reasoned that it was at least better to find SOMEONE, even if their troubles came with them. So, he began running up the hill, towards the commotion. The running proved to be a bit of a mistake, as Simon crested the hill the exact same time they did, and ran facefirst into someone, causing him to tumble to the ground and lose his glasses.

His appearance must have shocked the group out of their peril, as they immediately became quiet as he began feeling around in the grass for his glasses. Without the light from their torches, this would have been virtually impossible; thankfully, he spotted their familiar glint and claimed them while the man he ran into spoke in a rather posh accent. "My word! So very sorry about toppling you, my good fellow! There are times when I truly don't know my own strength!"

The man offered a hand to help Simon up, and he took it while speaking. "Oh, that's alright, it was silly of me to... to be... to be..."

Back on his feet, Simon was now getting a good look at the man, who actually wasn't a man at all.

Because he was a cupcake.

For the third time today, Simon rubbed his eyes in astonishment. But the image before him remained the same: a person-sized, white-frosted cupcake, with muscular arms and legs, a mouth, eyes, and a great big twirly mustache, to reiterate, THE CUPCAKE HAD A MUSTACHE, and it took Simon several seconds just to reconcile that fact ALONE. It took even longer for him to truly appreciate that he was speaking to an anthropomorphic cupcake. An anthropomorphic cupcake that was now raising an eyebrow - because the cupcake also had eyebrows - and looking at Simon quizzically.

"Are you quite alright, old chap?" The revelation that a baked good had just called him "old chap" was still struggling to worm its way into Simon's mind as he looked around at the rest of the group. Indeed, they all appeared to be sweets of some kind or another, among them a tall, thin lollypop girl (OF COURSE SHE'S THIN, SHE'S A LOLLYPOP) with a flapper haircut and what looked like a quasi-humanoid strawberry partially covered in chocolate. There were about a dozen of them all in all, and Simon was staring at them in open-mouthed shock.

"Is he okay?" asked a strand of licorice.

"I think he's a bit simple..." responded a chocolate bar.

"This is a dream." said Simon at last. "I'm having a very bizarre, very vivid dream... with talking dogs and leech monsters and candy people, and I'm about to wake up next to Betty and tell her all about it, and she'll tell me about her dream, and we'll both have a laugh and then breakfast."

The candy people stared at him, unsure of what to make of this sudden outburst.

"Any second now." he continued, his legs wobbling a bit.

"Um, sir?" asked the strawberry in a French accent. "Forgive me, but... are you... human?"

"Yes." Simon said dully. "I'm human."

The candy people all 'ooh'd and 'ah'd. Apparently, this was very impressive.

"My name's Simon." he continued automatically, in a bit of a daze and not really knowing what else to say.

"Well, Mr. Simon Human," said the cupcake, "We are very well met, but if you could give us directions to-"

"No."

"...I'm sorry?"

"No. No no. No." Simon was starting to come to his senses, shaking his head defiantly. "No, I'm sorry, but... you're not real. None of you are real. At all. I'm imagining all of this."

The cupcake raised his eyebrow again, now looking somewhat offended. "I beg your pardon, sir, but we are very real. I am Mr. Cupcake. And this is Lollypop Girl, Chocoberry, and some background characters. We are refugees from the Candy Kingdom."

Simon stared at the cupcake, taking in his words. Everything he was seeing and hearing right now was not only impossible, but downright silly. It felt more like a Far Side comic then real life. And yet... the things that he and Betty had studied... all of the theories and stories, amazing things said to have existed in times past. He had never really believed in it all... but he did recall word, in some old legends, of beings made of sugar, and delectable treats taking on a life of their own... could it all be true?

Simon shook his head. At the end of the day, one thing mattered: whether this was a weird prank or cult, or hallucination or dream or if it was all legit was irrelevant next to one simple fact: it would probably be easier if he just went with it.

"Alright... alright. Sorry about all that, I've just had a bit of a weird night."

"Think nothing of it, chum!" proclaimed Mr. Cupcake merrily. "We're all prone to the odd eccentricity! Why, I myself enjoy bathing in poison oak leaves! The burn is so worth it..."

"Uh-huh... okay, um... I don't suppose any of you have any food? I've been without all day, and I'm famished..."

"NAT-turally!" Mr. Cupcake replied bombastically, before reaching up, pulling off a chunk of his own frosting, and offering it out to Simon.

Simon took the offered frosting automatically, staring at it in his hand with a growing expression of horror. He looked up at Mr. Cupcake, who merely wiggled his brows enticingly. If the prospect of eating a part of this apparent sapient being's body was already disturbing, then that simply made it more so. Taking a breath, Simon opened up, closed his eyes, and prepared to sink his teeth into the fragment, when he was cut off by Lollypop Girl's scream.

"They're here!" she shrieked, pointing in the direction that the group had come from. Simon leaned over to look.

Staggering slowly over the next hill were about fifty or sixty candy people. These ones, however, were very different. Where the group Simon was standing with were all brightly colored, these ones had a mottled green and brown color scheme, and glowing green eyes, and some of them were missing fragments. All of the moved with same slowish, clumsy gait, in many cases dragging their feet, and all were groaning in monotone voices. A couple seemed to be saying "Sugar".

"The candy zombies!" Mr. Cupcake shouted, pointing at the horde, "They've caught up with us!"

Simon looked at him. "Candy... zombies. You've got to be kidding me."

"It isn't a jest! They're going to kill us and eat our sugar!"

"What about me?" Simon asked.

"Oh, they'll probably eat you too."

"Right. Okay, I guess we'd better run, then."

"Capital! Lead the way, Simon the Human!"

And off they went, sprinting into the night while the Zombies shambled slowly after.

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

Some hours later, Simon and the Candy People stopped to rest. They had returned to the general area Simon had started out from; he could hear the waves of the lake not far to the right.

"Well, that's that." said Simon. "I mean, they must need to rest too, so we can probably take a load off for a while. They're so slow, it'll be easy for us to get moving if we see them."

Mr. Cupcake shook his head. "That's what we thought, my dear fellow, but those fiends need never rest! They are fueled by their very being as undead! Even now they doubtless pursue us, relentless!"

Simon raised a brow. "Well that doesn't make sense, they must have SOME kind of metabolic function..."

"I can assure you it is true! We have been fleeing for days, and not once have they slowed!"

Simon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "So... the only way to really be rid of them would be to destroy them?"

"Indeed, but they have us so outnumbered! Even THEEEEESE..." he flexed his muscles dramatically, earning admiring looks from all the female candies - "would be useless!"

"So how did this whole zombie thing start, anyway?"

"In Candy Kingdom, of course! You see, we were all spending a quiet evening outside the walls, when suddenly these accursed undead came lumbering from the graveyard!"

"They killed Starchie the gravedigger!" proclaimed Lollypop Girl in distress. "It was horrible!"

"It's a good thing that Princess Bubblegum fixed that little defect of Candy People exploding when they're scared!" said Mr. Cupcake. "Otherwise we'd have been doomed then and there!"

Simon sat down. "And what happened next?"

Chocoberry replied. "We tried to get into ze castle, but ze Princess had placed it all under quarantine to protect the citizens! Zose guards would not even let us in!"

"Ugh, those guards!" said Mr. Cupcake angrily. "I despise them! It's not like they're even real candy!"

The rest of the group looked apprehensive at these words; Simon gathered that Mr. Cupcake was probably the only one who hated the guards: the others seemed to fear them.

"So, we did the only thing we could." said some ice cream. "We ran, and the zombies followed."

"Are you going to eat that or not?" Mr. Cupcake asked, pointing at Simon's hand.

"Huh?" Simon looked down at his hand, where he was still holding the piece of Mr. Cupcake. His hand was now quite sticky. "Oh, um... I suppose. I don't know, I guess I've lost my appetite."

"Ha-HA! Nonsense!" said Mr. Cupcake, throwing a friendly arm around Simon. "Everyone likes candy!"

"Heh, yeah, I guess they d- they do..." Simon's eyes widened. He had just had an idea.

He jumped to his feet. "Oh! Candy! Candy, candy! Everybody loves candy! I just figured it out!"

"Figured what out?" asked Mr. Cupcake, taken aback by this sudden new enthusiasm from his dour friend.

Simon wheeled on him, grinning. "I know what we're going to do about the zombies! Oh, this is PERFECT!" He rounded on the entire group. "Listen, everybody, I know what to do, but I'll need your help! I need every one of you to give me a piece of yourselves, like Mr. Cupcake did!"

They exchanged quizzical looks, but complied, all getting to their feet to hand Simon candy from their bodies. Soon, he had an armful of candy: a chunk of strawberry, some lollypop, a bit of chocolate, and handful of ice cream, a bit of licorice, and other pieces from the others. "There! That's perfect, this should easily be enough, thank you!"

He ran up a nearby hill and looked around. The sun was getting ready to rise, and Simon was illuminated in a bit of grey light as the Candy People looked up at him expectantly. "Perfect..." he said. "Perfect! Alright..." he set the candy down. "Listen, I need you all to start running in that direction!" he pointed further in the direction they had been going in, away from where the zombies would come from. "Keep going for at least a few minutes, they have to follow your scent that way!"

"Very well, Mr. Simon!" said Mr. Cupcake. "We'll trust you. But are you going to be alright?"

"Yes, yes, I have a perfect plan, don't worry!" he straightened his glasses confidently, beaming. "Now, you all need to get moving, quickly, before they catch up with us! Go, go!"

Shrugging, Mr. Cupcake led the group at a jog in the direction Simon had indicated, passing him by. Simon watched them go. The bait was set... and now for the trap.

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

Less than two minutes later, the groaning horde of sweets stumbled over the hill, following their prey with unending determination. "Suuuuggggaaaarrrr..."

"HEY! ZOMBIES!"

The monsters hesitated for a moment, looking off the to the side, where Simon was standing atop a knoll, hands on his hips. "YOU WANT SUGAR!?" he opened his jacket, showing pockets full of candy. "THEN COME AND GET IT!" He scooped out a handful of ice cream and chucked it, causing it to land at the feet of one of the zombies. The green-eyed beast fell to its knees and quickly devoured the ice cream out of the grass, before looking up at Simon and snarling.

"THAT'S RIGHT, COME ON!" pulling out the piece of Chocoberry, he began breaking it apart and scattering it around at his feet. Changing direction, the pack of zombies began to lurch towards Simon, growling and moaning and demanding sugar. Simon backed away, dropping the last couple of pieces as he did so, before reaching into his jacket and pulling out the chocolate. He began walking away, leaving a trail of little broken-off chocolate pieces to lead the monsters on. The pack reached the trail, stumbling over themselves in their eagerness to devour the fruit and chocolate.

On and on Simon led them with his trail of sugary goodness, until, now armed with only the piece of Mr. Cupcake, he reached the shores of Iceberg lake.

"You know what?" Simon told the zombies as he walked backwards down the beach, waving the piece of frosting to goad them on. "You guys remind me of the zombies from a computer game I played once. Back in college, a bunch of my friends made me sit down and play Doom." Moaning and snarling, the fiends had nearly reached him, cornering him against the water. Simon stepped back into the shallows, water reaching to his ankles, and threw the piece of candy at them, buying himself only a moment as they tore into it.

"I didn't really like that game all that much. Too violent for my tastes." Finished with the candy, they rounded on him, baring their teeth and growling as they reached forward to tear him limb from limb. "But you know? I think I learned a valuable tactic from it." Simon smiled as a loud screech sounded behind him. "MONSTER INFIGHTING!"

Simon threw himself into the water just in time as a pack of hissing, snapping Leech monsters flew into the fray, lunging towards the zombies and attacking them. Simon looked up from the water just in time to se the carnage begin, as the leeches began flying around the suddenly confused and disoriented zombies, biting into them and tearing chunks away. "Because everyone likes candy!"

The fight was brutal on both sides. The leeches came in strong with a heavy advantage at first, having both surprise and altitude on their side. They could fly in behind a distracted zombie, latch onto it, and then tear a chunk of it away. Soon, however, the zombies became wise to what was happening and fought back, grabbing leeches out of the sky and tearing their wings off or bodies in half. It was by far the most savage thing Simon had ever seen.

By the end of it, all the leeches were dead, and only a single hapless zombie remained. Grimacing, Simon grabbed a small chunk of ice that had washed up on shore and rushed the zombie, raising the ice as a weapon and smashing it right in the face. The zombie's head split open as it tumbled to the sand, dead once more. Simon grinned down at the fruits of his successful plan, one hand on his hip as he looked down at the ice chunk.

"Huh... that's the second time today that ice has saved my life..." he held the chunk up triumphantly. "Just call me the ICE KING! No, that'll never catch on."

oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo

As the sun rose, Simon wandered out into the grasslands and sat down on a rock. After all that, he was STILL tired, STILL starving, and STILL thirsty. Almost as bad, his wet clothes provided no protection from the chilly morning wind, and he began to shiver. "F-f-f-fire... need a fire..."

Some minutes later, Simon, shed of his jacket, which lie in the grass nearby, sat before a campfire made from the driftwood he had retrieved the previous evening. He stoked it gently, wondering if he'd ever get back home.

"Ahem."

Simon looked up in surprise, to see Declan sitting not far away, a dead squirrel at his feet. "Hey."

"Declan. You came back."

"Yeah, well... I was gonna keep going, but I ran into this crazy green magic hobo who wanted to turn me into a body part. You?"

"Undead monsters made out of candy and ice cream."

"...Yeah, sounds about right."

Simon looked down at the squirrel. "You caught some food."

"Yep."

"You pretty good at that?"

"...I'm a Siberian Husky."

"Right. Be better cooked, though, wouldn't it?"

"...Yeah, I guess so."

Simon gave him a look. "If you'd be interested in sharing a bit... I might be in the mood to cook... and you don't seem to have the thumbs for it."

"Alright, alright, don't be pushy." He nudged the squirrel towards Simon, who started to prepare a spit.

As he worked, Declan talked. "So... this world we've washed up in seems pretty weird. And pretty dangerous."

"Yep. Feel like sticking together? Exploring it, trying to find a way home?"

"You know what? I don't have anything better to do."