It was around roughly four in the morning when I noticed a change in their behavior. All of the mobs abruptly turned their heads and the zombies started snarling and making aggressive noises. I stiffened as I watched them turn and start heading away from the safehouse and towards the college campus.
What's going on? Did something attract their attention? A survivor maybe?
I watched closely as the horde continued to move off going south until almost all of them had gotten clear across the street. Though their direction of movement began shifting east towards the end, my left.
Almost without warning, a figure burst out from behind a tree and began running full tilt towards my safehouse. I stood up from where I was sitting in the window sill in shock. A survivor!
The guy, as far as I could tell, took the steps that would lead over my wall and, with the drawbridge out, made a terrific leap over the wall and tumbled onto the ground on the other side.
Quickly, I rushed downstairs. By the time I made it to the door, I heard the man screaming, "HELP! PLEASE! OPEN THE DOOR OR I'M GOING TO DIE!"
Rushing over, I threw open the door and got out of the way as the man leapt inside, skidding along the floor as I saw spiders spilling over the wall while zombies screeched and arrows came flying in our direction. I slammed the door closed and winced at the thuds I was hearing, then shuddered and stepped back as a spider came up the stairs and made the leap onto my safehouse and started climbing. Grimacing, I rushed up the stairs past the man just in the process of getting up, my sword held up at the ready just in case.
Once I got up there, I was shocked to see the spider had gotten up onto the alcove where my furnaces are, and was currently climbing through the doorway into my safehouse sideways. Crap!
Rushing forward while it was still squeezing through the doorway, I jabbed it in the face!
Squealing and chittering at me, I dodged its barbed front legs as it squeezed through and before it could leap at me, I jumped forward and stabbed it in the head.
It lashed at me again with its barbed legs and I winced as they cut into my skin, but I twisted the sword in its head and it ended up collapsing down, dead, then seemed to burst into shadow and melt into the floor and disappear without a trace, leaving behind only one of its eyes and some spider silk.
My relief was short lived though as I spotted another spider climbing up my alcove! Quickly I pulled some wood planks from my inventory into my offhand and placed them in the doorway, blocking it off.
An involuntary shiver went up my spine as I heard it skitter up my wall and scritch around on my roof. Between that and the sound of screeching zombies outside, I doubted I'd get any rest tonight, even if I had yet to really start feeling tired.
Looking through the window out at the wall, I paled when I noticed that cracks are forming in my wooden wall. The same cracks that appear when I'm breaking something in Minecraft. It seems zombies can destroy blocks, though it seems they do it at a slower rate than I do. Well, at least they shouldn't be able to reach my safehouse since it's floating…
I watched as the zombies broke through and started spilling in, along with skeletons and… Creepers.
Eyes widening, I turn around and rush towards the guy who'd gotten himself off the floor and was panting and trying to catch his breath.
"MOVE!" I yelled, grabbing his arm and pulling him towards the stairs.
Not needing to be told twice thankfully, he didn't resist as I pulled him upstairs.
As soon as we made it up to the second floor, I let go and willed my heart to slow, listening for the dreaded hiss.
After half a minute though and no kaboom, I sighed in relief.
"What is it? Why did we run up here?" the man asked, still wary and looking ready to bolt. I noted he had a light British accent, and underneath all that post apocalyptic chik didn't look half bad.
"It's the Creepers," I answered. "The Zombies broke down the wall, so I was worried that the Creepers would get through the hole, get under the safehouse and blow up, taking out the floor."
The man grimaced. "Those would be the green ones then? Good thing they aren't doing that it seems." He seemed to relax a little as I took a seat on the window sill and looked outside to survey the area.
"I'm Julian… by the way. You?" he asked, his voice sounding far calmer now that the threat of sudden death was over.
"Matthew," I responded, looking back and holding out my hand, and we quickly shook. "Glad to see someone else survived this mess."
"Likewise. Do you know where this building came from? I've never seen it before, and it looks rather strange." Julian asked, taking a seat on the couch and slumping over, looking beat.
"I built it. There was a condo here a while back, but I guess they tore it down, cause there was nothing but a field. Seeing the opportunity, I used the open space to build this place so I'd have someplace safe to shelter in and hopefully survive this nightmare." I answered.
Julian looked a bit stunned, his mouth hanging open slightly. "I'm sorry, you built it? You realize this place is floating right? I nearly went in the opposite direction once I saw that, but I'd already committed to getting here since it's the only place with light and I hoped light meant more survivors and hopefully safety."
"Well, you found a survivor and this place is as safe as I could make it, hence the floating. I didn't realize the Zombies could break down the walls and made it float to simply stop the spiders. Didn't realize they'd be smart enough to leap from the stairs onto the building unfortunately."
Julian looked fairly baffled as he took in my answer, then responded, "…Are you a Wizard or something? How does one make a building float?!"
I grinned slightly and shook my head. "Not a wizard. Well, sorta. I think I could make potions and enchant stuff later, but… I'm sorry, I have to ask. Does none of this seem familiar to you? Does the word 'Minecraft' ring any bells?"
"Minecraft… I think I've heard of it. Some game on the computer, right?" Julian asked.
I stared at him, surprised, "You've seriously never played Minecraft? Not even seen it? It's everywhere on youtube and millions of people have at least seen it!"
"I've never really gotten into playing video games," Julian said defensively, "Most of my time was spent travelling and studying for my degree in engineering. What precious little free time I had I spent with friends getting a pint, watching TV, or snogging the missus."
I stared at Julian for a moment. "Huh. Well, given that we're in the middle of a Minecraft apocalypse, if and when I get power back up and running, I'm making the Minecraft wiki required reading. Know your enemy, and all that jazz."
"Well seeing as we don't have power at the moment, perhaps you could tell me what Minecraft is about then?" Julian asked.
Before I could begin, his stomach grumbled. He grimaced and I stood up from the window sill and pulled some food out of the duffel bag I'd left on the floor off to the side and passed it to him, along with the bottle of juice from my inventory.
"Thank you," he said, taking it gratefully, though he eyed the juice bottle a bit funny, having noticed it seemingly come from nowhere.
"Careful with the juice, it's all I have to drink until I can scavenge up some water tomorrow." I warned him.
He nodded and poured some in his mouth, before carefully setting the bottle aside on the floor and tore into the food.
While he ate, I explained to him about the game of Minecraft, about how it's a world of blocks and monsters where you could dig for resources and build with blocks, and the laws of physics were only loosely based off of our world, and how after the apocalypse started I found that I'd gained the powers of the main character of the game and ended up building this place after testing out a few of my new powers.
"That's lucky then," Julian commented. "Wonder why you got the power though. Any radioactive spiders bite you recently?"
I chuckled and shook my head, "You don't know Minecraft but you know Spiderman?"
"I liked comic books as a kid and my parents were very old fashioned. So sue me." He countered.
I shrugged. "No spiders. Just zombies breaking down the door, then getting shot in the head by a skeleton and waking up in bed apparently not as dead as I thought."
"Wait, you died? Why didn't you mention that part?" Julian asked, shocked.
"I don't really like thinking about it," I said uncomfortably. "And it wasn't the last time I died either."
Julian, if anything, looked even more shocked. "Bloody hell, you just… what, can't die? Reincarnate?"
"Games refer to it as respawning," I replied.
"Call it whatever you want, that's a hell of a trick! I bet anyone would love to be able to do that, mate! I know I would!" Julian replied, a touch enviously.
"Yeah. Lucky," I responded gloomily. "Instead of the after life or heaven, I get to wake back up to the world completely destroyed. Great."
Julian quickly grimaced. "I hadn't thought of it that way… tough luck, mate… But at least you've got powers yeah? It won't always be like this."
"Here's hoping. But if we don't find more survivors, humanity might just be finished."
Julian grabbed the juice bottle and held it up in a toast, "To finding survivors and saving the world!"
I chuckled and held up an imaginary glass and he tilted his head back and poured some more juice in his mouth.
After he finished, I asked, "So what about you? What brings a Brit to America?"
Julian shook his head. "Not a Brit. My mum is though. Born and raised here in Florida, but I've been over to the UK plenty as we travelled back a lot to see her family. Couldn't help but pick up the accent, especially since my Mom has it too… I miss her… it's because of her I'm even alive, you know? I…"
He trailed off, his throat tightening and didn't say anymore. I nodded in understanding. I could hope that my family is still alive, but considering everything…
I stood up and cleared my throat. "Right, well… Heh, I was gonna say you could use the couch, but then I remembered I'd grabbed my extra mattress from my apartment so you can use that. Let me go…"
I went over to the bed and rapped on the mattress against the wall with my fist, causing it to break and fly into my inventory. I then placed it next to the couch while Julian watched with a bemused but melancholy expression on his face.
"That's going to take some getting used to," he commented. I laid out a pillow and a sheet for him, along with a blanket in case he wanted it. I doubted it though, and wasn't surprised when he didn't move to place it over himself after he'd kicked off his tattered shoes and pulled off his torn shirt and pants. I went over to the window sill and looked back outside through the crack.
"…They doing anything interesting out there?" Julian asked.
I shook my head. "Not really. Just milling about now. Guess they've lost interest. Now if only that dang spider would get off the roof…"
Julian grimaced and nodded. We'd both been trying to ignore the scritches and chittering from up there for a while now, along with the chittering from below. The rest of the mobs may have wandered off, but the spiders can still sense us it seems.
Eventually, despite the disturbing noise, I heard Julian's breath even out as he finally drifted off to sleep. As for me, I'm still not tired. If this is in line with the game at all, then it's entirely possible that I could stay awake and not suffer any trouble for it, apart from possibly Phantoms showing up.
On the off chance I can still get tired though, I eventually got up and quietly walked over to the bed, unequipping my clothes except my underwear and laying down on top of the covers. It's gotten slightly cooler, but it's still too hot for me to bother with them, and I simply laid there and, to my surprise, drifted off rather quickly.