The Great Zombie Invasion Read online

  Books by Mark Cheverton

  The Gameknight999 Series

  Invasion of the Overworld

  Battle for the Nether

  Confronting the Dragon

  The Mystery of Herobrine Series: A Gameknight999 Adventure

  Trouble in Zombie-town

  The Jungle Temple Oracle

  Last Stand on the Ocean Shore

  Herobrine Reborn Series: A Gameknight999 Adventure

  Saving Crafter

  The Destruction of the Overworld

  Gameknight999 vs. Herobrine

  Herobrine’s Revenge Series: A Gameknight999 Adventure

  The Phantom Virus

  Overworld in Flames

  System Overload

  The Birth of Herobrine: A Gameknight999 Adventure

  The Great Zombie Invasion

  Attack of the Shadow-Crafters (Coming Soon!)

  Herobrine’s War (Coming Soon!)

  The Gameknight999 Box Set

  The Gameknight999 vs. Herobrine Box Set (Coming Soon!)

  The Algae Voices of Azule Series

  Algae Voices of Azule

  Finding Home

  Finding the Lost

  This book is not authorized or sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or Scholastic Inc., or any other person or entity owning or controlling rights in the Minecraft name, trademark, or copyrights.

  Copyright © 2016 by Mark Cheverton

  Minecraft® is a registered trademark of Notch Development AB

  The Minecraft game is copyright © Mojang AB

  This book is not authorized or sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or Scholastic Inc., or any other person or entity owning or controlling rights in the Minecraft name, trademark, or copyrights.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Sky Pony® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyponypress.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Owen Corrigan

  Cover artwork by Thomas Frick

  Technical consultant: Gameknight999

  Print ISBN: 978-1-51070-994-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-51070-999-7

  Printed in Canada

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Again, I feel the need to thank my family for putting up with my obsessive need to write every minute of the day. I know my compulsion must be getting a little tiring, and their understanding and support is really helpful. To my wonderful wife, who helps me with the story ideas, I say thank you. To my son, who tells me if my ideas are stupid or not, I say thank you. And to Gramma GG, who is always perpetually excited and supportive of everything I do, I say thank you as well.

  To Nancy M: we all want to give you a great big hug and say thank you for everything you’ve done for our family. You have had a profound impact on many people, and your hard work and dedication are appreciated more than words can say. We are forever in your debt.

  To all the people working at schools like my son’s middle school—teachers, administrators, support staff, counselors, psychologists, and social workers (two in particular, Gaylen and Christine)—I’d like to say thank you. You all do an incredible job helping kids reach their potential. This takes dedication, compassion, creativity, patience, and a love of learning. What you do is valuable and it is valued, though sometimes too quietly. I’m sure you don’t hear the appreciation very often from parents or students, so I’m saying it: Thank you for all your hard work. Thank you for the late nights grading papers, reading essays, and correcting math assignments. Thank you for everything you do to help kids get on a path that leads them to a love of learning … THANK YOU!

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I’ve been really excited about this series, the Birth of Herobrine, for a while now, and I’ve had a lot of fun writing about some of the historical characters you’ve heard so much about through previous books. I’ve had my mind on this series since I wrote my second Gameknight999 novel, Battle for the Nether. In that story is the first mention of Crafter’s great uncle Weaver and his love of TNT. Since then, I’ve wanted to go back and explore the many historical figures that shaped Minecraft for Gameknight and his friends. So here we are now. I hope you enjoy my take on Minecraft’s past.

  As I wrote this book, I struggled to picture the landscape and the structures in my head. So I went to Minecraft, built many of the structures, and found just the right landscape features to describe in the story. You can see Two-Sword Pass and the Abyss and many other structures from the story on Gameknight999’s Minecraft server; I hope all of you get the chance to visit. Go to www.gameknight999.com to get the IP address for the server as well as see some of the images. You can also watch some videos I made that show things other kids have built, specifically their player shops. Some of these are fantastic. Quadbamber has been adding a lot of really cool new features to the server, so come check it out—you won’t be disappointed. If you need help with server plugins, check out Quadbamber’s YouTube channel, LBEGaming. He is the Minecraft server master!

  I really wanted to incorporate some of the new features from version 1.9 in this book, which was released just as I finished up writing, but it just didn’t make sense in the story. So the new battle features and new boats, the elytra (these are super cool), and of course the new dragon and the new End will need to wait until the sixth series. However, you can see these new features right now on Gameknight’s server. If you come onto the server, please say hello to Gameknight999 and me, Monkeypants_217.

  Please keep the thoughtful comments coming. I love reading your emails, and I respond to all. Just be careful and make sure you type your email address correctly. The stories that all of you are sending me are fantastic, and I post nearly every one to my website. Sorry, but those that are only one sentence long do not get posted; I need to see more of your amazing writing! Go to my website, www.markcheverton.com, and email me your comments, questions, or stories.

  Keep reading and watch out for creepers.

  —Mark (Monkeypants_271)

  Being on the outside can be difficult, but it’s important to be yourself and find those similar to you, whose personalities resonate with your own. Being accepted for being who you are is more important than being accepted for popularity’s sake. Being the person you were meant to be is far more important than wearing a popular disguise. The former leads to happiness and respect, while the latter leads to eventual disappointment.

  CHAPTER 1

  GOING BACK

  Tommy stared at the space-age device with trepidation. He knew his father’s invention, the Digitizer, could take him back to see his electronic friends within Minecraft. It had been a couple of days since he’d seen Crafter, Hunter, Stitcher, Digger, and Herder, and he missed them. But his father had warned him that it wasn’t safe to be using the electronics during thunderstorms, and there was one approaching at that very moment.

  He glanced at the stairway that led up out of the basement, then scanned the concrete room. There
was a dusty smell to the place, like it was somehow ancient. But that was probably because of the mounds of discarded stuff spread everywhere, collecting dust. Piles of abandoned inventions, each one created by Tommy’s dad, sat on shelves, lay half-assembled on benches, or lay in piles of disconnected components. It was like a graveyard of mechanical things, nearly all of the devices complete failures … all except for the Digitizer. After the sale of the device to some mysterious company his father wouldn’t talk about, they had upgraded their Digitizer with new power supplies, stainless steel support brackets, additional computer memory, and, of course, lots of blinking lights—they both liked blinking lights. The upgrade had been finished last night; Tommy was just itching to test it, but with the storm coming, his father had said they should wait.

  “I’ve waited for an hour now,” Tommy said to the cluttered room. “How much longer do I have to wait?”

  No answer came; he was alone in the house. His parents had gone to a party for his mom’s work, and Jenny had gone to stay the night with a friend.

  Glancing at the small window in the top of the basement wall, Tommy could see it was barely raining. Thinking about it, he was pretty sure he hadn’t heard any thunder for at least five minutes now. Wasn’t there some kind of rule about that?

  “The storm is probably gone,” he said, trying to convince himself. “I’m sure it’s OK to take the new Digitizer out for a test drive.”

  He moved to the desk chair and turned on the huge 1080p monitor. Minecraft was there, waiting for him. He’d started the program an hour ago, after his parents had left. With his wireless MLG mouse, he activated the Digitizer’s software. Instantly, a sound like that of an angry hive of bees filled the room. The device began to glow bright as blinking LEDs flashed in complicated patterns. The LEDs had no purpose other than to look cool. Tommy smiled … the LEDs were his idea, and they did look awesome.

  Turning back to the software, he set the timer to forty minutes. After that time, the Digitizer would be programmed to activate again by itself and bring him back to the real world safely; it was a new feature his dad had programmed. That would give him two days in the game with his friends (real-world days were only twenty minutes long in Minecraft). He’d just go in and get out, quick and quiet. Nobody would know he’d been in Minecraft, and he’d be out before his parents returned home, which he knew would be extremely late tonight.

  He logged into the game using his Minecraft user name, Gameknight999.

  Lightning flashed outside, filling the basement with harsh white light. The rumble of thunder caused the house to vibrate just as the glaring light receded.

  Ugh, so much for no thunder in the last five minutes. Maybe I should wait, Tommy thought. After all, Dad was really adamant about how dangerous it could be.

  With the computer’s cursor hovering over the Activate button, he paused and listened. Raindrops danced on the side of the house and splattered against the basement window. That sound always reminded him of frying bacon … mmm, baaaconnnn. A momentary pang of hunger shot through him, but he’d just had a couple slices of pizza. Tommy knew he wasn’t really hungry; he was just excited.

  There was no follow-up lightning or thunder … the storm must have passed him by.

  “It’s probably OK,” Tommy said to the glowing Digitizer.

  Ignoring a nagging thought in the back of his head, he clicked the mouse.

  Immediately, the angry beehive began to grow louder as the lights on the Digitizer became brighter, the LEDs now blinking furiously. Gritting his teeth, Tommy was ready for the blast of light from the invention. But suddenly, a flash of lightning outside lit up the basement windows as the storm thundered down upon the house. The lights in the basement flickered momentarily as more lightning struck the home, the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity running throughout the house’s electrical system. Sparks leapt out of the surge protector that was mounted to the wall as lightbulbs grew bright and then burst.

  This wasn’t a good idea, he realized.

  Tommy tried to reach for the mouse and click the Cancel button, but it was too late. The Digitizer activated, blasting him with a brilliant white light just as more sparks jumped out of the power strip and ran along the cords to the computer. Suddenly, all of his nerves felt alive, as if the electricity was surging through his body. Waves of blazing heat and chilling cold wrapped around his body.

  He had the urge to wrap his arms around his body but found he couldn’t move. Tommy fell forward over the desk, his head landing on a pillow he’d placed on the hard wooden surface—a lesson he’d learned from the first time he accidently used the Digitizer. Slowly, his view of the basement became blurry, the piles of half-built contraptions and towers of old boxes began to undulate like writhing snakes. His view of the basement faded and overlapped with something green and blocky. At one point, he felt as if he were in two places at the same time. Then the basement completely faded away.

  Suddenly, the heat and the cold and the electric jolts all disappeared.

  Everything in his body ached. It felt like that time when he thought it would be a good idea to go out for the wrestling team … that had been a painful mistake.

  Groaning, he sat up. Around him were green grassy blocks, with the occasional cube of dirt intermixed within the verdant landscape. Standing, he turned and completely surveyed his surroundings. A majestic oak tree stood nearby, its leaves waving in the constant east-to-west breeze. Glancing up, he found a waterfall streaming over the edge of a stone outcropping that extended out from the tall mountain looming high overhead. The cool liquid fell in a wide pool that flowed down into an underground cavern far below. The moos of nearby cows floated on the breeze, followed by the clucks of chicks and the occasional bleat of a sheep.

  Moving to the oak, he rubbed his hand on the rough bark, feeling the hard jagged surface under his blocky fingers. Even though Tommy could see his stubby, square fingers, the bark under his palm felt real and alive. Glancing at the tall mountain behind him, he spotted the sheer face on one side that he knew all too well. This was where he always spawned when he used the Digitizer. With a smile, Gameknight999 knew that he was back inside Minecraft.

  And yet, something felt wrong. The torch he’d placed over the entrance to his secret hidey-hole the last time he’d been here was missing. Glancing to the top of the mountain, he couldn’t see the tall column of dirt he’d built, the one with torches adorning the sides of the pillar so that he could easily find his way back. It didn’t even look like it had been knocked down. It was as if it had never been built in the first place.

  “That’s really weird,” he said aloud to no one.

  Without warning, a jolt of fear shot down his spine. Glancing around, he searched for monsters, but saw none. Gameknight breathed a sigh of relief, then moved to the oak tree. With his hands balled into fists, he pounded on the wood until the first block broke, then continued pummeling the rest of the cubes that made up the tree’s trunk. With one of the wooden blocks in his hand, he went to work on the tree leaves, hoping for one of them to drop an apple. By the time he’d cleared all the leaves, he had two red apples in his inventory. Good, that would keep him from getting too hungry before he reached Crafter’s village.

  Quickly, he changed the blocks of wood into wooden planks, then made a crafting bench. With the planks, Gameknight crafted some sticks. The rest of the wood was used to make a pickaxe, a shovel, and a wooden sword.

  Stepping up to where his hidey-hole was hidden, Gameknight put the shovel to work, clearing away the dirt until he hit stone. He then shifted to the pickaxe and began digging up the rock.

  It’s not here! he thought as panic started to seep into his mind.

  How could this be? He’d dug out a chamber right here into the side of this mountain, and now it was gone.

  A sound echoed off the side of the mountain. Gameknight spun around, wooden sword in his hand. The basin before him was empty, the landscape bright with sunlight.

  “At least t
he sun will keep the zombies and skeletons away for a while,” he said to himself, even as a small voice in the back of his head reminded him that there were other monsters out there that weren’t affected by the sun.

  Gameknight glanced down at his sword and knew he needed better, sharper weapons. Forgetting about the hidey-hole, he pulled out his pickaxe and started digging up stone. The plan was to collect just enough to make new tools; then he’d head for Crafter’s village.

  When he had a handful of gray blocks of stone, Gameknight returned to the crafting bench and made a stone pick, a shovel, and a sword. Some armor would have made him feel better, but he was anxious to see his friends and to find out what happened to his hidey-hole. So, after breaking his crafting bench and putting it into his inventory, he set off across the grassy hills toward the village he knew lay over the horizon.

  CHAPTER 2

  A NEW MINECRAFT

  The forest before him was filled with oak and birch trees. A thick leafy canopy blocked out much of the sun, but shafts of golden sunlight were able to penetrate through the cover and light the grass-covered ground. Gameknight tried to keep to the sunny sections, knowing that skeletons or zombies wouldn’t venture into the sunlight for fear of bursting into flames.

  As he ran, the sounds of life were all around him; cows were moving about doing cow things, chickens were clucking, and the occasional sheep could be heard bleating away. A constant westward breeze made the leaves rustle and the grass wave about as he sprinted through the biome. Everything was as it was supposed to be, with the exception of his base being gone … how could that be?

  No one would take the time to fill in his hidey-hole just as a prank; that wasn’t how the villagers thought. All that would mean was more work for them and then more work for him to rebuild—a “joke” like that wasn’t funny to NPCs.

  Suddenly, a faint moaning sound floated in on the wind: a zombie! This was surprising, seeing that the sun was still high up in the sky.