Survival in a Strange World

Chapter 2: Lost in the Caves

As the thought of curling up into a ball until the night was over slowly creeped into his mind, more banging from the entrance snapped him out of his trance. But he had blocked the door with a pile of dirt, the zombies couldn't get past that... right?

To his shock a rotting green hand punched its way through the dirt barricade, slowly chipping away at the makeshift defence.

"Ok," he said, "I'm not staying here".

He pulled another apple from his pocket and munched on it quickly, tossing the core into the corner of the room; then raising the shovel in a two handed grip, he stabbed it down breaking through the broken floorboards and piercing the dirt below. He continued to dig in a hurry, shovelling faster than seemed possible, pouring the excavated dirt onto the pile that the dead green hands were slowly chipping away at.

Once the hole was deep enough for him to fit in, he climbed out, snatched the lonely torch from the wall and jumped back in. Then, reaching up, he pulled some of the remaining floorboards over his head in an attempt to hide the light from the torch. Once the hole was sufficiently covered, he stopped for a breath, letting the muddy air fill his lungs.

Unhappy with simply hiding, he snatched up the shovel with his other hand, once again stabbed it into the ground and found himself digging diagonal downwards, using the excavated dirt to clog the hole to prevent the zombies from following him. He hadn't made much progress when another problem greeted him with an unpleasant grey face. Stone. A shovel wasn't breaking through that, even an iron one.

Turning he began digging in another direction, but almost immediately the same grey face blocked his path. He gritted his teeth and turned again, he couldn't go lower without a pickaxe and with only two apples he would not survive underground for very long. He was struck by a terrible feeling of Deja Vu, but how? There was no way he had been in this situation before.

He shook the thought from his mind but to his surprise, a small light of hope remained, he still had options. There were more than two directions he could go in. Regaining his resolve he turned again, and holding the torch to one side, began digging one handed in a third direction. Thankfully no stone sought to block him this time.

An eternity passed as he continued his awkward digging routine, the cramped tunnel slowly filling with discarded dirt as he trudged on. After he broke through what felt like the thousandth dirt block, a sudden rush of air washed over him, a sensation like flight... or falling. In his trance of endless digging, deaf to the growling of his stomach, he hadn't noticed the lack of path before him and without realising, his rhythm had carried him forward. His heart jumped into his mouth as his body followed his misplaced foot over the edge and into the void.

For anyone who hasn't experienced it, the sensation of falling flat on your face is very unpleasant. Doing it in the dark is worse. After extracting his face from the rocky floor he climbed to his hands and knees. Looking around he realised he had dropped his shovel and the torch had extinguished when it hit the floor. He was enveloped by the black embrace of darkness.

He began desperately snatching at the ground around him, blindly searching for his shovel until one hand came to rest on a wooden object. Rising to his feet, he carefully picked up the object, running his hand along its shape to determine its identity. It was curved and with his hand reaching what he assumed to be the top, he felt a piece of string tied to it, following it down and finding the opposite end again tied to the wood. Pulling the string a little and releasing it, letting it come to rest, clued him in as to the object's identity. Slipping the bow over his shoulder, he returned to searching for his shovel. He found it soon after, having fallen further away than he thought.

Regaining his composure now his tool and potential weapon was once again in his hands, he found himself looking up and squinting into the darkness, looking for any path he could take. He wasn't sure how far he had fallen but his gut told him trying to return to his dirt path was not the best option.