Introduction
Zombie
lover as I am, I often watch late night zombie movies. This results
in some pretty epic zombie dreams on a fairly consistent basis. I
started realizing that they could easily become a coherent story and
that they almost kind of played out that way in my dreams, so I've
decided that they are so out there and weird that I should write them
down into a cohesive story. I was fortunate enough for them to
already kinda work together so I've had to change only a few details
now and then, but for the most part they're exactly as I dreamt them
in terms of plot. I've always wanted to write them down and this blog
seems like the perfect place to do it.
The
story itself has kind of progressed to be kind of a mix between Night
of the Living Dead, The Body Snatchers, and Independence Day. I'm not
saying that this formula has by any means made a good story, but I
feel bold enough to say that this is an interesting, and maybe even a
unique take on zombies. I hope to (1) explain the spread of
infection, (2) create a story for my human characters that's more
proactive than just survival, and hopefully, I can (3) provide a
resolution. Welcome to my dreams.
P.S.
If you're reading this and you suddenly discover a way to turn it
into a drinking game, please share in the comments.
Song for this week: Walking
on Air - Kerli
1.1
There
was an absolutely gaudy looking barn outside of town that most people
insisted was “cute” or “quaint”. Pretty much every prom, high
school banquet, awards ceremony, and bar mitzvah took place there
because it had been gutted and retro-fitted with the best sound
system, stage, and dance floor in our little town. I've been there
way too many times and I hated every inch of that paint chipped,
rotted, musty old building. It was well lit enough for big
celebrations, but I never understood why they never went out of their
way to make it look more presentable and replace some of the wood
that's clearly been aged. They could afford a Bose stage sound system
but 4x4s to fix the door or the walls is just too expensive. I guess
it was for that rustic look, but I thought it was the ugliest
building I've ever seen but there I was, driving out to that stupid,
over-sized barn again. My little brother was getting an award and our
parents were out of town which meant it was my
job to take pictures and be the supportive family member.
The
“fun” had already started when I pulled into the parking lot of
my brother's Honor Society awards ceremony, and by “fun” I mean
the comedian/ high school principle's act was in full swing. I
actually liked his act, I just wish it changed a little bit from year
to year. It didn't matter though because the crowd was eating up his
act like always, even though they've heard his jokes thousands of
times before. He did tell the jokes better every time because he just
got to be more confident, but confidence didn't improve the jokes
themselves all that much.
I was hammered drunk only a
couple of hours before and really late by the time I showed up. I had
sobered up quite a bit, but I was way beyond the point of being tipsy
still, and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to drive to
the event anyways.
I decided to say at my car for a
few minutes and smoke a cigarette to hopefully cover the smell of
alcohol on my breath even a little bit from the high schoolers and
their teachers. It may have also been another excuse to put off going
into that stupid barn.
Partly through my second cigarette I heard a
scream coming from a woman behind the house not but a few yards from
the barn.
I still had enough presence of
mind to remember that a blood-curdling scream is a bad thing, but not
enough to think that I should get an escort cop from the barn to come
with me to check it out. I didn't even have a flashlight, cell phone
(it was dead) or a way to defend myself if it was something serious
so I probably should have had more reservations about checking things
out; Whiskey will do that to you.
Although I wanted to go, I was
concerned more for my own safety than whatever was happening over
there, but as usual I was over-taken by a day dream. What if I
swooped in at the last second and saved whoever is over there from
whatever impending danger has closed in on her? A thug trying to mug
her? A rapist stopped in the middle of his perverse actions? I'd be a
hero for sure! Every fiber of my body told me this all wasn't likely
and that I was going to go over there and have my ass kicked but it
didn't matter now; I've already pumped myself up.
I went over to the side of the
house the scream came from to see if I could help. My good intentions
were met with a bird bath and weeks old dog turds rather than my
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a hero. The dog turds were not a
pleasant sight but certainly nothing to scream about, so what
happened here? I started to question if the scream came from inside
the house, but it was always locked. Nobody's lived there for years
and was considered a community landmark; I didn't know of anybody who
was allowed in there so I had my doubts about the screams coming from
there.
“Is anybody there? Is
everything okay? I heard a scream and I came over.”
It was dark and I couldn't see
anything so somebody could have been there. I waited a bit and
started to walk towards the barn thinking I should tell somebody when
I heard a whisper that was unintelligible but it was definitely a
whisper; a faint, hoarse, high-pitched squeal that I was just barely
able to perceive.
“Please come to the window”,
it said more audibly this time but just barely. Definitely a woman's
voice. The voice seemed to come from the window, which I noticed now
was slightly opened. Now thanks to the disembodied whisper all I
could think about was the song Come To My Window by Melissa
Etheridge.
“Is everything okay over here?
I heard a scream and I just wanted to make sure everything was ok.”
I was speaking at the window from a distance because I didn't really
want to get closer because my courage was starting to wear off
considerably by this time. The faint voice muttered something that I
didn't quite catch again and rather than ask the whispering voice to
repeat itself I just sat there and stared into the pitch black room
behind the window. “My name is James. It's okay, I'm here to help.
Is everything okay? Do you need any help?”
It said something else or
repeated itself; I'm not sure. Finally, I heard a much more distinct
voice as if she had moved closer to the window; “Come inside. Shut
the window.”
I acquiesced to the voice and
awkwardly climbed into the first floor window, shut it, and took in
my surroundings. It was dark but I could still tell I was in a
bedroom so I sat down on the bed and tried to locate and speak to the
stranger; “I heard a scream. Are you hurt? Should I call 911?”
I sat for a long while waiting
for her to say something and it was during this silence that I made
up my mind about this woman; I didn't like her. I was still going to
help her if she needed it, but I didn't like her.
After a long and uncomfortable
pause I wish she hadn't started talking because she got creepier and
a bit excited.
“Danger. Soon the other
building will be gone. Death. Blood. You run. Lot's of blood. Run
towards the sun set. Don't stop. You'll find a machine. My machine.
Get in it. Fight and-”
“Woah, stop right there.
What's going on? Who are you? And did you say I'm in danger?” I
said and stood up from the bed. I could tell she was hiding in the
closet so I started to look for something to protect myself and work
my way over to either her or an exit, whichever came first.
“Kill me. I've tasted blood. I
will kill you.”
“You've tasted blood? You'll
kill me? Why would you do a thing like that?” I stayed close to the
wall inching my way around the small room trying to grab hold of
anything to protect myself but the room was stripped clean of
anything useful.
“Find others to fight. You
must kill me!”
I thought this lady was cuckoo
for cocoa puffs. There's a mental health ward the next county over so
I thought maybe she broke out and I was getting worried about what
would happen next. She was getting more excited by the second and she
was threatening my life so I needed to get out of there. Also, broken
sentences kinda tick me off and she wasn't even done.
“I hear your heart. I smell
your blood. Like metal.”
Does that mean have
too much iron in my blood? I thought to myself as I bumped into
the chest-of-drawers.
“I will kill you. You must
kill me!”
Just then I heard screams coming
from outside the house and a loud explosion. The window I just
crawled through showed me a bright orange and red glow that could only
be a fire. It was loud, enough even for me to feel it in my chest
like the bass drum of a marching band. I had finally found the door,
and my instincts told me to run and see what it was but before I
could leave the room I saw movement from the closet.
I flipped on the lights next to
the door and saw a young women who looked like she had been ripped to
shreds by a dog or something big. The skin on her right cheek looked
like it was barely hanging on to her face and chunks of her right arm
were missing completely, revealing muscle-tissue and bone. Her pale
skin contrasted with the blood dripping down from her eyes and pools
of blood already coagulated at her mouth making her the creepiest
thing I'd ever seen, not counting that night I watched Japanese
commercials on YouTube.
“Your face! Your arm! We need
to get you to a doctor! You're not well.
Just stay calm, lie down on the bed and I'm going to get someone.”
I was genuinely concerned for this girl, because I'd never seen
anything like her in my life. At first I almost threw up my dinner
and whiskey but I'd be okay as long as I didn't have to touch her. It
was a bit of a relief though because I thought she was
delusional from blood loss or some sort of head-force trauma and not actually a psychopath.
“Run towards the sun set. I'm
going to kill you. You must kill me!”
I knew then that delusional or not, she was still a threat. Now that the shock was gone from
seeing her for the first time, I realized I'd seen this girl before.
She's been over to our place before. She one of my little brother's
friends and judging by her dress I think she was in the Honor Society
as well. She definitely sounded different, but I was sure whatever
happened to her had affected her pretty badly. She looked messed up.
“You must kill me!” The
screams from outside haven't stopped, but they were completely
drowned out by the primeval shriek this young woman released as she
lunged towards me.
Her teeth were bared and aimed
directly at my throat, which wasn't something I really wanted to
experience. I had sobered up a lot by now so I had my wits about me
enough to Chris Brown her hard. Just as I had suspected, touching her
made my skin crawl and throwing up didn't seem like it was that
far-fetched of an option right now.
I was thinking she would take
the hint after being hit and keep her psycho behavior in check but
she only stumbled backwards for a step then continued her assault. As
she approached me the second time, I grabbed her by the throat and
pressed her up against the wall. She was cold to touch and the moment
I touched her, blood gushed out of her eye sockets. I made the
connection between her and a ketchup bottle in my head, but that is
one of those thoughts you get that only serve to creep yourself out. Probably better to suppress those, right?
“You'll have to kill me!”
I
wasn't thinking straight at that point or I probably wouldn't have
done it, but I was so freaked out and scared that killing her
actually made sense to me at that point. I threw her body against the
wall repeatedly partly out of anger and partly out of fear, making
sure her head received the blunt of the blow every time until her
bloodied, beat up body went limp in my hands. That was my first kill.
I let go of her and let her
sink to the ground. I began to wonder if I had gone too far. I asked
myself if she was really a threat to my life and if that killing
was really in self-defense. I thought it would never hold up in
court, and it probably wouldn't have if the court system lasted more
than 48 hours from that point. Lucky me.
Immediately after the corpse hit
the floor I remembered the ketchup bottle thing vividly; I rushed
to the chest-of-drawers and threw up in the first drawer I could get
open. Once I had everything cleared out of my system I knew I had to
address whatever it was that was happening outside.
When I left the front door of
the house I saw the worst thing I'd ever seen in my life; mass panic
and bloodshed. There were people attacking each other and dead bodies
surrounded the farm house and the whole fiasco was lit by the burning
barn. Everyone looked well dressed like they'd come right from the
event so I couldn't help but wonder what had happened. What caused
this? I saw students lying on the ground with their arms missing and
surrounded by pools of their own blood and it was all too disturbing
for me. By this point everyone was as messed up looking as the girl I
just killed, and they seemed to not only kill other people but tear
at their flesh with their hands and teeth until there wasn't a single
person who didn't look like they had decided to jump through the
world's largest paper-shredder.
Eventually I began to piece
some things together despite the shock. I noticed that it was the
high school teachers who were attacking and in some cases eating the
students! The fact that the teachers were able to have caught so many
students made me think this was a premeditated attack, too.
I found no
trace of my brother, so either I missed his demise or he got away
safe. If I tried to look for him I would surely be attacked as well so I had
only one option; to leave. I'm hoping at least some of the students
got away, though. It was entirely possible because I stood there for
about a minute and nobody noticed me so it's not hard to think that
another student could have gotten away.
After what I'm sure was the
longest sixty seconds in history I started to looks for a route to
my car when it occurred to me that the number of attackers were
increasing and I couldn't find where they were coming from. That is
until I saw a recently fallen and partially consumed girl right in
front of me rise to her feet. I couldn't believe it!
She was just partially eaten and
very much dead by then, but she just got up and started moving
around! In fact, all the other bodies on the ground rose at about the
same time; but, I was so taken in by the girl that I didn't notice all
the other students stand up and do the same thing. I was transfixed
on the girl immediately in front of me.
The
girl in front of me was less coordinated than her teachers were, but
she was definitely still alive and looking around for something. She
cast her eyes one way and another looking for something when she
settled on me. We made eye-contact for an uncomfortable amount of
time and then she began to shamble towards me; it was a quick shamble
but a shamble all the same. I didn't know what her intentions were
but I had a good guess and I didn't have it in me to kill another
person that night. In my bodies choice between fight or flight, I'm
glad it chose flight. I took off in the direction of my car, hoping to
get there out of sheer luck rather than a cleverly devised plan, only
to have my path intercepted by my old high school English teacher.
She was old, real old, but she
seemed to be a lot more mobile now. It was my sincerest hope that I
would never have to see this old bag again, but there I stood,
face-to-face with my most hated teacher from high school. I backed
away and began to wonder what I should do next, until I remembered
what the girl in the house had said; She wanted me to go in the same
direction the sun set, which would be west. Rather than risk getting
attacked by the woman who almost failed me my junior year of high
school, I took off towards the west which I seemed to recall was
behind the barn.
I knew this because my first
girlfriend and I had plenty of good times behind that barn and we
watched the sun set almost every day the summer before my Sophomore
year of high school. To be totally honest we didn't watch the sun
set, but it set while we did... other stuff.
The backside of the barn, due
west, was overgrown with shrubbery and a few trees, but I forced my
way through. I was lucky because the trees kept the light of the fire
from making me visible to my attackers, but I was not so lucky in
that my old english teacher saw me make my exit.
“One went that way!”
The weird thing was that she
spoke very clearly, but the response to her call was a massive grunt
or moan on behalf of all the students. I heard one of the male
teachers yell out “Get him!”
This was the last thing I heard
as I ran off into a clearing behind the over-grown brush and shrubs.
It was a field usually used for crops but the wheat had been
collected weeks ago. The soil was uneven and kind of hard to walk on
let alone run, but I had plenty of motivation to push on. It never
occurred to me that I didn't know where I was going or why, or that I
was following the advice of a maniac who had tried to bite my
jugular.
When I had finally finished
running across the field I crossed an old, country road and into
another field that hadn't seen crops in years so it was easier to
cross, and I kept running. I was too scared to be tired or consider
slowing down, eventually ending up on another farm road. My legs couldn't take me far enough from
that scene.
I had no car and as far as I
knew I had no destination, but fear was in control. Everything I did
from that point on seemed like a reaction to what was going on around
me and my autopilot told me to shake a leg.
Post section 1.1
A quick note about what I'm doing with this writing process before I leave. I've included a song for every post that I leave here that will share what I feel about some of the characters. I couldn't include ever detail of my dreams, and I couldn't even share every dream. The woman in the farm house has a rather interesting back story and the song I chose for this post is very much geared towards her personality. Once I get the main plot out of the way I hope to someday go back through my notes and tell her story as well, but the song should be sufficient for now. I am in no way a professional writer, though, and I know that even through my meticulous editing I've still probably missed a lot of mistakes that will only serve to make me look like an idiot on the internet. It's my sincerest hope that this is at least readable and interesting to read.
