Undead Head, GR and Wilderness Party, Terrorists Attack in China

       Before the first dream with any sort of a plot there were dozens of twisting random images, little vignettes drawn from my past, both real and fictional. I had the random Yellow and black warped checkerboard patterns that typically mark the onset of a headache. (Feeling OK so far. I did sleep 13 hours though, so I may just have slept through it.)

       In the first dream I was with a group of archaeologists and soldiers were guarding us. I was there with a considerable set of lights and cameras to document their find. The forested area quickly gave way to a dead scar of a hole in which there were several large stone walls with images depicting feather and bead wearing warriors in battle with skeletal men and beasts. I commented that these were laid out like a warning, blocking progress to the cave like hole at the back of the scar, rather than lining the way, as much of this style of architecture seemed to do in other places. The archaeologists argued about that as I set up my solar powered light kits to take photos of the first monolithic carvings. I did a walk around with the HD steady cam first, and then settled in to taking shots in high resolution stereoscopic vision of the details of the monolith.
       I was not present when the accident occurred. One of the porters tripped over some old jaguar bones and fell into a vine covered hole. If it weren't for the stone pillars at the bottom of the pit he might have survived. We gathered for a memorial, after which I found a stone which depicted this place. I showed a head deep under a pile of large stones in the back of the cave, and showed the victorious army hauling away the dead from around this place. It was odd that for what the archaeologists thought to be a necropolis there were so few bones, the jaguar not withstanding. I suggested that this illustration explained where the bones were all buried.
       I promised in the morning to take the helium balloon up and see if I could spot the location on the carving.
       In the night, we were awakened by the clang of pick against stone. “Antiquities thieves,” was my first thought. The soldiers were running towards the noise, weapons drawn. The team leader was yelling at them not to shoot, the carvings were too precious. There was a yell and then several shots were fired. I had brought my night shot camera and was able to see the soldiers clustered around one of their own, and the body of the porter long before the narrow madly sweeping beams of the soldiers settled on the scene. I fired up one of my portable instruments, flooding the cavern with a diffuse cool light. The porter's body had several bloodless bullet holes in it, a soldier lay dying with a pick stuck through his body armor directly through his heart.
       Quite the argument ensued, with the lead archaeologist insisting that their man had somehow injured himself and they had shot the dead porter to cover for him. The soldiers insisted that their dead comrade had waken them and then run into the cave mere seconds before themselves, some weren't even properly buckled into their body armor, they had suited up so quickly to follow him. They felt that the porter had been faking his death and was really a thief. Neither story fit the elements of the scene before us, and a couple of the archaeologists and myself took the time to look at some of the stonework in the cave, it was dramatic, showing the funerary practice of decapitation and them crushing the skulls before taking them far away from the other remains. And all of it taken far away from the cave where a single crushed skull was buried.
       Seriously creepy. I asked if any of them had ever read comics or watched horror movies, because “this sure looks like a big red and yellow international 'get out of here and don't leave any bodies lying around' sign to me.” I snapped some photos of the crime scene, as I was sure there would be some later inquisition. We went back to the main group, who decided that a live jaguar must have dragged the body of the porter down here and the pick must have fallen on the soldier when someone panicked in the dark and dislodged it from above. I refrained from pointing out that the above part of the cave was some 30 meters from where someone had obviously been digging. A foot thick layer of ash and cave dust had been thrust aside and the pick had scored several chunks out of a fired clay dome. I immediately saw what had happened here thousands of years ago. Whoever had commanded the enemy army had been dismembered and his crushed skull had been mixed in with clay and then a huge fire had been set on top and all around to harden the clay.
       The lead archaeologist agreed with me and the team started to carefully dig out the over sized bust of a large skull. They X-rayed it, and found that there was indeed a skull in the center of the fired clay, or at least a skull shaped cavity, they were pretty sure the skull itself would have been reduced to ash in the firing of the clay. I wasn't so sure just based on the thickness of the clay.
       “Someone really was afraid of this guy.” I said as I documented more of the carvings and the clay skull itself. “They did everything they could to make sure he was absolutely isolated in his afterlife.” I thought that if they'd had enough stone they would have filled in the opening of the cave. Then I realized, that if they had filled it with loose stones, the native population would have long ago looted them for their own construction projects.
       Another night, another interruption. This time the dead porter and the dead soldier were at the scene. Fortunately there had been no other casualties. The three foot diameter clay skull was destroyed. The skull which had been encased in clay was free. Two picks were on the ground.
       Several of the guards crossed themselves, as did a couple of the archaeologists. No one wanted to touch the bodies to move them back to our makeshift morgue. Finally we drew straws, even the archaeologists participated. Only the military captain and the expedition leader excused themselves. Not very sporting of them, I thought. I drew one of the short straws along with a young soldier. She looked terrified. I suggested that we go get body bags first and then move them in the bags.
       Back at the morgue and storage tent, we discovered the remnants of their previous body bags. Neither of us said anything, but we were both thinking how pointless this was, and that no leopard or jaguar tore open the body bags and then took the bodies out and down into the cave.
       “Please, let's just hurry up and get this done!” the soldier's voice quavered as she encouraged me to stop looking over the bodies before putting them in the bags.
       “Just looking for claw and tooth marks.”
       “I don't want to know. I want to get back to the campfire. Surround myself with high explosives and automatic weapons. We're sleeping in our body armor the rest of this trip. I feel sorry for you guys.”
       “OK. Thanks. If we do have walking dead, shoot for the head.”
       “Is that something you learned in archeology classes?”
       “No, Zombie movies.”
       That made her laugh, an uncomfortable laugh, but a laugh.
       We finished our chore and used a day's ration of water to clean up afterwards.
       The team lead and a couple of his anthropologists were still up looking at the skull. They were discussing how best to preserve it from the moist jungle air. It looked like the dessicated flesh was becoming soft in the moist air. They didn't have a freezer, but did have some large zip seal bags. I offered them some of the desiccant packs I used with my camera gear. They bagged the skull, after I took a few shots, and tossed in nearly all my spare desiccant packs. I fell asleep working out how to rotate my remaining stock to keep my equipment and media dry. I moved all of the media into a single pouch. I would have to plan my shoots more carefully but that would save some space and allow me to rotate packs by drying some every night by the fire.
       I awoke to another commotion. The Team lead was yelling at the Captain and vise versa, both accused the other of moving the bodies during the night. Soldiers and archaeologists gathered behind their respective leaders. The porters and I making a sort of loose third grouping. I snapped a shot of the argument and both pointed at me and shouted in unison “Put that thing away!”
       “Is the skull missing, too?” I took the moment to interject my personal fear.
       “You and your monster movie logic.”
       “Is it?” asked the Captain.
       Turns out, it was.
       I had a really bad feeling.
       The soldier who helped me move the bodies was talking animatedly to her comrades until their Captain called them to attention. “That's enough, soldier.”
       The attack started almost immediately after the Captain entered the specimen tent.
       Old moss covered and mostly headless skeletons poured over the edge of the scar and stumbled towards the camp. Bullets did little unless there was a direct hit on bone. Grenades were better. There seemed to be little coordination to the skeletal movement and they collapsed readily if you hit them hard enough. I realized that our two expedition members were not amongst the attackers.
       “This is just a diversion!” I yelled at the Captain.
       “Well, it's working. We're penned in here.”
       “Stop shooting at them and just hit them. He doesn't know what guns are yet.”
       “Who he?”
       I pointed up to the top of the scar at the only point that overlooked our entire camp. There was the porter, holding up a nearly fully fleshed out skull that looked like it was looking out over us. I didn't see the soldier. “Your soldier, get to his tent, make sure it doesn't get his gear.”
       I ran to the soldiers compound, smacking tottering skeletons out of my way with my heavy tripod. The compound was empty save for a couple of randomly moving skeletons. I looked around, wishing that I had the helium balloon ready for flight. I spotted a couple of porters trying to run for it and called them back. Too late.
       They fell under a mass of flailing limbs and a few moment later stood up and shambled to the supply tent and ducked inside.
       “The supply tent.” they're in the supply tent.
       None of the soldiers or others wanted to move out of their defensive circle. The three recently dead left the supply tent with arm loads of axes, picks and other hand tools. They didn't seem to have any guns or grenades.
       “Shoot them in the head, the head is the only way to stop them!”
       “Stand down! We're not shooting our own.”
       The headless skeletons collapsed, and the porter and his grisly burden vanished back beyond the forest's edge.
       “They're dead, Captain, they aren't on our side any more.”
       The Captain refused to believe that they were actually dead. “It's some sort of jungle disease, made us think they were dead.”
       “Hello, bullet holes in the porter, your platoon shot him up after he was dead the first time. No bleeding, any of that ring a bell.”
       The Captain still refused to fire on his people.
       “I have photos.” I offered.
       The Captain pushed me aside and called his senior staff to him. “We'll call to evacuate the rest of you until this can be sorted out.” He watched the two porters and his former soldier retreat behind the brush at the mouth of the scar. Through the afternoon we could hear the sounds of digging on what I had called skull hill from the illustration on the first wall as we entered the scar. One squad of soldiers moved the skeletons out of the compound. I was stunned by the amount of flesh that was on them, ligaments, threads of muscle, it was disconcerting. “How could there be any flesh left on them, they've been in the dirt for hundreds of years?”
       No one had an answer.
       “We should cremate them,” one of the soldiers offered. “they aren't going to get up and walk around after that.”
       I agreed, but the bone guys fought the idea. “look at what we can learn from this!”
       “You're all leaving, we will take care of this.”
       The helicopters arrived. I put my media on with a research assistant, who wouldn't stop crying, and I strapped on my heaviest tripod and the dead soldier's body armor.
       “I'm officially embedded with your platoon, Captain, it's a pleasure to be your photographer.” I showed him my press credentials.
       “Shit. Just what I need.”
       As the last helicopter full of scientists and porters left I turned to the Captain, “Let's get those bones cremated.”
       He looked at me, looked up at the helicopter, then looked back at me and smiled. I had all ready put my camera bags down and was pulling on work gloves.
       “Get to it.” He called out to his platoon sergeant.
       We piled bones, some still moving, and some kindling, everything was too damp to light.
       “Phosphor grenade.”
       The bright white hot grenade burnt down through the bones and caught the damp wood ablaze in just a few seconds. The pile was still burning when the first group of skeletons came down into the scar, wielding axes and picks taken from the supply tent.
       “Fall back to the cave, that will concentrate them.”
       I was thinking that would do the same thing to us, but knew better than to interrupt the command. I was no longer a voting member of the team, I had only one function, to record these events for history. I took that seriously, running and uploading the first images of zombie attackers. Every bunch we knocked down was replaced by another bunch who ran inhumanly fast, pickup up the weapons and renewed the attack. We were pushed further back into the cave. In one lull in the action I ran out and wrestled a couple of axes from still struggling undead grasp. One of the sergeants joined me and we managed to bring a half dozen weapons back to the troops.
       The next group of attackers was even faster and had more flesh on their ancient bones. They swung harder and we took some injuries. I caught the whole thing on video.
       “We have to keep cremating them, reduce their resources,” the Captain called for his troops to spread out and drag the still wriggling corpses back to the cremation fire that was still burning.
       The dead necromancer threw everything he had at us, several soldiers were buried under flailing undead.
       “Shoot the head, shoot their heads!” the woman soldier shouted above the din of combat.
       I found myself wishing I was armed, as I didn't expect that there would be any prisoners taken here. I knew there was a hunting rifle in the supply tent, so I slipped off to get it. Upon leaving the supply tent I spotted our original porter. He was up at the tree line, holding up a fully regenerated head that was now perched on a ligament covered skeletal frame. I sighted the head through the camera and took several photos. I ran back to the Captain and pointed out where the enemy commander was located.
       The dream became more disjointed at that point. I started shooting the hunting rifle, shattering skulls and occasionally ancient obsidian swords. We had to fall back to the cave again after taking several casualties, and then having to kill them again. We could tell the undead entity was trying to figure out the guns, so several of us risked pulling the dead soldiers back to the cave with us, taking their arms away and using plastic cable ties to secure their hands and feet. The freshly dead weren't as strong and fast as the long dead. Several of the dead had old carved masks on their skulls. Bullets bounced off of the masks and we had to hit them from behind with the axes to do any damage. Frequently the only way to get them to slow down enough was to wait for them to attack someone else and strike while the tried to wrench their weapons free.
       Eventually the undead leader made his appearance in the cave, he was not easy to dispatch, he was faster than I could follow with the camera. We pushed him back and the flash from a stun grenade slowed him long enough for one of the soldiers to get off a head shot. All of the undead in the cave slowed to a crawl and we managed to dispatch them easily. I made my way over to the undead head. The bullet damage was already mending.
       “It's regenerating!”
       “Not on my watch,” the Captain stepped up with a Phosphorous grenade and shoved it in the still moving jaws. “I don't want to hear anything you have to say.” He pulled the pin and we all pulled back as the skull exploded and burned.
       An unearthly moaning filled the air and in the place of the burned skull was a gem encrusted mask with gold and silver feathers splayed upwards over the eyes for nearly a foot and a half of decoration.
       “Where did that come from?”
       “I don't know, never saw it before.”
       “Don't touch it.” I offered. Everyone turned to look at me. “It's hot.” I pointed to where the phosphorous was still burning nearby in a pool of rocky glass.
       I kept shooting video from the HD strapped to my shoulder, but took out the still camera to get shots of the mysterious mask and the remains of our victory.
       The mask faded as the head turned to ash and the grenade cooled.

       In a later dream I met up with GR, he had a new Humvee that he'd gotten for a very good deal, and he drove me up into the hills to meet some friends of his. There were places where the road wasn't actually as wide as the vehicle and I commented that we should have taken Little Red (my Honda Insight.) Somehow during the party I got very wet with some sort of sticky food-like substance. The hosts only had women's clothing, and nothing like pants that would fit. I agreed to wear a T-shirt and a sarong while my own clothing went through the wash.
       GR said I should take off the T-shirt and juggle burning torches. We went out to the pool deck and I juggled for a bit. I only nearly burned myself a half dozen times before I managed to find the rhythm.
       I stayed in the sarong because the women somehow “lost” my pants. “That's the biggest thing that's ever vanished from our dryer. It happens sometimes. We usually get something else a couple of days later. That's how we got this kilt and that sarong.” I asked to try on the kilt, but it was just a bit too large, it fit GR just fine, though, and he changed into the kilt.
       An obviously Polynesian woman came up to me and rearranged the sarong so that it covered a good part of my chest and went over one arm. “That's another way to wear it when it gets a little cooler at night.”
       We danced for a bit and she tried to teach me some Polynesian moves, though not the ones I was really becoming interested in. She smiled, “Later, baby.”
       GR similarly found himself the center of attention of a pair of busty redheads.
       My new Polynesian friend offered to take me back to her place, and then home to the city in the morning. I decided that I didn't really seem to miss my pants. Her place was also in the mountains, but we rode in a tiny little smart-car sized vehicle to get there, so the roads seemed plenty wide enough. Her house was decorated in yellows and browns. I explained that yellow was one of my favorite colors, and the browns almost exactly matched my Hawaiian shit. I pretended I blended into her walls.
       We were talking over tea when GR showed up to take me home. “She's a he, man.” he whispered in my ear. I thought about it a second, and decided that it didn't matter, I was really enjoying myself.
       “I'll get a ride down the hill later. Enjoy the girls,” I waved to the redheads who were both in the front passenger seat.
       GR grunted good night and drove off.
       “He told you I'm a man, didn't he.”
       “Yes, and not a problem. I'm enjoying our visit.”
       “Its not true,” she showed me her breasts, berry sized nipples and firm natural shape. “I have female bits down here, too.”
       She did, and also small male parts. I asked her how she kept so slender as most hermaphrodites tended to a certain largeness.
       “Good genes, weird, but good.”
       We resumed our chat and our tea, and dancing. “When you agreed to wear the sarong, I knew you were someone I could talk to. I just had a good feeling about you.”
       “It was all the magic sarong.”

       In a still later dream (I slept 13 hours for some reason.) I was watching television in the lobby of a large hotel in China. I had won some sort of contest and was at the Olympics for a week. The lobby exploded into a confusion of flying glass and body parts. After I unburied myself I found myself facing a Chinese man who was crying and holding his shoe out to me, with his broken off foot still in it. I almost passed back out. I move the table off of me and gently took the foot from him and set it down in the box he was sitting in. I managed to get the attention of some police but they only wanted to take me out not help the man who had his shin bone sticking out of the remains of his leg.
       I stopped and went back to the man taking off my belt I threaded it under his thigh and improvised a tourniquet. The police let me finish and then half carried me over the rubble. As I went by a part of the bar mirror, still against the wall, I saw that half my own face was hanging and my scalp was on crooked. No wonder they were trying to get me to the ambulance, I looked pretty bad.