Black and White Birthday, with Zombie

I was out looking at critters in a pet store, and there were several of my friends with me. We left without me buying anything, as I was concerned about the pool in the back yard (the fish were taking over) and the zombie in the basement. I really didn't have room for pets, and hoped against hope that they weren't thinking of getting me a new pet, as I was having trouble keeping up with the koi in the garden pool. The house wasn't ready for a party either, every horizontal surface was filled up with Lego based game prototypes that needed to be broken down and stored away. After photographing them, I figured, I checked my phone, over 8Gb of memory left, so no problem there. I slipped out of the store and headed home ahead of the crowd, they said they were going to stop somewhere for lunch. I cleared out all the Lego constructs surrounding the pool so that my birthday friends could use the pool area if they wanted. I kept dropping pieces off of the contructs into the pool. I tried fishing out the Lego pieces I'd dropped - a bunch of 1x1 round and cone-shaped bricks in long antennae-like chains, mostly yellow and light blue. (Everything else in the dream seemed to be black and white, mostly.) The fish (Beautiful black spots on white koi) in the pool kept hitting the chains of bricks, knocking them even further apart. After dropping an entire space shuttle model and watching it carreen down the stairs into the basement, bouncing and knocking bits off as it tumbled from step to step. I decided to head down there and deal with the basement zombie so that my guests would have some place to gather. The zombie, wearing a black and white checked clown outfit, would stop attacking if someone agreed to play a card game with him. It was a collectable cardgame sort of thing, and he had the two decks already made up. As long as thew game was in progress, the zombie wouldn't bother anyone. If you lost your game against the zombie, he would eat you, of course. I started the game, then left to finish cleaning up the dropped Legos. As I was taking the Legos back upstairs to my room, I was a little worried about leaving the game table after my turn, but figured the zombie would just have to wait. I heard the house manager saying my guests were arriving and they offered to usher them into my room - which I knew was way to small for everyone. I explained the issue, and as I came back from dumping a few pounds of Legos in various states of contruction, or destruction, into my room, I realized I wasn't even going to have room for me in there. I could only barely make out the fact that I had a black an white checked bedspread and pillow shams. The zebra patterned rug on the floor was barely visible between the desk, printer stand, office chair, file cabinets, book cases, piles of Lego and paper models and my bed. I sighed, wondering how it had gotten all so crowded. I shouted down to the house manager to ask my guests to wait in the frontroom until I could get the fish out of the pond and the Zombie settled. I was a bit worried about the zombie, as I was pretty sure he cheated. I found a couple of decks I'd made up myself many years ago and decided to bring them down. Maybe we could get him to play a four-hand game and that way he couldn't cheat by rearranging my deck. A part of my brain realized that the Zombie had picked the cards for the second player'd deck, so probably didn't even need to rearrange the draw pile. Heading back down the stairs, I discovered that my friends had brought me two black and white kittens from the pet store, they were adorable, and friendly. Also, a black and white puppy (looked like an English Bulldog, too cute) two guinea pigs (also black and white in their little white cage with a black exercise wheel) and a small very musical voiced black and white bird. I protested that I not only didn't have enough room for all of them, but I had no kitty litter, training pads, cat, dog, rodent or bird food for them either. They didn't seem to care about that, and started taking the cages downstairs into the basement. I hoped the zombie was fully engrossed in our game and wouldn't be a problem. The uncaged critters stayed in the front room, playing on the black futon. The little black and white bird fluttered up to my shoulder and sang a cute little song in my ear as I went down to face the zombie, and all of my guests, not sure which I was more frightened of at that point.

What?

Zombie Apocalypse dream...who knows what episode we're on now. This one took place at a porn studio. An unusually normally proportioned porn star was covered in bites from many narrow escapes, but she never turned. It didn't take us long to figure out that she was immune. We decided we needed to get her to a doctor, if we could find one, and see if she was the cure/inoculation for the rest of us.

I "woke up" and was thinking about the whole zombie dream thing...it's been months since I've actually watched or played anything zombie related. I couldn't figure out where this dream came from, so wondered if it had been mis-delivered.

"What!" echoed through the room, really waking me up.

Missed the Boat, Movie Extra Extra

I dreamed I was wrapped up for winter, even though it was only a mildly chilly day, because I was going on a cruise to Alaska. Unfortunately, the traffic was stopped and my shuttle missed the sailing time by about 15 minutes. I managed to get to the ticketing office, and they switched my boarding to LA, but told me I had to get there on my own. I made my way over to the train station where they looked at me like I was crazy, but the ticketing agent just smiled and asked if I'd forgotten my sunglasses. I looked at her questioningly, and she laughed and said I looked like a spy from "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego" and that made me chuckle.

In the second dream of the morning I was an extra in a zombie movie, and at the same time performing with some friends in an art film using some of the other extras as their main performers. I was in a torn up tuxedo and my hands were made up so I could tear off bits of my own "flesh" and chew on them. It worked so well that the director of the movie I was an extra in decided to promote me to a "named" zombie and featured me in a couple of different scenes. This sort of threw off the filming of the other film a bit, but the directors' production assistants managed to work out a compromise, and at one point I was being whisked away in a cart with a makeup artist and a costumer going at me while I sat in the back. In the second movie there was a weird romantic tangle and I had a set of cheat cards with the character faces and names of my partners, because there was not going to be any other way to recognize them under all the makeup. Those cards were in plastic badge holders and kept popping out of my shirt. We finally got the idea to rubber band them together and safety pin them to my t-shirt.

Dreamlands Zoo an Amusement Park. Dimension Doors.

Night before last I dreamed I was with some friends at the Dreamlands Zoo, which is really as much an amusement park as a zoo. As we were strolling around, we noticed people suddenly convulsing, and then collapsing, then rising again with classic zombie features. Some of them threatened to go into the enclosures after the trapped animals.

We decided that wasn't going to happen, and rather than running away with the rest of the crowd, we went after the zombies, and used ourselves as bait to lure them into one of the ride enclosures. The ride operator helped us out by starting the ride after we got the bulk of them in the loading area. We hopped on a car, and were able to jump off of the roof of it onto the control booth as it went by. It was a rather long jump, about eight feet, easy for me, but for one of our shorter members we ended up grabbing her by the arms as she fell just short of the roof. She lost her shoes to the zombies below. I told her it would be okay, as there were plenty of shoes in the gift shop.

I carried her piggy back to the gift shop, followed by more zombies as we went. In the gift shop I had to tell her to just pick all the ones her size she could carry, as the zombies were getting close and she didn't have time to pick her favorites. I had to toss the shoes out of their boxes into a bag and then pick her up to get out of the store before we closed the zombies in by lowering the security gates. We found ourselves in a little back stage area, going through shoes. She found a pair of sneaker boots that fit, but they weren't a color she liked. Bright red, so I liked them. I told her to grab any that fit which were the color she liked, and we could take them with us. I figured the boot top sneakers would be better at stopping ankle biters. We joined the others with five or six pairs of tan shoes in a large theme park bag.

There were about twenty of us, warily eying one another, waiting for the telltale symptom of impending infection. Victims' heads would pop off, turn over in the air and land back in place, but transformed by a greenish tint. Then the convulsions and collapse would happen. Anyone who was near when a head popped off might get splattered by goo and become infected. Amazingly, no one had been bitten, and the zombies, once they were rounded up, were remarkably docile. I was glad no one had panicked and started killing them. I was pretty sure that there would be some sort of magical cure, eventually.

I climbed out onto the roof of the building and looked out over the theme park and zoo. Several of the keepers waved to let me know they were okay. I asked if there was enough food for the critters for a couple of days. They indicated that there was. Then I took off into the air and headed for the center of Dream City to find out if there were some EMRTs available. (Emergency Mage Response Team) The dream just sort of fell apart at that point.


This morning's dream was suffused with a dark and brooding atmosphere, amber tones and deep purple and blacks in the sky. There was a haze that blocked out any sign of stars or moon, and diffused the pale amber lights from inside the house.

I entered the house, and there was no furniture in the front room. The carpet was threadbare, a path worn between the front door and the kitchen, and, oddly, between the left and right walls of the room.
As I stood there, pondering where I needed to look next, a man, very similar in build and manner to myself, stepped through the wall on my left, running, and into the wall on the right. I checked the walls, they were solid enough. I thought perhaps it was a ghost. Just to be sure, I entered the dining area and turned down the hallway to the right, checking to see if the apparition ended up in the front bedroom. No. There was a musty curved front chest, a ragged shag carpet (dark green from moss or its original color I couldn't tell) and the remains of a bed frame, six slats and two long rust marks between a collapsed footboard and a headboard with rotted fabric and hairlike stuffing on its face. The headboard was leaning back against the wall, where water stains showed it had been in that place a considerable time.

There were no signs of traffic through the room other than myself. I retreated back to the kitchen and began cleaning up the place with brooms and mops that were in much better shape than the rest of the house.

The house was essentially nine squarish rooms:

Bath and Hall to backyard, Kitchen, Master bedroom
dinette and hall, dining room, hall and closet and Master bath
Bedroom, front room, Bedroom with round front chest of drawers.

There were only two exterior doors, one in the front room, and one at the hallway between the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen was a very '50s looking affair with white and chrome appliances that had rounded corners. Once I had everything cleaned up I moved a table into the front room and covered it with the best tablecloth I could find in the linen closet. I then set out a number of food items and drinks.

The next person who burst through the wall almost crashed into the buffet. They stopped and noticed me, and it was an awkward hemming and hawing. Yes, we had the same name, too. I could feel some sort of connection and he took a snack and excused himself, promising to come back.

Another pair of people shot through the room. They went around or leaped over the table. While both exhibited the same uncanny resemblance to myself, one of them was decidedly female. It occurred to me that I might want to discover why they were running. The last pair had left wet marks on the walls they had passed through. When I touched the water, I noticed that it didn't feel right. I pushed my hand into the wall, and then through it. I looked at the direction they had gone, and decided to go after them, rather than in the direction of whatever was where they were running from. I crossed the room and pushed my way through the wall, a green glow filled my vision as I pushed through. I stepped out into a bloody red sky and blackened ruins. There was a solid chunk of wall behind me, and no indication of where the folks who were ahead of me went. I turned back and pushed myself through the wall and ended up back in my place.

The woman was waiting for me. She was snacking and perched on the end of the table. Her presence was a little unnerving, she was both me and the opposite of me at the same time. Her height was about four inches less than my own, but her hair and eyes were the same, her expressions so very much like my own, just a little softer, and rounder. "You're like a sister, one I never knew I had."

"Closer than that. I'm your X chromosome doubled. We are nearly genetically identical."

"Then the men..."

"Closer that actual twins."

"Clones?"

"Not exactly. Just other...possibilities."

She then took me on a quick tour of the other possibilities, except one because, "things are a little hot there, right now."

There was essentially a path out of each room of the house, except the dining room, as it didn't really have its own walls, the front room passage was the quickest to navigate, and went between their party house and the ruins I'd seen earlier. "We don't know what happened there, and we don't spend any time there, it's even creepier than here."

"Thanks."

"Just calling how we see it, your house just feels wrong."

I have to admit, I felt much the same way about it. I was pretty sure I didn't actually come from this place originally.

"How many of you...us?"

"Eight, though one died, and then there's you, so...nine." She looked around the blue green world we were in. "Odd, we really thought there was just one per room in the hub, your house. But then there's you." All of the homes we'd traveled through, except the ruins, had indeed had eight or nine rooms, not all of them were square, though, some were linear, or two lines, some "u" shaped, and one was two four room apartments connected by a breezeway.

"Maybe I'm not one of your eight," I suggested, but immediately knew that wasn't true. "Or there are nine.

She agreed that nine was probably the right number, but wondered if that meant there was a ninth place we could travel to. I wondered that, too. "That has to be where you are from, though!"

I hadn't thought of that, but I didn't have any idea how to get us there. At least, I didn't until I noticed the round front chest of drawers sitting in an overgrown part of this house's yard. I walked over towards it, and as I did so, it glowed slightly, and made a noise like my cell phone alert. A low whine and then vibration. The glow strengthened and then faded in time with the alert.

"Never seen that before," she said.

Another one of us showed up, sandwich in hand. "Thanks for the grub," He wiped his palm on his pants and we shook hands. There was a nearly electric jolt went through both of us. "Wow, he's like us, only old."

"Thanks," I coughed. I did then note that all of the others had also been mid twenties looking.

It wasn't long before there were half a dozen of us, including another female me, but with long red hair. "She dyes it." the first woman wispered when she noticed me looking at it.

"Interesting, my hair used to be reddish like that when I was in my twenties," I had quite the clear memory of my image in a large vanity mirror, and indeed, the me of the dream, now white haired, had once had reddish brown hair.

"Oh..."

"Told you."

We turned back to the chest of drawers, I could feel it pull at me, and the glow was more pronounced. I gestured towards it, and the drawers started to open, flooding the yard with a greenish light. We all gestured towards the bulky piece of furniture and pulled, until there was a wooden frame filled with a bright green glow.

"So, who's first."

I was, but I just ended up surrounded by cats and staring into the alarm light next to my bed. No other me around. (Probably a good thing, that would have freaked me out.)

Hidden House, Not the Chosen One

I dreamed again of the large bookshelf lined dome house, with its long spiral stair up to the second floor which was open to the floor below, with a grand round promenade that looked over the center of the house below and up into the sky dome above. The house was being rebuilt, and not everything was in place. There were unruly piles of furniture and books waiting to be sorted, a stack of floor lamps awaiting repairs and transportation back to their proper locations. Because of this there were large pools of darkness on the floor below, lending an aura of creepiness to the stillness. The house should have been buzzing with activity, but I'd sent the workers home, just wanting to sit and relax quietly under the moonlight coming in from the sky dome.

In the solitude, I began to hear noises, like conversation. Either someone had left a radio on, or someone hadn't gone home. As the sounds drifted up to my ear I could tell the tones were conversational, male and female, so decided it must be the latter. I made my way downstairs and followed the intermittent noise, made difficult by the acoustics of the dome. Eventually I found a doorway that led to an older part of the house. It had been covered in the rubble of the original disaster and had not yet been cleared. I dug it out, remembering that it went to an older, underground portion of the house. There was a back door of sorts, in the hillside across the berm that covered the servant living/storage quarters and separated my property from the graveyard property. I made my way down the long dark hall, now empty of its angry ghost, into the brightly lit yellow and white gingham kitchen, and there was N and her boyfriend, who she introduced as Derek.

I'd never seen him before, but was amused that he was a chubby, crew-cut, suit wearing sort. He was obviously older, but just as obviously was dying his hair, and scalp, where his hair was thin. The complete opposite of everything she had previously found desirable. Even though I was angry to find them in my home, this made me laugh.

Laughing as I told them to pack up their junk and leave made Derek angry. Fighting angry. He came at me swinging, but I backed up and tapped him on the nose over his missed swing. He went down with a howl. I politely suggested that he not get up for a moment. N made some comment about how I'd never fought for her.

I suggested that if I'd known about Derek when we were married I would have done far worse than merely bopping him on the nose like a bad puppy. I told her it's far too late to give me the opportunity for fight for her, so he's all hers and to take him away with the rest of her crap. It was a very tense dream moment, but also, oddly, satisfying when they picked up their stuff and began stacking it outside the door.

-----

This morning, I dreamed I was playing a mash-up World of Warcraft, Diablo III sort of campaign, and soon it was real, rushing around trying to avoid the undead, unleashing powerful magics and then leaping huge distances to clear surrounding hordes of evil undead. I raced through the map, avoiding creeps where I could and engaging from a distance where I couldn't. At the conclusion of the conflict I somehow managed to return home victorious. Others were gathered there, and greeted me as the "chosen one" who would lead them all to final victory. Now, I'd actually come to report my successes to the person who previously had been considered the "chosen one" and asked him to straighten everybody out. We went out to the crowd, who pointed out that I fit the prophesy.

I pointed out that I didn't. Their leader was the one with the one handed companion, not me. I didn't even have a companion!

A little gnome jumped up with a large axe in her hand, "I'll be your companion!" Then she raised the axe to chop off her hand.

I intercepted the axe and took it away from her. "I'd love to have you as a companion, but you can keep your hand."

"I'll just tuck it here in my belt, then." Well, she missed a little and her hand went right down the front of her pants, her big gblue eyes went wide at the error, causing a ripple of laughter through the crowd. I put down my magic bow, then knelt down and hugged her.

"It will be good to have help in the coming conflict, I'm honored."

A different Gnome picked up my bow, and held it aloft. It was an oddly designed thing, more of a harpoon gun than a crossbow, and so it had but a single large cocking lever outside, as the works were entirely internal. "Look, a one-armed companion to me!" The Gnomes in the crowd all hushed and then after the laughing stopped, a silence fell across the whole crowd.

"We should go plan your final campaign," the real chosen one leaned over to me. My Gnome companion took my weapon and, even though it was half again as tall as she, held it aloft and fell in behind us. I would rather have strapped the weapon back on, as I felt a little exposed without its heft at my side, but the pride of the Gnomes seemed wrapped up in my weapon, which I realized was likely an ancient Gnomish design (and proably why I had kept it and continued to add enchantments to it regularly.) "It appears you have fulfilled another part of the prophesy."

"How so?"

He looked over his shoulder, which prompted me to do the same. "That sure looks like you raised the whole Gnomish Army in a single minute." And there was indeed an army's worth of grim faced gnomes gathered respectfully in the courtyard behind us.

"I am not the chosen one. I don't even believe in the chosen one."

"It's not about what you believe at this point." He paused at the top of the stairs to look out over his outer courtyard. Portable forges were being set up everywhere. Gnomes, Dwarves and Men were working together to arm and armor the Gnomish host following us. "They have chosen you, that MAKES you the chosen one, by definition, really, it's quite simple."

That made me sad, because I was pretty sure that I wasn't even going to pick up the game again, as my subscription had run out and I didn't think I played enough to warrant the expense.

Reunion, Flying Romance, Returning the Cat

In my first dream of the night, I was reunited with the Nerd Girl (Star Wars) who was my first flame. We are both chubby old fans now, and the fire of passion that burned through us as young adults has long passed, however, we did have a good time at one of our smaller local science fiction conventions.

I knew the reunion wouldn't be long lasting, however, as she reeked of camels. When I mentioned this, our long time friend got insulted and smacked me. I had to explain that I smelled not the spitting one humped kind, but the cigarette kind.

"Oh, sorry." 

"I asked for it, I suppose."

"She only smokes those to cover up the other smell."

"I smelled that, too, and even though I'm not opposed, the last person I was with chose that over me, so - not an inducement to explore a long term romance either."

"It would of been so romantic if you'd gotten back together."

"I suppose, but we didn't grow into somebodies we could love."


And with that I was off into the next dream. It was Almost a Super Power Tuesday! The woman I was dating had the almost a super power of flight (which I would argue is legitimately a super power) however, she could only fly if she was bottomless. (Which did limit the appeal of flying, at least for her. Not so much for the rest of us.) If she knew she was going to want to fly somewhere she would wear either stretchy shorts that were easy to pull down, or short, really short skirts and just pull down her panties.

My almost a super power was to become small, about 8 inches tall. The power, at least allowed everything I was wearing or carrying to shrink with me.

We seceded that it was dark enough to fly home after a long walk, so my GF pulled down her panties and indicated that I should sit on her backside.

"I think I'll use your panties as a hammock, you smell yummie." She sighed and lifted me into her underwear and we took off into the sky. I was quite enjoying the view as she had to fly with her legs slightly apart to avoid losing her panties, and me.

"You are so going to owe me when we get home."

"I'll be happy to warm you right up." The dream ended before we got to that part.


I love flying dreams and the flying theme carried over into the following dream. I had managed to locate my girlfriend's favorite cat, played by Teddy Bearheart, my orange tabby. He'd gotten out and had somehow managed to avoid the zombies by climbing as high up as he could, and then leaping from roof top to rooftop when the crowd below got too large and noisy. I managed to hear him mewling above the noise, and climbed up a nearby empty house, then leapt over to the one he had gotten himself to. We jumped to the next house in the row, I was deliberately making noise to draw them with us. We finally came to a house where the zombies couldn't break down the fence to get into the next yard. (It had been raised and reinforced at some point in time.)

There were several hang gliders roped down to this roof. and the entire south end was covered with solar panels. I tried calling down to the people who had to be holed up down below, but there was no answer, though I thought I could hear them moving around. It was getting dark, and the wind was coming up. I made a rope ladder from some of the extra rope and dropped down into the back yard.

Like my house there was a large sliding glass door. The living room held four people aimlessly wandering in the dim LED light. There were no curtains on the windows, they were trampled and bloody under the shuffling feet. I realized that I was essentially only armed with a short sharp stick, and there were four of them, but they didn't seem to notice me. I realized that the light from the LEDs must have made the coated window like a mirror, and they could only see themselves. I, however, could see that they had several book cases in the room full of MREs and dried goods. Enough to keep a couple of people in kibble for at least a year. I knew I was going to have to come back here to clear the place out.

I found myself sneaking around the back of the herd in the dark, then closing the gate of that house's fence behind them. At least the neighborhood herd was mostly contained now.

I climbed back up, and borrowed a second sling from one of the hang gliders. It took a bit of doing to coax Teddy into the sling, but I got him tied in and hung under myself. "Sorry about the bumps, guy, it's going to be okay."

I launched myself into the air on one of the hang gliders. The nylon rope paid out on a heavy spool that I could barely control. I took a few moments to get the glider under control and slowly climbed out to the maximum height the rope would allow. I hoped it would be enough to glide back to my own house. I let go of the rope and the glider immediately went into a nose dive, causing Teddy to shriek.

The herd looked up and I was headed directly for them. I managed to pull out of the dive a hundred feet or so above them and started to climb out, circling wide until I was lined up with the road that led back home. Fortunately I have a wide front yard. Only, I really needed to get into the back yard, as that had the only entrance into the house that wasn't completely boarded up . I angled over, judging my glide, and guessing that I was going to have trouble getting by the two story house next to mine. Or I was going to land in that back yard and have to jump the reinforced fence.

Unfortunately it became obvious that neither plan was going to work, the wind was behind me, and I was barely above the roofs of the houses on the mesa above us, the wind was getting turbulent and I couldn't control the hang glider. I managed to get us onto the roof of the house two doors down. We slide to the edge of the roof and I managed to get out of the sling. Teddy was howling and I could hear zombies out on the street moving towards us. I managed, somehow at the last second to grab a tree branch and used it to swing us out over the lawn and then back to the covered balcony of the house. This house had been locked up tight and we hadn't even tried to break in, as the lower story was completely boarded up. I let Teddy out of his bag, he immediately quieted and cowered at my feet.

I stood a long while, stick in hand, listening. The creatures outside made it difficult to hear if there was anything or anyone inside. The moon was up outside, on the other side of the room from the windows we'd come through, of course. I backed up to the wall and slid along it, Teddy slinking about five feet behind me. I made my way to the back windows and pulled open the curtains. Moonlight filled the main room. It had been set up as a TV room at one time, a big screen dominated one wall, and the bathroom and master bedroom were behind me. There was a small bar to one side of the TV, and stairs to the other. There was no furniture in the room. I stepped out into the room and could see dust float up into the beams of moonlight. I made my way over to the stairwell, it was full of furniture. I turned back to the master bedroom. The door was locked. I tapped gently. No answer, no shuffling, either. The bathroom door was locked as well. Teddy was chasing rodents in the moonlight. At least he would eat well tonight. I stepped out of the musty air into the night on the balcony. The zombies had shuffled up the street to investigate the noise of the now trapped herd.

Finally, a break. I called to Teddy, who picked up his unfinished meal and trotted out to me. We climbed down the tree next to the balcony and I picked Teddy up and ran for our house.

I stopped. There in the middle of the street was my GF from the Almost Super Power Tuesday dream. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Rescuing my girl friend's favorite cat." I just sort of stood there, confused.

She pulled down her panties and turned around, pointing to the cleft in her now bare and amazingly cute bottom. "Mount up!"

I shrunk down, with Teddy, and she lifted us up to her backside, then thought better of it and put us in her panties. She jumped into the air and flew up and around circling the house looking for a place to land. "Don't worry, we'll get the handsome kitty back to his owner. And then you're going to owe me."

You won't see that on the Walking Dead.

Driving to the Zombie Apocolypse

Last night and this morning’s dreams both started out as driving dreams. Yesterday, I was actually a passenger in R’s pickup truck, his wife was sitting between us and there were a couple of our friends in the back of the truck. We were driving away from Escondido, headed out to the coast intent on reaching the Marine base at Pendleton. Unfortunately the dream soon morphed into the tsunami dream where the first wave had all ready washed across the freeway, taking the wandering zombies with it as it withdrew. We arrived at a low spot in the road at the same time as another wall of water was approaching.

The people in the back of the truck shouted at R to “Go, go, go!” as there were zombie drivers approaching. How they could tell there were zombies driving, I don’t know. R started driving as the water rose up on the low part of the road. The truck fishtailed and R was having trouble keeping the front end, where the drive wheels were located, on the road. I opened the window into the bed area and told everyone back there to grab the end of my seat belt and to crowd up to the front. I was trying to shift as much weight to the front as possible, trying to keep us on the road as the water continued to rise.

In the distance I could see the wall of water climbing, and it was far higher that the truck. I didn’t know if we would be able to make it up to the next hill, or even if the next hill would be tall enough to protect us.

I woke up with a very full bladder.

This morning’s drive was being undertaken by myself. Little Red was on the last quarter tank of gas, and I knew I would have to fuel up soon if I was to keep going. Only trouble was, most of the gas stations were in “Zombie Territory.” I figured that I had about 120 miles left, but since I couldn’t know how clear the roads would be, it could be considerably less. The weather was getting cooler, so I needed to drive to keep warm. I had blankets and water and some food. I decided to head inland to agriculture territory, figuring the fewer people the fewer zombies. I was hopeful I could find a gas station that still had power, because putting gas in from a tiny pail on a string was a pain.

Apparently I’d all ready had to do that, as I had a memory of pulling gasoline out of an underground tank a two liter jug at a time. All the while watching for zombies. The container had pretty much melted by the time I’d finished filling up the tank. I vowed to look for some gas cans next time I stopped, even though a pair of five gallon tanks would pretty much put me in the position of tossing out other items. I hated the idea of giving up Little Red, as I was still getting over 50 miles per gallon, even on bad roads.

At the moment I was driving across a frontage road, as the freeway was clogged at many of the onramps. I would get on the freeway only when I saw a clear path to the next exit, otherwise I was trying to stay on the frontage roads. I found myself driving next to a field of ripe grain, and wondered how much I would have to harvest to be able to make any sort of bread or porridge, or beer, I supposed. I also wondered how safe it would be to stop and harvest, if there was anyone left alive out here.

I climbed up on top of my car and looked out across the fields. Nothing was moving at the farm buildings. There was no house, so I assumed it was a company farm of some sort. I could see barns, but none were open. I also could see gas pumps, so decided to drive up and risk running into unhappy people.

If the compound was occupied I would just move on, after all I had another hundred miles or so to look for resources, and gasoline. When I drove around the dusty road to the gates of the place, I could tell it was all locked up, and abandoned. There was a very slender dog in the shade of one of the buildings, he made a wheezing bark at me, and then sat down, whining. I know it was probably not a rational thing to do, but I grabbed some of my canned meat and opened it up before breaking into the place. He made no attempt to prevent me from breaking open the lock and then driving my car into the compound. I closed the gates behind me an used the car to hold them shut.

There was power, as the farm buildings had solar panels. There were no human remains, and most importantly, I didn’t see any signs of Zombies wandering around. If there were any inside the buildings I didn’t know, but wasn’t going to go looking for them. The dog, a Rottweiler or similar was grateful for his meal, and when he finished he walked over to where I was inspecting the gasoline tanks. I was trying to make sure I didn’t accidentally fill the cans I’d found with diesel, and neither of the tanks were labeled in English. I kept talking to the dog, not sure if he’d suddenly remember that he was supposed to be a guard dog. However, the dog sat at my feet while I filled up multiple tanks, watching me the whole time. After a bit his tail began to wag. He then walked over to the car with me when I carried the first two cans to Little Red. The dog stopped at the passenger door, and then stretched out in the shade of the car. I filled the tank and took both the empty can, and the part empty can back for more fuel. The dog stayed by the car.

On the next trip back to the car, I found some spare wire and used it to wire the gate shut, figuring it would keep zombies out long enough for me to get to safety. Although, if there were to be zombies at the gate, I didn’t really know where I would drive to get out of the place. As night fell I decided to camp in a generator room, where I found a trashcan full of dog food. My new friend was very happy about that. The generator room had a roof access that allowed me to get up to the barn roof, where the solar panels were located. I figured if there were zombies in the compound, the dog wouldn’t have still been alive. But if he had somehow survived zombies, we had an escape route.

I started to wonder if staying here, after making sure it was safe to do so, would be a good idea. I could harvest the grain and then store it against the winter that I knew was coming. There was no way to carry nearly enough to keep the dog and I fed for any length of time. In fact, I figured I would have to abandon a lot of tools and supplies to take the dog anywhere in the car. However I didn’t want to just abandon the animal, who I’m fairly certain was destined to starve if someone hadn’t come along.

I awoke to barking, and looked out the grimy window into the compound. The dog was standing in the yard, pointed out towards the fence, and my car. I grabbed a fire axe and stepped out to see what was going on. I expected zombies, but instead there was a pack of coyotes loping down the access road, their eyes roving the fence, looking for holes, I suspect. They ran by us, the dog having come to stand at my hip, and watched us, not afraid, but not aggressive, either.

Ad astra per technica,
FF

Infected Laptop, Erotic Zombies.

Dreamed we got a porn pop up infected laptop at work. I was assigned the job of cleaning off the pop up generator and key loggers and the like. I discovered that the laptop was acting like a file host, but couldn't figure out why it would, since the porn content was actually pretty mild and mainstream looking, as such things go. (All attractive people doing attractive things to one another.) At first I was very tempted to make a clone of the hard drive just so I could investigate it further, some of the photos were more art than photography.  I figured that there was something else going on below the obvious, so decided not to risk doubling up on the problem by making a second drive. In fact I decide that we would wipe the drive down to the partition tables and low level format it.

I didn't want to take a chance of losing any of the administrator's real data. So we shut off the system and removed the drive. I mounted it on another system with a different OS and was able to save the person's documents. I could see that there was a single large file on the drive taking up several hundred Gigs. Sort of a partition in a partition. It must have taken quite some time to create that.

The next dream was slightly different from the normal zombie dream, in that there were zombies mixed in with the making of an adult erotic thriller. The plot of the film was a mix of "Moonlighting," "Charlie's Angels," and "Walking dead" all shot on a studio back lot. In the course of the story we discover that the zombies want to breed as well as feed. In the dream's reality, we discovered that exposure to sexual body fluids cured zombies. Either causing them to die, if they were the slow undead type, or to revert if they were the fast infected type.

Happy 50th?

        I would have thought that the occasion of my 50th birthday would create some sort of dream presence. I wasn't exactly expecting any great revelation or wild dreamlands party event, but, well, something a little out of the ordinary, perhaps.
        But no, just the usual jumble; a plotless mishmash of friends and strangers trying not to look like zombie chow and a one-line musical refrain. This morning's musical selection, courtesy of Counting Crows: "And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls..."

I Want to Go Home! and One of Us!

    This morning's hypnopompic hallucination featured a child's voice saying, in the way one might say "I want to go to Disneyland!" when asked where to go next, "I want to go home!"
    If I hadn't been paralyzed I probably would have been beaming ear to ear; the voice was just that happy.

    The dream I had before that was pretty much a standard "Escape from Zombie Invasion" dream in which several people I don't know were trapped in the center of a small town. The undead citizens were closing in on us and we had to pick a direction to try to fight our way out of it. In the process one of us was bitten, and since he knew he was going to turn he chose to stay and fight off the zombies. Only thing was, he ran at them shouting "Soon I will be one of you!"
    "One of us!" the zombies started mumbling and shuffling around like they were dancing. They completely forgot to chase us. It was enough of a distraction for the rest of us to make it out to where people's cars were parked, and presumably to get away.

A Passel of Plagues

              I dreamed that I was about 12 years old, living in a steam-punk universe, very Edwardian but with airships, robots and ray-guns, none of which were particularly reliable. The dream started with me being out on the streets late at night, having snuck out of the barracks like building with AH so that we could visit his girlfriend, in this dream played by his wife. As we made our way across town, the air-raid sirens went off.
              As bombs began to fall on the edge of town, the lights were quickly being turned off or snuffed out. We ran along a narrow river road, taking turns climbing on one another's shoulders to turn off the gas lamps as we ran. Soon we came across a police man doing the same, but from another direction.
              “Thanks, lads, now get yerselves t'cover!” he pointed over to a warehouse like building nearby with a large yellow arrow that pointed to a cellar door.
              “Raid Shelter 104,” was printed in four inch high letters on the base of the arrow and in eight inch high letters on the doors.
              “I have t'see to the Century Street Landing. Mind now!” he hollered as he ran off.
              AH and I looked at one another, “I have to get to C,” he ran off down the nearly pitch black street, “it's only a dozen more blocks.”
              I hesitated, eyes adjusting to the scattered starlight. It was easy enough to pick out the road from the river wherein was reflected the partly cloudy sky and its myriad stars between. Still, I ran carefully, keeping myself away from the river and following AH's uneven sounding footfalls. I lifted my feet a little higher than I would have if it had been daylight, or even if the streetlights were on.
              I heard AH tumble and shout in front of me, so slowed just in time to see him rolling on the street, clutching his foot. “Stubbed my toes on that!”
              Where he pointed was a steel box with several lit grills on its surface. As I approached I realized that the grills were glowing from within, the airship shaped grill was red, fading to amber even as I watched. There were seven stencil like grills in total. Of the three on top, one was the airship, the next one, which was a dark amber but brightening and turning red, looked like a dinosaur, the third grill was no shape I recognized, but was completely dark. There was one in the middle, which I interpreted to be the re-animation ray. The Bottom row of three were also dark, but one was an Orbital Mind Control Laser, the second a Wave and the last one was Fire.
              I wiped my hand across the OMCL grill, which lit bluish green. Lasers cut through the clouds causing them to light up like lightning, and the lasers cut into the dirigibles at the edge of the city, soon the sound of bombs going off faded to nothing. It seems the OMCL was more “Persuasion” than “Control.”
              I was pulled up to my feet, “C'mon, stop fooling with that, you'll get us ki...” AH's hand relaxed as he stopped talking. His other hand pointed towards the mouth of the river. I glanced down at the steel box, the Dinosaur was glowing brightly, as were the Wave and Fire stencils. “Wha...?”
              I looked up. At the mouth of the river a giant Dinosaur, much the size of Godzilla was climbing out of the sea. Water pushed ahead of him, surging up the river, it's crest visible as a line of darkness in the reflected milky way of the otherwise calm river.
              “High ground!” I shouted and grabbed AH's sleeve to pull him back up the street to the last bridge we passed. Our side of the river, and into the warehouse district, was flat and only a dozen feet or so above the height of the river itself. The high ground, what little of it there was, was across the river. The Cemetery, Mortuary and Crematorium were at the end of a long uphill winding road overlooking the town from across the river. We ran.
              Crossing the 98th street bridge I looked out to see a huge wave blocking the Godzilla-like monsters hips and legs, but his head swept across the city, shooting out a ray that hit the ground in a swath about a hundred feet wide, and everything it touched was bathed in flames. We ran harder.
              From half way up the hill, low trees and headstones all around us, I saw that the monster was not lighting the whole city on fire, instead laying out a pattern of stripes that created a sort of maze, the only exit of which, was at his feet.
              “It followed us!” AH blurted, panting.
              I looked at his feet. There was the steel box with it's backlit stencil like cutouts. I'd touched the OMCL grill before, and it had stopped the airship bombardment. (Or was a coincidence, but I wasn't so sure. It had glowed blue green where the others were amber and red.) I tried it again, but it remained dark.
              “Maybe you can only use it once,” I said.
              “Maybe it wasn't you at all,” AH added.
              “Well, here's one that hasn't been used yet.” I swept my fingers over the very odd looking last symbol on the top row. It glowed blue and then green. The Monster, Wave and Fire glyphs began to fade.
              The monstrous roaring stopped. I watched, stunned, as the creature turned and waded back into the ocean.
              I whooped, and turned to see that AH had started up the hill to the mortuary, calling out to C, who for some reason was at the top of the hill near the entrance.
              That didn't add up for me and I hurried after him, barely noting that the Reanimation stencil had begun to glow amber.
              As we made our way up the hill we grew, our youthful stick figures filling out to the size and shape of our current adult hood. There was a part of me that was sad about this. AH reached the top of the hill, and the small robot, which is what I now knew it to be, grabbed him and dragged him into the building, tossing him down some stairs.
              As I crossed the threshold, completely against my will, my instinct was to run, I once again found myself to be a young boy.
              The robot looked at me, its disguise shifting, trying to find something enticing. “Actually, I've always thought robots were pretty cool.” I said.
              The robot stopped in a half woman half robot phase and smiled at me. It was a predatory smile, but it didn't last.
              “What does the Reanimation Stencil do?” I asked.
              The change in demeanor of the robot was instant. “Help me shut all the doors. Now!”
The robot clattered off, closing and barring doors, sliding the ceiling and floor bolts closed, and then starting to slide furniture in front of the large front windows. Outside, the townspeople were making their way up the hill to the building.
              I thought they might want shelter from whatever was coming and asked if I should let them in.
              The robot shouted “No!” and let out a girlish shriek. As the people began to pound on the doors I realized that they were dead, and had pulled themselves out of the ground.
              “What about the people in the cellar,” I asked.
              The robot shrieked again, then ran down the hall to secure the cellar door. I ran upstairs and out onto a balcony. It was a short six foot jump to a nearby tree, and I climbed down the hill behind the mortuary, relying on my speed to avoid the reanimated remains. As I crossed out of the cemetery I noticed that there were machines along the road moving by themselves as well. The Reanimation Ray must also work as an Animation ray. I hoped that AH would be all right, but couldn't think of a way to get back and save him. Interestingly, the undead seemed to have no interest in me, instead it looked like there was sort of a conflict brewing between the robots and the zombies.
              I made it to the fair grounds, where I snuck into a large tent, not yet fully erected, and hid under the tarps along the upper bleachers. I was soon discovered, as people began to fill in the seats and they pulled back the tarps to complete the tent walls. The carnies all leered at me, but didn't say anything to me. I tried to sit as far away from them as possible.
              The show began, instead of animals, though, there were all sorts of animated machines, robots and other constructs. The talk was of dismantling the town to create more, and from there to take over the world....
              And in the middle of the center ring, was the steel box, it's stencils dim save for the one in the center. I knew that if I could get to the thing and wipe my fingers across the stencil I could turn that red to blue and then green, and the animation ray would work for me. The mechanical and one-legged trapeze artist were in the way, though.

Zombie Attack, Carmagedden, Blue Movie

Zombies Attack Jupiter III

              There were about a dozen of us at work when the news came in that Zombies were attacking the city. I was wiring the ship's internal video network, a mix of thin copper and fiber-optic cables. I looked over at the slender brown-haired woman who was one of two women I worked with on this project. We both had the "What did she just say?" look on our faces.
              The other woman was back in the Main Distribution Feed calling out the pair colors for us to terminate at each tap point. She told us over the radio that the city was being attacked by zombies. The infection had just suddenly boiled over and reached the tipping point. "This is a different strain, they're saying, very fast acting." She told us to tune to a certain channel when we hooked up the next station's tap.
              My partner asked me to finish up so she could go to the staging room and pick up the thin panel.
              "I have to see what she's rambling on about now. Sounds like she's watching a horror movie, not the news."
              "Right, because we haven't had zombie attacks in weeks," I stated rather matter of fact.
              "That's right, everyone was cured or rounded up," she raced down the curved hallway, shouting back "and stop calling them zombies!"
              I had forgotten that her own parents and sister had been infected in the last attack. I picked up my cell phone and called N. She didn't pick up, so I left a message; "Get to high ground and lock yourself away from everyone else. I'll figure out how to come get you."
              I then called the construction manager to ask him if the site was securable. Again, no answer. I crawled out of the crawl space and hit the intercom button on my phone. "Hey, has anyone else heard about the zombie attack, like, from security?"
              Both the gals on my installation team called back with "no" but there were no other answers. "I've got a bad feeling about this," the one in the MDF said, and then yelped. "Oh! My god! They're in the building, heading up the access stairs!"
              My partner arrived and began hooking up the panel. "There's some of the engineers running ahead of them, it doesn't look like they're going to make it."
              "Lock yourself in, Clair, don't let anyone else into the MDF, you hear me!" I shouted.
              As I pulled myself out of the crawlspace I looked at my partner, who was standing transfixed and trembling looking at the monitor. I read the crawl and froze.
              "Thousands of recently innoculated display New Terrifying Symptoms. Rapid onset, ravaging hunger. Statewide quarantine imposed. If you've been innoculated, lock yourself in. All National Guard units activated, call..."
              N had insisted on being innoculated, despite the vaccine being inadequately tested.
              The crawl continued running underneath footage of bloody-faced people in packs chasing through the streets, throwing themselves at cars and store front windows. Several buildings were seen where the rooftops were a milling mass of feeders, and those being fed off of. I knew, for some reason, that the zombies would climb after prey, but only rarely would they head back down once they had climbed somewhere. I had a locker on the floor just below us, and in that locker was a gun and about two hundred rounds of ammunition. I had stopped carrying it in my tool harness just a few days ago. My partner started switching through the ship's security cameras. There was no one on board but my construction crew. The locker room leading into the ships access way was empty.
              "Clair, I'm going to close the door to the locker room, I have to get something. Can you see the ship's controls from in there?"
              I heard the alarm sound and the ships internal bulkheads began to close. I told my partner to "Get to the control room and lock the doors, don't let anybody in."
              I didn't hear anything from Clair. I tried to remember if she had been innoculated. I knew that the brown-haired woman hadn't, she'd been terrified that this very thing would happen to her.
              "We have to save them," the woman pointed to the security camera image, a group of engineers and designers was racing towards the locker room and the access ramp of the Jupiter III (which wasn't a space ship, but a dirigible.) I noticed that the group was not panic stricken, like one would expect. I realized that they were all infected, and running towards what they knew was a likely source of nutrition. Us.
              We both ran for the access way. I only had one plan. Beat the much younger woman to the door, close and then lock it down. I grabbed the young woman by the back of her shirt. "Get to the bridge, fire up the hydrogen jets and heat up the lift cells. You were better on the simulator than me."
              She slowed and turned back to head for the control room. I heard thumping from inside the MDF and when I got to the plexiglass windows I dove and slid along the floor under them. I looked back to see Clair hammering against the door with bloody broken hands. I was thankful that she hadn't unlocked it before turning completely. I was a little bit worried that she might damage equipment needed to control the Jupiter III, but saw that all of the cabinets were closed. I was never more glad that Clair was compulsive about keeping things neat.
              I reached the access ramp and the guard station was empty, from what I could see, the locker room was empty. It was really just a long hallway full of lockers for folks to put their street clothes in while working. There was a long partition down the middle and there was a men's side and a woman's side. The door at the end of the access ramp was closed but not latched, and was always locked from the other side. I stepped quietly down the ramp and was just thinking of heading into the locker room when the guard appeared on the womans side. He had a handful of women's clothing held up under his nose.
              We lunged for the door together. I managed to pull it shut with a click just as he grabbed the handle from the other side, and pushed rather than pulled to try to get through. I knew he'd been infected.
              "Clair's locked in the MDF and the guard was also infected. He's outside the ramp room though." I rummaged through the guard's desk. quickly skimming through the security cameras. There was a dead body on the woman's side of the locker room, I hadn't been able to see it through the tiny windows in the doors. It only took me a couple of moments to find the external door locks and I closed off the hanger bay. Too late, it seemed. There were several people running across the hanger floor, followed by other infected ones.
              I grabbed the microphone on the desk. "Get into the secure cargo lockers, one per locker. You should be safe there until we come to get you out!" I shouted at them. Some of them looked around to try to see where the voice was coming from. That was a mistake, their pursuers closed the gap to almost nothing. They wouldn't have a chance to enter the storage unit and close it now.
              There was a shotgun locked to the side of the drawers of the desk. I looked in the top drawer for keys. I found ammunition for it, but no key to unlock it from its mount.
              "The hydrogen is preheated, we can get out of here when you have everyone on board."
              "They're loading themselves into the storage containers now. I'm trying to find the roof release."
              "It's not there, its in the hanger control booth."
              "Oh, shit."
              I thought a moment, that being difficult because of the guard banging on the door. I loaded the shotgun and tipped the desk back. I ripped off the security panel. I turned the desk so the shotgun was pointing at the door, and fired.
              Just as I'd hoped, the zombie ducked down to look at the new hole in the door, and I fired again. The hammering and clawing stopped. I pushed the other door open and discovered that the guard wasn't wearing any pants. So much for getting his keys. I went to my locker and grabbed my bag. I found the guard's pants, gun and keys on the bench and took them, too. I locked the door, but realized it wouldn't take a group of zombies long to worry the door apart, now that it had a hole the size of a fist in it.
              "Fire the jets!" I shouted as I prepared to open the door behind the guard's desk that led into the hanger.
              "What? That'll kill everyone in the hanger!"
              "There's no one left in the hanger but zombies."
              "Stop calling them that!"
              "I need to get to the control room to open the hanger and release the clamps."
              "I can do that from here. Get on board."
              Through the small window I could see dozens of other zombies enter from various doors in the hanger. The people who'd managed to lock themselves into the storage containers weren't going to be safe much longer if we didn't get off the ground.
              "Our passengers need us to be off the ground, soon." I shouted into the intercom as I raced up the ramp. I hit the ramp retract and jammed the joystick into place with a leather something from the guard's belt (Pepper spray holster?) and then leapt across the gap into the dirigible's entry way. Zombies were attracted to the noise and movement and began to move towards the opening. (The opening was only about 8 feet above the ground, very climbable for a zombie.)
              I managed to swing the shotgun around, but held off firing in the hopes that one or more of them might not be infected, "Yet" I mentally added.
              The dirigible suddenly lurched up a few feet, nearly spilling me out into the hanger below. I dropped the guard's belt, losing the extra side arm, radio and ammunition. I scrambled back away from the edge of the entry, then swung the door closed and spun the hatch shut.
              "What are we going to do about the roof?" I asked from where I sat on the floor.
              "They've got it."
              "Who they?"
              "The people in the control booth, they're waving at me, we have to find a way to get them out of there."
              "Get them out of there?"
              "They're trapped. We have to help them."
              "Tell them to open the doors and then you can fly over. We can lower a cargo pod to them."
              I heard her relaying my instructions over the radio. Just as I suspected, there was no response.
              "They won't open the doors. They just keep waving at us."
              "Can you turn us in place so I can see them." I stood up and went to the window of the Embarkation Lounge. "I'm at the window of the lounge."
              "I think so, just a second."
              I felt the ship begin to turn, really though it looked and felt more like the hanger rotated around us it was so smooth.
              Just as I thought. The people in the control room crew were a mix of live and undead zombies. The live ones were faster and clever, with some reasoning abilities as well as the ability to navigate in places they were familiar with in life. The dead ones, pretty much follow noise and movement, hoping for whatever it was they needed to keep going. Oddly, though both types would eagerly chase prey, only the live ones would chase prey down stairs. Deaders wouldn't step down stairs unless you were right ahead of them. City dwellers had sometimes been able to save themselves from undead packs by leaping the rails into subway access stairs or even dropping down into sewer access tunnels. Of course, that didn't work if there were live zombies in the pack.
              I really didn't know how my partner could possibly have thought they were anything else. I realized that we were stuck here unless I could convince her to let me shoot the people in the control room, cook the zombies in the hanger, and then make a dash for the control booth to open the hanger doors.I would need to do this before the power went out. After several hours without food, hungry zombies would begin to chew on electrical cords, even ripping up drywall to get to wires with power in them. I was concerned that after making all that carnage, she would then just leave me stranded there.
              That was when I realized we had a time bomb in the MDF. Clair, in a few hours, would be ripping into the UPS in the MDF for a little snack. The voltage would probably kill her, and then a couple of hours later she would revive to finish ripping out our power network.
              "They're all infected, babe," I said as gently as I could, "some of them are stage two." I resolved to avoid using the word "zombies" in an attempt to bring her back to reality a little bit.
              "Clair, too?"
              "Yes."
              "How about the passengers?"
              "Some of them are probably infected and haven't shown yet. That's why I asked them to take separate containers."
              "Oh god, oh god oh god oh god...."
              "Babe, keep us in the center of the hanger as best you can. I have to shut some more hatches." I had just noticed more infected workers racing up the stairs of the catwalk that surrounded the hanger, and they were jumping for the disk shaped envelope of the dirigible. They were missing, and becoming snacks for their fellows below, but it would only be a matter of time before we drifted too close and they would be able to jump to us. I started racing through the ship, trying to make sure I shut every access hatch I knew of, and every one I could find.
              As I closed the last one I knew of I went by a window and saw that we were floating out over the city. "How'd you get the doors open?"
              "I just kept asking over and over again, one of them finally pulled the handle to open them. I don't know that he really knew what he was doing, though."
              "Maybe there was enough of him left to know to do the right thing." I knew I said it just to be comforting. I remembered reading that none of the research that had been done on the infected from the first outbreak seemed to indicate that anything of an original personality survived. There were still hundreds of them being stored in warehouses around the nation.
              Looking out over the city I saw that many fires had started all ready, this outbreak looked like it was going to be bad. I wanted to ask to head over to the Submarine base to look for N, but knew that if this outbreak really started amongst the innoculated, there wasn't much hope.

Carmagedden
             
              Later, I dreamed that I was with an older woman, she had long white hair, down to her waist, the last few inches was a light blonde color. We were following a pair of vehicles that were racing in a flood control channel. There was a wood-paneled white station wagon like MS used to drive long ago, and a black and green stake bed truck with at least half a dozen people in the back. The station wagon was also full of passengers. They cheered and hurled insults at one another as they dodged the large boulders and parts of houses that littered the channel.
              I was recording the whole thing. Stopping only to interview the woman about what was going on. This was what we in the media were calling an "Apocalypse Club" and this particular one was called "Carmagedden" by its members. They raced with a complete abandon and an apparent disrespect for life. The woman corrected me on that particular. "No, we love life, but have come to understand that the demons come for us all, and you don't know when they will show up, or where, so you might as well live large, every day, it just might be your last."
              I went back to following the action from the dirigible (two dirigible dreams in one night!) and managed to get the camera settled just as the white station wagon tried to dodge a house shaped stone, that I soon realized. as we got closer, was a stone facaded house. It fell into the drainage channel and the truck swerved, two of its passengers falling out and ending up under the crumpled home. The station wagon rolled up onto the sloped side of the channel as the house passed just in front of them. A stone fence work tagged the front passenger side and the station wagon flipped and rolled.
              We looked around, but didn't see any demons. We swooped in to check on the condition of the driver and his passenger. Several of the passengers had climbed out and were all ready rolling the car over. The driver was in bad shape. The woman jumped out of the dirigible, dropping the last ten feet to the ground. She staggered over to the man and injected him with something.
              "Thanks." The drivers eyes almost instantly dilated.
              "Can you drive?" the old woman asked him.
              The driver held up his arms, both were a mass of compound fractures, bone and blood glistened in the hazy light. I imagined my news editor would have to censor that image before it replayed during the dinner hour. (It was going out live, now, though.) "No, Dolly, I don't think I can drive any more. It's time." Before I could wonder what would happen to him in a world in which medical care was nearly unavailable (demons seemed attracted to large groups of humans so hospitals and schools were a thing of the past) Dolly had taken out a gun and shot him in the head.
              Other cars began to arrive. Taking on the passengers and then taking off. "Get out of here, it's too crowded." Dolly started waving them off.
              From the slope above a leathery demon, batlike, swooped down on Dolly, the talons at the forward bend of its wings pierced her shoulders and it ripped her head off with its hands. I handed the camera to my sound guy and brought up a shotgun, blasting the demon. The flaming blast ripped its flesh from its frame, but the skeleton just leered at me and it crouched to jump for me. A second blast shattered its head. I immediately started scanning the sky, "Get back in the lift, before more of them show up."
              The club members of Carmagedden raised their intoxicants to us, beer, wine, pipes and needles of various sorts and sent us off with a cheer as they raced off in different directions. As we climbed out of the flood control channel, I watched as club members restarted the station wagon and drove it off as well.
              I signed off. The sound/camera guy looked at me, terror still written all over his face, "that's got Pulitzer written all over it."
              "That's got luck written all over it. Now I'm going to have religious nuts to deal with all afternoon."
              "Do you need more ammo?"
             
Blue Movie

              I was directing a film about two middle aged women who, in order to fight their depression, join an erotic dance class. They form a fast friendship, and end up in a furious romance that takes the form of them recording one another dancing, initially for their husbands and then eventually realizing they are dancing for one another. Finally they record themselves dancing together, this leads to more (not shown in our film) and that film is found by one of the womans' husbands. He feels that the other husband has to know what is going on. A serious complication, the second husband finds it quite exciting. The relationships, to one another, to their husbands and families explode, some to the breaking point.
              We had just finished a day of shooting on the erotic dance numbers, and the respective actresses found themselves fielding offers to help them "take the heat off." I had to send the crew out, finally.
              "My husband isn't going to know what hit him," one of them quipped.
              "I'm wishing I hadn't gotten rid of mine," smirked the other. She turned to me, "What are you doing tonight," she purred, "this is all your fault, you know."
              "I think you'd better call my wife and ask her," I pulled my cell phone off my belt for her.

Island Paradise, Zombies, WoW

       I dreamed I was out on the archipelago again. The one with the heavily undercut main island, and the lush green crescent of vibrant green across the crater from it. There were a half-dozen families or so who lived on the island. I was visiting in my catamaran (I wish) and showing the local families how the boom structures and the out-rigger hulls worked to keep the boat upright in a storm. I could crank the outriggers up over the cabin, which would right the hulls and allow me to lift the cabin out of the water again. I hadn't really had to use them except to practice. I took bunches of folks on a tour of their island, and out to where we could watch the whales from up close.
       When we got back to the island, they showed me how to get to the docks under the overhang. There was a spot that was hidden from view from the ocean, you had to know it was there to make the turn around the spire jungle covered rock to make it into the cove. We paddled the catamaran to an open slip and everyone guided me up a long spiraling switchbacked stair carved in the face of the rock. There were a couple of places where you had to lean out over the cove, holding on to rope and netting handrails to hold your feet against the steps. When I made it to the top, I noticed an elevator there, and several of the women and younger kids were stepping out of it.
       “We had that put in for the tourists and the young ones. It's much better than the old basket,” explained a woman.
       “Except when the power goes out!” A little girl about 11 or so giggled and ran up the slope to the village center.
       The last time I'd been here I'd climbed up a chain ladder hanging from the cliffs overhanging the lagoon. (I'd been on a cruise ship that sank, I think, and our lifeboat had drifted into the lagoon here. I'd made friends of the locals, and promised I would come back for a visit. It had taken me a couple of years to liquidate enough stuff to build the catamaran, and then I couldn't convince N to come with me.
       I told my tale, and they told theirs. Every hurricane I'd worried about had missed them, they explained that the island was charmed that way. Not to say that they didn't have their rough surf and wet weather. It wasn't the sort of life for everyone, but they made a bit of money on the tourist trade, so had computers and high speed Internet as well as television. (which I knew from the last time I'd visited, as I'd talked them into letting me email my folks to let them know we were OK.) I met the folks I'd been emailing back and forth with, turns out those 9 families were pretty much everyone left on the island.
       “We lost our sheriff and the doctor only stays through the winter now. We made a deal with a couple of the cruise lines, and we get to use their doctors in an emergency.”
       “Plus we have a plane if we need to fly someone to the hospital in Palou,” one of the women added.
       “Most of us wouldn't trade this little island for anywhere else in the world, but it's isolated and not for everyone.”
       I was thinking that once you had the internet and a camera, you pretty much had access to the world. I'd brought several for them. There was much glee from the kids as they opened my gifts.
       “So,” I found myself saying, “you have a job opening for sheriff?”
       “You'd have to double as postmaster.” Said the Mayor of the island.
       “And you'd be welcome to stay in my house if you don't want the apartment above the station,” added one of the women, “I know how to cook more than coconuts.”
       This allowed me to identify her as one of my frequent correspondents. We'd had a running Gilligan's Island conversation that had gone on for most of the year. It had started when I'd answered the 'Mary Ann or Ginger?' question with “Some of the 'native' girls who showed up were pretty darned attractive, and I'm almost old enough for that Lovey gal, if she weren't married, you know.”
       “There's not much in the way of pay, but then again, there's not a lot to spend it on. The job is yours if you want it. You mostly get to hold on to cruise ship shoplifters until the helicopter from the mainland comes for them.”
       “Sounds like a pretty cushy job, to me.”
       “You're welcome to stay after the cruise season, of course, but there really won't be anything to do after that.”
       “I brought my computer and my boat, I'm pretty sure I can find something to do. Besides, I hear there's going to be fiber run to this island, so you won't have to worry about outages during the monsoon season.”
       “How'd you know about that?”
       I knew about that because I'd sold my house to be able to afford it, but I wasn't going to tell them that, I was saving that as a New Years surprise. I'd also known that the Sheriff's position was open, as he'd recruited me before he retired to the mainland. He missed the city, just as I knew I would after a time. But I knew I could always sail to the mainland (admittedly a few days away) and take a plane back to San Diego during the winter months if I really needed. Besides, I had Internet camera access to every one of my friends back home.
       It really didn't take long to get me and my two cats settled into the apartment above the jail, much to the, I assured her, temporary, disappointment of my Gilligan's Island friend.

       Soon I was handling the mail and running tourists out to see whales on my catamaran, or off to the reefs for snorkeling. We got to design and make our own postage cancellations, so I made sure SCV got all our first day covers.
       One evening I was out riding on a basking shark, or some similar creature, when it spooked and headed out to deep water. I was tangled in some netting I'd been trying to cut from its back. The pressure was starting to hurt my ears, and I didn't know how much longer I could hold my breath. I managed to cut the last of the nylon net free and swam as hard as I could to the surface. I looked around in the twilight to get my bearings. The island looked an impossible distance away. I had my waterproof cell phone, so called the island to let them know where I was. Then I started swimming. I angled myself for where I thought my boat should be, but couldn't see it. I could feel the oppressive heat and moisture of a monsoon building. I called and told them to get out to my catamaran first, it could survive the rough seas that were sure to come soon. The water was already choppy where I was.
       A large shape swam below me, stirring the bioluminescent plankton in its wake. This I didn't need, as I was certainly prey size for some of the sharks that roamed the deeper waters. I swam, also creating a smaller wake. I angled myself for the larger wake, hoping to use it for cover. I wasn't the only one. Several large (my sized) fish were all ready following along the wake. They quickly passed me by.
       I looked back along the wake and realized that even as slow as the large fish was that made the wake, I wasn't going to be keeping up. The luminescence was fading. The waves grew choppier.
       As I crested one, I spotted a large glowing patch of ocean, It looked like an ancient ships wheel about the size of a football field. There were smaller bright spots as some critters splashed and jumped in and ever tightening spiral into the center. One of the spokes lengthened, directly at me. I stopped my backstroke and held my cameraphone up as high as I could and snapped a few photos, sending them to GI girl, who had stayed on the phone with me. My connection was spotty, but the cell tower was on the highest point of the island, and reached several miles and even a little bit under the water. (Isn't technology wonderful.)
       The head of the spike was a large whale-like animal, I couldn't see spray as it skimmed the surface, but I could see flying fish, bronze and black in the fading daylight. They were riding the bow wave. I started pulling with all my might to be ready as the large animal passed. (I hoped it was not targeting me.)
       I felt the pressure wave and it lifted me and carried me forward with it. I kicked to bring myself in closer and body surfed along side the large animal. I could see the dark scars left behind by nylon netting. I was positive this was the animal that I'd cut the netting from. It slowed, and veered towards where I had originally found it.
       “Its...bringing... me back.” I spoke on the phone every time I rose out of the water for a breath. I had no idea if GI girl could hear me, as the noise was terrific.
       We swam out of the luminescent patch, for which I was grateful, but the animal still glowed where the plankton clung to its skin, a sort of blotchy bluish green pattern that faded. My legs were exhausted, even with the bow wave making it easier, it was still a long hard swim. I could see my catamaran, and I could see the lights of the launch from the island. The great fish reached the surface and dove, rapidly gone from sight. I slowed after the final push and only the flying fish kept me company.
       I reached my boat only a couple of minutes after the lights came on.
       “Hey, you show up on the fish finder!” GI called to me over the phone. “At least, I'm assuming that's you in the middle of all those fish.”
       I had to keep dodging the flying fish, none of them had taken a nibble yet, but I feared that was coming. The flying fish stayed with me even as I climbed up the ladder onto the deck of my boat. Several of them leaped out of the water and sailed around my reunion. The Mayor and GI were waiting for me with open arms and in GI girls case tears.
       “You are never going out alone again.”
       “I sailed across the Pacific to get here on my own. I think I can handle it.”
       “Handle it, you could of died. I'm not letting you go alone any more.”
       I was a little shook up. If it had been any later and the sun had been completely down, I might never had gotten my bearings to get back within cell range. It had been close. Much closer than I wanted to admit. GI girl was still hugging on me and sobbing.
       “Hey there, I'm fine.”
       “The ocean never gives back what it takes.” Only she didn't say “ocean” but the name the islanders used for the monsoon ocean.
       “The fish I cut free from the netting brought me back, so perhaps this is a sort of repayment.”
       “Let's get back before the tide makes it impossible to dock,” the mayor piped up and headed for the wheelhouse. I unfurled the storm spinnaker, as the winds were quite gusty and I wanted to be under way before letting out the mainsail.

       This is the first long happy (mostly) dream that I've had in a long run of “warehouse full of zombie, race for your life, aim for the head” dreams. The only other variation was a World of Warcraft dream where I was Axel, tossing fire from my hands and trying to keep the group from breaking up. N didn't want to run the whole instance, though and took the shortcut option of buying off the boss. Yes, it fulfilled the quest, but with no loot for anyone, and very little experience earned. I came back with two of the original party and we redid the boss fight. It was dicey without healing, but we managed. Then we ran it again with Fetch. Then as Axel I ran again with some others. N came in and asked, “why are you running that again? You did the quest.”
       I popped out of character and opened up my inventory screen to show her the nice new epic chest piece that had dropped. “Now I'm returning the favor for the others. We're going to do this until everyone gets what they want out of it, or until we're sick of it, whichever comes first. You're welcome to join us, there's a couple of different things that would be good for a druid.”
       “No, I'm sick of it after the first time. I'm going to the auction house.”
       “Ok.”