It was the zombie apocalypse. I was trying to survive with a group of survivors in a mall, and after careful measures we had managed to wipe out the horde of zombies in the parking lot. Over the next few months we were clearing out the vehicles and salvaging what we could. I was part of a team that had survived by taking over a mall, not unlike “Dawn of the Dead.” We had cleared out the mall, and the surrounding area and were starting to stock up when a herd of zombies came our way. I was on the outside when it happened and was forced to hide in a van full of supplies that I had just brought back. I was the only one.
Everyone else ran back inside, I was cut off from them for a long time, many days. After a while I decided I needed to make a run for it. Even though I still had plenty of food, the living conditions within the van were not tolerable for me, so I opened the door with my shovel in hand and fought my way through. I struck down a few zombies and ran for my life.
The next thing I remember was coming across a community that was in ruin, there were survivors but things were collapsing as soon as I arrived. I joined the fray with my shovel and the others soon recognized me as a helpful ally. At one point a few children were told to go hide inside with their parents, and from the screams we could tell their parents were already zombies and we had inadvertently sent them to their deaths.
Roughly forty survivors including myself built up fortifications, we were planning a major fight. We would draw the zombies in with a huge bonfire, it was a disaster. I remember faces which seemed familiar even though they were fleeting, and all dead or dying. I fought and fought, as I am want to do, and after dozens, maybe even hundreds of slain zombies piled up around me, the number of the living had thinned to nearly nothing. I fought into the crowd and out of the two. I found a clearly and ran. The fire behind me burning and drawing the attention of the zombies. I was holding a woman’s hand dragging her behind me. She was wearing the garb of a police woman; perhaps I was thinking about “Silent Hill” at that point, I cannot be certain.
The fire burned though out the night and allowed me and the police woman to escape.
It’s strange in dreams... how time warps. Many years must had passed in an instant, me and the police woman were holding up in a warehouse with a bunch of college students and a group of needlessly hostile minorities, not unlike the scene in “Diary of the Dead,” everyone hated each other. The college students were meek and had insane and judgemental leftist views about the whole situation, and the blacks and Hispanics who had banded together to survive were racist and untrusting towards all these “whites.” It was stupid but it was just like some of the badly written social commentary forced into so many zombie films. The only people I could rely on was myself, the police woman, and the leader of the minorities a man named Marcus, he and I had become friends. The three of us were the only competent level headed people in the group.
The events that transpired were more like a montage of tragedy, one of the students broke their leg, it got infected and he died. There was a rape, and I murdered the rapists when they were drunk, and that drove the conflict between us more. Mistakes were made and we were overrun. Some of us escaped, but slowly we dwindled. Zombies got a few of us, we had begun to kill each other, and others literally broke down laid down and refused to go on. I lost the police woman... she died trying to help a child... though the child was already gone. Her mind had gone, the police woman, the stress and the despair of the situation was too great, she lost her sanity and soon after she lost her life, and with her gone there was only Marcus and me left.
We stopped speaking to each other, Marcus and me, there was nothing to say, we had gone well over a year with the police woman before she was taken from us and at least another year before we lost the rest of the group, and another two or three years walled up in that warehouse. We had survived for so many years and never seen another survivor, and now without the police woman... we were just two men waiting to die. The human race was finished we were its last representatives.
Marcus died, in the night. We were starving, and all the canned food we were finding was expired, I grew tired and weak, but he grew ill, and slowly he decayed in front of me. We never spoke, I knew he was dying, and I could tell we wanted to die, and there was nothing left. With Marcus gone I was alone, just one man waiting to die. I was the human race’s last representative.
Years passed. Roaming alone was easier than with the others, even Marcus and the police woman as capable as they were had slowed me down. I no longer had to share the scraps of food I found and hiding, moving, and running were all easier when you only had to worry about yourself. I wore the police woman’s helmet, she had become important to me, I did not want to forget her, also the helmet kept me safe. I wore a leather jacket and gloves even when the sun was high in the sky, the only exposed skin I had was my lower face. I carried a rifle, a pistol, a shovel, a knife, and an axe, I had gotten so good at taken out the living dead that I rarely made any sound and I never broke a sweat anymore.
I lost count of the days and the years. I prowled through the ruins of Calgary wishing for any sign of life. Then slowly I awoke. I stirred in my sleep for a moment feeling the full effect of my zombie apocalypse dream, and the feeling I had was not unlike the inspiration I drew from Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend.” I was proud to know I fought until the end even when there was nothing left to fight for.
When I drifted back to sleep I dreamt I was an interloper in a foreign farm community, I had my secrets but they only came to me as they developed within the confines of the story. I have always been a hard worker and an agreeable helping hand, so even though I was un-trusted for being a foreigner I soon gained the trust of the many locals with my willingness to work. I became one of them, only I was really a spy.
This dream was a little more complicated. Everyone knows what a zombie apocalypse looks like, we have all seen the movies. This dream, it was like Stargate, sort of, some alien had come to this technologically backward world and declared themselves a god. I was sent here to find out about this alien and arrest him while doing the minimal amount of shock to the locals. I was not just a foreigner, I was an alien to this world. That was the secret I was keeping from her.
I had fallen in love with one of the girls in this village, but she was very dedicated to her god, the alien I knew to be a fraud. She was golden like a sunflower, and eyes blue as the sky, well as blue as the earth sky, here the sky was often a pale shade of purple. She had a twin sister who was much more tomboyish then her with short cropped black hair and eyes just as dark. Though one was gold and the other black they were very alike in their behaviour, the only difference being I got along a lot better with the one I was not in love with.
The girl’s father was very fond of me, I worked for him and he was very happy to learn my intentions to be with his golden daughter, I had his blessings and everything. He was their only parent since his wife had died birthing the two girls, and that loss had haunted them all. The greatest hurdle to winning my golden lady’s heart was the fact that I was a foreigner and I had not shown much love or respect to their idol god, and that was something the golden girl could not look past. This had created a huge emotional and sexual tension between the two of us, and in my sleep my body was twitching in response to an agony I knew all too well in real life.
The technology of this place was backward yet complicated in a way only orthogonal thinking could create. Their cotton jinn and steam engines were designed so very differently than earth’s. While surrounded by all these strange machinery I had begun to learn that the prays the girls made to their god were more than just wishful words, there was a literal voice in their heads answering them, and I knew through them I would find and arrest this false Stargate-esq god.
I tried to talk to my love, the golden girl about it but she grew very distant and untrusting of me for asking, saying a lot of things that hurt my soul, how I was unworthy of her and never a true member of the community as long as I was doubted their god. I was hurt but I had a job to do so I turned to the black sister. She was more cooperative but she warned me a great many times that their god did not like anyone seeking him or his voice out, especially outsiders. She also warned me that my inquires about their god would drive a great distance wedge between her sister and me.
I caught the two sisters praying together and I tried to spy on them but their god, or whatever voice in their heads told them I was close and they discovered my presences. I was successful at acting aloof, but the golden girl would not have any of it, she did not trust me. She stormed out of the farm and into the fields. I chased after her. I took her hand and pulled her close to me. I told her I loved her and I only wanted to help her. I could not explain that her god was an alien fraud or how I knew I could not chance blowing my cover I still had a job to do.
She broke into tears telling me that I could never understand her, how I would never know what it was like to be hurt like her. She never even knew her mother.
I lost my temper then.
I shouted at her “Everyone I ever knew is dead. My entire planet is over run zombies. I have no home to return to. You have a father and sister who love you, and me, I love you. I have lost everything, never dare complain to me about your insignificant pain.” While this would be an interesting line of dialogue to absorb and ponder over as to just why does my mind create such scenarios of sadness, but at the time all I could think was, “holy shit, is this still the same dream?”
Insanely this was still the same dream, and it came back to me how the two completely different scenarios had come to be connected. As I walked the ruin earth one desperate lonely night I saw a light in the sky and the light encompassed me and took me aboard a rocket ship. Aliens from another world had seen what sad fate had become of the human race on earth and taken pity upon the few survivors left. They had rescued me and a handful of others. In my gratefulness I agreed to help them in any way I could and since I was genetically so similar to these other creatures who had been victimized by an alien opportunist they had sent me in to investigate.
After a few days of being awake and thinking about what a crazy story my mind had come up with in that long dream I came to think that it might be a good idea for a short story, or a collection of short stories. The situation was so complicated that if I made the many levels of science fiction play off each other I may just have a story crazy enough to be considered acceptable to a popular mainstream audience.
As of now I am left unsure whether my imagination is amazing or if my dreams are just crazy. I may or may not have a great idea for a novel series on my hands.
