Jaci Dawn

I have weird dreams all of the time. Some I remember. Most fade with waking. Some are prophetic. Some are healing. Some are warnings.

And some are plots from B movies.

This is a plot from a B movie.

I lived at home with my mom and dad. Only I wasn’t “me”, I was a character in a B-movie or a zombie novel. I was about 23 in the dream. We lived in a little house on a river in a rural location. But we were getting ready to move out and I was packing my car, which was eerily similar to the 2006 KIA Sportage I presently drive. My mom was also packing her car. We were getting ready to evacuate.

I don’t remember what Mom packed into her car, but I remember the details of everything that went into my car.

I made sure that this brass ash tray made it into my car. I grew up with this ash tray.

The cobras simply crawl over it.

And up it.

I also packed cooking utensils, spatulas, miscellaneous silverware, and clothing. I remember emptying a drawer in the kitchen and putting it into my car along with the suitcases of clothing.

My mother and my little sister left about a half-hour ahead of us. My dad, my baby, and I left as soon as the car was loaded and the house locked up. The house was a light green colored house with a picket fence. We were not the only people who lived on that side of the highway as there was a joint road and intersection at the highway.

When I got there, we had to wait for two lumbering delivery van type vehicles. I pulled out behind them and we saw the road was littered with some sort of slime. Traffic was excruciatingly slow and the problem was revealed as some sort of giant snail-slug-alien thing that excreted a jellied slime of human remains. (I told you this was a dream, right?)

We didn’t want to drive over any of the excrement. I don’t know why, but it just seemed gross: jellied slime of human remains? Anyway, we hit a straight stretch and I called on the KIA’s great power for acceleration and we passed the two vans and the snail-alien-slime thing. We were worried about my mom & sister who were about 30 minutes ahead of us, and now we had been delayed even more by the snail-alien-slime thing.

We entered a winding stretch of road through a deep pine forest. Nighttime fell. My dad, who sat in the passenger seat and who wasn’t really my “dad” but who was a kinder, more benevolent sort of person, kept tending to the toddler in the car seat behind me. he handed her food, bottles, toys. He unbuckled his seat belt to change her diaper while we traveled. We had no option of stopping.

This section of woods was dark and depressing. It was known as the Zombie Woods because in recent times, zombies had taken over it. I could not stop or hesitate. We felt things land on the car and at some point, we realized there was a zombie clinging to the side of the car, by the baby, staring in at us and trying to distract us. I kept the windshield wipers going so they couldn’t land on the windshield and wreck the car.

Early morning found us on a sagebrush butte, coming in to a ranch compound that was gated off. We could see Mom’s car in the compound, so we knew they had made it safely. I came up to the gate, honking my horn. The zombies abandoned the car as we approached because the compound was zombie-free.

The gate raised and we were allowed in, but we had to be quarantined to ascertain we were not somehow zombie-ized. It was a very rustic place with log cabins, outdoor showers, eco-friendly out houses, and a main compound. Razor wire surrounded the place. A large barn was central to the place, with hay and grains and other storage.

Then the zombies attacked. We all headed to the barn and out the other side of the barn, where the zombies were concentrated. I thought we were in the defense & winning, but then my baby was out there in the sagebrush & I had to go rescue her. I got behind enemy lines somehow and had to fight my way back to the barn by throwing handfuls of gravel at the growling zombies. But I did it, with my baby in hand.

Then I climbed the stacks of hay in the loft of the barn and hid by a window that overlooked the yard of the compound. I couldn’t tell if we were winning or the zombies were until someone came into the barn and climbed into the loft to tell me it was OK and we were safe.

Woke up briefly and fell back asleep.

Dream resumed.

My sister-in-law, Debbie, and her husband, Don, came walking up from the far side of the compound. My dad was no longer in the dream, but my husband was. Deb and Don came into the compound and were quarantined. They told us (Don & I) how proud they were of us for having made the safe run to the compound and avoiding zombie infestation. However – they had discovered that it was OK to be half-zombieized and that maybe we (humans and zombies) could get along.

And I woke up for real at that point.