Author's Note: The average person has about 3 to 5 dreams per night, but some may have up to 7 dreams in one night. The dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full 8-hour night sleep, two hours of it is spent dreaming. REM sleep is the deepest level of sleep we can reach, and it is this stage that we remember our dreams the best. I had a crazy ass dream the other night. And went something like this...
Chapter 1:
English summer rain.
Not as magical as everyone makes it sound. It's dark, humid, the wettest of wet, and it lasts forever. The people seem to have accepted it, maybe. That's the way it seemed to the girl as she drove through the streets of Crawley. People were out and about in the rain, some even without umbrellas. The rain was an old friend they had all seemed to come to know and love and accept. She, however, was not so fond of the hot rain that continually fell from the sky.
She was bound and determined to find Camden High Street, but had been driving for hours without any success. Every time she stopped for directions she was told to go a different way. Aggravated, the girl just decided to drive until she could find a sign that might give her a general idea of her location. Essex. Eventually it grew dark, night fell over the British planes, and still the rain fell from the sky. After what seemed like an eternity of driving, she reached a place that could only be described as the boonies. The area was an empty, ugly, desolate area of nothing. Giant jagged boulders in the dirt field created looming shadows which sent chills down her spine. Headlights clicked on, illuminating the cracked and rugged road that lay before her.
A loud pop.
She lost control of the car as the wheel jerked from her hand. She felt the front corner of the car drag against the road. The car stopped. She got out, immediately getting soaked in the rain. She walked around the front of the car and expectedly found the front right tire to be flat, a gaping slash in the tread. She sighed. After putting the vehicle in neutral, she attempted to push the car. Unfortunately, the wet surface of the car made it difficult for her to get a grip and her hands repeatedly slipped. The car continually got stuck in the mud and grime that started washing over the cement of the road, along with her feet. She soon decided her efforts were futile, especially since she had no idea where she was going or where the closest vicinity was. A bright flash of lighting revealed a building sitting atop a hill. Assuming it to be a house of some sort, she decided to head up to it and use their phone.
Once she found the front gate, she started the trek up the ghastly, steep, unusually high hill. Frustration quickly set in. The ground was not in any way foundationally solid. The mud around her feet often shifted beneath her, causing her to slip back down a few feet. Her pants and shoes grew heavy as they soaked in with water. The heavy rain made it almost impossible to see the many number of broken hedge stones that littered the grounds. Hot, throbbing pain shot up her leg each time her shin or ankle collided with a stone marker.
She glanced up towards the building and was disappointed to find that she had only made it halfway up the dreaded hill. In the middle of a heavy sigh she felt a hand fall on her shoulder. She looked to see the yellow stained pearly white color of human bone, the five skeletal fingers gripping tightly. Slowly she turned her head. Her eyes were met with a hollow socket and one decaying eyeball sitting loosely inside a cracked skull. Strands of hair and dried blood adorned it's cranium, rotting flesh and spare pieces of a burial suit hung from it's limbs and rib cage, discolored saliva dripped from it's teeth and swollen tongue.
She let out a blood curdling scream.
Like a shot she was off, running madly towards the building she now hoped could serve as a sanctuary. Already her presence had stirred the undead from their slumber. Countless bodies emerged from their graves, reaching out for her. Her back leg sunk horribly into a thick patch of mud. Desperately she tried to pull it out, a moaning corpse grabbed at her ankle in the process. The denim of her jeans ripped as she jerked her leg away, she had escaped for only a second, but already there were more descending upon her. She felt a sharp pain in her forearm when one sunk it's teeth into her flesh, another scratched at her exposed shin and calf, and yet another still attached itself around her waist trying to gnaw through her shirt.
"Get off!" she screamed.
Once more she beat them away and ran for the house. Finally she reached the cement porch. Lights on in the window. People! She beat against the door, screaming for someone to answer. She noticed a stray arm clinging to her waist. In the process of detaching it from herself, she ripped the hem of her shirt. She sighed, disappointed now that her favorite cami had been ruined. The emotion was quickly taken over by panic as the undead corpses caught up with her. Again she pounded on the door, crying out for help. She turned her head to try and remove the rotting body from her back and save herself from being bitten on the neck. Suddenly a light washed over her. She looked back towards the door with a grateful smile on her face, but the smile immediately vanished and her eyes widened at the sight of the gun that was aimed at her face.
The man in the doorway was just as frightening as the undead threatening to eat her alive. His black shaggy hair created sharp shadows on his face; His glaring eyes were grossly discolored with yellow and red. His flesh was a greasy olive green, almost matching the color of his teeth which bore together in his malevolent grin. She winced when she felt crooked teeth sink into her neck, but she was more afraid of the man and his gun.
"Please," she begged, almost to the point of tears, "Don't shoot me."
The man's grin turned into a solemn frown when he realized the young woman was not one of the undead that often plagued his home. He gazed upon her with sincere regret. "Sorry love."
There was a loud bang. Blood splattered as a bullet pierced through her left shoulder and into the head of a corpse. Another shot, more blood from her waist, a second corpse fell to the ground. Another shot, blood trickled down her right leg, a corpse that was trying to crawl out of the ground fell back into the dirt. Hot, blinding pain screamed through every muscle fiber and vein in her body. Her leg gave out and she dropped with a heavy thud against the cement. Then everything went black.
"Bloody hell, Muh-doc! Wot the hell 'appened! There's blood everywhere!" 2D shouted, his hands ruffling into his scalp.
"Nice one. Why don't you try expanding on your vocabulary there some face ache?" Murdoc stood at the sink washing the red goo from his hands.
"That still doesn't explain what 'appened, y'basket!"
"Listen 'ere mate!" Murdoc pointed to the taller male, flinging water all over the floor. "Don' you be callin' me a basket, arsehole! Nuthing happened. Those damn creepers came up to the studio again and I had t'take care of it! Savvy?"
2D fell silent and nodded his head. Murdoc then went back to washing his hands. After a minute or two, 2D started to speak again. "Muh-doc, you sure y'okay? Y'seem kind of -" he was cut short when he felt a tug on the hem of his shirt. 2D looked down at Noodle who pointed to the vacant corner of the kitchen. "Blood and sand!" he shrieked. In the corner was the unmoving, mud caked, bloody body. 2D began to panic. "You let one of them in! Bugger Muh-doc!" His arms flailed about in utter frustration. "Wot th'hell is wrong wif you!"
"What are ya'll screamin 'bout?" Russel asked, having heard the commotion from his room.
"He bloody well let one in!" 2D shouted. "I may be a fan of their movies but I don'wanna get eaten by one!" He turned back to face the older man. "Seriously Muh-doc. Wha' the hell possessed you to let the bloody fing in? You of all people should know -!"
"She's not."
"Say again?"
"She ain't one of them creepers." Murdoc dried his hands with a dishtowel. "She's a person. She was at th'front door, getting eaten by 'em. So I did what I had to."
2D's arms dropped to his side. His head tilted in a mixture of disbelief and pity. "So you shot 'er?"
"I shot those damn creepers is what I did!" Murdoc snapped, he wasn't in the mood to be scolded by any of them. "She was in the way! What else was I s'pposed to do?"
Noodle had wandered over to the motionless body in the corner. She'd been poking it hesitantly for a minute or two, and then she nudged it a bit harder with her foot. The pressure caused more blood to ooze from the already open wounds. The Japanese girl screamed and ran to Russel's side. "She is not being dead!" Noodle shouted up at the large black man.
"Say what?" Surely she was dead. "Calm down, Noodle. You're just imaginin' things." He patted the top of her head. "C'mon shorty, yo' a big girl now -"
Noodle beat his hand away. "I am not stupid! If she was being dead the blood would not be... be... be doing the gushing!" Her arms exploded into the air.
2D walked over to the assumed dead girl. He crouched down, the knees of his long legs coming up over his head, and he examined the body. "Crikey, Noodle is right! Bloody hell Muh-doc!" he repeated the tired phrase, "You didn't even check to see if she was still alive or not?"
"Not my problem," the man replied, looking lazy eyed at the body on the floor and then at 2D.
"Not yo' problem? You cracka' ass. You just shot through her a few times and decided to drag her through the studio? Fo' kicks or somethin'?" Russel said.
Murdoc's eyes fell closed and he growled. "I'm done here." He then walked out of the kitchen heading for the carpark where his Winnebago resided.
"Wot do we do wif her?" 2D asked. Unfortunately, Russel had left, following hot after Murdoc, and Noodle had set off to cleaning the trail of blood from the lobby to the kitchen. The young man looked at the girl with his dark eyes and sniffed. For a long time he stood there, just staring in silence. Finally he sniffed again, crouched down, and picked the body up off the floor. Even though he was normally the gentle type, the excess blood made 2D nervous so he ended up carrying her around like a rag doll under one arm, having to hike her back up every once in awhile as she slipped.
"I don' see why I have t'do this. Muh-doc's the one who shot 'er. M'always the one left wif cleanin' up his messes." Low aggravated grumbling started to vibrate in her ears. "Jus' cause I owe ya' my life don't mean y'can go 'round treatin me like ya' bloody door mat. Wanker..." The girl opened her eyes. At first everything was a spinning blur, but slowly things came into focus. Keybords, posters, flickering green, blue, yellow, and red lights on the ceiling. Finally she could make out the appearance of the pale, shaggy, drone-like man who sat beside her on the bed.
"ZOMBIE!" she shrieked.