Ninteenth Entry: A Dream is a Wish?

October 7th


I had a really bad fucking dream.


It's three in the morning, and I cannot go back to sleep. I came down here to Insert Coin to be alone. I need to think. I need to get this out of my head.


Last night was nothing special. After finishing up with clean-up duty, I went over to Tara's to give Sharon and Alex some alone time (he still won't take her back to her place for some reason, I'm guessing he's a slob). We watched some Cowboy Bebop and had popcorn, it was nice.


After that I went back home, and thankfully Alex was gone, and Sharon was already asleep. I brushed my teeth in the kitchen in an attempt at being quieter, grabbed my blankets and pillows from where they had been wadded up on one of the kitchen table chairs, and went to bed on the couch.


I woke up, or at least thought I did, and found Tara standing over me wearing a short black nightgown. “Hey sleepyhead,” she said to me, as she bent over and kissed me gently.


“What are you doing here?” I asked as I sat up.


“ I live here, remember? Why don't you come to bed? You fell asleep on the couch.”


“Because Sharon's in there,” I replied, completely confused.


“Why would Sharon be in our bed?” asked Tara, looking confused.


“She lives here. Hashmir gave her apartment away when she was missing. He gave it to Parasite because she was living in her store, remember?”


“Have you been drinking?”


“I wish,” I replied.


“What's wrong with you? Did you have a bad dream or something?”


“Life is one big bad dream this year.”


“I love you too,” she replied, sounding a little hurt, “Are you okay?”


“ I guess. Why do you live here again?”


“Because we decided to both live in your apartment while we saved up for a house,” Tara was starting to look worried.


I held my hand up, but there was no wedding ring on it.


“So we live together, Sharon has her apartment back, what about the zeds?”


“Zeds?”


“The zombies? The undead plaguing the Earth?”


“Have you been playing 'Abandoned 2 Die' again? What is it with you and zombies?”


There was a knock at the door then. Tara just stood there looking at me like she did not hear it, so I got off the couch and went to the door to answer it. Opening the door revealed Alex Sigler standing there in a University of Michigan sweatshirt with an M-16 clutched in his right hand.


“Come on! It's happening. We're surrounded. It's fight or die time!” Alex yelled at me.


“What? Surrounded?”


“The zombies, a whole horde of them. They're about to breach the fucking building! Let's go!”


I turned to look at Tara who had come up behind me. She was now wearing a black sweater and blue jeans, and holding an M-16 in each hand. She offered me the one in her left hand, holding it out by the hand guard.


“But you told me-” I started.


“We've known this was coming. We'll survive it, we've survived everything else,” Tara reassured me.


I took the rifle from her, and found that I was suddenly wearing jeans and a gray short sleeved shirt. Tara ushered me into the hallway where Sharon was standing dressed in a pink t-shirt that exposed a couple of inches of her stomach, and blue jeans; she too was armed with an M-16.


Everything shifted, and I found myself down in the shopping level. We were crouched down behind a makeshift barrier made up of benches, large potted plants, and rolling kiosks. Directly around me was Alex, Sharon, Tara, Maria, Gerry, Mitchell, and Milton along with other people I recognized, but did not know. We were all crouched down, waiting for the onslaught to come through the doors. For some reason the gate had been rolled up, and only the glass doors stood between us and the seemingly endless number of zombies outside. All of the outside lights looked like they were on, and All I could see out there were zeds.


“Why are the gates up?” I asked.


“Someone's helping them. Someone wants this to happen. Some fucker is working against us. If we have to fall back, we can lower the gate at the end of this hallway though,” explained Alex.


'Why don't we just do that now?”I asked.


Before anyone could answer me explosions made the ground shake. The glass doors at the end of the hallway exploded inwards in a flash of fire and smoke; glass showered down over all of us. The smell of the smoke was quickly followed by the smell of the undead as they rushed in.


“Fire!” screamed Alex.


Our guns bellowed again and again as we fired at the oncoming zombies, and they dropped in waves, but there were rows and rows behind them to take their place, many stumbling over their dead again compatriots as they came towards us. Finally the first one reached the other side of the barricade.


“Fall back!” bellowed Alex, and the call was repeated again and again by others to make sure it was heard.


We kept firing as we backed towards the end of the hallway. Funny thing, our guns never seemed to need reloading during all this. Once we were past the line in the ceiling that conceals the bottom of the rolled up gate, it thundered down, crashing into the floor. A couple of seconds after it was in place, the first zed crashed into it, rattling it against its tracks.


Gunfire echoed through the shopping level.


“What caused this?” I yelled over the din.


“Kaur did this. He had to be the one that had the computer roll the gates up, and he's certainly the motherfucker who called back his guards. Do you see any security officers here with us?” bellowed Alex, pulling me away from the group assembled near the gate. No one was shooting through the holes in he gate, instead waiting for someone to tell them what to do next.


“But he'll die too!”


“He's insane. He's evil! He's somewhere secure, don't you fucking doubt that for a sec-” Alex suddenly fell forward onto me.


I pushed Alex back off of me, and saw that the front of his sweatshirt was stained with a spreading circle of blood, all but obscuring the university logo. Looking over his shoulder I saw Alexandre Rontreal standing in his white and black uniform, his smoking handgun still pointed in our direction.


“No one stands against Hashmir Kaur, not the council, and not you!” Rontreal yelled, and then ran away.


Alex looked me in the eyes, ”Fuck,” he gasped weakly, and his knees gave out.


“Alex!” chorused Tara and Sharon both, and they rushed forward to try and catch him, both going down to their knees with him as he fell to the floor.


“Why did you do that?” asked Sharon, looking up at me with tears in her eyes.


“I didn't do it. It was Rontreal; he shot him in the back,” I explained.


“I know you were jealous, but you didn't have to kill him!” Sharon shrieked, getting to her feet and throwing herself on me, “You took the person I loved because I didn't love you.”


“You should have loved me!” I bellowed in response.


“I could never love you; you're pathetic!”she looked me in the eyes, but her eyes were no longer hers, they had gone all milky, “So now I'm going to take someone you love!”


Sharon pulled away from me, her skin had gone all pale and gray. She turned to where Tara was still kneeling over Alex's body. Tara looked up in terror as Sharon dropped onto her.


The two of them fell over into the unbelievably large pool of blood. Tara screamed my name over and over, begging for me to help her, but I couldn't move. It was like I had been turned to stone.


Sharon's teeth sunk into Tara's neck, and her screams turned into strangled gurgles as her throat filled with blood. The whole time this was going on Maria, Gerry, Milton, and Mitchell stood over by the gate looking mildly interested, I looked at them hoping one of them would help.


“I knew you didn't have the guts when it came down to it,” spat Maria disgustedly.


“ Damn! Catfight!” hooted Milton, the mall's lights flashing off his gold teeth.


“Are you really just going to stand there?” asked Gerry.


“I warned you,” said Mitchell.


I looked down at Sharon and Tara again just in time to see Sharon rip apart what was left of Tara's neck, the spine snapped with a sickening crack. She held up Tara's head for me to see. Tara's eyes still begged for help.

Sharon tossed aside Tara's head and it landed with a loud thud, a sound I should not have been able to hear over the background noise of gunfire, but I heard it clearly all the same. She got to her feet, and started to slowly stagger towards me, her face a blood-soaked sneering mask of rage and fury.


“You'd better put her down,” said Gerry.


“He hasn't got the balls,' replied Maria.


“You are so fucked,” chuckled Mitchell.


“Man, smack that bitch up!” called Milton.


I found I could move again. I brought my right arm up, but the M-16 was gone, having been replaced by an golden colored aluminum baseball bat with a bend about halfway down its length, like someone had been trying to beat up the pole of a streetlight with it.


“It's you or her, man,” offered Gerry.


Sharon's outstretched arm were almost close enough to grab me when a wave of revulsion went through me. I swung the bat hard. Her left arm crunched as the bones snapped. She staggered but did not fall.


“See? You are pathetic!” spat zombie Sharon.


“Don't make me do this!” I yelled back at her.


“Then give up and die!” she yelled back, her voice going all gravelly.


I swung the bat again, this time at her head. It cracked like an egg, and black ooze started to run out and over her face.


“Don't you love me anymore?” asked the Sharon thing in front of me.


“Yes!”


“Then stop fighting. I want you inside me.” it purred in a rotted disgusting way.


“No!” I howled, and swung the bat.


The Sharon thing went down this time, but I did not stop. I kept swinging the bat down onto her again and again until her head was a smear on the shiny floor. Only her blood was not the black ooze that had come out of her head wound, and her skin was no longer gray, it was her normal pale pink, and the blood was bright red as it mingled with Tara's and Alex's blood.


She hadn't been a zombie after all.


“Damn, son, that's cold!” yelled Milton.


“Maybe you do have a spine after all,” commented Maria, admiration in her voice.


“Like I said, you are fucked, and now you're all alone. You have nothing!” Mitchel spat, and started laughing.


Then they all started laughing as I looked from them to the bodies on the floor, and back. I started to scream the word “no” over and over as the gate behind them rolled up all on its own, and zombies flooded in.


I opened my eyes to pitch blackness. I could feel them around me, the undead were all around me. I groped for the lamp on the table next to the couch, and after almost sending it tumbling to the floor, I managed to turn it on.


I was alone, no zeds, no Tara. I was drenched in sweat, and I was crying. I wondered if I had screamed, but when Sharon did not come out of the bedroom, I decided I must not have.


Deciding I needed to be alone, I came down here to think, and write it all down before it had time to fade. Putting it all down on paper has given me time to think about it.


Does it mean anything? Is it just my jealousy? Is my mind trying to tell me something? Is it just that I've been under more stress these last few months than I realize? Am I becoming emo?


I don't think I'm going to get any more sleep tonight, I think I'll play some Smash Bros. to try and clear my mind. I wish I had some booze.