I Dream of Zombie

Stop! Shovel time!

Published on January 4, 2006 By stutefish In Life Journals

I had an extended dream last night, about zombies.

The dream was vaguely reminiscent of Day of the Triffids, I book I have read but a movie I have not seen.

In my dream, the zombies would suck out your soul, turning you into one of them. They accomplished this by raising up their arms in the classic zombie pose, extending their fingsers, and drawing out your soul as thin black and red wisps of... ectoplasm, I guess. Don't ask. Dream metaphysics.

Anyway, they could do this from several feet away, which meant that even though they were slow zombies, you didn't want to run into even a small group of them. They'd suck out your soul, which was their version of braaains, and then, soulless, you'd be a zombie, too.

Like I said, they were slow zombies. And they didn't bite, just the soul-sucking thing. And there was a bit of a delay on that, too, before the zombietime kicked in, so you could still get away (or deliver beatings--more about that in a moment). Towards the end of the dream, I realized that, being slow zombies, it should be trivial for us survivors to reclaim our city and our world.

"Just give me a shovel," I dreamt, "and I'll solve this zombie problem myself."

Why a shovel? Why not? Sure, a shovel isn't a very awsometastic weapon, but everybody seems to forget that slow zombies are not a very awsometastic monster. You can bash them on the head with a shovel, no problem. You can chop them in the neck with a shovel, no problem.

Last time I checked, head-bashing and neck-chopping pretty much covers all the bases, zombie-wise. You're welcome to pack a shotgun if you like, but for slow zombies, give a housewife a shovel and she'll do just fine.

Anyway, in my dream, we survivors were all living in an underground cave complex. One of our main problems seemed to be power generation. Towards the end of the dream, this problem was solved--I think--by rounding up several healthy young men and leading them off down a newly (added?) (discovered?) tunnel in the cave complex. This wasn't my solution; one of the other survivors had put it together.

At first I was a little annoyed that they'd solved the power generation problem like this, without consulting with me, and without even telling me what was down at the other end of that new tunnel.

But then I thought, what if the power source is a leaky reactor or something? What if I don't want to know what's down at the end of that tunnel. What if they're using healthy young men because they have the best chance of surviving the longest, working on the reactor or whatever it is?

Then I thought, what our survivor community needs is a security service. People standing at the cave entrance, hanging out at key intersections in the tunnels, making sure that nobody goes down to the leaky reactor, that zombies don't wander into our home, that sort of thing.

Then I thought, that will just cause resentment and conflict, having a bunch of "security" people hanging around all the time. My entire staff would go on power trips, abuse their authority, get delusions of grandeur... Next thing you know, soul-sucking slow zombies are the least of our problems.

Then I thought, this would be the perfect opportunity to try out my favorite scene from my favorite movie, Road House. You know the scene I'm talking about: The one where Dalton is talking to the bouncers about his rules for running a roadhouse. Well, his rule: "Be nice." Apparently Dalton got to be the best cooler in the business by following that one simple rule: be nice, until it's time to not be nice. When is it time to not be nice? Dalton will tell you when it's time to not be nice. Until then, be nice.

I figured, if I set up my security team on that basis--be nice--it'd be a while before the survivors even noticed that we had a security team. They'd just be some nice people, standing at key intersections in the tunnels, helping little old ladies cross the pit trap and warning people away from the leaky reactor.

So that was pretty cool. I've always dreamed of running a crew on the "be nice" principle, and now there I was, really dreaming about it.

And that's when I thought, wait a minute.

These are slow zombies.

Why are we hiding underground, feeding healthy young men to leaky reactors, and plotting what amount to peaceful military coups of the survivor community, when all we have to deal with is slow zombies?

Give me a shovel, and I'll make the world safe for our kind before breakfast.

Then my wife started nudging me, and I woke up.

Somewhere off in dreamland, some cave-dwelling zombie plague surviors have probably assumed I've been taken by the zombies.

I never did get to tell them my ideas about the security team. They're probably dying of radiation sickness and petty infighting right now.

Which is a pity, because all they really needed was a shovel.

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