Dawn of the Dumb

3:30AM. Just had a bad dream - a type I've had before. We're talking zombies here, and not the slow moving ones but the run for your life crazy-psycho jump on you biting type of zombie from "Dawn of the Dead" or "28 Days Later." So it started out with me in some kind of highland compound with a group of people I didn't know. We were in some room... oh, the 1st part of the dream was me shooting a TV segment with a jib arm and my Canon 5D2 camera. We were at a grocery store and the producer was not happy with me taking too much time to level the jib head and taking focus marks. I tried to speed things up with the help of my AC but we couldn't get things right. Rick, a camera man I've worked with before, was advising us in the background while eating ice cream. Anyway, somehow that dream transitioned to me in some compound (and oddly enough just before that dream, I just remembered, that I was at the grocery store initially to meet my dad for some reason).

So at this compound somebody opens a door and all of a sudden these bloodied eyed zombies came running out biting chunks off people and turning them into zombies. In all the chaos I run out, kicking a few zombies out of my way, and find this white van where an middle aged, robust woman and a young blond (I think she was Polly-Anne fromt eh "Dawn of the Dead" movie) were already trying to get the van out of the gated parking lot. I end up in the driver's seat with the middle aged woman next to me while Polly-Anne guided us through a small maze of cars blocking our way out. We managed to get out of the parking lot and I wait for Polly-Anne to catch up with us to jump in the van while the middle aged woman is screaming at me, asking why I stopped. Even when Polly-Anne gets to the passenger side door, the middle aged woman was too dumb to open the door and even when I reached over to unlock the door, the middle aged woman didn't think to move over so that Polly-Anne could fit in. So we tear down the street and blocking our way is a group of children dressed up for Halloween (masks covering their face, orange plastic pumpkin baskets in hand) and we decide to just run them over. After a bump and a thump I realized that we might have made a mistake and that those were real kids and not zombies. And that middle aged woman goes and makes a stupid comment about how those kids should not have been out that night. I just remembered that infuriating me.

So somehow, Polly-Anne disappeared from the picture and I was stuck with the middle aged woman driving some back country road. On top of that, some Nissan Altima was following us in a very suspicious manner. Now I know the zombies couldn't drive but we couldn't help but percieve this car as being the same kind of threat - or even worse since it wasn't like the zombies could hop in a car a chase after you. At a dirt road intersection we had to decide where we were going to go - the highlands where we came from, an unkown road that went into wilderness, and probably a few other choices that amounted to just a bunch of question marks. We decided to drive towards the highlands but then a quarter of the way up we s[pun around to try and get a look at the Altima that was following us. The Altima ended up playing chicken with our van and it seemed in our best interest to try and lose the Altima by heading back to the wilderness road. Once on the wilderness road we passed by a small camp and stop. The Altima behind us stopped at the camp and this tall lanky guy steps out and pulls a bucket from the trunk. At the camp there are two other guys preparing supplies and what not. At this point I stepped out of the van to walk over and talk to the survivors of this camp. The tall lanky guy took the bucket and poured a bunch of skinned rattle snakes out on a table as the oterh two guys sorted through the catch. After a moment, the lanky guy rubbed his eyes and increasingly looked like he was in pain. Next thing I knew the lanky guy bit one of the other guys in the neck. I didn't even bother seeing what happened next and started running for the van. But this lanky guy was a frickin fast runner. I tried to jump in the Altima to get away but the door was locked and this tall zombie was closing in on me fast and furiously. Near the van, I had to duck as teh lanky guy lunged at me. With a kick I managed to buy myself a little time and got to the van door. All I could think of was that this guy was going to pop out at any moment from behind me and tear out a lage chunk of meat from my neck. I frantically got the door open and jumped in. It think I managed to peel out in the van and get away but there was the thought that the lanky zombie had jumped on the van and was lurking somewhere on top or below - I didn't know. I'm not sure what happened to the middle aged woman at this point. She just wasn't there anymore. That's when I woke up - not totally sweaty and paranoid like I had in the past a few times but not feeling all that happy about having this kind of nightmare.