The infected are coming

Another recurring theme in my dreams, one that has haunted me since early childhood, long before my first zombie movie, is dreams of cannibalistic monster humans. Sometimes they are the walking dead. Sometimes they are not. Last night, it was kind of a mix. 
There is some background necessary for this one: In life, we aren't where we want to be. We live across the state from the rest of our family. Some, we get to visit somewhat often. Others we are fortunate to see once or twice a year. The dream began with a change in that circumstance. We had recently moved back to my husband's home town.

It starts out so good. We have been living in the new house for a few months, a nice big place with enough rooms that in addition to having a bedroom each for all three kids, there were two to spare for our hobbies. It even has a huge basement. It isn't a finished basement, but it is dry, and we are making it more of a living space. It is a work in progress. The yard is even big. In it, we have built a nice club house, and planted gardens. Best of all, it was really affordable to purchase, and the circumstances under which that came about had not brought harm or loss to anyone. We feel good about the place.

I am working in the kitchen garden, which is adjacent to the house, just outside the back door. The plants consist mostly of herbs and loose-leaf salad greens. There are also bunching lettuces and cabbages, and some brussels sprouts, but those are not ready to pick.. I am using careful harvesting techniques to encourage further growth, by pinching back leaves where it will cause the plant to branch out. I am fairly engrossed in my work when the smell hits me, and I realize that there is a dead animal very near to where I am working.

I look around and do not see anything in the yard, or the brush by the fence. It must be in my garden.
Carefully pulling leaves and stalks aside to look more closely, I find the corpse, a little rabbit. Its head is partially ripped off. It looks like it was picked up by something without sharp pointy parts, and pulled apart. It isn't chewed up all over. It's crushed, and the flesh around the torn area is really ragged, like something chewed just there. Whatever did it had such a good grip that it tore through the neck instead of just tearing off the skin, and in the process it broke every bone in the little animal's body. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of blood.

At this realization, I cease to be clinical about the investigation of the dead animal, and gag at the smell and the thought of how it died. All I can picture is a person picking it up, wringing its neck, trying to tear its head off, gnawing it and drinking the blood, then throwing it in my garden. I am hit with the horrifying notion that there is someone in my neighborhood right now who would do something like this, and I don't know who it is.

I look around at the houses on either side of ours. Could we have moved in next door to a psychopath? This kind of animal abuse is characteristic of the childhood behavior of people who go on to become serial killers.

That is when I notice that one of my neighbors is watching me through the edge of a mostly curtained side window on the second story of his house. I can see half of his face. An evil grin covers it when he sees me start as I notice him. I grab the basket of greens and herbs and turn to enter the house. In the time it takes me to take the two steps that place me beside the door, he is out of his house and climbing over the fence to my yard.

His behavior is totally weird. Normally a very nice man with whom we get along well, he appears to have lost his mind. His expression is kind of a cross between hunger, lechery, and labored determination. He doesn't talk. His movements are slightly uncontrolled, and appear to require a concentrated effort, as if he has damage to the part of his nervous system that allows him to control his muscles.
He has red smears on his shirt and hands. Beyond him, I can see others around his house. They have the same stilted, sloppy kind of movement, and the same look on their faces. Some of them are fighting, but not with their fists, like most people. The are grabbing and swinging at each other like cats, and trying to bite. They are growling and grunting like animals.

The neighbor is over the fence by the time I look away from the scene. He begins to half-stumble, half run toward me. I quickly enter the house, slam the door shut, and lock it. I hear an angry, wordless yowl from outside as he bangs into the storm door, shattering the glass at the top. Then, I hear both of his fists pounding on the door. I yell for my family.

I know something is wrong with several of my neighbors, and we are in danger. My first thought is barricading the house to keep them out. I bark orders at everyone, and they just look at me like I've lost my mind. My younger daughter says, "No, that's just Mr. Jonas from next door. He probably needs help with something." I have to physically restrain her from opening it. I make her look out the window. In the meantime, my husband, disgusted with my nonsensical behavior, does open the inner door. Mr. Jonas reaches in through the broken glass, slicing a big gash along his arm. Howling in pain and frustration, he draws his arm back and throws himself around like an agitated toddler.

Simultaneously, three things happen. My husband realizes that something about Mr. Jonas is scary, and shuts the door.
My daughter sees one of the neighbors bite another in the throat, taking her down.
I realize that the combined behaviors of the neighbors add up to mean that they must be "zombies" of some kind. I don't think they are dead, just impaired in some way that I don't completely understand.

Finally, though, my family and I are on the same page. I bark orders again. My oldest daughter and my husband begin closing the aluminum storm shutters over our windows.
Our new house had a neat feature. Each window had a switch next to it, almost like ones you use for lights. When the switch is up, the shutters are open. To close the shutters, you flick the switch down. The shutters drop kind of like a cross between a garage door and a venetian blind.

The movement seems to draw the attention of the zombies, but not all of them are attracted to it, and the ones that are do not move fast enough to get in. Once closed, the shutters would be very difficult to open from the outside. A rational person might be able to get in, but someone with the level of impairment that the zombies displayed would attempt to use brute force, and that would not work.

The younger kids set about calling family and friends to warn them, beginning with the ones closest to where we are on the wild guess that the phenomenon had started in our neighborhood. I begin gathering and arranging things to make the house defensible, listening to the kids reporting back to me on who has or has not experienced zombie weirdness. I hear my younger daughter shouting at my sister, "Of course I have faith in God, but God doesn't expect you to sit on your butt and let Him do all of the work. Barricade your house, and pray to God that it holds. Just do it!" I know my sister at first did not believe her, but as adamant as my daughter sounds, my sister will take measures to protect her family pending further information. And she will pray.

My husband and oldest finish with the downstairs shutters. I have him help me move things so that we can stay in the kitchen and the dining room, which have the smallest windows, and are adjacent to the bathroom, also with small windows, and to the windowless pantry and the stairways. If needed, we can get to either the basement, or the upstairs quickly.

I have my oldest start calling people, too. By now, it has been almost ten minutes. We have barricaded the windows in the living room with book shelves. Then, we barricade the doorway between the living room and the dining room with another bookshelf, and the table. The kitchen door is barricaded by moving the refrigerator over in front of it. In the pantry, we put together a stash of weapons. It looks like these people can die the same way anyone can. That will be helpful if we have to defend ourselves.

I start helping with the phone calls. There are some people we are unable to reach, and we are worried about them. We ask others to call them. In the meantime, my parents ask if I have called 911. I have not, but I assure them that after I hang up, I will. I tell them to be ready. My kids have been told that there is zombie activity in our previous residence in the city, eighty miles away, and they live kind of between where we are and that location. I tell them to alert their local authorities too. I tell my brother to get his guns ready. I wish I still had mine.


Finally we have called all of the numbers stored in our phones, and in our minds. I call 911. There is no dispatcher, only a recorded message describing the emergency as an outbreak of some kind of reaction to spores from a new kind of fungus. We are advised to do basically what we are all ready doing.
I learn the following things from the message: The government believes that the fungus has been destroyed in its original habitat, which they do not say was a lab, but somehow I know it was. The bodies of the infected are the only thing left that carry the spores, and they seem to be the perfect growth medium. The fungus grows in the respiratory system, including the walls of the throat and the inside of the mouth. It releases a toxin into the blood that affects the central nervous system. It causes dementia, aggression, and extreme hunger, even when the stomach is full. The dementia includes forgetting what to eat. The infected will attack and attempt to consume anything that moves.

The spores from human victims are not airborn while the victim is alive. There just aren't enough of them. The recorded message states that it is suspected that victim zero may have mistakenly consumed the fungus. It occurs to me to suspect that the fungus was deliberately fed to someone, like a test subject.

The message goes on to say that the spores are spread through biting, and no one is immune. Once contracted, the fungus is terminal. Either the toxins eventually destroy the brain, the fungus causes suffocation, or the stomach ruptures from overeating. Either way, the host dies within days of contracting the fungus. The fungus continues to grow in deceased hosts. Eventually it causes the abdominal area to become bloated and distended, and will release spores if dead bodies are disturbed. At that time, infection is airborn. No known treatment is available at this time, and it does not appear that one will be forthcoming in the near future.

According to the message, we are advised to remain indoors until further notice. A number is given for us to call if we are under attack, and another if we are starving or without water. A third number is given for anyone bitten. The number is followed by a stark promise to provide medication and solitary confinement to preserve dignity and eliminate the pain of the illness, followed by the admonition that the bitten should think of the safety of loved ones, and call the number before they hurt someone. It strikes me that anyone calling that number will likely be carted away by authorities and quickly euthanize.

I call the number for help in an attack, but all I get is a busy signal. I give my daughter my phone, and have her keep speed-dialing to see if she can get through.

I explain to my family what is going on. We make more phone calls, first getting hold of people who did not believe us, and telling them what we have learned. I call to make sure my brother knows that zombie he shoots is all ready a dying person anyway. He breaks down and cries on the phone, and tells me he is glad to know that, because a neighbor broke into the house and attacked. The man was not a close friend, but was someone the family liked and trusted. No people were bitten, but the neighbor tore their dog apart, then turned on the family. My brother shot him in self defense. I don't get how upset he really is, until he tells me "he came over to borrow my weed cutter last Sunday, and we had a beer and talked about piddly normal stuff. I had a beer with him on Sunday, and I had to shoot him in the head just a few minutes ago. His blood is still wet on the floor."

There aren't any words of comfort I can offer, except to say how much pain the man was spared by that bullet. I tell my brother to throw the body outside, and why. He has calmed down, though he is still shaken. He is able to tell me that the body is in the garage, and they are in the house. I tell him what will happen to it, that once it's bloated with fungus, if they disturb it, it will release spores. I emphasize that if they end up forced to flee the house, they need to wear wet bandanas or other cloth over their mouths and noses until they get out of there, to avoid getting infected if they come into contact with the corpse. As he promises me that he will, I hear something break through part of the glass in the big picture window in the living room, and impact against a book shelf. I tell my brother that everything is ok here, but I have to hang up and work to make it stay that way. Before he hangs up, he tells me he loves me. My brother and my dad don't ever do that. It's kind of a guy thing with them. It hits home again how scared he is. I say it back.. I'm terrified, too.

I realize the shutter over that picture window did not go all the way down. They might be able to get that one open.

An inarticulate scream comes from that direction, and then we can hear the zombies fighting. I think maybe if we wait and let them congregate, the more aggressive ones will kill off the others, and we'll have less of them to defend against, but eventually they are going to get inside the living room. We have to better barricade the rooms we are using, and we have to be ready for a fight.

I think about which of the items we have gathered will be the most quickly lethal. It is a horribly mercenary thought, and I feel less human for it. I don't share the thought with my family because the people outside are our neighbors, both old and young, and I don't want the kids to think about them tearing each other apart, or us having to kill them. I realize they're going to have to face it when it happens. I wish they didn't. I ask them if they remember the things I've taught them about self defense. They nod.

They are crying. They can hear everything I can, and they know that some of their classmates are out there. I pull them into a hug. My husband puts his arms around us, and we try to block out the terrible noise from outside, but then we hear the wood splintering in the kitchen door as Mr. Jonas hits it with something solid. I think it must be one of the rocks that border my garden. It will take time, but if he is not stopped, he is going to get through that door.

My husband lets go of us. He goes to the closet under the stairs and gets his bowling ball. I realize he's going to take it up to the bedroom and drop it out of the window above the kitchen door, down on to Mr. Jonas's head. I hold the kids tighter as he starts up the stairs. My older daughter seems to know what is going to happen, as she starts talking to the younger ones, telling them it's going to be ok, and Dad won't let him in.

I think about the way Mr. Jonas welcomed us to the neighborhood with a pie he made at home, and how much fun my son had playing with his grandson when his kids came to visit during the last week before school. I am filled with a sense of dread as I realize my husband is going to have to kill our neighbor to save us. I understand how my brother felt about shooting his neighbor.

My insides feel frozen, and my heart hurts. I want to cry.  I'm pretty sure uncontrolled sobbing would at least feel appropriate in this situation, but if I do that the kids will freak out, too, so I have to hold it back.. I start telling them that it's going to be ok. I know they are thinking of what Mr. Jonas must be going through. I wonder if it hurts to have the fungus growing in your lungs. Maybe the bowling ball will give him a more peaceful and quick death than the ones described in the emergency message. I hope it will spare him more pain than it will cause.
Most importantly, we will be safe. I am blinking back tears and fighting to keep my voice steady so the kids won't be as afraid as I am. I pull away and start handing out knives. I tell them it's "just in case." I tell them to go for vulnerable spots, the eyes, and the throat, if they have to fight. I move us onto the stairway so that they can run away first. I grip a big kitchen knife tightly in my hand. My heart is pumping like mad as I hear the window open upstairs.

I wake up and realize that there is no Mr. Jonas. The memory of him was all part of the dream. We are still living in the city away from our family. We haven't yet seen our moving plan come to fruition, and we have another whole year before it will happen. There are no zombies. I've never been so happy to feel disappointed. It takes a while for the fear and the adrenalin to go away.