It’s night, and I am outside. Surrounding me are the ruins of
old stone buildings with their skeletal timbers jutting upward toward a dark
sky. The landscape feels like the property of my old house, before it was
renovated. There’s a chill in the air, despite the torchlight that illuminates a
few points in the distance.
There’s a group of frightened people waiting to the left of
a cellar doorway. I step over the shambles of a wooden farm fence, and find
that they’re arming themselves with makeshift weapons. Pipes with large bolts,
kitchen blades, Molotov cocktails, and other less intimidating things.
A man
rushes over, and presses a grenade into my hand. “They’re coming!” The crazed
look in his eyes frightens me more than his dire prediction. “He shouts to no
one in particular, “Get ready!”. People gather on the lawn, facing this cellar
door. The doors are missing, revealing concrete stairs that descend down into a
dark hallway beneath the ruins of a large house. I recognize this as the ruins
of my old home.
Undead emerge from the cellar steps into the torchlight. I’ve
released the grenade, and tossed it down the stairwell. The explosion sends
shards of concrete everywhere, and as I fall down I lose my glasses. Scrambling
to retrieve them, the world devolves into blurs of movement, and torchlight.
People sound like they’re panicking, and attempting to run
while other attack the undead. I see struggling forms falling to the ground,
and back away while still laying on the ground. In the darkness, I retreat away from the
cellar door, toward the road. Still without my glasses, I find a heavy steel
pipe weapon nearby. Up the stairs and toward me move a woman and child, both
dead. A man takes down the woman, and with startling speed, the child bares its
small teeth as it rushes toward me.
* * *
The rest is a blur. By the time I can hear anything beyond
a high pitch whistle in my ears, I realize that I am covered in blood, and slumped on my
knees next to an oak tree. I feel like I'm in shock, and have a deep sense of vertigo. Gradually, I regain my composure.
To the right of the house is another ruin, but one
that has a door and first floor but no roof. Side stepping the corpses the litter the ground, I walk over to the house and sort through the garbage can next to the doorway. I hope to find something useful. Inside, I find a box-cutter, an empty DVD case, and a bubble envelope. An old
man stops me as I back away from the can, and explains that he “put them there
for a reason”, then returns the objects to the garbage.
I walk through the door, and up a short flight of stairs. I am standing in a kitchen that has a window facing the road. I turn on the kitchen faucet, but realize it’s too short; a stubby bathroom design. The water doesn't reach the sink. Instead, it pools all over the dusty counter top.
My father is
standing nearby, reading pages from a binder. It looks like he’s seen battle,
and his pants and shirt are tons and frayed at the knees and elbows. “I need to
get out of here”, I tell him. He explains that he’s going ahead to Quebec to
locate a safe zone for the family to move to, but he needs me to stay here to
watch out for the family while he’s gone.
I can’t do this though. It’s his responsibility to look
after the family, not mine. The dream reasoning blends with reality as I
realize that I am moving overseas for work, and I can’t stay behind. The sounds
of the undead echo off in the distance as my father remarks “Do what you need
to do.” He turns back to studying his binder of papers.
I don't want to abandon my parents to the threats outside, but I know that my presence here can't stop what's coming.
