I should have been having dreams of this nature last week, not this week.

I dream of the zombie apocalypse. These zombies are different than the ones from my radio show- less survivable, more related to necromancy/demon possession than they are to a virus. I am in the apartments, looking at the sky.

Something’s wrong. The blue expanse is calm, perhaps too calm.

That night, I hear running. I go outside. People are fleeing, a mass exodus from Fredericksburg. They tell me to run, so I join them. I don’t really need to be told what we are running from.

My dream skips to an abandoned hospital. I sit on a bed, peering out through some boards covering the windows. A man and his three children have joined me. They are troublemakers by nature, but the situation has them cowed and trembling on a bed. They cling to each other. The man has a shotgun. He tells me that we can make it to the compound if we travel quickly and try not to get split up. I glance at his children, but nod assent.

We leave just before dawn. Somebody has set the city on fire. We run. I’m carrying the youngest child on my back, a light girl of maybe five or six. The man tries not to use the gun until they are almost on top of us. He uses it and it draws more attention. There is a stitch in my side.

We keep running. The little girl is not so light anymore and the man had to pick up his other youngest child. The boy child, the eldest of the three, is trying to be stoic. It shows that his strength is flagging. We’re out of bullets.

It is a miracle that we make it to the compound. We get past the inner gates and the horde is locked out. I hear gunfire. Somebody tells me to put the child down so they can test me for possession or something like that. I’m not really listening. I hold up my hands, submit to their tests, and am allowed inside.

We’re given jobs, but I know I have to go out and find others. Maybe my family has survived. Maybe my friends have survived. I tell my supervisor and she looks grim. “Go talk to the Oracle,” she says. I assent, not sure why I need to get permission from this person if I want to leave. On my way to the Oracle, I pass the man I arrived with. He asks me where I’m going and he tells me that he would like to go with me.

We visit the Oracle. She gives me permission to go, but tells the man that it would inauspicious for him to leave at this time, unless he did something drastic. I leave at this point- this information is not for me.

When he comes out, his face is gray. I don’t ask him and he doesn’t volunteer the information.

At dawn, I am ready. He and his son join me behind the first gate.

We walk for about a day, heading South and East. To Yorktown, I tell myself.

In Tappahannock, we encounter them. The man tells me to run ahead. I do, but look back. I wish I hadn’t.

He left his son in front of the horde. When he joins me, he is crying. I don’t know what the Oracle told him, but I hate her.

He leaves me when I reach my house in Yorktown. My parents aren’t home, but I still have hope. I don’t have any plans, so I tinker in the garage for a while with wards, drawn on the floor with chalk. I don’t think they’ll work, but it makes me feel better to have them there. Zombies arrive and start banging on the door. I have a gun. I open the door and two walk in. However, when they step on the wards, they look like regular people again. Understandably, they are confused.

I tell them not to step off the wards. I want to try something. I grab a ball-point pen and draw the ward on their arms. I tell them to step off the wards- away from me, thank you. It works. It’s not really a cure, but I tell them that they should get that tattooed immediately if they want to avoid turning back into the zombies. They leave and I now have a purpose. Unfortunately, this gets difficult when there are fifty or so coming in at once, with more behind.

Eventually, I recruit some of the newly turned zombies to help me. And that’s where the dream ends.