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Grandmother Zombie
#1
20170612-Dream-Grandmother Zombie

I am onboard a ship at sea during World War II. It is a freighter of some sort, but there are also passengers aboard. We are in the middle of the North Atlantic. Two bored boys have been amusing themselves by tying a J-shaped piece of coathanger for a hook to a string, and dropping it over the side of the boat. They are trying to see who will catch the biggest fish. After a half hour at the rail of catching nothing, one of the boys feels a tug on the line. When he hauls it up, the hook is coated with yellow slime. They bring it on deck. It forms into a dome of jelly. They poke at it with the rest of the coathanger and it moves slowly away, avoiding the metal. This is great fun! At least, until it leaps from the deck into their faces.

They are quiet, well-behaved boys for a couple of days as the slime built up in their systems. Then they move fast around the ship, distributing the infection to other passengers. By the time the infection is noticed, half the passengers and crew are infected.

There is war on the ship. We found out that a wood stake, pounded into a zombie, would stop him (or her). But if the stake were pulled out, the zombie would start up again. We stake the zombies as best we can and lock them into compartments, but they continue to slime new people into the zombie fold. We get more and more efficient at staking zombies, but there is not a lot of suitable wood on the ship. We are losing the war.

In the course of fighting them, I begin to notice some odd features about them. They are very fast—for the most part. They can also talk, but never seem to have much to say. Mostly it is flat instructions to each other to ‘go here’ or ‘go there,’ or ‘you are about to get a stake in your back,’ always delivered in a flat, calm tone.

The exception is a Grandmother Zombie. She was an old lady already when slimed, but she had somehow retained her kindly face and a lot of her old personality. She moves very slowly unlike the rest, so I never get around to staking her. I am too busy with the fast-moving zombies. She is always sweetly smiling and can be heard to give calm encouragement to the zombies around her. “Don’t give up dears! If you rush them, they can’t stake all of you,” and “Back that young lady into the corner. Very good! Now go ahead and slime her! That’s the way its done. You are all doing such a very good job.”

I am nearing the end. I have been awake for over 24 hours, staking zombies with a dwindling company of normals. We make our way to the bridge at one point where zombie crewmen are resolutely sailing the ship towards Europe. We try to at least stop the ship and set it on fire or something. We stake the crew, and they fall where they stood, but more zombies simply take their places. Some fight us while others unstake the crew. It has been for nothing.

We fight a defense that takes us into a hallway of cabins. The normals are falling to slime, and the Grandmother Zombie is there at the back, urging on the zombies in her trembly, kind, grandmotherly voice. My back is at a cabin door. I duck a slime blast aimed at me, and it hits my last remaining companion in the back of the head. She shrieks, and the zombies pull her into their crowd, awaiting her transformation. I back into the cabin, lock the door, and move stuff up against it. I am tired, done, and need sleep. The zombies outside murmur a while, and then grow quiet. Some of them groan a bit in a disappointed way. Then I hear the voice of the Grandmother Zombie.

“He did a wonderful job of battling us today, don’t you think? But don’t worry dears. He has to sleep now. We will get to him while he is sleeping.”

Dream ends.


Comments.
I woke right up after that one! I haven’t seen a zombie movie in years, and the only one I really liked was a parody of zombie movies, “Shaun of the Dead.”

I do think that the -idea- of zombies represents a Jungian archetype. You can, for example, see people acting out the role of zombies in any large organization. Many of the checkout clerks at Walmart come to mind.
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