I dreamed I was watching a real bad Syfy-type movie about the Zombie Apocalypse, a father and young daughter trying to escape overland through a desert landscape of mobile dead people. They had encountered someone earlier in the movie (a scene I “felt” had happened, but didn’t actually witness) who told them about a safe place where some guy named Eric could protect people because he had figured out a foolproof way to fight off the zombies. So they headed that way.
On the road, they came upon a black and tan Studebaker in a ditch by the side of the road. In it was one for reals dead person missing head, shoulders, and chest, and a zombie woman looking well fed. She lumbered out the car door at Dad & Kid so Dad pulled out his flamethrower (yeah, it just appeared strapped on his back) and prepared to dispatch her to wherever flaming zombies go, but she had this weird power to melt into the ground. She could disappear without disturbing the soil, like a ghost passing through solid objects, and could stick her hand or other body parts up through the ground in a similar manner. Way cool.
So she goes underground and doesn’t come back up and Dad assumes (as people do in badly plotted movies) she’s gone for good and tells Kid to come along, but Kid is fascinated by the ghostly zombie and dawdles (as kids do in badly plotted movies) to see if she’ll come back.
At that moment (a teachable moment?) Dad decides to teach Kid a lesson about disobedience and takes off without her (and I started yelling at the screen, “Oh, come on! He wouldn’t do that in a real life zombie apocalypse!”) But he leaves and doesn’t come back.
As is the way with dreams, I stopped watching the movie and became the Kid. She waited around but Dad never came back. I had this feeling that in other parts of the movie, the ones the other me was watching and not participating in, he was fighting off zombies, including the ghost zombie woman, and desperately trying to get back to/search for his little girl. But I didn’t actually witness these scenes, as I said, just “felt” them happening.
So Kid started back down the road looking for Eric’s house, hoping that’s where Dad is. She eventually gets there (though I didn’t actually witness or participate in that journey), and knocks on the door. No one answers, so she walks in and sees this little kid laying on the floor, his bottom half hidden by a chair. We never see that bottom half, but there’s something creepy going on there—you could just feel it in that don’t-go-downstairs-in-your-nightie! kind of way.
Kid says to Other Kid, “I’m looking for Eric.”
Other Kid (not looking so good) says in a sluggish voice, “He’s here.”
At that moment, a zombie man steps into the room and says, “I’m Eric.”
And then I woke up. But I did feel, upon waking, that Dad in true badly plotted movie fashion, would swoop in for a rescue in the nick of time.
Isn’t that weird? I mean, a black and tan Studebaker!
