Awake the Dream: Part 3

The follwing is the 3rd part of a terrifying dream i dreamt three nights ago.

“What happened Kos?” Sydney asked.

“I don’t know”

“Obviously something happened, you wouldn’t be shaking if you didn’t know.”

“I don’t fricken know Syd! Lay off!” my tone rose to a yell until I looked down at my hands and pulled up short.  I was shaking. Not just shaking, but trembling. My fingers were twitching uncontrollably, the tremors making their way all the way up my arms and into the remainder of my body. I had been through some intense situations before, all of us had, but this scared the shit out of me.

“Okay, you are going to have to tell us what happened.  I know whatever it was freaked you out, but we need to know what is going on” dad said, keeping a watch on me from the corner of his eye while driving on towards our home.

“I… I just don’t know what it was,” I was beginning to lose my focus, I was panicking still and thinking about the situation made my heart race faster and faster. “They started shooting people”.

I couldn’t see Sydney because she was in the back seat, but I could almost feel her entire body tighten up like a straight jacket on a wily ward of the psyche department.

“What do you mean they started shooting people?” she asked.

“What do you think I mean?”

My dad was looking at me now instead of the road, “Who shot who?”  His eyes wide with shock.

“There were soldiers, and they took a group people out of a house on Bedford Avenue and pushed them down and shot them.” I said, trying to keep my tone steady and not let my voice break.

“You saw this?”

“I was running by the time they pulled their guns, but I know they did, they killed another man right in front of me. They shot him and he died right in front of me dad, he died right there!” I couldn’t hold it back now, I just started sobbing. I felt Syd’s hand reach up and rub my shoulder, but even that small gesture made me jump I was so terrified. I knew it looked weak, but I couldn’t help it. I shouldn’t have cried in front of Sydney, I was supposed to be the stronger one, the older brother. Pull it together Kos, Pull it together.

No one spoke again until we got home.

Our house had seen its better days.  We lived here since Sydney was born and I was four.  One would think that people would care a little less about their houses once the end of the world began, but everyone, or at least we and our neighbors, kept our homes beautiful, even better looking than before the plague. The shudders were still intact, windows scrubbed clean by Sydney only the other morning.  We even added a garden, a plan my dad had always had, yet it wasn’t until news of the plague hit that he finally rushed to the store and grabbed some seeds to prepare for the shortages and hardship to follow. 

I was the first to the sidewalk, I couldn’t wait to get into my house and feel a little bit safer. 

“What are we gonna do?” Sydney asked. I turned around to see that she was standing at the end of the walk by the lamppost. “What now?” I didn’t give Syd the credit she deserved, I hadn’t even thought that far ahead, I just wanted to hide away in my room and concentrate on not puking or busting into a torrent again.  Stupid, stupid, stupid

“We don’t do anything. We are out of the way of the town. We will wait until we hear more about the situation in center town.  Then we move from there.” Dad said. He didn’t seem to have the resolve I would have once heard, like when he would declare that ‘we were going to have dinner at this specific time and if they aren’t here, then too bad’, but I’m forgetting, he hasn’t spoken like that since the plague came, since mom left.

“Dad no! I just watched someone die. I didn’t watch some bar brawl where someone accidentally got hit in the back of the head with a beer bottle; they took a gun, aimed it at a man’s head and pulled the trigger.” I tried to block out the part about ‘and oh, by the way, for all I know, three of my best friends might be dead too’ but he seemed to be getting the picture.

 “It’s not safe here. They were soldiers, uniformed soldiers. Soldiers in friggin uniforms, Dad! I don’t wann stay here!” I turned around, finished the climb up the steps, threw open the door, and ran through the hall to my room.

I needed to pack. I kneeled down on my wooden floor and yanked out one of my duffle bags to start throwing clothes in.

Awake the Dream: Part 2

There was a gun shot.

Then a second.

And  a third.

I knew what just happened even though I was turned and running away. The image of the freckled face girl, the red headed man, and the elder woman was burned into my mind. 

I could hear screams. The terror was tangible and infecting.  My heart was racing and I couldn’t even control my footsteps, as I raced around the corner.   I had seen people die before, but never like that. Everyone who I witnessed die, died of plague, not gunned down in the streets. The soldiers were here to protect. The government may have been weakened by the infection, but it still survived to keep us safe. Those people must have done something terrible to deserve being shot. Why was I even running? I didn’t do anything wrong. I needed to calm down. I was past the library now and up around the street corner. I jerked myself to a stop and looked down the road to the intersection I had just cut around.

It happened faster than I could register.  A man about my father’s age ran through the intersection, he had been standing beside me in the street just a few seconds ago. Just as he began to turn toward my direction we made eye contact. A gun fired. He went down, smacked the concrete, and just laid there. “My God” I murmured.

He was dead. They shot him. He was dead right in front of me. I didn’t see him attack anyone back at the house. What was happening? Why? Why did they shoot him?

Then another shot fired. Then more, many more. They kept coming. By now I could barely hear them though because my heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t even concentrate. I was about to pass out.

“Mare!?!” I shouted. “Nova! Ireland!” I didn’t know where they were. Didn’t they follow me? Oh my God, did they shot them? “Mare! Nova! Ireland! Where are you?” I shrieked. Then something flew right past my head and hit the corner of the building just past me. They were shooting at me. They were going to kill me.

I ran again. I ran up the hill till I got to the business district. There were people here standing on the street. They all looked confused. I didn’t know what to say, so I just ran past them, around them, through them.  I had to make it to my dad who was somewhere in town running errands with my sister.  I had run about twelve blocks and made it past a vacant Dollar General before I made it to the spot where I had left them. But the car wasn’t there. I looked across the parking lot at all the shops and houses and I didn’t see any sign of my father or sister’s presence.  The sound of a gun firing not too far behind  me sent me into a run again. 

I ran a few blocks farther down and made it to a small trading lodge that had been set up in the remnants of an old Pizza Hut.  I saw our car towards the far end of the lot.  I was almost there. I just needed to find them now.  I ran inside and franticly looked around the tables for them.  Everyone here seemed to be oblivious to the event outside.  They continued walking from table to table, trading food for other objects. I ducked in and out of them, trying to catch a glimpse of my family from the crowd. I finally just stood up on one of the merchant’s tables and looked over everyone and it was only then that I got a glimpse of my sister’s lime green barrette at one of the tables straight ahead of me. 

I was in such a panic that when I jumped down from the table I tripped on a woman’s foot and slammed my shoulder into the table in front of me. I got up in a scramble, barely managing to stand and squeezed through the crowd until I made it to my sister.  I grabbed her arm from behind, which gave her a scare, and then turned to my dad. “We got to go” I whispered to him.

“What?”  my sister asked.

“We need to go now” my voice breaking at the end of the sentence. It felt like I was choking on something, maybe it was my own tongue.

My dad was still turned from me and looking at the tools lying on the blanketed table. “just one second, I need to-”

“No! We need to go now Dad! Or I’m taking Sydney and I’m leaving!”

He then turned to me and I knew he could read the panic on my face, because he instantly set down the hammer he was holding “okay, let’s go”.