I am walking down a highway in the darkness before dawn. Large green fields spread to both sides of the highway. I can see pretty far, for the highway is higher than the rest of the landscape. I come to a plaza located off the side of the road. It takes me a moment for me to make out what is in the plaza. It is far away and lower than myself. Additionally the sun has not fully dawned over there yet. On the highway dawn is well under way, but in the plaza it is merely starting. The plaza contains a Micheal's, an Ikea, then another Micheal's store. I turn and walk down the exit ramp to enter one of the Micheal's. I do not know which of the two to enter, so I enter the nearest one. The one to my left.
"I wonder where the clay is," I think.
I try to find the clay to build characters for my stop-motion comics. I can not find any. I search the entire store, but still find none.
...The Micheal's changes into large shipping warehouse combined with a grocery store...
A man drives by on a forklift. Something about him reminds me I work at this store. I do not want to work retail. I run to the auditorium to hide from my job.
...When I enter the auditorium my awareness leaves my body...
...I float up into the sky to have a bird's eye view of the plaza...
Zombies, hundreds of zombies, run across the parking lot. The zombie plague has begun. The zombies enter the store and begin to slaughter the employees and customers. They are almost to the auditorium.
..."Wait a minute. This is just like that board game," I think...
...My awareness re-enters my body...
The zombies are pouring into the auditorium. I am not scared for I know the rules to the game. The zombies can only move through the aisles. They can not climb onto the chairs or the stage. I jump onto a chair. The zombies run past me.They are frustrated and angry they can not reach me. I feel safe.
...I realize the zombies are changing...
They are growing past the rules of the game. They will eventually be able to attack me. Fear grows in my stomach. I look around and jump across chairs to make it to the stage. I pull back the red velvet curtain of the stage. The backstage looks unimpressive. The backstage workers look at me in surprise.
"What are you doping here," one asks me.
"I am escaping the zombie plague, and you better too."
I see a slide coming down from the ceiling. I do not know where it goes, but I know it is away from the zombies. The slide is encased in a frame made from wooden boards. It is dark and covered in cobwebs. I crawl up the slide as the zombies rush onstage. I hear the backstage crew scream as the zombies kill them.
...When I emerge through the roof I find myself on the gravel road running past my parent's house...
The bright sunlight warms my flesh. There is no trace of the slide or how I got here. I do not care. I am free of the zombies. I walk up the road and encounter two children. A young teen bother and sister. They are also traveling down the road.
"Are we safe," they ask me.
"Sure," I say as I look out across the corn fields.
Corn plants grow before my eyes. Odd, they are yellow like dead plants. I look to the soil and see hundreds of things crawling out. Insects, grass clippings, animal corpses, and garbage all emerging.
...The zombie plague is actually a giant cloud of particles that settles on the earth...
...The particles animate any dead material in the soil...
We are surrounded are by dead things, zombie things. The twins scream, adding to my growing fear. I quickly turn. A muscular human torso has crawled from the sand. A red iron mask covers his lower face. Eyes black with hatred look at us. With his one remaining arm he pulls himself forward. He reaches a blue fourteen inch chop-saw and wedges it onto the stump of his other arm. He then maneuvers to a horse corpse that is emerging from the soil. He chops of the horse's head and crawls on top of the fresh wound. All the different pieces, man, horse, and machine, fuse into one. Now he is a zombie centaur galloping down the road at us.