the zombie/alien invasion dream

[mellowtigger]

On Friday night, for the first time in half a year, it was just barely warm enough upstairs to sleep without turning on the electric blanket. Maybe a bad move, in hindsight. I woke up cold, exhausted, spent Saturday catnapping, and still slept 8 hours into Sunday morning.

I had a long dream Saturday morning, and I still remember much of it on Sunday.

• long-legged alien machines roamed the landscape, intending to bring the extinction of humans.
• zombie-like transformation of humans to do the aliens' bidding (and eat our brains)
• each human transformation was preceded by about half a minute of confusion by the person.  that's how you knew someone in your vicinity was about to turn against everyone.
• these zombies sometimes remained smart enough, though, to herd humans into pens using pieces of doors and fences to push us around as we tried to fight back.
• I kept being separated from my escape-group of 3-4 people, who I think maybe(?) I do not recognize from real life.
• my escape group kept reforming as we lost/gained other survivors
• a cat was duct-taped (the poor thing) to my left leg for safe sleeping arrangement while I took my turn sleeping in a safebox in the back of a pickup truck on yet another section of travel.  I think the idea was that if I needed to take off running, then the cat would come with me without taking precious partial-seconds of tending to it

Curiously, this dream seems to match the current trend of anxiety-related pandemic dreaming.  According to the "dream" tag on this blog, it's been a full year (minus 3 days) since my last dream.  I'm sorry it had to return in such a common pattern of quarandreams.  How dull.

Comments

[mtbc]

What triggered human transformation?

[mellowtigger]

H1Z1? I know that we feared being bitten, so I think it was the usual zombie bite infection. But how that relates to the aliens, I have no idea. I never saw the aliens, just their walking ships. I think the ships had 6 legs (more than the stereotypical tripod 3, at least), but the legs had nodes/segments that made them look more like spines, and they glowed.

edit: Wait, now I'm remembering another less-well-developed piece. The children. There was at least one infected child who became a kind of speaker for the aliens, issuing verbal commands that the adult zombies couldn't speak. I remember it standing in the door to a hallway saying something. I don't remember what it said. Something kind of like Torchwood's third season, maybe? I don't know. That's the only flash of image I have of that plot point of my dream. They were carriers to be feared (agents of the aliens, apparently?), but they were not like the flesh-eating monsters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchwood:_Children_of_Earth

[mellowtigger]

Reading up on the plot, I see that the aliens/children from that tv show were related to a flu epidemic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchwood:_Children_of_Earth#Plot

Interesting.

[mtbc]

Huh, thank you, it's a good while since I'd seen that.

[mtbc]

I don't suppose you saw Falling Skies? My memory's hazy but everything from the insectoid things with glowing spines to the talking-through-children rings small bells.

[mellowtigger]

The name sounds familiar, but none of the photos look familiar. I think I didn't watch that one.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/falling_skies/pictures