Playing With Ideas: When Zombies Attack

So this is what happens when I play music videos before I go to bed.



(It's a very silly video, but the music is cool. This wasn't the only song I listened to, but it was the only one with zombies.)

I dream about zombies. Some people's zombie dreams are nightmares. Mine aren't. I think I probably have failed to understand the concept of zombies somewhere or something. I actually wrote the dream down because I thought it was such an interesting idea. It really doesn't follow the way zombie movies go at all, or so I understand, because I haven't watched any (except for one, an old black-and-white movie).

What I wrote is too long to post here, but the most interesting part to me is the idea of half-zombies. I can hear you getting squicked out (me too), so I'll quickly explain. The half-zombies are zombies that somehow managed to retain some of their humanity when they were turned. They're not mindless, and they know who and what they are, because their memories stay with them. Some of them even like it, because they think it makes them better fighters, which is important in a world where everything has been destroyed and most of the inhabitants have been turned into monsters. However, some of them. . . don't. In the dream, I was turned, so I was one of these.

Here's an excerpt from what I wrote (sorry for how rough it is):

I flee and barricade myself in a bathroom, desperate to figure out what to do. I was the leader, but I am a zombie now. Is there even anyone left to take my place? Are the others dead? I look at my face in the cracked mirror and stare at my withered hands. What if the half-zombie state isn't permanent, and I lose the rest of my humanity? It would be like dying.

Okay, so this could easily be a nightmare. There's a definite potential for horror. But for whatever reason, my dreaming mind decided to include magic as the way to fight zombies instead of guns or weapons. Magic is pretty integral to the whole idea, because in the dream, only humans can use it. Half-zombies may be strong, but for some reason that I'm having trouble defining in words, they can't use magic well at all. Full humanity is required.

I'm not clear on how the zombies were created, but since this is a magical world rather than a science-fiction one, let's say they were created by some form of curse. If that's the case, then there should be some way to break it, which is what happens next in the dream (again, sorry about the bad writing):

Something taps on the window. I look up and see a face blurred by the glass. Terrified, I hide in the shower. The latch pops, the window opens, and someone leaps down through the small opening.

It's one of my friends. I run to meet him, then stop and press myself against the wall, realizing that contact with me will turn him, too. But he strides forward, and before I can stop him, he embraces me and kisses my cheek. The touch turns me back into a human. He explains that the last of the people from the cursed city went into hiding to escape, and they discovered a spell that is the antidote. Now we must fight our way out to bring the cure to the rest of the world.

Whether this spell could restore the fully mindless zombies. . . though I really like the idea, I don't think it would. It would only fix the ones that still have some of their humanity left. The idea is a little awkward, I know. Still, it's interesting enough that I would go ahead and start turning it into a story if I wasn't already working on two other ones. Maybe I'll come back to it someday.

Do you ever dream things that make you want to tell a story?