My brain > Hollywood

    Unconscious dream layout
+ conscious rewriting and editing
= Story worth of a movie!

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The view was hideous. The streets were filled with them; pale blue skinned zombies with torn and twisted bodies, staggering around in the central business district, pressing themselves against the large windows of the skyscraper without success. I turned away from the sealed glass doors and faced the lobby. Some survivors were camping out in the waiting areas, reading the glossy magazines that are to be expected in waiting areas, with stories and pictures about dead and forgotten celebrities.

I crossed the room, their heads following me with questioning looks. At the gateway to the stairway, I showed my ID badge to Angelina, sitting in her glass cabin. She smiled at me and said "You've been in the lobby more than any of the others, and I've seen you the whole time. You don't even need that badge anymore to convince me". She winked and opened the stairway doors. In the middle of the small, jet 50 stories high room, I looked up. The stairs were turning around endlessly. I sighed and took the first step. The elevators had broke down several hours ago, and the amounts of energy saved were propably buying us days, but as I climbed up, I couldn't reconcile with that thought.

At the laboratories, I met Dr. Hauser, one of the lab leaders. Not a big shot, but no redshirt, either. We had become close friends since the incident. "Any progress, Dr.?". He smiled and shrugged. "same level as last time you asked. It's frustrating; I was just about to go to the glass house." He meant the lobby, the skyscrapers 'outdoors'; a place to go in one's breaks, to meet new faces among the campers and to look out the windows and watch the world breaking down a bit more. "Just were there; the view hasn't changed since they started to press against the glass. I got a bit of time left, I'll join you." "Because of me or because of Angelina?", he asked with a grin.

We started our descent along the stairs, but before long we smelled them. I looked over the handrail and saw the zombies crawling upwards. "How did they get in? Management told us that the glass is bulletproof! And with the equipment in here it better should've been!" Hauser was on the brink of turning back up. "There are not many of them, we need to see what happened down there!" He sighed, then headed down with me. When we encountered the first zombie, we simply jumped from one side of the staircase to the other, cutting a corner and bypassing the undead.

This way, we made it down to the lobby floor, but when we headed for the door, a zombie that had been behind the stairs bit Hauser. I ran back up a level, observing Hauser. His skin got pale, he coughed blood and gasped "Wait... I don't want to... I can feel it... Don't want..." His eyes lost focus and wandered around, he took a step on wobbly legs. Then he held to the handrail and his eyes found mine once more. "Can fight... The urge... Help me..."

His skin color grew healthy again, the other zombie turned his head back to him and attempted another bite. I shoved it away and led Hauser up the stairs, cautiously of his behaviour. But he got better with every step. "This is amazing, I am alive! I felt what it's like... It was horrible, but... I was dead down there! How did I come back?" "You're the Doctor, you tell me! I'm taking you to management, they have to get the labs on this phenomenon! If you came back, maybe there is a cure for all the others, too!"

Up at the top floor, the suit people were gathered in their conference room, blankly listening to some eggheads lecture without understanding a word. I interrupted the speaking scientist: "Gentlemen, the zombies are in the staircase. That's the bad news, the good news is that Dr. Hauser got bitten! How's that bad news? Because he made it back!" I pointed at the door, where Hauser was entering as on cue, his skin still a bit colorless, the wound in his shoulder gaping at the suits, but evidently a walking, talking, thinking human being.

One of the suits finally spoke. "So, what does that mean? Can any zombie come back and they just don't want to? Did he have some vaccination? And, aehm, shouldn't we analyse his blood and whatnot?" I took a breath, but Hauser spoke first: "You're right, I should go immediatly." With that, he stormed out of the room. When I reached the staircase, he was already one floor down, yelling: "Shouldn't you be in the lobby, investigating how the zombies got in? How they could get past Angelina?" I winced in horror and ran down the staircase once more, dodging and kicking zombies.

Somehow, the main doors had opened, and the lobby was crawling with them. I identified some of the campers, now zombified. Angelina was in her glass cabin, frantically adjusting her radio equipment. I knocked at the back of her cabin, and as she saw me, she got out immediatly. LUckily, the staircase doors held, and the few zombies in the stairway were managable. She sobbed. "Did you hear the transmission? Do you know?" I held her, asking what she meant. "It's the Chinese. They are about to nuke the place; they don't want the problem to spread to them." Just in that moment, I could see a single get fighter pass the city, headed for the center of the outbreak. We stood in silence.

When we saw a mushroom cloud growing into the sky far away, we looked at each other. Then, she seemed to remember something, and she started to wordlessly drag me into the second floor corridor. After a turn, there was a grey body bag on the floor. She stopped, confused. "What is this? ...Who is this? Last time I came through here, this wasn't there." She looked at me, questioning. I kneeled down and opened the body bag. In it lay, seemingly dead, Angelina. I looked at her. "It's ...you?" She turned away in terror. Before any of us could say another word, one of the suits, the only woman up there, came into the corridor. I didn't study her face back up there, but she looked familiar...

"Calm down, both of you! It's got to do with time travel, and time is short right now!" She turned to me. "Help me get her in here!" She started dragging the body bag into the restroom closeby. "Angelina!", she jelled. "Get in here, I'll explain what this is about after we got out of here!" She opened a secret compartment hidden underneath the floor tiles. It contained a small chamber stuffed with strange electronics. She placed the body bag in there, directed the speechless Angelina into a seat and took the last one herself. Looking up to me, she said: "Sorry for that, but you weren't in the plans. You better step back." I stepped towards the windows, where I could see the giant mushroom. Almost simultaneously, the chamber disappeared and left a gaping hole in the floor, and the sound blast of the explosion hit the building.


I just saw this as a draft. Why did I never publish this?