No matter what I do I still see them.  I hear their cries, see their faces, feel their teeth as they tear me apart at night in my dreams.  At first I thought they were only nightmares, the figments of my over stimulated psyche.  Some nights I would go to sleep and simply drift in darkness, watching, waiting for them to come.  Other nights I would be in the city streets, the coliseum, the wilds running and fighting and eventually succumbing to their ravenous will.  And before each night was over I would wake up screaming, my arms and legs burning in the imagined pains I had endured.  It is only now, only as they are filling the streets and trying once more to take the world that I am conscious to what is happening.

I have had these nightmares since I was a young boy, imagining the neighbors next door to lumber slowly through the hallway, up the stairs and into my room.  The children at school would have grey eyes, dead eyes that never blinked nor showed any trace of the soul that had once resided there.  Even the cat and dog would amble down the streets howling in wild, furious anger at anything faster or healthier looking than they.  Everyone was always healthy looking at first, like they had just climbed out of the shower or woken from a good night's sleep.  By dream's end though they were grey, putrid and crumbling to dust.  I spent a hundred summer nights as a boy with my eyes glued to the empty sidewalks and streets, jumping a bit as the neighborhood dogs howled at the moon. 

College came and I left to begin life as an adult, as a man seeking higher education and knowledge.  As I learned in biology and anatomy classes about the inner workings of the living body, of the stages of death and decomposition and the various diseases and bacteria that inhabit the human form, so too did my subconscious find new and terrible ways to devastate and maim the people in my dreams.  Anna Heinman, my first serious romantic interest, and the woman I had dropped down on one knee and proposed to after an evening algebra class wasn't spared my dreams of horror.  The first night we made love filled my mind, took center stage in my nightmares at least once a week if not more.  She would be healthy, tan and gorgeous every time as I pulled off her shirt to expose her breasts.  She would kiss me with lips as red as fire and I could feel the warmth of her body pressed tightly to mine.

And then the cold wind would blow something rancid into the bedroom, she would lean back and her soft, hot skin would turn to ice and loose all color.  Bits of flesh would fall away to reveal the bones and muscle behind her ample chest and then she would look at me.  Those verdant eyes would go grey with one blink and her raven hair would go white.  She would open those pouting lips and they would crack and bleed as they curled over the gums.  Her teeth, once white and healthy would be yellowed and stained in the blood of someone as they dove down to my throat.  After a week of the nightmares I broke off the engagement and left school for good.  I miss her, but the memory of that rotten ghoul in my bed keeps me from missing her too much.

The windows and lone door of my second floor apartment are completely boarded up now.  I have enough canned food, frozen meat and water to last me a month, maybe longer if I don't gorge myself.  The t.v. has been on CNN nonstop, waiting for the news to tell the truth.  The race riots in Atlanta and Smyrna and Valdosta and half a dozen other cities aren't riots at all.  Buffet would be a more accurate term.  Even now I catch the scent of foul meat drifting up into my room from the air vents.  They're saying the National Guard will have it all under control in about seventy-two hours.  We'll see.