Despite the whirling vortex of horrific images in his mind, Wil was able to fall asleep almost at once. Exhaustion took its toll and its hold of him, and he did not so much fall asleep as he was yanked down into it.

Wil dreamed that he was on a highway, long and straight and perfectly flanked by evenly spaced, identical pines.The pines stretched back forever in neat rows, like one gigantic orchard. Things moved among the wooden columns, shadowy, inhuman, bestial shapes with predatory lopes that ran parallel to the highway. The sky above was powder blue and tinged newborn pink. Dawn.

The moon hung in the center of the sky, forever ruined and marred and circled by its scattered parts: a celestial Tantalus whose gravitational reach would never help make it whole again. There were four huge stars and seven smaller ones in the sky, but as Wil watched, each began to fall and left pale streaks across the sky as they plunged toward Earth.

“Wil,” a familiar voice breathed the note of his name.

Naomi.

She was ahead, a dark figure at the end of the highway, and in the same direction all those writhing shapes in the woods were heading towards.

Wil ran. His run was the usual run of nightmares: slow, futile, almost sending him backwards.

Some of the shapes in the woods on his left turned to look at him with black eyes. The ones on his right glared at him with glowing green eyes. Other things moved in the woods to his right, and what he had first taken for trees were actually giant arachnid legs.

Wil tried to yell to Naomi, to tell her to run, to hide, to do anything but stand in the middle of the road.

He had no voice.

The sky above him shook, began to break in spider-webbed fragments as if it were nothing but glass. Two chunks of it fell out, one over the left side of the forest, another over the right side. The missing piece of the sky on the right revealed a squirming black void. It sucked in light, darkened everything around it, spread oily veins across the heavens.

The hole on the right side emitted green light and was filled with tall, slender, scuttling shapes. The green light was poison that burned the sky, and a million watchful eyes stared out from the scuttling shapes, and their glare burned Wil’s mind.

The darkness and the light, both spilled out and flowed from the holes in the heavens like blood from a wound. It splashed into the woods and consumed both sides. Wil stood between the flooded forest, a panicked Moses who had failed to hold back the walls of the sea as they began to crash down.

Wil had a thought as the writhing darkness and the burning light consumed him, a horrible thought that sent him catapulting out of his dream.

There was more than this, he thought and then woke from one nightmare and into another.

“Huh!” he said as he shot straight up.

He was in the gas station storage room. It was dark, save for a small glowstick that cast neon green light around the room. It reminded Wil a little of the toxic light from his dreams, from the eyes of the man who had tried to eat O’Donnell, and the shape on the TV. It wasn’t the same, though. It was just garish, not bad. Actually quite helpful in this case, though as Wil looked around at O’Donnell, Gutierrez, and Matsuda, he thought that it did make them all look a bit like Martians with green skin or something.

Better green skin than green eyes, he thought.

“Hey, we were just about to wake you,” O’Donnell said. The side of his face had been bandaged, gauze wrapped around his head like a slap-dash Halloween mummy.

“It’s about five in the morning,” Matsuda said. “We overslept a bit. Well, O’Donnell let us.”

“We all needed it,” he said. “Plus, I dunno, my head was feeling funny.”

“You and me both. Had some weird-ass dreams,” Gutierrez said. “But we’re running behind, and my family might not have time to spare, so shove something in your food-hole and let’s get going.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“We should at least do a quick check of the store for anything useful,” Matsuda said.

“He’s right. Ten minutes to look things over and find a car,” O’Donnell said. “I know for sure at least three of the cars out there have their keys in them.”

“Even if they don’t, I can just hot-wire them,” Matsuda added as he checked on his bags. Wil ignored the fact that the old man was apparently hot-wiring any sort of car they might find and focused on what Gutierrez had said.

“I had a weird dream too,” Wil replied.

“Pretty sure all of us did,” O’Donnell replied. “Hard not to after a day like yesterday. It almost doesn’t seem real now. Like maybe we all just got got drunk and wound up in a gas station storage room together, and when we go out there everything will be normal.”

“Don’t even make me hope for that,” Gutierrez muttered.

“What did you dream about?” Wil asked Gutierrez.

“I dunno. I was having Christmas dinner with my family, but the tree was weird, and my family’s eyes were either black or green, and they didn’t have any other facial features.”

Wil felt his skin begin to crawl.

“What was wrong with the tree?” he asked.

“Mom always makes a big deal about decorating it, but there were only a few ornaments on it,” Gutierrez said and shrugged. “Why?”

“How many? Four big ones and seven small ones?” Wil asked. Gutierrez’s eyes widened and Wil saw her pale even in the eerie light of the green glowstick.

“How the fuck did you know that?” Gutierrez breathed. Wil noticed Matsuda and O’Donnell were staring at him too.

“What about you guys?” Wil asked. “Sound familiar?”

“Yeah,” O’Donnell said. “Yeah. It wasn’t Christmas. I was in a gas station, like this one, except huge. The shelves were stuffed with black jars on one side, glowing green on the other. And there were only a few lights hanging from the ceiling: four big and seven small.”

“Mm,” Matsuda said and rubbed his chin, which now had a bit of stubble on it. “I was…somewhere familiar, with people I knew from a while ago. Like Gutierrez’s dream, half of them had black eyes, the other green. We were in a room with a chandelier: four large candles and seven smaller ones.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Gutierrez asked.

“Just more wild shit for the list,” Wil said.

“That ever happened to any of you before? Sharing dream details or whatever this is?” she asked. “And none of you are bull-shitting?”

“Absolutely not to all your questions,” Matsuda said. O’Donnell and Wil both shook their heads. “Whatever. Got bigger shit to worry about. Me and the old man will check the cars, you guys search the store?”

“Works for me,” Matsuda said and picked up his rifle. Gutierrez made sure everybody was ready before she unlocked and cracked open the storage room door.

Wil didn’t bother to stand and watch what Gutierrez and Matsuda did: they were on the clock and they might not be able to come by food and other stuff this easily again. He roved the aisles with several empty bags he’d taken from behind the register and began filling them up. Water took priority, then food that would keep. Then any sort of medical supplies, and then any tools or assorted useful items.

O’Donnell took several lighters, knives, a few maps of the area, batteries, smaller, pocket-sized flashlights, some of those tiny energy drinks, and a tire-patch kit, on top of the basics. Once he’d filled several bags, he stopped at a display of hot dogs and made himself two, which he hurriedly wolfed down.

“Eat the stuff that spoils first,” he said around his last bite, then belched. He drank from one of the many bottles of water they had left behind, then waved at Wil to follow. Wil made himself two hot-dogs as well, and while they were cold, they were still very edible.

Almost as soon as he exited the station, Wil was greeted by the sound of an engine turning over and coming to life. Matsuda had managed to hotwire an old Ford Focus, by far the least damaged of the cars available, but with the most room.

“This’ll do,” O’Donnell said. “You two should grab some hot dogs while we put the stuff away, and grab anything else that might be good.”

“Will do,” Matsuda said as he and Gutierrez returned to the station.

“I’m surprised there was so much left,” O’Donnell said. Wil nodded. Nothing had been touched. The only sign that anything was out of place was the front wall being smashed in and the wrecked cars.

“Add it to the list,” Wil said.

“Should we actually make a list?” O’Donnell asked.

“Did we get a pen and paper from in there?”

“I didn’t.”

“I’ll nab one,” Wil said and then ran inside, snatched a few pens and small pads of paper while Gutierrez and Matsuda gobbled some hotdogs, and then hurried back outside. The two emerged just as he finished drafting the list.

-Broken moon

-Sharing Dreams?

-Black eyes/Green eyes?

-Black-eyes dead, change shape (only sometimes?)

-Black-eyes: SHOOT HEAD 4 DEAD

-Green eyes alive, look normal

-Green eyes: Any vital area=Dead

-Crater footprints/spider-thing?

-Rocks with black goop/worms/veins?

-Black-eyed ones get slower with progressive bites?

-I’m still not a zombie

-Air distortion in woods/spike distortion

“I think that’s it,” Wil said and glanced down at the patch on his leg where he’d been bitten by the intestinal lamprey-thing. “Still don’t feel like a zombie.”

“That’s it, he says,” Gutierrez replied as she got into the front seat. O’Donnell sat behind the wheel while Matsuda and Wil took the back. The trunk was now full of supplies and their backpacks, but they kept their guns (and Wil’s axe) with them.

“For now,” O’Donnell replied. “Fingers crossed. Portland here we come.”

“Hm,” Matsuda grunted, and they four pulled away from the gas station and back onto the highway.