34. BAD NIGHT
LEESA’S HEART POUNDED in her chest and the long-sleeved T-shirt she slept in clung to her skin with sweat. She felt like she had closed her eyes and fallen asleep only minutes ago. The sounds of music and voices from somewhere down the hall told her it couldn’t be very late, and a glance at her clock confirmed her thought—the blue numerals read 11:24. She had gone to bed a little before eleven, pretty early for a Friday night, but she had been feeling tired a lot lately, courtesy of all the tossing and turning she seemed to do almost every night now. If she didn’t figure out some remedy for her restless sleep soon, she wasn’t sure how she was going to make it through the semester without her grades suffering.
Going to bed early tonight had not been any big deal—she hadn’t been doing much of anything anyhow. Cali was out with Andy, and Stacie and Caitlin were on dates as well. With Rave still up in New Hampshire, Leesa had been left to fend for herself, so she had just hung around her room, doing a little studying and watching parts of a sappy romantic comedy movie on television.
She pulled herself out from under the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Wide awake despite the tiredness she felt in her body, she knew she would not be going back to sleep anytime soon—not after this dream.
The cold air immediately attacked her damp shirt and bare legs, and she felt goose bumps begin to pimple her arms and legs. Moving carefully across her dark room, she switched on the desk lamp and retrieved a new, dry shirt from her dresser. She shivered as she pulled the wet shirt off and replaced it with the new one. The cloth was cool against her skin, but a big improvement over the sweat-soaked garment. She grabbed her terrycloth robe from the closet and slipped into her moccasins, then wrapped her arms tightly across her chest and waited for her body to warm itself up.
The warming seemed to take longer than it should have, and Leesa knew why. It wasn’t just the cold and the sweat that chilled her—it was the nightmare that had yanked her from her sleep.
Tonight’s dream had been the most realistic and most disturbing yet. It was the raw violence of this new vision that was so upsetting. None of her other dreams had contained any violence at all. Even the vampire nightmare, as dangerous and threatening as it felt, had not displayed any actual violence. This one was different. The zombies tonight had not just stumbled around a graveyard or peered plaintively into a window. No, these creatures had attacked the campers, forcing the men to defend themselves and their children. Leesa had heard the bullets penetrating the monsters’ rotting bodies with a wet, almost sucking sound. She had seen their heads explode when the shooter adjusted his aim at his daughter’s instructions.
And such realism! That was what made the whole thing so much more frightening. When the zombie stuck its gruesome face into the girls’ tent, Leesa had almost felt like the thing was trying to get at her. She could still hear the creature’s low, gasping moans, and swore she’d been able to smell its foul, decaying stench as well. She shuddered at the memory.
The worst thing about the dream was the way it ended. Leesa could still picture the two black forms lumbering through the darkness toward the car, but she could not make them out in the darkness. Were they the fathers, escaping from the zombies? Or were they two of the creatures, seeking more flesh to feast on after finishing off the men? Leesa hoped and prayed it was the fathers, about to rejoin their children and drive away from that cursed place.
A sudden realization struck her. Not knowing how the dream ended was not the worst thing. No, the worst thing by far was that she didn’t know whether this horrible vision was also going to come to pass—or if it already had!