Along the Tracks, chapter 2

Billie Joe woke from his dream covered in a cold sweat. He was breathing heavily and he could almost swear that he could still hear gun fire. He was alone in his room as Adi and his two children had been visiting grandparents on that particular weekend which left Billie home alone. The house seemed cold, different. His mind kept screaming at him to stay awake. He knew why of course. This wasn't the first night he had had this dream. In fact it wasn't the second or third time either. The same dream had been occurring every single night for the past month. It hadn't bothered him at first as it had appeared fuzzy almost as if he were viewing it threw foggy glass. But as the days continued it became more vivid, more lifelike. Billie didn't know if was from the lack of sleep but he even swore on some nights his dreams were reality. He would wake up to the same smell of decay that had cursed that tiny cramped room, or that there were people in their corner beds snoring as they tried to forget what was going on in the land of the living. He believed it so much that one night he even found himself venturing into the darkness of his house in Oakland in search of the person who was creating that noise. But he never found them even as the machine gun fire reverberated off the white walls of his downstairs studio so much that he had to plug his ears in fear of going deaf. The boarder line between his dreams and his real life had been breached and it seemed as if the two had combined to create an alternate existence one where he was trapped neither in his own personal dream land or in the real world. He was beginning to think he had gone crazy...
It was the Sunday of the second month when things began to change, In Billie's dream that night it had not been Adi beside him in the bed. It was a young woman with fiery red hair and bright blue eyes. She had not said a single word instead she just sat up in the bed and stared across the room sadly. No matter what Billie Joe said to her eyes had not moved from the dark corner. It was the first dream in which Billie had not heard gunfire or the loud constant snoring that often plagued his dreams. Instead the woman seemed to bring a kind of calmness to the room although the look on her face revealed complete terror. On the third night Billie's dreams stopped altogether.
He awoke the next morning so confused and disturbed that no matter what Adi said to try and coax him from their bed throughout the day he wouldn't move. The woman's image was still fresh in his mind like a picture hanging on a wall.
By the next day a distraught Adi called their doctor who arrived at their house by early evening. Unable to find anything physically wrong the doctor prescribed sleeping pills in hopes that Billie Joe was just over exhausted. The prescription took a hold of Billie almost instantly and he slowly began to drift into a drug induced like slumber.

Billie opened his eyes to a pale foggy sky. He shivered as rain pelted his face. Reaching his arm out to sit up his hand came in contact with someone's foot. Billie felt a wave of panic wash through his body as he sat up and looked around. A scream escaped his lips as he looked across the field. Every square inch was covered in thin, gaunt bodies. Their blood pooled around them as their lifeless corpses seemed to float in the mixture of decay and mud. Billie continued to scream as he tried to free himself but everywhere he turned there were more of them, men women and children even small infants. As the world around him began to spin he saw her. Her bright fiery hair was like a beacon in the sea of grey. Crawling over to her side Billie wiped her hair away from her closed eyes only to see a single bullet hole in the center of her forehead. Her skin still felt warm to the touch as if she had only been dead for a few hours. For some strange reason seeing her like this: dead, filled Billie with a huge amount of grief. Tears began to spill out of his eyes showering her face. His heart felt as if his heart were being ripped out of his chest. He grabbed her wrist in a vain attempt to check for any pulse and that's when he noticed another persons hand was entwined with hers. He pulled the thin scabby arm that was holding onto hers. Bodies rolled away as the other corpse came to the surface. After a few moments the person broke threw
Billie stared at himself. Except it wasn't him. It looked like him to a tee. But this person was dead.... It couldn't be him.... Could it?
Suddenly the corpse's eyes opened wide staring at Billie with empty sockets.
"Wake up Billie Joe! Wake up," it whispered.