My dreamscape now feels more real and a lot more comfortable than my waking life. It is filled with lectures on advanced state machine design mixed with the programmable logic arrays I used at work. The kittens showing up periodically to help. At some point, my eyes finally opened all the way. I feel disoriented and lightheaded but the fever is over and my apatite is back. My waking thoughts are now as clear as my dreamscape thoughts.

I check my forehead in the bathroom mirror and am pleased to find that gashes are now thin red lines with no puffiness. I was sure the injury was more severe. Just how long have I been sick.

I wonder if it is daytime. The sky is black but the ash fall has all but ended. I still feel a little heavy but other than that I am greatly improved. The cats seem a bit more spunky as well. I head to the outhouse with the shotgun and a 45. As anyone who has watched movies knows monsters have a special radar that sends them after people in comprised situations. True or not, extra preparations are best taken when you will be vulnerable. I am nearly back to the cabin when I hear some loud creepy cackling sounds coming from the neighbor's house. Ok, some big nasty scavengers have found the corps of that bear. Bears are notorious for having parasites so I left the meat alone. Now I am wishing I had torched the place after looting it.

I don't like the idea much but I need to carve some holes into the boards covering the windows. I will end up shooting blind into the dark but cutting a few murder slits will be better than waiting until the scavengers chew holes where they want them.

The day(?) passes with not much going on. On occasion, I can hear gunfire off in the distance. Nice to know I am not the only survivor in the area. Not so nice that the other survivors need to use guns. I am using a spring-loaded oven timer to count the hours. The kittens jump a foot in the air every time it goes off. Every gun in the cabin is loaded and every clip stuffed. I have moved a large pile of firewood inside and stacked it against the wedged back door. Close to dinner time the noise from the neighbors moves up to the space around the cabin. The tiny kittens are arching the backs and hissing. If I weren't so scared myself it would be cute.

Soon there are scraping and scratching sounds at the front of the cabin. Soon there are sounds like something hard-hitting at the cabin. They are fairly low so I angle the shotgun low and fire off a round at the sound of a persistent banging sound. Boom shick-shick

There is are several loud shrieks and the sounds of the cackling beasts running for cover. I crack the front door shotgun in hand and peek out. There is a strange-looking animal dragging itself away by its front paws. It is about the size of a lab. Two rounds from the 45 and it's down.

The amount of ash falling is way down but it is still pitch black out. Fortunately, the concept of stealth is a mystery to these creatures. Cackling and shrieking they slowly close back in on the cabin. They stop by their fallen companion. Posturing, shrieking, and snapping their beaks they keep glancing off to my left. Such an obvious ambush. I take a step back and await the leap that will put a beast on the porch. The porch shudders as something hits the side. The rest of the pack charges the cabin. Four blasts from the shotgun scatters the pack and sends them back to the woods a second time. Two rounds from the 45 takes out the stunned thing at the side of the porch. The beast had botched the leap for the sneak attack.

I start stuffing shells to reload the shotgun. There are eight of these things now littering the yard. There is no way I can safely dispose of the corpses, but I really don't want to leave a pile of bait in my front yard. I grab a lamp and walk onto the porch to examine the one closest to the cabin. The body structure is between that of a rat and a dog with heavy claws on a paw slightly longer than a dog's. The tail is heavy and thick about the same length as the body. The head is long tall and narrow with a heavily serrated beak ending with an ax-like tip. The whole body is covered with blue and red feathers.

Sounds like the bastards are getting ready for round three. I slide four more rounds into the shotgun and ready myself for the attack. I left the lamp on the porch so that I had better visibility. Three are running wide on the right and four on the left. The rest are running straight at the porch. Running in tight groups is ideal for a shotgun. Many are already limping and a few fall in the rush. Three rounds stop the frontal rush. Two rounds and the left group are down. I spin right and step back to take out the right group as they jump to the porch only to watch them pile into the porch rather than onto the porch. No idea what is going on, but thanks. Boom. I take out the 45 and wander around the yard finishing off the survivors.

The kittens are on the porch hissing, growling, and batting at one of the corpses. I notice a faint white mist sliding off the corpse and onto the kittens. As I look down, there is a white mist flowing from the corpses around me, to me. So creepy, but so out of my control. The kittens didn't get sick last time. I hope I don't get sick again. After I reload the shotgun I corral the kittens back into the house, pick up the kerosene lamp and head back to the front yard.

Each time there has been an instance of monsters showing up I had audible clues. The muffled silence that had been present while the ash was falling heavy has lifted. Trees falling from the weight of the ash had sounded dull and nondistinct. Now the cracks and pops of the trees straining under the weight of the ash were clear and the distance easily gauged. After a few minutes of careful listening, I decide to move out.

After looking at the corpses for a bit I find the garden cart which has near a foot of ash in it. Since it has sloped sides that means maybe six to eight inches have fallen. After emptying the cart I start hauling the bodies to the neighbor's house. Sooner or later even my looted food will run out. I carve off some of the meat from the feathered things. I will check closely for signs of worms then supplement the kitten food with cooked monster meat. Tomorrow I will do one final looting of the neighbor's house then strike a match to the whole mess.

There is a fire in the woodstove but the cabin is still a bit chilly. I have been using the water from the back of the toilet to take a sponge bath. Twice more and I am out of water there. Water is going to be the first crisis. Western Washington in winter and I end up short on water. Not a scenario I would have ever dreamed of.

That night more crazy vivid dreams. Clocks, sequencers, accumulators, ALUs, RIS vs CIS, we are laying out special purpose microprocessors while the cats are explaining how and why their night sight, hearing, and smell are superior to mine.

Next day, probably

Today I am feeling much better. The kittens too have a spring in their step and are now up the stairs exploring the loft. The ash-fall has all but ended and the air is dead still. A quick listen outside suggests that all is clear. I still won't leave the house without at least two firearms. A short while later I am making my final trip to the neighbors ruin. I have three gas-soaked rags in a bag along with several garbage sacks.

At the pile of corpses I left next to the ruined house, two pairs of eyes reflect the lamplight. They vanish with the sound of padding feet shuffling off into the distance. I don't know what took off, but I'm glad they did.

Sheet-rock litters the stairs but the stairs themselves are quite sound. The same can not be said for the master bedroom which is over the garage. What's left of the house is groaning with my added weight. I am moving about kissing the walls and moving fast to get this done. The living room is blocked by the collapsed ceiling. Five minutes in and I can hear wolves howling a mile or so off northwest.

Crap. It was a pair of wolves I spooked and now they are calling the pack for dinner. There have been wolves in the area before but they have never been a real problem around here, but four-legged feathered beaked monstrosities have never been a problem either. I wonder how long it will take to gather the pack. Some of the answering howls sound very far off so I have some time. I quickly try to finish looting the house. I make two piles a ways from the house, edibles, and hardware. Change of plans, I start hauling the corpses to the propane tank. I take an ax to the propane line and shove it into the corpse pile. I place a lit candle with an aluminum foil reflector thirty feet up the hill from the propane tank.

The wolf pack is not together yet but they are close. I haul the foodstuffs up the hill and return with my brother's AR-10. The cart is loaded with the first round of odds and ends from the house when the pack goes quiet. I dash to the propane tank and open the valve. I drag the cart up the hill, put out the lamp, and use the cart to brace my aim.

They approach the corpse pile. In the dim light, I can barely make out what they are up to. Some of the pack are trying to drag corpses away from the propane stink, and a few are coming to investigate the candle. Big mistake doggies.

The wolves jump at the sound of the 308 round going off and the flaming plume erupting under the propane tank.

BOOOOM

I chuckle to myself as I remember the sage wisdom. [Never pet a burning dog]

Those wolves not incapacitated by the explosion are clear targets for me when they stop. Burning wolves and burning corpses provide plenty of light for me to start thinning the pack. Soon the survivors have changed their sights to me. Their timing was bad since the pressure in the tank was climbing from the fire jet under the tank boiling the propane the steal being weakened from the same heat. The second blast was much larger than the first.

Once my sight recovered from the flash I started plugging the stunned and wandering wolves that were still standing. The house was now down but the volcanic ash kept it from catching fire. My pile of supplies not in the cart was now scatted over a large area and my ears were ringing again. I am sure any wolves not stunned or down are running as fast as they can in this gloom.

As I go around making sure that any wolves that are down, stay down, I make an interesting observation. Dead wolves have a white mist that will gather my way. If there is no white mist they need a bullet. Creepy but useful information. These wolves like the bear are not local. They seem to be exceptionally large.

I spend most of what may be the day hauling corpses onto the ruined house and regathering the supplies that were still intact. Arson is not my calling. It took forever to get that house burning. I had to take an ax to a pile two by sixes and waste a bit of kerosene before the whole mess really started to burn.

More monster meat with the kitten chow. They seem to enjoy it. Smells like chicken. I am tempted to try it but not quite yet. Sleeping any more means extreme dreams and this night is no exception. I can no longer keep up with what is happening in my dreams. I am watching many monitors each showing a different channel. Everything when combined is for designing a massive multi-processor system. There is also the cat channel where I am being instructed on how to play with cats.

Another day? Maybe

It bothers me how well those wolves were able to navigate in what I thought was pick black. Maybe I need to let my eyes adjust to the dark a few times a day to see if can see a little in the darkness. This plan is thwarted by the coming of rain. Not a little rain but buckets of the stuff all day long. So, I played with the cats and read one of my brother's spy books.

I gave up on trying to keep track of time.

Tonight's dreams are about watching a white mist combine with a green liquid forming into a massive printed circuit hooked to a neural network and knowing it was only a small experimental sample. The kittens at my feet seem quite interested in this.

How many days? Who knows?

Still pouring rain. Where is all this water coming from? I am glad we live at the top of the hill with all this ash there are going to be massive ash deposits where water pools up. Another earthquake, and a big one, it seems like no big deal after that first one. But, the massive roaring crash from the north that followed the quake has me spooked. The cats seem to enjoy the time we are spending together. Another day of boredom. Another night of dreams. More construction in the dream but the cats are now literally talking to me instead of making cute sounds that I just happen to understand. This may not be a good sign.

Awake again.

Time to wake up and do things. The rain has backed way off. At least today I won't get drenched when I do my business. I have lined a small garbage can with a liner and have rigged a tarp to catch water for bathing. Partway through the project, I noticed it was getting lighter outside.

Finally, it is time to explore. Tomorrow I want to take some binoculars to a few clear points and see what I can learn. For today I will head north up the main road to see if I can find out what that big crash was.

I head out with the AR-10 and the 45. On the way down the hill, I spot a man poking at the charred remains of the neighbor's house. He is armed in a similar fashion to myself with the addition of a garden machete.

"Hello." I call out to him from a ways off, not wanting to startle him.

"Hello. Which came first the blast or the fire."

"Well about that." I then proceed to explain the chain of events from the bear to the wolves and using the house to dispose of the pile of corpses.

"Don't worry too much, there are plenty of houses to loot. Name's Dan by the way. I'm heading north next to see what that crash was."

"Name is James. Was about to head that way myself. Have you seen anyone else?"

"Not alive. I have seen a few remains. You and I have been lucky taking out the scavengers before they took out us." Dan replied

"Have you noticed the white mist that comes off the animals after you kill them?" I ask

"Yes, and feeling stronger every morning after that."

"You been having strange dreams since getting covered in that white stuff?" I ask

"You too? What are yours about? I keep building cloud stuff things that don't quite work and starting over again every night. I can't tell if I am making progress, success is still a long way off." Dan

"Sounds frustrating. My dreams started by covering what I learned in college and have progressed into the work I have been doing recently. They are a bit more fun since my cats keep showing up in them. That and I seem to be making steady progress in them." James

"You were able to keep your pets? That's cool. My dog was crushed by our china cabinet. My wife works at Providence Hospital in Evert. I was fixing the pipes in the pump house after that last freeze we had when the big quake hit. So I am all alone just now." Dan

"Survivors are going to be really scattered from their families since it happened in the middle of the day." James

"The hospital should be as safe as anywhere but not too many buildings could take that kind of shaking. How is your place?" Dan

The foundations are messed up but the cabin itself is doing well. No glass left, only one working door, and it leaked a little in that downpour, but other than that It has been great. I did have to reassemble the wood-stove chimney pipe." James

"Wow, your place sounds pretty good. I have been doing major repairs to the structure of my place and shooting everything that tries to crawl through the cracks." Dan

As we start down the main road I noticed that it wasn't just the area around the cabin that looked decimated. Fully half of all the trees had fallen. Those were still standing had the tops broken out and many branches are broken or missing. The drainage ditches along the sides of the road were filled with mud and ash. Numerous small streams had cut channels in the wet silt covering the roadway making footing treacherous.

My first attempt to jump over one was disastrous. I get up with a wet foot, muddy knees, and a hand full of wet ash.

"What the heck!" I am not hurt just embarrassed.

"Oh? You hadn't noticed yet. I don't think we got weaker after the quake. I think gravity increased. We have an old spring scale in our bathroom. My weight increased by one-third." Dan continued, "You will need to learn to run all over again. Jumping will take a while to relearn. When you try to throw things, you will be very discouraged. Any long shots you take will need additional vertical correction."

"Ha, so that is why those things kept crashing into the porch when they tried jumping onto it. That was probably why it took the wolves so long to gather and why they first spooked so easy."

"I wonder if gravity was even less where they came from?" Dan pondered.

"Like one-third of ours?"

"Yea."

We walked in silence for a bit till sounds from the down slope side of the road caught out attention. Soon a huge green and brown lizard head pushed its way out of the forest. The beast was struggling with the condition of the forest and the slippery wet ash. The creature lifted its head eight feet in the air and centered its attention on us.

Dan and I have our rifles up and firing. We had both aimed at the neck. My shots are barely drawing blood. I am not getting the penetration needed to bring this thing down. I can't tell if Dan's shots are even cracking the scales.

With a tremendous roar, the lizard thrashes violently to work itself up onto the road. This has little success and the lizard takes a strange tactic. It drops its head opens its mouth and begins to take a deep breath. Dan and I both seize the opportunity and begin emptying our clips as deep into the open mouth as we can.

The lizard shrieks in agony thrashing its head back and forth while flames spew forth from its nose and now mostly closed mouth. Dan and I are moving away as quickly as we can.

"That thing is a fucking dragon!" Dan exclaims.

"No shit."

The monster is choking, thrashing about, and screaming. When we look back the dragon has ceased its struggle to get to the road. It is now rasping and gasping and choking as it struggles to breathe. Some of our rounds must have torn deep into its windpipe. It is now drowning in its own blood.

"As soon as I'm sure it's dead I am going to bathe in the white mist that comes off it. That thing is a dragon." Dan

"Yea, I'll be there with you. You know what I'm thinking now is that if there are real magical monsters then..." I finish with a pause.

"Then there must magic now too. How do you think we tap into it." Dan

"I think we already are to some extent. I don't feel week and heavy anymore. My muscles are good to run but my coordination is set for a different force of gravity. Maybe what is happening in our dream state is also connected." James

"I'll bet you are right. I wonder what else we will be able to do in time. Oh, look, it just went still." Dan

We begin a cautious retracing of our steps to where the dragon is now still. As we get close a white mist begins to rise. We then pick up the pace and work our way down the hill to the resting place of the dragon. The white mist envelops us both.

"What do you suppose this stuff is?" Dan

"No idea. Your experience with it parallels my own. In any event, I haven't had any negative effects from it and it seems to help. Besides, half the time it can't be avoided so might as well try to make the most of it." James

"Not to mention we are getting it from a dragon. I wonder how hard it would be to knock a tooth loose from this thing. That would be a souvenir to show off!" Dan

As it turned out it was very hard. After Dan had tried pulling pounding and swearing. I pulled out a 45 and pulverized enough of the bone in the upper jaw to work loose the two largest fangs. The ends of the roots were broken off but what we were now in possession of was obvious.

With each of us packing a substantial trophy we continue north on the main road. We reach Hill Crest Road and observe an odd sight. Visibility isn't great but what we don't see as look down the main road has stopped us in our tracks.

"Are we getting close to the edge of the world?" I ask.

"Kind of looks like it."

The closer we get the more surreal the view becomes. Dan stops thirty feet away.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"We have what may be five to six hundred yards visibility in this mist. We have no idea how high that cliff is. I don't trust the soil to hold near the edge."

He has a good point. This land is just a pile of glacier poop from the last ice age. Rock, gravel, and sand, held together by hardpan. Still, there are a fair number of large trees close to the edge. So I walk close enough to get a clearer view over the edge.
While I am near the edge a tree further up the hill surrenders to gravity. Over ten seconds pass before I hear a splash far below.

I wander back to where Dan is waiting.

"How far above sea level are we around here?" James

"Eighty to one hundred feet I would guess" Dan

"That has changed. I couldn't see water, but at the angle I was viewing from, and the limited visibility I can only say that it is a long way down. When that tree went over the edge the splash sounded faint and distant." James

"With all the rain we have had and water chewing away at the underside of that cliff. Your place is not much more than half a mile from here. Do you think your place is safe if we have another big quake?" Dan

"Maybe not. Looks like I will need to find an abandoned house a mile or two south of here." James

"Really? That far?" Dan

"Depending on how high up we are and how deep the water gets further out. I don't want to have to keep moving over and over again." James

"Yea, I wonder if my place is safe. Hey, I wonder how dragon meat tastes." Dan

I watch over Dan as he tries to carve off some dragon meat. After an hour he manages to carve of a couple of chunks out of the belly. The only place that was soft enough for his machete to even make a dent in it.

That evening a faint white mist comes off my clothes and settles on the kittens. I tried the dragon meat. Have to say that I am not a big fan. The kittens were none too sure of it either. Now that a dim daylight has been established I will try to shift my sleep schedule to match it.

That night was again filled with vivid and strange dreams. The conclusion of which was an expansion of the experimental module, and the installation of both a heads-up targeting display and the cat interface module. Both seemed funny when I first woke up. They stopped being funny just a few minutes later.