Since coming to Liberty and observing just how safe and defensible the island was, Elliot had found that it was easier to get a full night's sleep. There were nightmares still, but then, that was to be expected in a world that was overrun by the undead, and it was for that very reason that he never voiced complaints about rotted faces invading his sleeping mind. He was neither a snorer, a mumbler, a whimperer or a kicker. The only real indication anyone had that he was even sleeping was the steady rise and fall of his chest. And, of course, the closed eyes. When in nightmare land, Elliot's body showed no signs of external strife.
He was on a boat with David, in the middle of the ocean. Except, the ocean wasn't salt water. It was snow. A thick, crisp fall of snow that didn't hinder the movement of the tiny boat at all. Bats and butterflies swarmed the sky, which was the clearest blue Elliot had ever seen. The day was hot, far too hot for an ocean made of snow to logically exist.
David was lazily strumming on a banjo, chewing on a length of straw, while Elliot dipped the end of a fishing line into the snow ocean's depths. As was customary for dreams, Elliot knew what he was fishing for, but if someone in the dream asked him, he wouldn't have had a clue how to explain it.
There was a tug on the end of the line. Sharp and insistent. And then another, this one bringing Elliot to the edge of the boat, peering over into the thick white depths. He couldn't see anything, but something was there. His line had snagged something.
"You caught something? Reel it in," David said from his place reclined at the opposite end of the boat.
"I'm trying," Elliot insisted, now yanking with all his might.
Up from the thick snow popped a rotted hand. But it wasn't just a hand, it was also an arm, and that arm was trying to pull him over the edge.
Instead of trying to get away, Elliot, with David's help, continued to pull on the line, dragging the zombie farther and farther out of the snow. The skin on it's face was half missing, large tufts of blonde hair gone, revealing patches of mottled skin beneath.
Rae the swimmer growled at them, swiping with a hand that had become skeletal. She dragged her way onto the boat, lunging for Elliot, pinning him to the bottom of the boat. The stench of corpse breath surrounded him, choked him. Skeletal hands clawed at his chest, a mouthful of broken and jagged teeth coming closer and closer to his neck.
With a sharp inhale of breath, Elliot awoke, blinking around in the semi-darkness. He rubbed at his eyes, though the action did little to dispel the nightmare vision of Rae as a zombie.
His head turned toward her sleeping area, drawn by swift but quiet zip of a zipper and a scuffling that told him Rae was awake.
"Hey," he whispered, clearing some of the grogginess from his throat. "You going somewhere?"