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I dreamt we were at a Cottage-style get together, though it wasn't as plush. We were huddled in the 'second house' of the place watching old videos on a TV.
The next video came on. The music sounded familiar, and the title appeared: "The $4000 Ribbon". I whispered to Mrs Meaty that it was Miracle Mile, and she agreed. That must be the weird UK retitling of it, I decided.
It wasn't anything like Miracle Mile is for real. A young Harrison Ford stood in a large downtown square in LA, dressed in a cheap, light grey suit. He was on leaving a message on a woman's answering machine, asking if she had a good time last night. He gave the number of the payphone, saying he was 'hanging around here pretty much all day anyway'.
A lot of characters from the Cowboys faction in Tombstone were there, but in 1980s gang member dress, running around and shooting guns and committing crimes. It was very strange and wasn't really going anywhere. A few of those watching the movie with us committed the film was 'pretty stupid', and I said it hasn't gotten going yet.
At this point, Anthony Edwards finally makes his appearance (though bald like today, not with the hair he had back in the day) and everyone said hey, it's that guy from ER! He was being thrown out of a convenience store. I paused the video and said he's the protagonist.
The nuclear attack was coming, and we saw into NORAD watching the little blips representing bombers moving across the big map.
Anthony Edwards, meanwhile, was living a wacky life. He and two friends were being filmed dressed as knights (costumes not unlike those of Sir Bedevere) dancing. I jumped up and impersonated the crappy dance.
Meanwhile, at NORAD, the generals were saying they couldn't really do anything, and it would be great if something went wrong with the Russian attack.
At that point I found myself in the movie. I was the bombardier in a Russian bomber, flying over the Mojave. Unlike Yossarian's cramped compartment in Catch-22, the space inside this bomber was enormous. It was also covered with thick white padding like school gym mats. I bounced over the maps to the glass nose and peered into the bombsight. Seemingly not an evil Russian, I opened the bomb bay doors and released the bomb. LA was still in the distance, and the bomb plunged towards the desert scrub below. It occured to me we were perhaps 1500 feet up.
The bomb exploded, and the pilot came on the radio yelling at the crew that someone had just dropped the bomb early, and that because the bomb bay doors had been open the sealed atmosphere of the plane had been exposed to 'deep space'. I bounced back up towards the main part of the plane, fully expecting the crew to come and beat me up (the bombardier being the first suspect when the bombs are released) but nothing happened.
It didn't matter. Back in LA the Cowboy gang guys were all running around with other people dressed in 80s clothes. Everyone was waving some sort of gun around and running around the square from earlier. Nobody could understand what was happening, there was dust and shit everywhere. I found that I was now in the role of a 1980s woman with big hair.
Down on the beach at Santa Monica, an eerie twilight due to the dust clouds blocked the sun. The sand was damp and cloying. People were running around everywhere. I somehow knew another bomb was about to hit. People were trying to bury themselves in the sand and I dived to the ground to duck and cover, and then started digging a hole to put my head inside. I then tried to pull sand in on top of my head to cover my exposed neck and hands.
The bomb hit, and despite having my head under the sand my eyelids lit up brightly inside with the flash. When the blast wave hit the force was enough to start pulling me out of the little ostrich hole I'd dig for myself. I dug my fingers into the sand and tried to hold myself inside my hole as the hurricane force wind pulled at me.
We were in a rundown part of Santa Monica now. Law and order was breaking down, and we were looking for a place to hole up. Electricity was still working, though I reasoned the power plants were out of town and so hadn't been hit.
A woman showed us around the building she had for rent, saying it was perfect for a group of survivors to lock themselves in and wait things out. It had a shower and kitchen, small bedrooms, and a garage. In the garage, the landlady demonstrated it even came with a working car for us to use, a rusty red Pontiac GTO with cracked paint. It really did work, as evidenced by the 'ding ding ding' chime when you opened the door. I wondered how it had survived the EMP.
The 'shower room' wasn't that well fitted, being more of a concrete room with a large boiler/power shower unit. There were large steps running the length of the room (not unlike a steam room) with a drain in the floor and a window. Remembering the advice from the Fallout manual about, er, Fallout, I immediately had a shower with lots of soap, and reminded my fellow survivors that anyone who'd been outside and exposed to the dust should as well to avoid radiation sickness. I was helping another survivor scrub her hair when an enormous freight train thundered past the window.
Riding on top of the boxcars were a ragtag US Army unit, dressed in a diverse collection of tatty uniforms. Some were dressed like War of 1812 soldiers, some like British Colonial troops, some like cossacks. For some reason we knew they'd object to our being in this building (they were supposed to shoot anyone who hadn't been evacuated or something, I wasn't sure). So we all tried to hide out of sight around the window. As the train passed, Marines in proper combat gear were now on the backs of the cars and they did see us and began firing. Several of the survivors were hit. We pressed tighter to the wall, trying to stay hidden until the train had passed.
At this point, I woke up.
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