Hey everyone!  I just thought I'd share this latest dream with all of you as I think it's rather interesting.  Anyhow, the dream starts out with me, and a group of friends, all in army fatigues (It was like I was back in the Army, only with more modern day gear), and we had been sent to take control of this one building that was special somehow (not exactly sure the details other than we were told to capture and hold it at all costs).  Upon arriving we were briefed by the sergeant in charge on what we were required to do, and the mission as it stood.  Namely, we were to "defend the castle."  The "castle" was a building that was made entirely of thick, poured concrete walls, floors, etc. In the inner most room was rows of wooden lockers and wooden picnic tables.  The building, however, had no doors or windows (doorways, yes, but nothing was framed out, no windows, etc, just the openings), and looked like all that was there were the poured walls and floors, like it was the start of construction, but nothing else had been added to it yet.

On my person I was carrying two magazine pouches on a web belt, with 3 magazines each (all 30rd), plus I had one in my rifle (It was an AR15 or M4, not sure which, and it had a red dot sight).  While waiting for the enemy to attack (they were something akin to a cross between zombies, and reptile men), since things were somewhat laid back, I decided to explore the building a little to get a sense for the structure, and what we were defending.  Upon going topside to the 2nd floor, I found our ammo stash for the entire platoon (there was about 40-50 of us, so nearly a full platoon) and found that what we had wasn't much at all.  There was, at best, a couple cases of 50cal (for the ma-duces), and probably 12 ammo boxes of 5.56 AR ammo.  I was very surprised how little ammo we had.  At most we had just enough for one full reload for everyone in the platoon, and even that was iffy.  There definitely wasn't enough for the size of firefight we expected to have.

Anyhow, not long after this someone called out to everyone and said, "they're coming!"  So I hurried downstairs to see what was approaching, and wow, what an army!  Coming at us was this big old wave of bodies.  They didn't have any weapons, thankfully.  It was just lots and lots of the zombie reptile dudes.  However, it didn't matter that they were weaponless.  If they touched you, boom, you were dead, period, on the spot.  Anyhow, as soon as the fight started I moved inside the building into the inner most room (the same one we had our briefing in).  In that room there was me, and three other guys, one of whom was my battle buddy.  I said to my battle buddy "you cover the left side, I've got this," referring to my choosing to focus on the right side door into the room.  So he went over to the left side door, and joined the other two covering it.  The reason I decided to solo the right door was because it was down a hallway from the left side door, and thus harder to get too, whereas theirs was closer to the main entrance, so more guys would be needed to guard it.

In summary, the steps we took to guard that inner room (I'm not sure the value of it, aside from its strategic value to the defense of the building, and to avoid it being captured) were just good military defensive strategy.  IE, even though it wasn't one of the outer areas of the building, it still held significant value as it was the "core" of the structure.  Also, having three guys on one side, and me alone on the other, wasn't poor planning.  The primary reason for doing it was to give more support to the door that would almost certainly be more heavily involved during the fighting, and if I needed help at any point, the two guys in the middle were able to act as floating support, moving from the left door, to the right (the one I was defending) to the left again as needed to bolster the defense.  So it was done with practicality of defense in mind.  Anyhow, as soon as the battle started, and the fighting began, I remember everything got crazy dark.  I mean, we went from well lit rooms to just barely enough light to see.

Knowing we were short on ammo right from the start, and had a lot of enemy to deal with, we practiced ammo conservation right from the start.  IE, no "spray and pray" fighting.  Just lots of military recommended "one shot, one kill" as much as possible.  Also, due to it being so dark, and the fog of war, anytme someone came to the right side door, I first checked to make sure they were actually the enemy, and not one of our guys over there either by mistake, or cleaning up anything that got through to that door. Once I was sure that it was one of the enemy, I practiced "one shot, one kill" to take each of them down, only firing a second, and possibly a 3rd round if the first, and inversely the second, didn't do the job.  Each shot was taken carefully and patiently, and the situation reevaluated after each round to determine if another was needed or not.  Needless to say, I only saw four of the zombie reptiles show up at my door, and none of them got through.  All four ended up getting dirt napped while they were still in the hallway.

Eventually, after several harrowing minutes of fighting in near total darkness, the room began to grow lighter again right about the time the enemy began to fall into retreat.  Not long after this, several other of my platoon mates arrived to check on us and were kinda impressed with the body count we left behind.  And, while I only had four kills, as that's all that showed up at my door, the guys on the left, man, they left impressive stack of bodies behind.  About this same time my battle buddy asked me how much ammo I had left.  I laughing reported, "Dude, I'm still on my first mag and haven't even used half of it yet." Needless to say, the others were impressed.  I mean, I wasn't all that impressed of myself, as I'd only faced four enemy.  If I'd used more ammo than that, I needed to have my head checked.  Out of everything I did, I think I fired *maybe* 8 rounds total.  So I still had 22 in the mag. :)

After this happened we all left the building together, having completed our mission to defend it and found everything outside swept clean, and no signs that we'd been attacked, or that there had been dead enemy at one point.  It was like the bodies of the enemy dead had kinda just disappeared.  Once outside, we were ordered by our sergeant to "mount up" and get onto the vehicles waiting to transport us away.  Among them were 5 ton trucks, school buses, the old Army "cattle cars" (it's an old troop transport wagon that looks like the type of vehicle used to transport cattle), as well as some Humvees.  I was the last one to mount up, after making sure everyone else got aboard, and everything we needed was taken with us (ie, whatever ammo we had left, for example).  Once I'd made sure of that, I then leapt onto the running boards of one of the fully loaded cattle cars, grabbed a support handle, and hung off the side as it pulled away (mostly because there was no seating left, but also partially because I was one of several "rapid responders" who were assigned to quickly and immediately deploy if something went sideways (ie, we got attacked), and before the others could dismount) on its way to take the battle to the enemy in another location, and render support to those who were already there fighting.

The dream ended there. Anyhow, I thought I'd share that with all of you given how interesting the dream was. :)