Dreamers and the fictitious zombies appeared to be one and the same. Did this mean that the tales told to scare each otherweren't just tales? The sleepers as they had been calling them were the first in a stage of a transformation. A large number of humans would not survive beyond that stage. Those who did not survive simply fell into a coma and eventually died where they had fallen. The dreamers were those that survived the coma stage and became something else. These creatures appeared to be in a dreamlike state, without any discernible higher mental functions. Their sole purpose was survival. They lived to eat with insatiable appetites. They did not differentiate between animal, plant or human. Food was food."