Halfway back - Bruno, Steve and Fiona's adventure against zombies that may not be zombies and the secret behind them

by Marios Amontaristos

“That's stupid,” Steve responded spontaneously. “But go on.”

  “Ummm... Thank you, I think. We should go to a butcher or a super market and check their fridges. Maybe we will find very interesting things there.”

  “Do you have something specific in mind?” Bruno asked.

  “Not exactly. Come on, let's go.”

  They got up and left the apartment. Before taking the stairs, Bruno stuck his ear on Mr Simonnot's door.

  “Did they wake up?” Steve asked in a low voice.

  “A few of them. Let's go quickly.”

  On their way to the closest super market, Steve said something that was on his mind for some time, it was torturing him, but he couldn't express it. “Bruno? Do you remember what we did the first night?”

  “Yeap.”

  “You remember that we thought that Mr Simonnot was infected?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “You remember also what we did to him?”

  “Sure.”

  “We could have left him alive.”

  “We couldn't take that risk,” Bruno said.

  “Yeah, we couldn't,” Steve agreed quickly.

  “We didn't know. It could be dangerous.”

  “Yeah, we did what was right.”

  “Besides, there were no witnesses,” Bruno said, mostly trying to reassure himself that they had done the right thing by killing Mr Simonnot, while they could have just waited a few hours and he would be back in perfect health.

  Fiona looked at them. “So, it seems that someone wasn't killed by zombies, right?”

  “There were no witnesses,” Bruno repeated.

  “And there is no proof,” Steve added.

  “And he was an asshole,” Bruno added on Steve's addition.

  “And he would be eaten anyway.” Steve completed the list of unconvincing excuses. “Here we are.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  How different are we, anyway?

  They arrived at the nearby supermarket Dio and they went straight to the meat section. Although the place was open, there was anarchy in there, with various products on the floor or recklessly placed on the shelves. When they reached the fridges, there was no employee there. They looked around carefully at ham, burgers, turkey slices, chicken products and everything that once was alive. There was nothing strange. All packs were motionless at their place. And then they noticed the noise at the seafood section. They walked towards the benches and the noise was getting louder. And there was an actual mayhem there. Various fish struggling on the wooden boxes, crabs and shrimps walking and jumping around and the employees panicked and confused, trying to content them. Even the snails had escaped and were moving slowly but proudly around the place. Even if they had seen already enough weird stuff to fill their minds with enough funny and strange stories for a lifetime, Bruno, Steve and Fiona couldn't help being once again stunned. It was hard to think clearly at that moment, but Fiona kept her thoughts together. The fact that she already had something in mind, did a lot to help her. She went back to the meat section. The guys followed her. She stood in front of the chicken products.

  “What are you doing here?” Steve asked.

  “I think that I know what's going on, but I'm not entirely sure yet.” She remained silent for a few seconds. “When we went to the seafood section, did you see what was moving?”

  “Yes! Everything!” Bruno said leaving a freaked out laugh.

  “No, it wasn't everything,” Fiona answered.

  “Wait a bit...” Steve tried to remember. “Some salmon fillets weren't moving.”

  “And not just those. Many fish parts were not moving. And now, look here. Chicken nuggets, chicken fillets, legs, wings, even whole chickens are here and they don't move. Why do you think is that?”

  “The head is missing,” Steve noticed. “Could it be the reason...?”

  “Exactly! Everything that still has a head will regenerate. Can you imagine this? You cut off the head of an animal and the next day it's whole and alive again.”

  “This means... More food for everyone on the planet! No more hunger and poverty!” Bruno exclaimed happily.

  “I don't know if this is a good thing,” Fiona said, causing the other two to protest, even if this wasn't exactly the best time and place for a debate.

  “What do you mean? No more hunger and poverty! How can this be a bad thing?” Steve asked, feeling like he was defending humanity and the whole planet.

  “Let me explain. But first let's go out, before we get attacked by something,” Fiona said calmly.

  And off they went, ignoring the cries for help by the desperate employees, who were having their hopeless struggle against the sea creatures. While walking back home, Fiona let them know what she was talking about.

  “It looks like we are in the beginning of big troubles. If all those animals get resurrected every time they die, they will need food, right? This means that they will need more plants, since they eat plants,” Fiona began yet another scientific debate.

  “But, if they get killed without eating after being alive again? Head gets cut, the rest of the body is used as food, the head creates a new body the very next day. Won't this save tons of animal food? Plus, there will be a lot of meat, which means cheap food for everyone! How is this not good?” Steve insisted, while Bruno had nothing to add and he was looking at Fiona strictly, judging her for what she had said. Bruno knew how important it was for everyone to be fed properly and he saw a great chance now. He couldn't believe that someone would disagree to a great cause.

  “What you said is very cruel, but also very true. Although, it applies only to farm animals. What about the wild ones? Every time a wild animal dies, of natural causes or otherwise, it will return. In the meantime, new animals will be born every day, in land and sea. What if the flora doesn't regenerate as quickly as the fauna?” Fiona took her thoughts further in time depth, trying to see the big picture as the very frequent reading taught her to do.

  “The what? Fiona?” Steve asked, causing Fiona's rage for ignoring two fundamental words related to their science.

  “Argh! What if the plants don't regenerate as quickly as the animals? Do you think that the Earth's ecosystems are ready for a change as rapid as this? Oh, and not to mention humans. Right now, in every graveyard, dead people come back to life. Their relatives will not want to leave them without food. So, the need for food suddenly increases dramatically, even if for now it's only in Paris. Who knows if and when it's going to expand to other parts of the world.” Fiona suddenly stopped walking. “Oh, fuck.” She looked in front of her, fixing her eyes to an invisible horror, terrified as if she had just heard the worst news someone could hear.

  “What now?” Steve felt that things were getting very hard. Even though he and Bruno had been with Fiona for some hours, he could read from her reaction that she had very bad news. Bruno was equally worried and also scared. The moments that passed before she spoke again, felt like hours.

  Finally, she took a deep breath. “The catacombs,” she said. “THE CATACOMBS! We must warn the people! Now!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Where did they all come from?

  The catacombs of Paris are an underground system of corridors built for the storage of the bones that were unburied from the filled cemeteries. People started transferring the contents of the graves in the late 1700's. A visitor can see various bones and skulls, laid out in various ways and creating a morbid decoration which expands in about two kilometers of passageways and keeps the remains of approximately six million people.

  Such a dense population in such a small area, almost always means trouble. At around the time when the whole 'pandemic' of restored health broke out, the catacombs were closed for surveillance and as such, the strange activity inside didn't get anyone's attention. But that specific day of general joy, at Denfert-Rochereau square, there were many violent incidents caused by strange naked people who were walking around the celebrating crowd and attacking random individuals with
their arms and teeth. In some cases, they managed to actually kill and eat two young men, while three more were watching and laughing, convinced that their friends would return and they would all have a good laugh about it. Many of those invaded stores and apartment buildings searching for food and the huge unrest could not be contended by the police or even the army.

  In some cases, the police opened fire at will, killing many catacomb residents as well as some citizens, for whom the commanding officer said “They will return in a matter of hours, don't worry.”

  At the same time, as more and more bodies were taking back their shape and life, the situation under the ground was getting very dangerous. Hundreds of bodies reformed in narrow areas where no more than fifty people could fit and many of them died of asphyxia while others managed to move instinctively towards the light of the surface. In some parts there was damage to the walls and the ceiling from the sudden increase in volume, which also caused some strange bumps on the streets above the catacombs.

  The regenerated bodies that had died in the massive regeneration process, returned to life after a few hours and, since many of them had left and there was more space available, they managed as well to find their way out and soon enough, a couple million naked and aggressive people were swarming the streets of Paris causing a chaos never before seen anywhere in the history of humanity.

  As it was expected, no kind of riot control force was able to cope with the enormous number of the pretty dumb but very hungry and strong as a unit new inhabitants of the capital. After the first hours of celebration that turned into disaster, the government had to ask for help from NATO and the members of the European Union, which arrived as soon as they could but still weren't able to contain the strange new enemy.

  There were cases where innocent civilians, who weren't having their second chance on Earth, got blown up as well. The commanders weren't very careful with their bombs, considering that everybody was getting resurrected in Paris (The ministry of tourism could use the 'Feel alive again in Paris!' line, if it weren't for all this mayhem). Of course, this way the human fighting units were only reinforcing the flesh-eating opponents, something that they would regret after a few hours, when the first ex-civilians were about to join the zombie forces. Yes, many people called them zombies and many people found a chance to play a real-life first-person shoot'em-up game. With only one life, obviously. But they thought otherwise. Many of them actually joked “It's fine! We've got a few more lives!” Oops.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Kind of stuck now, are we?

  “Don't stand like this! We need to warn everybody!” Fiona shouted as Bruno and Steve were silent and looking stupid.

  “What catacombs?” Bruno asked.

  “Start walking, I will explain. So, in Paris, under the place Denfert-Rochereau, there is an underground system of passageways where in the 18th century many human remains were transferred in order to free some space in the cemeteries. These bones are the decoration of the catacombs.”

  “Decoration? The bones?” Steve looked a bit freaked out as Fiona was walking faster, forcing them to follow her pace.

  “Yes. You can see bones and skulls forming walls and various shapes and there are about two kilometers of tunnels. The tour takes about 45 minutes.”

  “There is a tour?! People go and see the bones and they say what? 'Oh, darling, is this a bone or you're happy to see me?' That's sick!” Steve exclaimed in disgust.

  “Says the man who spends more hours killing zombies and nazis than sleeping,” Bruno said indifferently.

  “Hey, these things are real, man! How would you react if you saw a bunch of bones, out of nowhere?” Steve defended himself.

  “In the last 48 hours we killed a bunch of people twice and our neighbor three times,” Bruno continued untouched by Steve's freaking out.

  “We were in self-defense! And we didn't see any bones decorating walls! This is just primitive! Fiona, how many bones are there in these catacombs?”

  “They estimate that there are the remains of about six million people,” Fiona said and she felt a cold drop of sweat sliding from the top of her neck to the end of her spine as she was picturing the number in her mind.

  “Six million people?!” Both Steve and Bruno expected something like a few hundred, with the bones scattered here and there instead of forming the walls like bricks.

  “Now imagine what we saw back at your building, but a few million times more. Free in the streets. Attacking people. The whole Paris will be a slaughterhouse! Come on! We don't have time!” Fiona said, getting more desperate as by listening to herself she realized the size of the disaster that was about to come.

  “OK, OK, we need to calm down and think what we can do,” Bruno said and he raised his head. Only then did they take notice of the intense noise of the helicopters up in the air, heading south. “Are the catacombs that way?” he asked.

  “I don't know, but I would bet anything that they are,” Steve answered and they started running towards their building. When they arrived in their apartment and after they caught their breath, they started calling their university fellow students, in the hopes of finding someone and warn them or at least think of something that they could do. No idea was coming as all three of them were panicking while there was no response to their phone calls.

  They must have called around thirty of their fellow students (Fiona called most of them, since the other two weren't exactly social enough to have that many phone numbers at their disposal) but in the end, nobody answered. So, they ended up sitting on the edge of the couch, trying once again to think, while they could hear a lot of not really encouraging noise from outside.

  “So, do you boys have any ideas?” Fiona asked with her voice fading out as she was reaching the end of her question and losing hope and the trust in Bruno and Steve's ability to produce useful ideas.

  “Sure. We just don't want to share them with you.” Steve couldn't resist the chance for a doubtfully witty answer, even now that things didn't seem favorable at all.

  “So, if they don't get killed the ways we know, should we try to find other ways?” Bruno wondered.

  “Like what?” Fiona asked with interest and a shy hope that maybe a thought was starting to take form.

  “Let's see what we have. The legs and arm that I had shot off of Mr Simonnot, are still outside. And we saw that the cut animal parts don't regenerate. As you pointed out very correctly, only parts with the head can come back to life. And...” Bruno grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.

  The news were now covering the intense chaos in the city center, something that originated in the catacombs, according to observers. Some very violent images were showing army fighters blowing up the easily recognizable resurrected bodies, using rifle guns and, in some cases, even flame throwers. Quick thoughts were flowing in Bruno's mind.

  “I will dare say that the most important part is the skull. Not the brain itself, but the skull. This is where the brain forms and the brain controls the whole nervous system. So, without a skull, there is no regeneration. Which means that we need to destroy their skulls,” Bruno said firmly and pointing out the word 'skull'.

  “You mean, like shutter them? Break them to tiny pieces? Grind them?” Fiona asked.

  “Maybe burn them to ashes. Otherwise, the pieces of a broken skull may regenerate into more skulls, which could mean more zombies coming from one single skull!” Bruno said as it was his turn to feel some cold sweat at the lower part of his back.

  “I have another idea. How about poisoning them?” said Steve.

  “Good one. This can keep them still for a bit. But we're looking for something more permanent, in case you aren't very sure,” Fiona said, taking full advantage of her opportunity for a sarcastic response, because no matter how grave the situation, there was a rivalry that had to be honored.

  “It is permanent. The poison will remain in the zombie and, when it tries to come back to life, the poison will start flowing again in the blood
and it will die again and again and again.” He was making sense, actually, as Bruno's chin rubbing and Fiona's expressionless face revealed.

  “But, what if they manage to metabolize the poison?” Bruno asked, hoping to get a convincing answer, because he liked the idea.

  “They won't have the time. They wake up, the blood flows, they're dead in a couple of minutes, their system stops metabolizing anything.” Steve was almost smiling in pride, ready to high-five himself.

  “This actually sounds good. But what kind of poison should we use and where can we find it? And how many liters are we going to use for every single zombie out there?” Fiona asked.

  “I don't know. Let's check on the internet,” Steve answered innocently.

  “I don't expect to... Yes, here it goes.” Bruno showed them the laptop screen that confirmed the absence of wi-fi signal.

  “We're on our own. For now, we only have the burning of the heads,” Fiona said.

  “The total burning. We need to burn off every single cell or we risk welcoming them back. We must turn them to coal, completely,” Bruno insisted, to show how important this concept was.

  “We can also keep the head and cut off anything that grows back, before it forms a full body!” Steve said, who hadn't stopped thinking and he wanted desperately to keep providing Bruno and Fiona with ideas, even if they sounded idiotic and gruesome. At least, he was sincerely trying and the feeling of having an idea accepted and discussed by the team, it felt so sweet...

  “That's not bad either, but there must be someone doing this all the time,” Bruno said with a disappointed look on his face.

  “Well, the police and the army must be already there. Some people can take this duty. We must go and let them know. Otherwise they will tear down the whole city and the zombies will become more!” Steve answered as he stood up in tension.

  “We need to have lighter weapons with us. And we have to go right now,” Bruno said.