Work Text:
Jean Charles crept slowly towards his destination, the imposing concrete walls casting an ever-growing shadow over his field of view. He glanced around furtively, before reassuring himself once again of the lack of guards around the perimeter of the decrepit government building he had decided to break into. His plan was simple in much the same way that giving birth is simple, in that, if you were to ignore the vast majority of what would be needed to do, it sounded rather easy to accomplish in theory.
Jean Charles did not have a simple plan because he knew he would be able to adapt and overcome, rather he had a simple plan because he was extremely angry at Patrick for daring to get close to Charlotte. Patrick was the reason that Jean Charles and Charlotte had broken up, and therefore Jean Charles had decided he must pay. His revenge on Patrick was decided on the spur of the moment based on a secret abandoned government lab Jean Charles had found the location of online. A secret government lab that was said to hold biological weapons. A zombie virus according to his sources.
Jean Charles had decided that in order for Charlotte to go back to dating him, Patrick had to be removed from the picture. Murder was unfortunately not an available option, as Jean Charles had never murdered anyone before, and searching up how to murder someone shortly before Patrick —whom he publicly hated— was murdered, would not be a smart idea. Jean Charles unfortunately simply did not have the required knowledge of effective ways of murdering people, a fact that he would later bemoan, but at this point has never been relevant.
In his eyes, that left only one option. Jean Charles had to turn Patrick into a zombie. Charlotte could not love Patrick if he was a zombie, so she would come back into the waiting arms of Jean Charles. Patrick would not be able to come between the two of them again, he would be too busy lusting for brains. Or perhaps eating them, Patrick was a soccer player after all, he had to be athletic.
The looming gate steadily drew nearer as Jean Charles approached. The gate creaked as he opened it, as if heaving an exhausting sigh at the realization of what was to come. Jean Charles snuck quickly through the gate before firmly closing it behind himself.
He pulled out his phone, glancing at the map of the facility he had found online. He looked up from his screen, and began walking to the building he had marked out on his phone.
Jean Charles pulled open the sturdy door, and surveyed the inside of the building. He had concocted many ideas of what the laboratory would look like once he had gotten in, and the physical building did not stray too far from his imaginings. There were shelves crowding the walls as if any unused space would result in catastrophe. The shelves were crammed with vials, upon which faded labels read out indistinguishable words. As Jean Charles scanned the room he was in, he saw a door with still-legible lettering above it. It read: BEWARE, TEST SUBJECTS ARE DANGEROUS. Jean Charles smiled. He had found exactly what he was looking for.
He took a deep breath, and opened the door into the room. The room that supposedly housed the entire world’s population of zombies was rather unimpressive. It was just a room with a glass panel at the back, behind which, there were zombies. Jean Charles leaned forward, looking around to see how he might free the zombies so that they could go and kill Patrick, the man preventing him from being with his love, Charlotte. Jean Charles saw a panel labelled ‘facility door controls’ and he walked over. One button seemed to work as the control for the door to the zombies, and Jean Charles pressed it.
The zombies flooded out of the contained chamber they had been resting in, and shambled towards the door of the facility.
“I freed you guys, so can you get rid of this annoying dude for me?” Jean Charles asked. “He’s taken my one true love away from me.”
The zombies did not respond, however a few of them did turn towards Jean Charles at the noise he made, while others still continued on towards the outside world. The zombies approached Jean Charles, who began screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Stop! Don’t do this. Go after Patrick, not me!”
The zombies began to reach for him and they began to tear into his flesh, all the while he screamed. The zombies did not stop in their ripping and tearing, not until Jean Charles had grown silent.
And then a new form rose from the ground, and emitted a guttural moan.
This journey had marked the end of Jean Charles the human, but began the not-quite-life of Jean Charles the zombie. Patient zero in an apocalypse of his own making, however unintentional.