What Fight Club would be if it had been written in 2020?
OK GOOGLE, HOW MANY CALORIES ARE THERE IN A HUMAN BODY?
Simon doesn’t feel right. Since he gets into his brain to eat human meat, things aren’t running smoothly in his head. Facing a society that treats him and his fellows as if they were zombies, He does the best he can to keep his dignity, keep his family and keep his job. But how to keep yourself together when you’re hungry as hell with the subtility of a panzer? As he’s forced to deal with his new normal maintaining a routine mirage, he decides to make it family business. And you know what they say about family business?
Thing are always getting messy…
What if we had very good reasons to believe in a zombie apocalypse? How would the population react? Governments? How the media would deal with it?
How could we be sure to be on the good side of it?
And what would those we’re seeing as the enemy do? Pop culture makes us fantasize zombies, but if they were part of our everyday routine, what would we do with them? A dark premise for pop and punk flavoured sci-fi tale.
Fantastic
Science-fiction Social commentary Punk
Dark humour Contemporary
Dystopia
Unclassifiable
Release: June 2020
Format : 14x21cm
Born in 1990, Julia Richard lived the majority of her childhood between Holland, Gabon and Libya. She made her debut as an author at 8, during a 2000’s themed writing contest. On this occasion, she wrote an essay about an alien invasion, Titanic zombies and carnivorous plants. Twenty years later, she came to the conclusion that people never really change et came back to her zombie first love.
Mainly vegetarian and eco-friendly, she doesn’t bite often but still thinks eating some humans could be a delicious way to save the planet. After all, we can always treat yourself.
SIMON PEETERS
48 y/o. A respectable father, marketing director for a cheese brand, with an everyday routine as well-oiled as his cholesterol-filled arteries. He suddenly discovers a craving appetite for his own kind. He finds out that it can get messy, but knows out to make the best of it.
- His personality: Lots of good will, a spark of bad faith, a dash of sexism and a fistful of toxic masculinity.
- Characteristics: Very creative for his recipes. See “Beth Bourgignon”, “Ricotta LasAnna”, “Carbonara Fuckerini”
Type actor: Edward Norton
JESSICA PEETERS
19 y/o. Simon’s daughter. She inherited her mother’s eyes and short-temper. She has a painful lack of taste in choosing her boyfriends. Be careful, the milk is getting sour.
- Her personality: Determined, [she doesn’t mince her words nor her nerves], more mature than her father thinks she is, vulgar, explosive.
- Characteristics: Swing the bat like goddamn Babe Ruth.
Type actress: Joey King
THE APOSTLES
A gang of independent zombies. Anticapitalistic conspirators putting in place an almost-industrialized manhunt and meat partition.
- Their personalities: Good teamplayers, especially if it comes to forcibly enroll people.
- Characteristics: They’re just like hemorrhoids : “Part of your life. Most of the time we even forget that they somewhat exist, but they have a bad habit of reminding themselves to you at the worst possible moment, when you had nothing special to do but you surely wanted to be bored somewhere else” (Simon says).
- Noteworthy: There’s a legend that says that the future can be read in Judas balls, but the future always seems hairy and creased.
Type actors: Daniel Radcliffe (Judas), Alex Lawther (Andrew), Manny Jacinto (Double J)
CATHY PEETERS
Simon’s wife. Coquette, fancy, susceptible but not resentful. Loves pageturners, action movies and herbal tea. Isn’t fond of zombies.
- Her personality: Can be selfless for her couple, but not to the point of letting herself to be munch.
- Characteristics: Does better parallel parking than her husband. Master in the art of always being right or having something to gain in any situation.
Type actres: Maggie Gyllenhaal
DANNY
Simon’s best friend. A by-the-rules kind of cop, loyal friend, very good basketball player. Under pressure since the corpses are multiplying themselves in town. He should lower his heat, or else he will be cold soon enough.
- Personality: If he had to choose between friendship or arresting a zombie, Simon would end in the paddy wagon.
- Characteristics: Hates bananas. For some reason.
Type actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Once the background is established and Simon’s aware of his problem, getting meat will become – as for the others – a priority. Despite thinking that he managed to keep up appearances in front of his family, his 20-year-old daughter, Jessica, still unmasked him anyway. She explains to him that she was raped and proposes to offer him an alliance to get rid of her rapists, giving less guilt-inducing victims to her father. Simon accepts. Jessica and Simon learn more about each other and their relationship changes. She becomes his nurturing mother and the balance of power between them is reverted. Simon is concerned by the mental health of his daughter but is still the victim of his parasite, and so, continues to collaborate. In his madness, the course of events is reverted, his memory is altered, and he goes through some memories in a different angle. It disturbs the reader on the very nature of his relationship with his daughter and the seriousness of the situation.
Meanwhile, the public riots and crowds are organizing to purge cities from the wrongly named “zombies”. Simon does his best to keep up the appearances in his family as in his office, but starts to lose his way and is forced to join other zombies (the Apostles) who organise a meat supply network. His wife discovers his condition and supports him without saying a word, for love. His son joined the anti-zombie raids a while ago. Violence leads to violence and Simon loses sight of his concern for his daughter. We end up learning that she has murdered – supposedly for the zombie cause – men purely and simply because they’re men. Simon decides to stop everything, now lucid that his daughter isn’t doing well. He weans himself off meat and handicaps his wife during an outbreak by eating a part of her foot. He gets himself captured by his cop best-friend and gets locked in a house where a reality-show of zombies massacre is broadcasted on the internet (Zombie TV).
Jessica manages – supposedly – to save him on time, but the chapter is full of elements highlighted by Simon during the novel that could let us think that this is just the final fantasy of a brain at death’s door.
A flash-forward tells us that years after, Simon succeeded to get himself off human meat but his personal life and the world were forever distorted by the events. Still, the world continues to feel the same.
A final surge of his zombie alter ego in the last sentence of the novel may suggest that he isn’t completely weaned.
THE TOWN
A very nice average-sized town with some nice cycle paths, a canal and residential areas. 4/5 stars on TripAdvisor.
Points of interest:
- Station district: Dodgy area full of sex shops, massage salons with “happy endings”. Well-known for welcoming all sorts of junkies, low-lifes and second-rate criminals at night.
- The Old Town: “By daylight, it’s really charming. You can find nice pubs, fashion boutiques, design stores, and some noble craftsmen. Those streets filled with history are crowded with young couples, families, pretty women walking down the street, cheerfully. The night is less lovely. The half-naked old stones of the outdated taverns stuck between some colorful shops take on a sordid face. Streets fill up with some loveless hookers, drunken, stumbling hobos, overcome by time and the gallons of cheap beer they bought for a few cents and perverts always ready to swing their dick at you. A real shithole.” (Simons says)
- McDonald's garbage can: the perfect spot to hide the bloody remains of a hobo.
ZOMBILOC
A geolocation app for zombies attacks in real time, it lists the cases and follows the evolution of the pandemic and proposes “wild hunts” grouping. It’s in top apps on the Play Store. Entertainment Category.
ZOMBAMAZING
Kickstarter project. “Zombamazing, the very first zombie community center by zombies for zombies. Healthy meals made from suicidal volunteers and degenerative patients (guaranteed contagion-free). Eco-friendly waste treatment with bones recycling, which will be turned into handcrafted jewelry or grinded into dust and used as an inorganic fertilizer for our permaculture crops.
A warm welcome by our volunteers in a bucolic and charming setting dispensing all the comfort needed, with bungalows for every budget: Cozy pleasure, Supreme Comfort or even the Total Felicity.
An exemplary hygiene and numerous activities to give a meaning to our zombies’ way of life, a day nursery and help from our psychologist in charge: Zombamazing will include all it needs to make you feel home.
A local structure that can welcome up to 30 people, a polymorphic social project, I want to engage us in a community and eco-friendly lifestyle with respect for everyone no matter who they are.
More on the grand opening, next summer.”
404 TUTORIALS BY SIMON
Simon's YouTube channel. The perfect content for every noob zombie. On the menu : How to cut fresh meat up, how to make a knot, tips and tricks to clean a blood stain, tasting videos and ASMR.
ZOMBIE TV
A web reality show. The epic confrontation of humans (volunteers) v. zombies (designated volunteers).
FESTIVAL DU ZOMBIE JOYEUX
Scheduled for the end of autumn. A great opportunity to see the very first election of Miss Zombie! A nice piece of a woman who will have the honour of doing a signing session at the Blood Sausage fair the following week!
The book
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Characters
Summary
References
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