Raphaël was nine years old. His mother had been dead for three years.
“Son, I won’t be long,” he had said.
Raphaël had just returned from school, a day spent daydreaming while his teacher tried to instill a passion for ancient Egypt. He excelled in mathematics, loving to manipulate the colorful little bricks to add units, tens, and hundreds, but history tended to bore him.
He had come home, ignoring the pile of garbage bags almost blocking the hallway, went straight to the living room, and carelessly threw his school bag onto the coffee table, knocking over one of the many empty beer cans stacked next to each other. He sat on the old leather couch eaten away by dampness - they had found it on the street - and settled next to two ashtrays brimming with cigarette butts. He turned on the TV and immersed himself in his favorite cartoons.
“Ok,” he replied to his father without looking at him.
His father nodded, hesitated as if unsure, then nodded again and left.
Raphaël continued to watch television programs, only emerging from his stupor when his stomach started to growl. He got up and headed to the kitchen, ignoring the swarm of flies buzzing over the sink. He opened the fridge: empty.
“Dad!” he yelled, “we have nothing to eat!”
No response.
“Dad!”
Then he remembered: his father had left. He looked at the clock: seven-something. He had started learning to read the time on a clock and was doing pretty well with the hours - he knew it could be seven in the morning or evening, and that the hand went around twice a day - but not yet the minutes. Anyway, he knew it was past seven in the evening because the hand was really close to eight. Usually, he had already eaten by this time.
Fear engulfed him when he realized his father had been gone for several hours, and his first instinct was to run to his room. He opened the door, walked past his mattress on the floor, and went straight to his closet. He rummaged through the pile of toys and pulled out a large pale pink piggy bank with a straight slot on its back. He didn’t need to shake it to know it was empty: the plastic lid on its belly was gone.
“He took my money!” he whimpered aloud.
He returned to the entrance, a mix of fear and anger overcoming him: it had happened before that his father took his savings, and each time, it led to other troubles. Once, he had even ended up at the police station.
His stomach growled again: he didn’t know when his father would return, but what he knew was that he was starving. Maybe he wouldn’t even come back tonight, so how was he going to eat? He didn’t even have any money left to buy a bag of candy at the grocery store. What should he do? Wait for him to return? But when would that be? He knew that when his father took money from him, he was up to no good: and even at nine years old, he knew where he went to get into trouble. Wouldn’t it be better to go look for him, and ask him to give back his money so they could buy something to eat for tonight? Maybe he could even take him to get a hamburger and fries, he would like that.
Decided, he put on his shoes and left the house without bothering to lock the door - his father always forgot to lock, or even close the door behind him, so they had simply decided to stop locking it.
It was a beautiful day outside, not a single cloud, slightly refreshed by a gentle breeze, very pleasant. He crossed the unkempt garden, passing two wooden chairs with holes and bleached by rain and sun, a small blue inflatable pool filled with stagnant water and various debris, and entered the street. At this time, neighbors began to gather on the sidewalks, pulling out tables and playing cards. Some just sat on a camping chair in the middle of the street, eyeing passersby suspiciously.
He never felt in danger. Just once, a young man had asked him if he had money on him. He had shaken his head, and the man had run his finger under each of his socks, before nodding his head and crossing the street. But other than that event, everyone seemed to ignore him.
He continued for a good kilometer, cramps crushing his stomach every time he passed a restaurant. He wondered if he would really find his father there: nothing told him he would be, but in a way, he was convinced.
He stopped suddenly: he had arrived at the den.
He looked up at the sky and observed the steel bridge that carried the tram over the street. He had heard a lot about it, but was seeing it for the first time. A shuttle passed overhead at full speed, roaring with rage, making the structure vibrate as if it were made of matches.
It was the gate to Zombie-Ville.
Everyone knew this part of the city: in his class, they said that zombies haunted the streets, ready to devour any little boy daring to venture there. But Raphaël knew they weren't real undead, just adults making bad choices.
To his right, a man curled up on himself slept in the shadow of a row of stairs. He wore torn pants at the shin and no shoes, only two mismatched socks. The space around him was littered with all sorts of garbage: half-empty alcohol bottles, plastic bags filled with clothing or balled-up blankets, cigarette butts. A car slowly passed him, an old diesel with grimy windows and a scratched body, scraping the only hubcap remaining with an unpleasant screech. The vehicle remained still for a moment, then a man emerged from the building, rushing down the stairs without a care for the homeless man sleeping beside him. He headed towards the car while the driver lowered the passenger side window. The man leaned into the opening and seemed to talk for a few seconds, hidden in the rusted metal. He then reemerged with a bill in his hand, which he discreetly stuffed into his pocket. He left at the same time as the car, scanning the street nervously from both sides.
Once the street was calm again, Raphaël took a deep breath and moved forward. He passed the homeless man, forcing himself not to look at him, fearing to discover a real zombie, but he soon spotted two more people on the ground, across the sidewalk. They were two women, one wearing only a t-shirt and panties, the other with a needle still stuck in her arm. He realized his knees were shaking, but he forced himself to keep going: if he wanted to eat something tonight, he needed to find his father.
So, he continued his journey, encountering more people: groups leaning against walls with vacant eyes, others sprawled on the ground, asleep, or dead. No one paid him any mind, except the few still conscious, the men sitting on chairs, counting bills and glaring fiercely at him. He was terrified: as he moved forward, the street became more and more crowded, yet it remained just as dead. Everyone he passed was motionless, unconscious, or perhaps even deceased. He turned at an intersection, and horror struck him as he arrived at the heart of Zombie-Ville.
The main street was crowded, yet it seemed frozen in time. The undead were indeed there: men and women standing in uncomfortable positions, yet immobile like statues. Some had their limbs arched, curled up like dead insects, others simply stood with their heads resting against the wall. Many were standing but with their heads down, as if they were tying their shoelaces or had dropped a coin; but all had the same fixed and vacant gaze, as if they had looked Medusa straight in the eyes and turned into statues. It seemed like the whole town was there, and he knew his father was somewhere in the crowd.
He made his way through the first zombies: none of them moved, staring at the sky or the ground. A woman had her head in a trash can, completely naked. Raphaël's entire body trembled. Thoughts raced through his head: would one of them suddenly move as he passed by? Would he see a pair of eyes suddenly roll in their sockets and fix on him? Were they real zombies, after all? Was he going to be devoured? By his own father?
“What are you doing here, brat?” he heard behind him. “This is no place for you, unless you also want some tranq's.”
It was one of the men on the plastic chairs. He ignored him completely, lowered his head, and quickened his pace. He bumped into a man wearing a beanie and a heavy jacket in the middle of summer, apologized, and noticed with disgust that the man with his legs spread and one arm raised to the sky had feces running down his pants to his shoe. Starting to panic, he almost ran, avoiding obstacles with difficulty, whether they were trash or humans.
“Human trash,” he thought to himself.
The crowd thickened, as if it were a horde of zombies encircling him.
“Dad!” he cried out unwittingly.
He bumped into another person in his frantic run, who fell like a sack of potatoes, without a sound.
“Dad, where are you?” he cried.
He ran, tears in his eyes, suffocated by the smell of decomposition and all kinds of bodily fluids, when he suddenly stopped: he recognized the red jogging pants with white stripes and the t-shirt from a jazz festival that had taken place before he was born. The man wearing them was standing with his back to him, bent over, his arms on the ground. He did not move an inch.
“Dad?” he murmured.
The man immediately turned around, and gazed at him with his eye sockets swarming with maggots: his skin was decomposing, his open mouth dangling a swollen and black tongue, wrapped by a centipede that ran down his throat. A liquid of the same color flowed between his yellow teeth and along his gumless gums.
“Son!” articulated the undead, a moth escaping his cadaverous-smelling mouth.
The nine-year-old boy looked around him: everyone had turned into zombies, their bodies decomposing, eyes white and insects crawling out of every orifice. All but one, a single man watched him from afar, across the street. That one was normal, but so distant, as if he was not part of the scene. As if he was watching from an even deeper reality. And he was laughing. Laughing loudly, as if mocking him. He felt like he knew him, had seen him somewhere before.
Around him, the zombies approached, enveloped him, and his own father sank his rotten teeth into his flesh.
Raphaël woke up with a start.
He opened his eyes with difficulty, still half-sunk in a sleep that seemed to have lasted an eternity. He only saw blurry shapes dancing around him, and he had to fight not to spill the contents of his stomach onto his knees. Was he asleep? He seemed to have had a nightmare: something with zombies, and someone who seemed to be watching him in his own dream, someone from another reality.
His head began to ache, and now, the pain spread throughout his body. He rubbed his eyes, shook his head, and the scene around him sharpened, the contours became clearer: he was in his car.
Except that, he was off the road.
Two shrunken and withered white bags hung from the steering wheel and the glove compartment: the airbags. The driver's side window was cracked, his door dented by the tree his car had hit. He looked in the rearview mirror: first, he saw his slightly puffy face, his eyes haggard and circled. Then, he looked beyond the reflection and spotted the road, the four black tire tracks tearing up the asphalt to his location.
“The accident,” he thought.
He remembered Emilie, as she had appeared in the middle of the road. Had she escaped from prison? No, he knew that. It wasn't really her he had encountered.
This thought overwhelmed him with shame, and he instantly lowered his eyes.
“What happened back there?” he wondered.
“You panicked, and you ran away, that's what happened,” a voice in his head replied. “You're a coward.”
He pursed his lips: he felt miserable, sitting in his car against a tree at the curve of a road lost in the forest. He had abandoned that girl to her fate, and he had been rejected by his best friend. She was right, he wasn't cut out for this kind of thing. What suited him was working on his computer. Logging in remotely, writing reports. But not finding himself in a life-or-death situation.
This experience proved that he was better off alone. No one to disappoint. He looked around him: the sun was beginning to set, and a grayish light was starting to settle in the already gloomy place. What should he do? Call for help? No, he had only one desire: to go home and sleep. Even Jordane had told him: he should just run away.
He turned the keys in the ignition, and the car sputtered for a few seconds before giving up. He tried several times, but the old Mercedes refused to start. He threw a furious fist against the steering wheel, and screamed as pain exploded in his wrist, releasing curses into the void.
“Why does this have to happen to me?” he thought.
The vision of Emilie on the road came back to him, followed by the one where he had left her in the restroom: “I'll come back, I promise,” he had said.
He chuckled: “What a damn liar!”
He would not return. He would never set foot in that damned town again. All he wanted was to get far away. Start over. Change cities. Change countries, try to live abroad. Anything, as long as he was far enough from Duli, from Jordane, from everything else: it would be just a bad memory, which he would take care to erase from his mind. He suddenly envied his father: he had had no scruples about leaving. The phrase the monster had spoken came back to him: “We'll find you a family that loves you,” the social worker had said. And in the end, his foster family had done the job. Even though it was hard, they had made the effort, sacrificed to pay for his education, were there when he needed them. While his real father was floating thousands of miles away, probably on a sidewalk, pockets empty and underwear full.
This thought brought him back to what he had seen in prison: a scene straight out of his childhood memories, so realistic that he really believed he had traveled back in time, or simply imagined his entire teenage and adult life, but that he had remained that child.
“What am I going to do?” he said aloud.
Jordane no longer needed him, Emilie was probably dead, there was really only one thing to do: get out of here. He tried to start the car again, just like that; but to his great surprise, it coughed like an asthmatic, and started with a racket from hell. The car trembled, the body scraping against the bark of the tree. Stunned, he pressed the accelerator. The tires scratched the ground, doing a burnout, the door produced an unbearable screech, but the vehicle finally freed itself from the tree and moved slowly and noisily back onto the road. He got out of the car, in the middle of the passage, and walked around his beloved: the left door was dented, part of the bumper torn off, but other than that, it seemed intact.
“Can you take me home?” he spoke to it.
It continued to buzz as a simple response.
“I promise,” he continued, “if you take me home, I won't get rid of you, I'll take you to the body shop, and I'll make you young again!”
He was about to get back into his wreck, when he saw something far ahead of him, on the side of the road.
A sign.
DULI <- 6
ALL DIRECTIONS -> 4
He thought back to Jordane. What she had told him. That she no longer needed him. And she was right, this wasn't for him, all this. He wanted to feel safe, forget everything. Move forward. He tapped the hood of the car, got in, and put it in gear: he knew where he was going.
