How Pizzas Save Lives
Chapter 1 - The Journal
John have his fist on his cheek, turning red from impatience. He is writing a book but continuously think about the perfect sentence to continue his story.
"How's your story going?" His roommate asks.
"Oh, it's you, Mike. I'm stuck on a sentence. You probably can't help out unless you know the plot like I do." He bites the edge of his pencil.
"You know, people write on laptops nowadays." He teases.
"They can do what they do. This is my lucky pencil. The last book that I wrote with this pencil hits best-seller, so does the last one, and the last." He starts writing, but erased it.
"You ready to go?" He asks politely.
"Yeah."
~~~
They both sit inside a coffee shop, waiting for a plane to go to a job interview. They both dronk Americano.
"Hey Mike," John say, "there's a cat there. You're allergic, right?" he points at the black cat with green eyes.
"Yeah. Let's move." He grabs his coffee and move, but there is something odd, something peculiar, something wrong.
People are biting each other, each covered in scratches. The thing is, they're not people. They're zombies.
Chapter 2 - The Escape
"RUUN!!" John screams. The people near them in the coffee shop are being bitten, most of them have scratches.
John sees a dog in the crowd, the zombies tear it apart. He almost vomit from seeing this but they had to find shelter.
They both run in a straight line without turning back. They jump over bodies, run beside blood-lusting zombies, and scream for their lives, until they end up in a Dominoes restaurant.
They push the door, but it doesn't open. They knock multiple times until someone comes and unlock the barrier. Once they both got in they a breath of relief.
"Close one, ain't it?" The man with the key asks.
"Yeah. Where did those - zombies come from?" A moment of hesitation enters Mike's speech.
"Welp, if you've seen one of those zombie movies you'd know that you need somewhere to hide and stay put." The man locks the door again. "I'm Ronald, the manager."
Once they have settled and introduce themselves they enter the main room, nervous customers are everywhere. One of them have a cat, shaking maybe from fear. John looks at it without trust.
A girl no older than her mid-twenties approach them.
"Are you okay?" She asks. "He's my manager. My coworkers went outside for a break but I stayed inside. My name is Ray."
"Good for you." Mike continues.
"Well, I got this baby right here!" The manager took out an AK47 from behind the counter.
"Where did you get that?" John asks.
"The story can't get any longer than 1000 words so I'll cut the drama." He replies.
Mike pulls John into the restaurant's restroom and says that they can't trust Ronald. John refuse to agree and tells his reason why, but their conversation is cut short by a gunshot.
"What was that?" John asks, getting out of the restroom.
"Follow us! The manager and his subordinate runs to the right. On their left is a rave of zombies.
They got in.
Chapter 3 - The Onion
The group of four runs into a close passageway, with boxes on the floor towards their right. Ray accidentally trip over a box of onions.
John tries to raise her up but a zombie caught up. One of his foot is only clothes with socks. When it touch the onion, its explodes. The blood corrodes the onions.
The manager shoot its head. The blood explodes, but isn't corrosive.
"Looks like they're allergic to onions." The manager investigates. "We need to go, more are coming."
Ronald use the butt of the gun to smash open a nearby window. One by one they exit. As the zombies trip over vegetables and themselves the team make it out onto the runway.
An airplane is about to leave. The pilot see John and the others and drops a ladder down but then his co-pilot pulls it back up.
A different horde if zombies is running towards the plane.
The vehicle starts moving and eventually fly but the zombies are fast. It climbed up the wheels and it wasn't long before the plane crashed on its nose.
The zombies climb out of the rubble, some in fire while some lost limbs.
They all run after humans.
Within the crowd, he sees a cat. It doesn't move, it doesn't panic, it only shakes. The zombies run around it like a stone in a river.
'Why didn't they tear it apart like the dog?' John thought.
Ronald lead the group and the rest follow him into the window a Chinese food restaurant.
Once he barricade the entrance, he checks the building for zombies.
"Guys, I have a theory." John broadly speaks.
Chapter 4 - The Theory
"So, you're saying that what you wrote down in your journal is true?" Ray questions. John nods.
"How can we believe you?" Mike asks too.
"First, they explode highly corrosive blood in contact with onion, like in my book. Then, they all are resistant to fire and blunt-force trauma." He preaches,
"And cats are always present when there is a horde of zombies. Do you know why? Because they are the source of the plague."
It caught their attention.
"The virus in my story not only spread through body fluid but also air, however it requires and open wound." John continues.
"So, if we get your journal we can stop it?" The manager asks. John nods again. "Where is it?"
"I left it in the luggage in the coffee shop." John replies with regret.
"What? Going there means suicide! Those zombies are waiting for you!" He replies with rage.
"Actually I took your journal without your permission. Sorry." Mike takes out the book from his bag.
John sits down, taking a nearby pen and start to write about an onion rain.
But nothing happened.
"No." John speaks, "I need my pencil too."
"Is it in the luggage?" Ronald asks. John nods once more.
"You're gonna need this fun more than I do. See ya." The manager leaves.
"So what's the plan?" The girl becomes intrigued.
John looks around the kitchen and sees a box of onion. "You know." He says.
Chapter 5 - The Pizza, Lots of Pizzas
They come in armed. Ronald was right, the coffee shop is filled with zombies. The longer have two entrances in opposite sides.
Ray have a bell. She stand at the East, luring the zombies in. Once they all funnel in Ray escapes through a vent and finds John and Mike.
Their job is to throw onions but Mike fell down. He tried to stop his fall by holding on to a table but cause the table to fall as well. The noise cause the zombies to turn.
"PLAN B!" He scream.
John grab his luggage and run away. Mike shoots the zombies non-stop. Ray joined in a little later. They got to the centre of the airport, it have a big garden where the three floors are visible.
Big mistake.
The zombies all heard it. They have surrounded the group. It's a feast. But there is a miracle.
Pizza! Pizza start dropping everywhere! Each one have an onion topping causing the zombies to explode and kill themselves with the blast. Ray looks up and found his manager doing the miracle.
He take a banner and swing from the third floor down to the first like Tarzan.
"Ronald! You came back!" Mike cheer.
"Yeah, the story needs a cliche and you're not suppose to die." He cheer back.
John surf through his luggage and found his lucky pencil. He starts writing.
"And the zombies all died. The-" Mike sneezed. John knew what this mean. He look around, and sees a cat, the black one from the very beginning.
It hiss at him and pounce. John was expecting to be scratched, to be one of them, but nothing hurt. He open his eyes to a gunshot.
Ronald saved him, but he's scratched.
"No." The words slip out of John's lips. He quickly wrote 'The end' and watch all the corpses of the zombies turning into dust and ink. The cat too.
He's hoping that it cured Ronald but it didn't. He now knows that it's too late.
"Sorry." It was his final words. He doesn't want to be one of them so he shot himself in the head.
The Aftermath
John, Ray and Mike all stand beside Ronald's grave. Ray shed a tear while Mike blows his nose.
John placed a pizza with onions as topping on the soft grass upon his grave.
"He was a good man." John speaks.
"Yeah." Ray continues.
"And he also broke the fourth wall." Mike blows his nose some more.
"Let's get pizza. It's on me." John ended the conversation.
They all left, but what they didn't know is that Ronald is not dead.
He is undead.