Zombies Take Verona: A Romeo & Juliet Alternate Ending
"Come, go, good Juliet; I dare no longer stay." Friar Laurence called into the tomb. As he turned to leave, a small vial fell out of his robe pocket. The little glass bottle bounced once on the grass, then rolled into the tomb, smashing on the floor near Juliet with a tinkle of broken glass. Juliet, busy killing herself, didn't notice the purple liquid seeping along the floor around the bodies of Paris and Romeo. Soon she too was dead, and the mysterious liquid appeared to have been soaked up by the three dead folks.
The watch arrived, and so did just about everyone else. Friar Laurence had evaded captivity, and was currently making his way toward the outskirts of the city. As he trudged through Verona's back alleys, the Friar pulled up his hood and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets, in hopes of blending with the riff-raff. He was just heading out of the city gates when a thought crossed his mind. He reached out the fingers of his left hand inside the pocket, feeling around for something. Not finding it, his mind raced, making the connection between the tomb side tinkling noise and his empty pocket. The Friar's eyes grew wide and he whispered "Holy St. Francis." With one last indecisive look over his shoulder, Friar Laurence turned and ran; bolting away from Verona like his life depended on it.
Back at the Capulet vault, everyone was confused. Without the Friar there to explain what had happened, everyone was forming their own theories about the three deaths, and everyone was convinced that his or her theory was absolutely right. Many of the townspeople seemed about to come to blows, including the Lords Montague and Capulet, both of whom had taken boxing stances and were being cheered on by a growing chant of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" Everything was going to chaos.
Then, from the vault came a groan. Nobody heard it at first. The groan got louder. A page, standing off to the side, turned to look in the direction of the sound. And when he did, he let out a blood-curdling scream that caused everyone to freeze.
The County Paris was climbing out of the vault. His skin was a greenish-grey color, and he moved with the lurching gait of the undead. His mouth hung open in a slack-jawed gape, and his eyes were rolled back in his head. "Brains…" Correction; this was not the County Paris. This was his undead zombie.
At the sound of the page's scream, everyone froze. However, when they spotted the zombie, Lord Capulet fainted clean away. And then everyone unfroze. Screaming, panic, terror, utter pandemonium swept though the crowd like wildfire. People were trampled as everyone tried to get away from the horrifying undead corpse as fast as possible. Then the other two zombies crawled over the edge of the vault.
On a hill outside Verona, twenty minutes later, the screams from the city reached the ears of the fleeing Friar. He turned to look back at his town. People could be seen running about, and zombies could be seen lurching after them. The zombie infection had spread, meaning there were more than three of the undead terrorizing the city now. The Friar felt terrible. He should have just left his experimental potion for curing death at home. It had been foolish to think he might have used it in case something went wrong and Romeo or Juliet actually died. And now he had started a zombie apocalypse. As a fire sprung up on the far side of town, Friar Laurence muttered "I hope you're happy, you hormonal idiots." With that, he headed toward Mantua. Might as well warn the world it was coming to an end, right?
Within two days, Verona was a city of zombies. In three, they spread to Mantua. Five days after Friar Laurence spilled his potion, the first zombie case was reported in Rome. Within two weeks, almost the entire known world had been taken over by zombies. And they were all ruled by the undead king and queen of the zombies; a young couple from Verona, finally together in undeath.
The End