Short Story: 1994 Zone Rouge Incident

The following was extracted from a body building forum site before its shutdown in 2005

In the year 1994, students from San Jose State University went on a summer vacation within Northern France. After a lengthy period of no calls nor arriving to their expected departure from France, authorities were dispatched to search for the missing students. Witnesses reported that the students were on a hiking trip of sorts near what was designated as “Zone Rouge”, a chain of areas that were isolated by the French Government after the First World War due to toxic chemicals and possibly undetonated artillery shells. Within weeks, things finally came to a head when one student was found aimlessly walking on a pathway by a farmer. It was reported that the student was in a poor state of mind alongside obvious physical malnourishment and was quickly taken to a hospital for emergency care. On the day after, local police attempted to question the student involving the whereabouts of the other students. This only led to the student entering a near traumatic state and began to mumble to himself for several hours before calming down. One nurse suggested that he can draw where they were last seen to which the authorities, without any other available option, obliged. Upon request, the student began to sketch some sort of pillbox fortification that did not match any French nor German Occupation schematics which was transmitted to higher authorities to get a grasp on the situation. Within ten hours, individuals from the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police arrived at the hospital, confiscated the sketch, and ordered the student to be returned to the United States. All further information was written off as a cold case and that the student was obviously mentally troubled from a potential murder scene. Below is a recreation of what the student sketched to the authorities, according to those who witnessed the drawing.