Monday, April 11, 2011

Northampton SF Group

The Northampton Science Fiction Group's blog can be found here:

http://northamptonsfwritersgroup.blogspot.com/

The Walking Dead: yet more zombies

Cops A and B, sitting in their squad car, are discussing electric light switches -- which seems to be as relevant to the programme as a discussion on burgerjoints in Paris. Then A owns up to his marriage being in difficulty. There, that's the characters set up.

Immediately after, they rush off, sirens blaring, to apprehend some criminals and in the ensuing chaos cop A is shot and wounded and rushed off to hospital.

When he regains consciousness the flowers beside him are dead. He falls from his bed, ripping out IV feeds, and staggers into the deserted corridor -- where he sees a half-eaten corpse (human, of course), lots of debris and blood, and a locked room housing The Dead. Outside, shrouded corpses fill the car park. Through all this and along streets empty of life he heads for his home, wife and child.

A nod and a wink to the start of Day of the Triffids?

It turns out that he's been in hospital for about a month. Even if his nurses had left him just days ago, how come he's not covered in his own urine and faeces? The site of the IV drips would likely become infected. His muscles would be wasted (yes, I know he does stagger around a bit, but that's just for the first day or so).

Soon he is feeling better (thanks to another living person and his son), and armed (from the cop station's armoury). He heads off searching for his family -- who are most certainly still alive. To cut the story short, he rides a horse into a city and suddenly is surrounded by an army of the dead. Fortunately (?) he finds refuge in a tank -- but the poor old nag gets eaten.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the woods, a group of survivors have made camp. And guess what: there are his wife and son. And cop B who has the hots for her.

This is the start of the TV series. Pur-lease! Zombies are mindless creatures; they get bitten, come back and bite the next living thing. Ad infinitum. Some thrilling modus operandi?

Finally point for now: if a single scratch from a zombie can infect the living (suggesting a microbial explanation to the disease) how come one can shoot a zombie in the head and get splattered with their (infected) blood -- with all those microscopic droplets of blood flying through the air -- and be perfectly fine?