Attacked by a Zombie Baby (Story)
This week I have been attacked by a story about a zombie baby. After spending too much time thinking about what was wrong with some contemporary zombie stories I ended up writing a bit of one to get it out of my head.
Zombie Baby
Patient zero in my story is a zombie baby. I had an interesting Twitter conversation with some doctors about how an Accident and Emergency might approach it. On the face of it we have a baby that is alive, it reacts to sight and sound and tries to grab people and bite them. So it’s alive. However, no discernible pulse or respiration.
Here are just some of the tweets
Oh, OK. Triage nurse will check heart rate, breathing rate, temperature. If fever, will give calpol.
— Richard Hansen (@PaedsRH) May 18, 2016
no pulse or resp?! Into Resus before you e blinked! Biting-everyone will look relieved-'sign of life'
— Malcolm McKenzie (@fourhourtarget) May 18, 2016
so sequence of events – nurse notes agitated child & anxious parents.
Brings child into cubicle— Damian Roland (@Damian_Roland) May 18, 2016
ignores not breathing as not possible & tries to put on sats probe to measure O2 levels + heart rate
— Damian Roland (@Damian_Roland) May 18, 2016
calls for help as child agitated to get blood glucose & second nurse says:
That babies not breathing— Damian Roland (@Damian_Roland) May 18, 2016
w/o a pulse but behaving alive I can't see child going anywhere but itu with full monitoring
— Malcolm McKenzie (@fourhourtarget) May 19, 2016
true. But only once recognised for what it was….and there'd be some reluctance to use the z-word 😉
— Malcolm McKenzie (@fourhourtarget) May 19, 2016
There would be roughly 15 minutes of more and more checking on diff machines 1/2
— Dr Aidan Baron (@Aidan_Baron) May 19, 2016
2/2 to try and get a normal set of vital signs before someone suggests the Z word
— Dr Aidan Baron (@Aidan_Baron) May 19, 2016
At which point there would be much scornful looks and scoffing but also hesitancy
— Dr Aidan Baron (@Aidan_Baron) May 19, 2016
Safeguarding referral 🙂
— Mary Ryan (@mrpaeds) May 19, 2016
# call public health 🙂
— 🇺🇦 Vickie Wells (@vickie_wells) May 19, 2016
I’ve been writing my zombie baby story in the wattpad app because I can do it standing up on the train. There’s not a lot, but I’ve outlined more of the story in unpublished sections. As I write more of the first draft I’ll post it up. The story is provisionally titled ‘Z List‘ but I might rename it Zombie Baby because the hashtag caught on!
My core premise is that it takes more than a few minutes for people to succumb to infection. In fact I’m sort of assuming that it would be a couple of hours before early symptoms show, and probably 6-24 hours before the person becomes a full-blown zombie. As I see it the infection needs to overcome the immune system and then make changes to the metabolism and brain function.
The zombie baby is spawned from a contaminated chinese herbal remedy. This allows me to work in a load more patient zero outbreaks until the source is traced. Also, the police and civil contingencies responses will be reasonably effective (although they might need extra help in places).
Related articles
Leave a comment