by switters - January 4, 2008
What do you get when you take a bunch of do-gooding animal rights activists who, knowing full well the chimps they're about to free from an animal testing facility are infected with a strange and dangerous virus, go ahead and free them anyway?
You get blood-spewing zombies who pummel and bite everyone to death, the pummeled become fellow pummelers and spewers (and biters), and The British Isles turns into nothing but an island of pummeling spewers who bite anyone and anything in their path until they run out of food. Like Detroit, but without all the snow.
That's what happened 28 Days Later when humans were exposed to the Rage Virus. What happens 28 Weeks Later is a little more complicated, but much more bone-crushingly stupid.
NATO (i.e., America) sends in a military force to destroy any of the surviving infected, clean the place up a bit, rebuild a couple high rises, and slowly begin to repopulate a section of London, a Green Zone, if you will.
One of the uninfected survivors had to bail on his wife at the last minute and made it to safety. She's presumably dead, but, luckily, their 2 kids were away on a school trip on the Continent so they missed all the spewing and biting and pummeling. They're reunited and dad breaks the bad news about mom. The younger child worries he'll forget what mom looked like, which is when his older sister gets the brilliant idea of sneaking out of the Green Zone and heading back to their old house - a house which is not only not in the Green Zone, but is, additionally, in a section of town that's not been "cleaned up".
From the moment they got off the plane everyone being relocated was told, in no uncertain terms, that they were not, under any circumstances, to leave the Green Zone ever, no matter what, because it wasn't safe anywhere but the Green Zone. This is the military talking. Don't leave the Green Zone. Stay in the Green Zone. Like the Diplomatic Corps, but without all the diplomacy.
But no. Junior needs his polaroid, and dammit if his completely retarded-idea-having sis isn't going to get it for him. So they sneak out of the only safe place in the area and head for their old digs.
It may just be me, but if I were sneaking out of the only safe place in a 500 mile radius filled with infected rotting corpses and rabid dogs and rats, I'd probably try to get in and out as fast as I could, you know, a "smash and grab" job, as opposed to, say, lollygagging around reminiscing about the old days for a bit and looking longingly at broken dinner dishes and baby pictures.
Not these kids. They want to soak it all in. I love these sorts of characters. They're the same ones who choose the flashlight over the flame thrower when being chased by a knife-wielding carnival geek wearing a hockey mask.
Well, they get more than a picture. Because there's mom right over there in the guest bedroom, not looking all that good.
What probably amounts to a Navy SEAL team retrieves all 3 of them and they head back to the Green Zone. Mom's hosed down and her blood tests reveal that, while she's not infected, she is a carrier. But before the head general's command that she be destroyed immediately for fear of another plague can be carried out, dad sneaks in to apologize and give her a "hello again" kiss, mom bites dad, and, that's right, a whole new epidemic breaks out. (See, mom was a bit put out by the circumstances of dad's leaving her. Abandonment issues, I would think.)
Dad infects a few here and there, and just like that, the entire Green Zone is in chaos, and the soldiers are ordered to shoot anyone they see, infected or not. Like Blackwater, but without all the sand.
When that doesn't work, an air strike is called in to firebomb everything they've rebuilt and everyone they've relocated. Like the Israeli Air Force and Palestine, but without all the anti-semitism and due cause.
And before you can spew and pummel and bite everything in your path to death, the last scene of the movie shows spewing and vomiting and pummeling zombies headed straight for the Eiffel Tower. I smell a sequel: 28 Months Later, in which Eurasia is nothing but a giant continent populated by spewing/pummeling/biting zombies with bad attitudes. (Like an Indigo Girls Tour, but without all the mullets.)
So the moral of the story is? If you're going to keep a patient you're eventually going to destroy in containment who's a carrier of a virus that turns people into blood spewing, pummeling and biting zombies, you might want to put a couple of guards in there with her just to be on the safe side. Just spitballing here.
switters also blogs at The Outer Sanctum. He lives somewhere that he insists on calling "The 'Ham" and claims to be gainfully employed.