Victorian Undead - Part 1+2

[espanolbot]

Aka, Sherlock Holmes versus ZOMBIES!

This being a Sherlock Holmes story, it may be a struggle to say what's going on while keeping under the page-count, but bear with me, even the more... odd parts of the story actually pay off later on.

The story begins in London in 1854, where following a mysterious meteorite disintegrating over a part of London people start dying of a mysterious disease. Dr Snow and the Reverend Whitehead (real people, FYI) have a suspicion as to what might have caused it... though the actual cause isn't what goes on the official record of events...



Skip forward to 1899, where a dapper gentleman attempts to hypnotise an aristocrat via a clearfully-designed chandelier so he can steal any incriminating documents he might have on him. The aristocrat's servant turns out to be Sherlock Holmes however, who, being Holmes, figured that something that would happen and prehypnotised the aristocrat (actually Watson) to come to his sense when he says a specific trigger word.

The well dressed man, enraged upon recognising Holmes, attempts strangling him to death with inhuman strength, leading to Watson unloading a gun into him. This reveals the man to actually be a kind of primitive robot, controlled and powered by copperwiring threaded into the carpet.

With the case, involving an MP having some important papers going missing after going to the "gentleman's establishment", solved (itself a reference to a canon Holmes story, but actually relevant to the overall plot), our heroes return home to Baker Street.


Holmes mentions that the quality of the workmanship should narrow down their search considerably, but the robotic thief has to wait, as their landlady Mrs. Hudson arrives with a message calling them to Scotland Yard...





The next issue, Holmes and Watson decide to go and look at the crime scene anyway... because they're Holmes and Watson, they can do whatever they damn well like. Once they get there, they find that the zombie that attacked the two workmen (leading to one beating the other to death after he turned, only to have been infected himself) had burrowed up from a submerged street.

Yes, London, like many ancient cities, is primarily built on the ruins of its predecessors. Holmes and Watson wander about admiring a mostly complete Elizabethan house, only to stumble across a pile of corpses and chewed human bones. Some of which look a lot more recent than the setting suggests.

Naturally some of the more intact corpses get up and start shambling after the pair, who end up stranded on a pillar, fighting the advancing zombies while the light slowly fades...






Meanwhile, sinister forces are afoot in Whitechapel... because that's the only place where this kind of stuff happens in Victorian London, apparently.


ZoMoriarty! ...No, he's not actually called that in the story, but still.

To Be Continued!

Comments

[icon_uk]

Well, if you're going to do a Sherlock Holmes and the Shamlbing Undead story, this IS the way to do it (the android subplot seemed a little out of place though, we're doing zombie horror here, leave the scientific romance for another story)

[espanolbot]

The remote controlled robot subplot will be explained later. :)

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

It does seem like a lot of work just to steal some documents. If you have enough access to a house to replace the carpeting and chandelier, why not just take the documents then, and if you have enough money to do such an elaborate plan, why not just bribe or blackmail your way out of trouble?

[althechi]

I like this!

(Imagine my icon is saying the polar opposite.)

[icon_uk]

Given how little Sir Arthur cared about Sherlock Holmes, I imagine he would have little problem with most things involving him. Remember the famed exchange between Conan-Doyle and actor William Gillette when Gillette wanted to amend the plot of a stage play featuring himself as Holmes. He sent a telegram to Cona-Doyle

"Do you mind if I marry Holmes?"

And got the reply

“Marry him, murder him, do anything you like to him."

[lissa_quon]

Oddly enough he seemed to mind when Sherlock was used in an Arsene Lupin story. Which is how Lupin ended up butting heads with Herlock Sholmes and his partner Wilson.

[espanolbot]

Which is kind of amusing, considering Doyle's brother in law created Raffles.

[althechi]

He gave permission for August Dereleth to make money off his own Holmes pastiches, as long as he changed the lead character's name. So yeah, he was a pretty chill guy when it came to his pet character.

(I just so happened to have that ACD icon, in response to a crappily written murder mystery...)

[his_spiffynesss]

Hmm, I think I have an old comic from the 80's that features Holmes and Watson dealing with Martians and Jack teh Ripper I may have to post it if I can dig it out.

[damar148]

This is really one of my favourite independant comics and as said, the way to do Sherlock Holmes vs Zombies.

Also those grenade launchers the goverment soldiers use? Those were actually made and used in combat, if rarely.

[tugrul]

"By the middle of the 19th century, Soho (a neighborhood in London) had become an insanitary place of cowsheds, animal droppings, slaughterhouses, grease-boiling dens and primitive, decaying sewers. And underneath the floorboards of the overcrowded cellars lurked something even worse-- a fetid sea of cesspits as old as the houses, and many of which had never been drained. It was only a matter of time before this hidden festering time-bomb exploded. It finally did so in the summer of 1854."

"When a wave of Asiatic cholera first hit England in late 1831, it was thought to be spread by "miasma in the atmosphere." By the time of the Soho outbreak 23 years later, medical knowledge about the disease had barely changed, though one man, Dr John Snow, a surgeon and pioneer of the science of epidemiology, had recently published a report speculating that it was spread by contaminated water -- an idea with which neither the authorities nor the rest of the medical profession had much truck."

-- Excerpt by Judith Summers in her history of the Soho neighborhood of London.

Dr. Snow was actually an anesthesiologist. He had his own account on the cholera outbreak, which you can find online, but the text that inspired the comic is lent from Judith Summers.

[espanolbot]

Snow being an anethesiologist is brought up in the next section. :)