Living the Zombpocalypse
By Aaron Yeager, Staff Writer
November 16, 2007 | 6 a.m.
Every morning on the week before Halloween, I donned a bandanna before leaving my dorm and prayed not to die on the way to class.
Of course, for those not in the know, the term "die" is a bit vague in this case -- more accurately, I was afraid of being "zombified."
Humanity
Midnight on October 23, marked the start of Humans vs. Zombies. This game is essentially a more militaristic campus-wide version of tag, played at Ohio university at all hours. I started on the second day, participating in the game's first event -- an escort mission -- as a human.
Around 11:50 p.m., West Green was swarming. People bedecked with comically oversized yellow and red plastic guns crossed Richland Avenue in brigades, bantering merrily and hot with anticipation.
"Are you a zombie?" one human asked a lone unarmed man standing atop a divider. "What do you think?" the man replied. As if possessed, two or three humans reached for their holsters and made quick work of the ambivalent spectator. It was only the beginning.
The humans could have literally passed for a small army, spanning the whole of Richland bridge. We were supposed to escort a scientist (of which there were actually three, with the real one incognito) on an epic, hour-long trek to Morton Hill. This basically amounted to us running like a hell-bent mob from everything that resembled a zombie.
As we flooded Court Street, confused belligerents tried to incite mass agitation by yelling "I love Bush" out a window. Amused, the troop continued determinedly toward its destination.
Morton Hill was a massacre. Zombies rushed at human firing squads with murderous aplomb. Instead of fleeing, I tried to hold my position, shooting one of my friends in the forehead before being cornered and divested of both my bandanna and "life."
Descent
From then on, things changed. As the Zombie Queen herself attested, “Life (un-life?) on the other side ain't easy.”
"I can't go to Gam[ertsfelder] anymore. Every bottle of Tide looks like a gun," the Queen, Lisa Gumerman, said.
Gumerman couldn't even walk to Donkey to talk to me without being "deactivated" (zombies are already "dead," so when they are shot, they are simply unable to "kill" for a preset period of time).
I was "deactivated" twice during the day, one of those times being at Shively, where after-dinner massacres became routine.
At night, however, we became the predators, coordinating kamikaze attacks on timid, holed-up humans. Of course, as I sorely learned, there were exceptions. On my first night as a zombie, some rogue humans chased me into the parking garage beneath Read, where I panicked, expecting imminent death. In desperation, I found a single, small exit, heaved myself up a flight of stairs, and vaulted across the street, dodging blanks from another befuddled human along the way before plunging into some bushes.
A former human I spoke with, Scott Creamer, had a similar brush with death. Cornered and out of ammo, Creamer let zombies circle him before jumping out and firing blanks, causing the zombies to duck and giving him just enough time to escape.
Such situations, reminiscent of Lord of the Flies or The Most Dangerous Game, make Humans vs. Zombies more than a friendly competition--it's also partly an exercise in the primeval.
"The people who treat this as life and death, they give us the most problems," Gumerman said. "I'm hardcore, but I realize it's a game."
During the next few nights, as pickings grew slimmer and slimmer, impatience and blood lust rose among the zombie "horde." Zombie Martha Archer decried how many would shout over Gumerman to say what the group should do next. Conflicts also erupted on Facebook, where humans complained of mounting foul play, such as zombies lunging at humans while "inactive."
Despite all this to-do, however, the final night of Humans vs. Zombies progressed quietly. Confined to College Green, humans took to trees and obscure crevices in order to evade their adversaries.
In chalky makeup, equipped with two flags, a marching drummer and a trumpeter, the zombies were a force to be reckoned with. While there were no grand battles, the ones that sprung up provided some entertainment. The only major one I witnessed was halted by the police, since it took place in an area where zombies would have had to "crowd surf" to attack properly.
Exhausted and partially discouraged, I headed home before the end of the final night. While the game hadn't been as action-packed as I had hoped, I took pride in the fact that I survived to see the end, even though I was already "dead."
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