Well, let’s be honest, this was a long time coming.
<br />
When I woke up this morning, I didn’t really think that I was going to make it through to the end of the day. I’d had it too good for too long. I’d made it through the first two days with a bit of luck and a fair bit of help from more experienced players, but now things were getting a bit too easy. I haven’t even been feeling afraid when I walk to class.<br />
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So of course, tonight’s mission was going to be the most challenging so far. As soon as I read the description, I was filled with dread. It was an escort mission.<br />
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Anyone who’s ever played pretty much any RPG or FPS game probably knows my dread. Babysitting someone from Point A to Point B while being faced by an onslaught of enemies is troublesome enough in games; dealing with them in real life is another matter altogether.<br />
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My main plan was just waiting a few minutes so that some other survivors would at least be in the area by the time I reached one of the pickup points. The event started at 7:30 p.m., I went to DC at 7:50 p.m. Unfortunately, things weren’t going as planned. The only players I saw on the first floor were a couple of zombies, but they were too busy protecting the escort area to chase after me.<br />
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Realizing I’d have to approach this like a stealth mission, I snuck up to the second floor of DC to at least get a sense of the distribution of the zombies ­– there was no way I was only dealing with one or two. As I walked through the empty hallway on the second floor, I realized for the first time just how vulnerable I was. This was the first time I was taking on a mission entirely by myself. At any moment, if a zombie were to jump out from one of the doors I was passing, it’d be all over.
Fortunately, I managed to get up to the hallway looking out on the main floor of DC without incident. Unfortunately, everything went to shit almost immediately afterwards.<br />
<br />
As I was scouting out the second floor, I ran into another lone wolf, carrying around a massive Nerf minigun and a look of exasperation that told me he definitely had a better idea of the situation than I did.<br />
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He gave me a rundown of the situation – there were more survivors in the building, but they were tied down in the washroom by a wraith (sock whip-wielding zombie) and a tank (a zombie immune to Nerf darts). On top of that, there were so many zombies in the area that even reaching them to help was not going to be easy. As we started thinking about what our next move was, a zombie came in and started to take the escort out of the building. My partner fired off a few desperate shots, but missed. And immediately after, three more zombies walked into the building and noticed us.<br />
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We had lost the element of surprise and we were <em>vastly</em> outnumbered. Five zombies cornered us in the middle of the hall, leaving us with no way off of the floor, let alone out of the building. I resigned myself to the fact that it was over.<br />
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We lashed out in semi-impotent rage. My partner managed to kill one zombie, but as we were backing up, we got blind-sided by a zombie who rushed through a side door and lunged at our feet, tagging us both in a pretty cool but kinda reckless roll. Before I had time to even register, I had become a zombie.
The transition was kind of fun. We were immediately hugged by the zombies who had given us trouble not seconds before, consoling us and welcoming us into their community. We gave up our player codes and joined the zombie Facebook group; we took our bands off our arms and around our necks; we picked up our fallen Nerf darts, realizing a part of our lives was over.
Tomorrow, I begin my new life as a zombie. I still have friends on the other side, and it will be hard to turn on them, to no longer see this campus through the same eyes as them. But this was the only way this could ever end. The zombies are coming, and I intend to be standing right by their sides.
