By Evangeline Lacroix
“Go ahead as bait!”
“RUN RUN RUN!”
“THEY’RE COMING!”
Kids pushed through the undergrowth for safety. They jumped fences, ran along the river past the stoners, and fanned out between the trees. Everyone who was not affected longed for the safety of the trees. It was safer than the open field, they could be hidden. A better chance to aim and fire.
They stayed in packs, all wielding the weapons of their choice. Some held different Nerf Gun models cocked and loaded, others with a hand full of marshmallows. Everyone was ready for battle.
It was like a scene out of The Walking Dead, or a good zombie movie. On Friday Sept. 27th, students of all grades came together to participate in the first Humans vs. Zombies game of the school year.
Hosted by Club USA , Humans vs. Zombies, or HvZ for short, started as a way for students to have fun. One of the original members of Club USA (Who now is in college) started the game as a way for members to interact with each other.
This year, Stage Krew helped to sponsor the first event.
“They were interested in having one. They didn’t know any of the rules and they did not know how to organize so I came in and became moderator for the event,” said Joel Pagan, Div. 473, and current president of Club USA.
Pagan is a self taught player.
“I have never had an official Humans vs. Zombie’s rule book given to me. All the rules have been an oral tradition. The rounds were ones I have seen in the past except for the last round I made up,” Pagan said.
But, the game did not come out of the mind of Club USA. It originated at Goucher College in 2005. The official HvZ website reports that HvZ is played at over 650 colleges and universities across the world as well as high schools, military bases, summer camps, and public libraries.
This game had more participants than the games of last year. The amount of people made for interesting game play for veterans.
“More people made it more intense, there was a lot more commotion,” said Nushrat Jahan, Div. 465. “It is a game of survival, when you have more people, your chances of surviving are better.”
This game was composed of five missions, each lasting about 45 minutes. After all the missions have been completed the game is over. Friday’s game lasted about three hours. Each participant was in a group of five or six members that they stayed with throughout the game.
The first mission was a simple survival game with no weapons. Teams run into the woods, and wait for the first zombie to activate.
“No one knows who it is because [the zombie] does not have to identify his or her self until a certain time while you are out hiding, hoping one of your teammates is not the zombie. Then he will start tagging and infecting people,” Pagan said.
Once a player is a zombie, they stay that way. The ultimate goal of the game is for the human race to survive all the missions.
During the second mission, power ups are introduced. These are small advantages given to the winning side after a round.
The third mission is a search and destroy mission. Two things are hidden and it is the job of both humans and zombies to find the items before the other.
“It is funny because you have zombies and humans side by side looking for something and they will be like ‘well are you a…’ and then they will start to tag each other,” Pagan said.
Because the humans won the first three missions, it became imperative to Pagan to give the zombies a fighting chance.
“I cut out the team captain mission,” Pagan said.
“It would not have worked, the zombies were unorganized. So I skipped it and went into the escort mission. The escort mission is my favorite mission because if there any humans, there will not be [any humans by the end]. The first time I played HvZ, there was no final mission. No one made it past. The zombies won. I was a zombie, we made sure no one was left. We infected literally everyone.”
In this mission, all humans have to protect a group of (in this case) journalists. These people try to ask everyone questions, humans and zombies. The reporters snoop every detail, making it difficult for the humans survive zombie attacks and keep the journalists alive at the same time.
The final mission is simple. Just stay alive for as long as you can. If a team comes back to base camp alive they win.
“There were so many zombies,” Samantha Burkhardt, Div. 651 said. “Everyone was shooting everything, and then you would turn into a zombie and you had to jump to get the next [human].”
In the end a whole team won the event. The team attribute the win to luck and their evasive nature.
“We are all very good at finding ways out of sticky situations,” Jahan said. “When we had zombies coming at us, we crawled near trees and such trying to get away. We were really good at getting away without causing a ruckus.”
For future players, there are several things to keep in mind before playing.
“Have a pre team going in or else you will be put into a team, and you don’t know the skill level of those people,” Burkheart said.
Another important thing to remember is to come prepared for war. If a player is going to be in the thick of things, it is important that weapons that will allow then to survive.
