So the time has come again for my residential college to play Humans vs. Zombies - it's like a huge game of tag that also simulates post-apocalyptic survival/hunting. :-) (see www.humansvszombies.org for more info).
I've decided not to play this time round because I have way too much going on to be constantly afraid of leaving my room and always watching over my shoulder. I also am unable to not take the game seriously. I saw my friend fend off two zombies last night, and my heart rate was up. I'm more concerned for his in-game survival than he is! Which is why it's probably healthier that I'm not playing.
The interesting thing about playing this game is that it taught me about myself. I've been musing over it a lot, and it's sparked a short story idea that I've been working on fleshing out a little. While human, I snuck around a lot, using the fact that as an engineer, all my classes take place in a small cluster of buildings to my advantage. I only had one real run-in with a zombie. Two of my friends and I were attacked outside of the dining hall near our dorms - all three of us managed to tag the zombie behind the door, but there were still two more and a fourth jumped out of the doors that we had just come out of to surprise us.
I found out in that moment that I am not the hero. I don't really know if I have it in me. I have good survival instincts - my first thought was that I wanted the brick wall to my back to cover my blind spots. But did I tell that to my friend, who we nearly lost to the zombie who leapt from the door, a deception I had anticipated in moving away from it? No. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me to run, which is what the other of my friends did. I thought enough to cover her escape up the stairs, at which point the OZ himself came after me.
Now this guy is really tall and lanky, and luckily I had the presence of mind to remember as I gained the high ground, "Oh, crap, he lunges for the ankles!" and I managed to hit him in the head as he reached up the steps in his signature battle move.
And so we return to my inability to separate real life from a game. I was in this moment entirely caught up by the premise of the game - that we were a small band of humans being beset by a band of (intelligent) zombies on our way back to safety. My heart was racing, my muscles were tensed, adrenaline was coursing through my blood. An extreme reaction, but it was exciting.
Everyone wants to believe that they would be the hero, the rallying point, the main character in the movie. I do consider myself a good leader, and did somewhat believe that that would extend to the "battlefield." But I learned that it didn't - I froze instead. I couldn't think of others (except, oddly, to cover one person's escape), but I could react well in the course of battle and was constantly aware of where each known opponent was.
Then a few days later, in a momentary lapse of concentration, I was tagged. An hour later, I switched my armband to around my neck, discarded my sword, and took up the role of predator. And took to it entirely too well. This happened late in the game, and between the lack of humans willing to leave their rooms and the number of things I had to do, I didn't get much hunting in, but I did aid in the "band practice massacre" so that no human left alive. There was the other thing I learned - in the situation where I was the predator, where I had no real risk except of starving if I didn't feed, I took to the hunt too well, even immediately turning on my friends.
Again with the reality separation issues: I felt that hunger when I watched my heavily-armed human friends leave a safe zone. My muscles coiled in an insane desire to chase them down, even knowing that I would fail alone, particularly because they were expecting a pursuit.
According to my friends, I'm the evolutionary reason why humans survived: a sense of self-preservation rather than heroism tends to keep you alive. I'll take it. And hey, since I had so much fun as the undead, maybe that's not too bad either. I think it's more fun to play as a zombie, since you have no restriction other than starving and I do enjoy the hunt. But I get more of a sense of accomplishment from surviving each day as a human - every time I got in my door for the night and breathed a sigh of relief, I smiled because I had made it another day.
It's a fun game that I recommend to everyone! I hope to play when it comes up again in the fall. Perhaps if I train in battle more before then I'll react better when it comes. And maybe I'll just be a survivalist. But either way, I'll enjoy the game. :-)
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