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I secure my Nerf guns in their duct tape and cardboard holsters. Loaded and ready. As I’m tying a segment of yellow caution tape around my head, I mentally prepare myself for battle against the living dead that can be found around campus — at least for this week. It’s time for some Humans vs. Zombies.
It’s my first morning with my new guns. I watch my back at every opportunity in fear of ambush. I walk for 10 minutes. No zombies in sight. I make the mistake of relaxing, and a blur of red dashes beside me. I fire my gun in vain, missing the target. I have been turned.
April 5 marked the beginning of HvZ. The game is hosted every semester by the Alpha Delta fraternity as a fundraiser for the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Bangor. Every student who participated was encouraged to make donations. With every dollar donated, the food bank is able to buy $12 worth of food at Hannaford.
According to the game’s Web site, umaine.hvzsource.com, this April’s HvZ game involved 191 players. HvZ is ultimately a giant game of tag. Humans are characterized by yellow caution tape around their arms or heads, zombies by red.
The game starts with two zombies while the rest of the players are human. The goal of the zombies is to tag the humans in order to turn them to zombies and continue feeding. If a zombie doesn’t get a “kill” by tagging a human within 48 hours, the zombie will “starve out” and be eliminated from the game.
Humans are the people seen on campus with large Nerf guns and ragged, oversized gym socks. These weapons serve a vital purpose in the game of HvZ as they are the humans’ only form of defense. The humans defend themselves from the unrelenting advances of the undead by stunning zombies with Nerf guns or hitting them with their sock “flails.” If hit with either, zombies are stunned and cannot attack humans for 15 minutes.
Different humans have different methods of staying alive. Some find safety in numbers and prefer to travel in groups while others, such as Nick Rucker, a third-year new media student, prefer to travel alone.
“When I need to get something done I can usually find one or two people to work with, but for the most part I like to travel alone,” Rucker said. “It’s easier just to keep your sock flails and guns down so people won’t notice you.”
This proved to be effective for Rucker as he survived as a human through Saturday afternoon.
Killer instincts run through my veins as I walk to class on Tuesday afternoon. My eyes have never been so keen for the color yellow. I lurk quietly down Long Road, and see a batch of humans – as paranoid as ever – making their way toward Gannett Hall. I cross the street suspiciously several times, but they don’t catch on.
I narrow in, adrenaline pumping. I keep gaining on them. I’m twenty feet behind them. Ten. I run after flesh and my identity becomes exposed. I am bombarded with Nerf darts and thrashed with sock wads.
I need a new ambush plan.
As far as humans having different techniques to survive, zombies had different techniques in order to get the most kills. Some plan ambushes and jump from behind bushes or walls, while others are subtler and take a quieter approach to achieve their kills.
Time for attempt No. 2. I feel I have learned from my previous failures. As I walk past the Union, I see another batch of humans on my left. They are walking towards me — guns cocked and wanting to fire, sock weapons ready for wielding. I experience a rush of excitement, but need to keep my cool.
I continue inching toward them, not offering them the satisfaction of a glance. As soon as we’re side-by-side… Wham! I nail one of the three humans with a quick tap. The deed is done. Human flesh turned zombie corpse.
The ambush technique works, but many zombies had it easy when Lindsey Miller, a second-year environmental science student, provided information to the zombies in order to help with their kills.
“My role in the game was communication,” Miller said. “I got the numbers of a bunch of zombies and mass-texted them with human locations and mission times. In this way, I supplied others with kills.”
Toward the end of the week, living souls become a rare sight. I had already starved due to lack of gorging. I was walking down Long Road once again and saw a living human casually standing next to two zombies. I immediately approached her wondering how one of the last humans could look so relaxed while standing next to two active zombies.
As I began asking her questions about the game and how it felt to still be human, a horde of six carnage-seeking zombies charged viciously and surrounded her. As she attempted to fight them off with her wild sock flailing and dart shots of fury, the zombies swarmed around her.
Although she was able to stun one zombie with a Nerf dart, I witnessed one of the last standing humans, third-year electrical engineering student Jamie Reinhold, die at the hands of a ruthless zombie — third-year political science student Frank Kessler.
Although there is constant hostility between the students due to the predator vs. prey nature of the game, HvZ is also a way to bring students together.
“It’s just a bunch of kids having fun and making friends,” Reinhold said — even after being turned by the bite of the insatiable animated corpse.
Throughout the game there were several missions. Kyle Lavesseur, an Alpha Delta brother and HvZ moderator, believed many people enjoyed this year’s story line.
This game had three missions with separate plots. In the final mission on Monday, all of the remaing humans were told to gather at the stage in the Hilltop parking lot and survive by fighting off all active zombies. The game ended with the zombies killing off the rest of the humans and winning altogether.
But, happily, students were turned for a great cause: feeding less fortunate families. So far this year, $300 has been raised, and Alpha Delta is expecting one more major donor to contribute to the cause.
