Omg Zombies!

"I'm in love with a girl who loves me better, fell for the woman just when I met her..."--Gavin DeGraw, In Love with a Girl

First of all, apologies for not posting more often this week. It's been a bit hectic for me, and what time I've had I spent writing (yay! Take that, elvish history!) rather than writing about writing. I hope you can forgive me.

But I also spent a good deal of time this week participating in a campus-wide game called Humans versus Zombies. It's more or less what it sounds like--people sign up to play, one of them is chosen to be a zombie, and when that or any future zombie tags a human the human becomes a zombie. Humans get to defend themselves with nerf guns and balled up socks (which stun the zombies for 15 minutes at a time) and zombies starve if they go 48 hours without "feeding" on a human. The game ends when there are either no humans or zombies left.

My time as a human was embarrassingly short-lived thanks to being friends with the wrong sort of people (darn zombies), so I didn't get the "running, hiding, and fighting for my life" experience I was hoping for, but I did have a great experience as a zombie that I think will work its way into my writing.

I was leaving a classroom building the day after being tagged and spotted a small freshman girl wearing the telltale armband of a human. I saw her, she saw me, and we both froze. She brandished her nerf gun, and I shifted my weight uneasily from foot to foot, judging the distance between us and wondering if I could get her before she got me. I could dodge one shot, maybe...but could my feet make up the gap before she got off a second? I wasn't sure.

Then I looked behind me and noticed two other zombies. No words were necessary. Our eyes met, and when I looked back hers were as big as dinner plates. A split-second later, she turned and ran.

At that point, it was all over, and all National Geographic. Three fairly big, fast, athletic guys chasing after one small, terrified girl. It was like wolves on the trail of a rabbit, and it was a bizarre experience. The funny thing was, if she had stood her ground she still probably could have fought the three of us off--especially if she'd had some socks to throw in addition to her nerf gun (which I learned today that she did).

It was an interesting lesson in that I saw for myself that people under stress don't always make the decisions that will give them the best chance for survival and the consequences of that fact--and I saw it from the perspective of the predator. I knew, the second she turned, that it was over. My villains in the future will have a much better idea of when it's all over themselves.

Moral of the story? Play silly games. You never know what you'll learn...

Muahahaha!