The following is a theatrical retelling of a Humans vs. Zombies event, hosted by UVic Urban Gaming. During these events, the last of the human race fights off the zombie horde with everything NERF at their disposal, accomplishing missions as they try to survive.
Rain pounded against the train windows as we zoomed down the tracks at full speed through the night, shaking and jostling with every bump on the rail. This old piece of junk had definitely seen better days. Leaning my head against the glass, hand firmly on my revolver, I thought about how I should be dead right now.
When things first went to hell, Rene and Jazz came and got me. They gave me a gun and tried to get all three of us out, but we got separated from Jazz by a herd of zeds (zombies). I wanted to go back for her, but Rene pulled me out of there, “We have to go!” he yelled… to think Jazz was his wife, and yet he’s the one who’s kept me going.
We eventually wound up near the town centre in a survivor’s camp, but the zeds were taking over the entire county and we had to get out while we could. But there are too many sick people, old people, and children to move fast enough, and their families won’t leave without them. So here we are in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, riding some strung-together piece of junk train we found back to the main station, trying to be heroes by saving the whole town. I suppose it would be nice to save at least one person.
I looked over to Rene; he was checking all his gun clips for ammo. Practically a one-man-army; makes me feel bad for making fun of his gun collection all these years. There are six of us on this train in total, seven with the engineer who’s keeping it moving. (Funny how you stop bothering to learn people’s names.)
Suddenly the train grinded to a halt, launching all of us in the rail car forward. One of the guys started pounding on the car door at the engineer: “What are you doing?! Gets this thing moving!” Getting back up to my feet, I glanced out the window, and saw the engineer running outside, back the way we came. Overtaken by panic, I slammed open the window and looked outside. There, in the distance, was our destination, up in flames. Already starting to engulf the train was the largest herd of zeds I’d ever seen.
“The town’s all zeds! We need to get out of this rail car!” I shouted.
“What about the train station? We can still make it!” one man shouted.
“No. This thing barely made it up the hill, we’re not plowing through a herd that big, and even if we do, we’ll ram right in to the burning station. And that’s assuming we can get the train moving at all!” I yelled back.
“Quiet!” said Rene, “Everyone grab your guns, and get on the roof.” No one argued. Scrambling on to the roof, the rail car was already shaking from the zeds pushing against the train, trying to claw their way to us. Keeping our balance on the wet roof, we fired blindly into the night at the crowd below, dropping them by the dozen.
It was then that we all heard the thunderous roar: a zed four times the size of any other came barrelling through the crowd, tossing the smaller ones every which way. One of the guys screamed “Tank!” but it was too late, the colossal monstrosity slammed in to the rail car, nearly knocking it over.
We all fell from our feet, sliding down the side of the car as it swayed. I nearly went off the side before Rene grabbed my arm, pulling me back from the edge. Two of the guys weren’t so lucky, their screams of agony quickly silenced as the horde enveloped them.
I got to my feet, and in a panic asked, “Now what?” But before anyone could answer, another of the crew got hit in the side of the head by some kind of sludge, rocketing him off the side of the car. The last of our crew got grabbed around the leg by some sort of tentacle, and ripped off the side of the car with hardly a shout before he was gone.
Rene and I moved back-to-back, and kept firing at the crowd, yelling for each other to duck whenever something came at us. When our guns ran out, we dropped flat against the roof with our heads covered, not sure what to do now. Fortunately we didn’t have to do much, as a zed managed to pull the pin from a grenade off one of our crew. The grenade went off, blasting all the zombies to pieces on that side of the car, shaking the whole train as debris fell all around us.
“This is our only chance. Go go go go!” I yelled. We launched ourselves off the side of the car, onto the pile of zombie corpses below. Scrambling over the mass of bodies, we made it across without being grabbed by the horde as the gap closed in.
Some of the horde kept slamming against the train, the tank still trying to knock it over; the rest tried to chase us until we got too far away.
We just kept running.