Photo by Geena Ross.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThey had created a fortified base around an old church, using an old brick wall to create a defendable perimeter. At some point Jazz picked up a flamethrower and spent most of her days gathering supplies while searching for us in the parts of town too dangerous for anyone else to venture into.<\/p>\n
She always did like fire.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vision mostly gone now, my body felt heavy and weak. A hand grabbed my shoulder and dragged me away from the balcony\u2019s edge. \u201cStay with us, Patty!\u201d Rene shouted.<\/p>\n
\u201cRene, he\u2019s really pale,\u201d said Jazz, trying to shake me awake.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s lost a lot of blood and is covered in bites,\u201d he whispered quietly. Everything went black, and my body fell limp.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I took up work as a farmer with a few other people at the church. Rene wanted to scavenge with Jazz, but she wouldn\u2019t have it. Instead she put his engineering skills to work fixing things. She even brought him back a motorcycle to work on.<\/p>\n
Everything went to hell when a massive horde came down on us. Tanks and goliaths made short work of the walls, and howlers brought more herds. Some of us sought refuge in the church itself.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We tried to bar the doors, but a goliath burst through them, sending a rain of splinters across the hall. The goliath grabbed me by the torso, but I drove a broken piece of wood into its eye before it ripped me in half. Enraged, it slammed me to the ground and ripped off my right arm, roaring as it threw me across the hall like a rag doll.<\/p>\n
Someone shot the goliath in the face before it came down on me again. It reached out, grabbing them by the head, popping it like a grape. Zeds continued to claw in from every opening. Rene and Jazz picked me up off the ground and dragged me upstairs to the balcony, knowing that zeds can\u2019t climb so well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My eyes opened to blurred shapes thrashing around and the muffled sounds of screams. A zed with long, lanky limbs skittered around the balcony, swatting and clawing at Rene and Jazz, Rene swinging at it with a bat as hard as he could. Clenching my teeth, I pushed myself off the ground with my remaining arm.<\/p>\n
Weak and completely numb, I was driven by the will to protect.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cPatty! Wake up, Patty!\u201d I yelled as the mangled body of our friend went limp and lifeless.<\/p>\n
Rene put his hand on my shoulder. \u201cIt\u2019s too late, Jazz; he\u2019s gone.\u201d I wiped the tears from my face and looked up in time to see a spindly-legged zed leap onto the balcony and swat Rene into the wall. I let go of Patty and moved to Rene, swinging at the jumper with a bat.<\/p>\n
The jumper ripped the bat away, drool running down its face as its teeth chattered. We backed away as far as we could until we bumped into the railing, a sea of zeds below us. Rene gripped my hand as it moved in closer, chattering its teeth wildly.<\/p>\n
The side jumper\u2019s head slammed in to the wall with intense force. An arm held it tightly against the wood panelling of the church and dragged it across the wall, grinding off flesh as it went before sending it rocketing off the balcony. We looked in horror at the one-armed zed, skin pale and grey. It looked over its shoulder, making eye contact with Rene and me before descending to the hall below.<\/p>\n
\u201cPatty had blue eyes,\u201d Rene muttered.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d I said, still in shock.<\/p>\n
\u201cI promised Patty once that I\u2019d give him a chance to let me know it was him inside if he ever turned. Zeds\u2019 eyes are milky and white, completely lifeless. His eyes were still blue,\u201d said Rene.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what? We follow it?!\u201d I asked in disbelief.<\/p>\n
\u201cGot a better idea?\u201d he said, slowly moving through the door of the balcony.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The goliath roared below, the entire building shaking. Peering inside the main hall, it was caked in blood. Half embedded in the wall across the room, the goliath thrashed wildly.<\/p>\n
Patty approached the goliath, dragging a blade behind him. His skin had turned darker grey, rough and hard as if armoured. Where the stump of his right arm once was now hung a twisted mess of flesh and bone curved into a blade. As the goliath charged, he swung the bladed arm upwards, slicing it in two.<\/p>\n
We followed Patty out of the chapel, feeling safer with him than not. Zeds came at us from every side, but Patty stayed near, cleaving through anything that got too close. Patty\u2019s body seemed to be rapidly mutating, his face now encased in what looked like bone, skin grey and rough, and the blade of his arm becoming finer. Every now and then he would face us, and we would see his blue eyes, as if to say, \u201cI\u2019m still inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carving a bloody path through the horde, we reached the motorcycle Rene had been working on. The horde of zeds still coming to us, we prepared to leave through one of the breaches in the wall. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, having trouble bringing out words. In the end, all I managed to force out was, \u201cGoodbye, Patrick,\u201d in a choked-up voice, holding back the tears.<\/p>\n
Rene never looked up, simply saying, \u201cSee ya, buddy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eyes still clear and alive, Patty raised his left arm and pointed at the road, signalling for us to leave. I wrapped my arms around Rene\u2019s waist as we sped away. I only looked back once, seeing Patty in the horde, cutting a bloody swath through their ranks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rene and I kept riding, never staying anywhere too long. From time to time we ran into other survivors, but always went our own way in the end, feeling safer on the move. We would always share stories with others we found, though.<\/p>\n
Every now and then, someone mentions a grey-skinned zed, armoured like a knight. An arm curved into a massive sword of bone, capable of cutting zeds in twain. Not one story has ever told of it attacking the living, though.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they say they saw its face, encased in bone, brilliant blue eyes shining through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Note: This is part three in a three-part series. Click here to read part one. Click here to read part two.] The following is a theatrical retelling of a Humans vs. Zombies event, hosted by UVic Urban Gaming.\u00a0During these events, the last of the human race fights off the zombie horde with everything NERF at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-june-11-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9120"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9156,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9120\/revisions\/9156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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