HvZ: Day One

Wednesday: Escorts and Exercise

I was extremely busy yesterday with the game, but I shall explain my adventures through the first day of HvZ, Fall 2011. I'll even throw in some map drawings, but those may come later.

Early in the morning, I woke up a little  earlier than usual and went about my morning routine. I gathered all my gear--backpack, blaster, clip, extra darts, moderator and player bands, and jacket--and headed out by 7:20 a.m. I knew my floormate (also an Alex), who has the same early-morning class as me, was more than likely one of the Origin Zombies, so I was wary of going outside. I got to the door, and sure enough he was waiting outside for me. Alex and I had an uneasy truce set up, but there was also another zombie just outside of the door. In a brief scuffle, I stunned both with socks and we all went to eat.

After eating, Alex split off to go hunt, and I was again attacked by the other zombie from before. If he hadn't scuffed his shoes while running, I'm pretty sure I may have been turned very quickly. Halfway to class, my Alex texted saying he'd tagged someone in Red Square. Later, I found out that this was the crazy-fast player known as "The General's Hound." This meant bad news for all humans, as he is super fast, and gets kills very quickly. Within half an hour, the Hound had tagged three people.

I finished class and jumped from Academic West to Communications, where I went to class and then stayed in the computer lab afterward. At ten, I had until one for my next class. I ended up finding a group of humans to roll with. We easily went from Comm to Environmental Studies, and used its underground connection to get to Arntzen Hall. From here we building hopped all up north campus, then from there

I had class in Fraser that I was able to get to safely. In the class I realized that there were quite a few human friends in there. Once class was out, we all teamed up and started going through campus as a massive pack. For the next two hours we ran a highly efficient escort service. We didn't care if it was one human trying to get corner to corner on campus, or a group of six trying to cross to the next building--we were there. If you could keep an eye out, a blaster ready, and stayed with us, we'd get you where you needed to be--and we loved it!

This was all going fine and awesome, and then the Hound happened...

The large group I was with grouped up at Miller to talk to some people, and then we saw a lone human across Red Square fighting off two zombies, and about to lose. Most of the group took off, and I half jogged with them. When the human fell, my group ran faster, and I started to go around the fountain the other way. I had totally let my guard down on watching The Hound, and then bam, I was a zombie. The rest of my comrades got to Haggard Hall after seeing the human was tagged. They all looked back to briefly mourn my death, and then took off to continue escorting.

I went back to my dorm to drop off my backpack and blaster, and then gathered a few zombies from my floor to go hunting when I was able to spawn as a zombie. With wondrous timing, we left the dorm hall just as two humans were pinned down at the entrance. After a while of stalemating with them, we decided to actually go hunt. Even after only 30 minutes of becoming infected, I was feeling different. There was a need to hunt, an ache in my legs and chest, to reach out and infect someone else to share this feeling with. So, we hunted.

After a little bit of running around, we happened upon a few humans around Arntzen half-deciding what to do next. A few of them eventually made a break for it, and I chased down a single human. He was waving around his Spectre blaster and ended up swinging it as he fired at me, catching the dart in the barrel instead of firing it. Needless to say, I tagged him. It felt wonderful, but there was still a slight pang of what I could only describe as "hunter's remorse" as I ran off knowing I infected him.

Slowly, the aching in my legs and chest became stronger, and that remorse for the newly-infected human gradually faded away. And all I wanted to do was hunt.