Run, Red Shirt, Run!

Happy Halloween! I really haven't been all that festive in the past few years (eh, carved some pumpkins one year, gorged on candy the next, but it's mostly about staying in and having horror movie marathons for me).  This year, however, I decided to try something that just sounded simultaneously fun and scary.  The local community was hosting a type of "zombie chase" fun run.  For 3 kilometers, I had to run across the neighborhood, dodging the undead and sprinting for my life!

Of course, it's all for fun; these zombies were just school kids in make-up, acting like zombies (and they were pretty effective zombie actors).  We all had flag football belts on, so the zombies had to try and grab them from us as we went by.  We were told that we needed to come back with the flags to win a prize (although that turned out to be untrue, thankfully, everybody was a winner; I was gratified to leave with a cool new tee-shirt and a bag of treats).

Upon signing up, I was under the impression that we would all have to dress up as zombies or something (and a few people did).  I was informed that we could dress up as anything we wanted.  Having lost some weight recently, I found that I could fit into my Star Trek red shirt without looking too morbidly obese or anything, so I decided to don that with some black pants and go as a hapless Starfleet security officer.  For those who are unfamiliar with Star Trek lore, it is a known fact that any character wearing a red uniform will be the first characters to die.  So, to run through a zombie-infested neighborhood with a red shirt was inviting certain doom.  Some of my friends even warned me that I will die, because of the shirt.

So, after working the full day and going to the gym to warm up, I took off with the rest of the group and we went around the short, brisk 3K loop.  It was pretty dark outside, and it was raining.  With the slight wind, it was pretty bitterly cold; fortunately, the cold became less and less of a problem as I continued pumping my legs and generating warmth in my muscles.

Then, I could certainly see the zombies on the street, as dark silhouettes on the dark wet pavement.  I could see them stagger, lunge, flail, and scream at the other runners as they passed by.  For the first third of a mile, I kept my distance from the undead, and remained relatively safe.

When I reached the track and looped around it, I ran into serious trouble.  There must have been four of the zombies on either side of the path, moving toward the runners as they passed.  I couldn't keep my distance for long; there was a zombie directly in front of me in the middle of the track.  I wasn't sure which direction to go; if I moved to the right, she seemed to move to the right.  Then I moved to the left, flinging my arms up defensively as I tried to swerve myself further away from the monster.  Unfortunately, she got me.  The curse of the Star Trek red shirt prevailed.

For the rest of the run, I had a fair share of other zombies running up to me, but without the flag football belt, I just told them "I'm dead Jim!"  Other times, just to maintain the role, I said things like "beam me up, Scotty!" and "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!" There was one part where we ran through some fog, so I uttered, "My God, Jim, where are we?"

With the zombies, the fog, running in the woods, the dark overcast evening sky, and the rain, it was definitely a moody and atmospheric event.  Even though this run only took about 15 minutes or so, it was a pleasantly thrilling experience.

I got to admit that, if the zombie-pocalypse ever becomes a reality, I would be totally unprepared for it.  Heck, I don't think anything in this world could really prepare a person for such a thing.  But after seeing these kids acting the part, I got to admit that in a real-life scenario, I couldn't possibly hope to outrun or outsmart a zombie, and in packs they'd be utterly terrifying.  I never used to consider zombie fiction "scary" per se, but after having this slight taste of a simulated zombie attack, I think it might freak me out a little more when I stop to consider just how frighting it would be to have an entire pack of the living dead closing in relentlessly.

And one more lesson learned here is that one should never wear a red shirt during a zombie-pocalypse.  It's just asking for trouble.