The Scripps Voice

By Alexandra Vallas ‘15
Copy Editor

The first time we meet it is for C-rations, the Spartan rations that remain in Collins Dining Hall on the Claremont-McKenna Campus. A mutual—surviving—friend has arranged the meeting, which takes place in the shelter of a decrepit building on Harvey Mudd College. When he speaks—which happens rarely and

Photo by Caroline Novit ’14

briefly, I come to find—he calls himself only ‘Z,’ like the ‘z’ in ‘zombie.’ I decide this is fitting.

He owns more than five guns, he tells me: two electric and the rest spring-loaded models. “Spring-loaded is better,” he says. “It’s quieter and more personal.” This makes sense to me. After all, anyone who’s spent even one day in the middle of the zombie apocalypse knows that noise is the last thing you want when flesh-hungry ex-humans are staggering after your sorry, living carcass. I write his words down in my notebook.

“But how do you conserve ammo most effectively?” I wonder. It turns out Z knows the ropes better than I had expected, because the answer comes quickly.

“Don’t shoot,” he replies, as if it is the most obvious fact—though in a way it is. Sometimes I find myself questioning how I’ve managed to survive at all; I credit most of this to my defensive strategy of never leaving my base.

“If you use a gun that’s one-shot spring-loaded, you’re not going to go around shooting—one shot and you’re done,” he continues. There is a faraway look in his eyes, one that makes me wonder who he has lost. Maybe he lost a close roommate to the virus or necromancy or whatever it is causing this zombie hell. I take a moment to breathe a sigh of relief that my cardinal rule, the Rule of Solitude and Antisocial Behavior, has served me so well in the course of the war.

In the vein of my previous questions, I turn the conversation toward shot accuracy, the best friend of efficient resource allocation. Thank goodness for that Macroeconomics course I took before the world ended—and we all thought we would never use what we learned in our classes for real world application!

Photo by Caroline Novit ’14

But my question seems to puzzle Z, who responds straight to the point as I am starting to realize he does. “You aim at them,” he says slowly. “It doesn’t matter where you hit them.”

This response catches me off-guard. I was convinced up until that zombies were only vulnerable to headshots, but surely as grizzled a veteran as Z would know better than me. What can I say? If I were a character in a pre-apocalypse zombie movie, I would probably be the one that survived on sheer dumb luck. But I decide not to tell that to a certified badass like Z.

“So how do you survive?” I ask him. “What does it take, in this environment, to keep your extremities out of a zombie’s mouth every day?”

He thinks about that question for a long moment before answering.

“Cardio, double tap, check the back seat…” He shrugs. “Though honestly, people just live underground around here. To survive you stay in groups, so you have to be nice to people.”

‘Be nice to people’ gets added to my notes. I’m starting to get really into it, and I think Z can feel it too. We have a connection—we’re two survivors bonded by the trauma of our experiences. Maybe, just maybe, he would be on my team. All I have to do is prove that I, too, can be as strong and kickass as he is. I know my next question will take me to that level. So, mustering all my courage, I lean back as cool and nonchalantly as I can against the wall, wearing my devil-may-care attitude like a pair of really intense sunglasses in a very dark room.

“So, Z. Zed. Can I call you that? Good.” I never have been one to wait around for answers. “Say I want to perform a long-distance kill. What kind of gun do you most recommend for that range?”

He blinks, obviously surprised. Clearly I am more of a proactive killer than he thought. We should get jackets for our two-man wolf—
“A sniper rifle. They don’t make them for NERF guns, but that’s what I’d suggest.”
…NERF guns? When did we start talking about those?

The Scripps Voice wishes you all happy hunting and thick skin during the 5C HvZ game! Also thanks to ‘Z’, for providing the interview for this story.

By Eliza Silverman ’14 and Zoe Stalnecker ’14
Cody Editor and Business Manager

In case you weren’t one of the many Claremont students running around with green bandanas and nerf artillery, we are here to recount the Live Action Role Play extravaganza that was Humans versus Zombies 2010 on the Claremont Colleges.

The game was ultimately a battle of good versus evil. The objective of the humans, or the “resistance,” was to resist infection at the zombie’s hand for as long as humanly—excuse the pun—possible. The zombie “horde” could infect a human by simply touching them on the arm.

The complexities of the game are as follows: all Claremont students that signed up for the game began as humans, save for a few “administrators” that were Original Zombies, or OZs. Humans wore green bandanas around their arms to signify their status as a human, while zombies wore a green bandana around their heads. You were required to wear the bandana and carry an identification card at all times. Basically everywhere except classrooms, individual dorm rooms and dining halls was a fair fight zone on the 5C’s—except, ironically, for Scripps. The entirety of the Scripps campus was a safe zone because the faculty didn’t agree that Humans versus Zombies was appropriate for an academic environment. The humans were allowed to defend themselves by shooting relatively harmless nerf darts at the zombies to deflect infection, thus “freezing” zombies for fifteen minutes.

But enough of the nitty-gritty details. Inevitably, you’re dying to know what Humans versus Zombies was really like. Was the week characterized by ceaseless adventures? Guerilla warfare? Heart-stopping showdowns? Our stories will not disappoint.

Living on Scripps, we really had to go out of our way to put ourselves in the line of fire. We did just that: we dined at Harvey Mudd’s dining hall meal after meal. The first few days were relatively uneventful because the ratio of humans to zombies remained about 350 to 50. After day 3, however, the resistance declined rapidly. Zombies were beginning to outnumber humans. Eliza alone had three zombies in her CMC Spanish class of 15 students; she had to make a break for it as soon as class ended at 10:50, to get back to the safe home base. “She looked pretty ridiculous,” said Jade Ulrich (’14). “One day she put on these neon protective goggles to block the rain from her eyes as she fled from Bauer Center.”

On the fourth night, all hell broke loose. We went to dinner at HMC and zombies were patrolling the perimeter. The resistance was down to a paltry hundred humans, and zombies were omnipresent. We hastily scurried into the dining hall without too much trouble, but the way out was a whole different ball game. Two specific zombies were targeting us from both exits out of the dining hall. We put our heads together and came up with a different escape route: off the edge of the outdoor patio! Genius! As we carefully and quickly scaled the walls, clamshells in hand, we felt pretty invincible. Until, as Eliza dropped down from the wall, a zombie came up and tagged both of us. Fail.

Humans versus Zombies added an element of suspense and intrigue to what would otherwise have been an ordinary week in Claremont. Our suggestion? Participate in the next round of Humans versus Zombies, coming Spring 2011!

Check out the website here!