The Zombies and the Video Game

When it started out I was in some cross between a video game and real life, where the object of this simple, four level game was to kill everyone and damage things. It was like Area 51 or something, but with worse graphics. Also, I was in a tunnel appropriate for a side-scrolling video game. When I shot an ATM or another large machine, it turned into a robot and started stomping off. Shooting other stuff, I did indeed find grenades. The violence wasn't real, everything was in black and white and when I shot it, it became colored. People seemed curiously frozen, like an extremely violent coloring book. Then, I decided that I should have a squirt gun rather than a real-looking one, so people wouldn't get worried. I now had a generic Super Soaker and a big pillowcase full of water (maybe it was a plastic pillowcase), but suddenly I wasn't in the game any more.

I wandered out of the door at the end of a level and found myself on the U of O campus. Nowhere that I would recognize when awake, mind you, but I knew I was there then. There was a small pond, with students lounging by it, and a well-lit building next to the pond. One of the fellows lounging by the pond admired my Super Soaker, so I gave it to him. Not being in a game any more, I didn't want to use it.

There was a Chinese/Korean restaurant on campus, run by Catering, where you could pay for the meal with your student meal plan. Tonight they were showing a movie in the main dining area. The waiters were busy closing down the food serving part so they could start the movie. The drink machine still was on, and people who had colored bands on their drink cups could refill indefinitely. I filled the water bottle from my backpack out of the cold water spout, and they glared at me.

Wandering around the outside of the kitchen kiosk, full of ovens and food preparation stuff, I found myself in an arcade, dimly lit and loud, as arcades generally are. As I looked around, not really wanting to play anything, my former roommate and some of her horrible friends loudly entered. I tried to keep several games between us. The games were mostly normal, somewhat older games. None ran on more than a quarter, and there weren't any really flashy ones. They all looked to be from the late 1980s. I like that in a video game. These games were certainly good games to put on a college campus -- if they were broken or stolen, it wouldn't be too big a loss to the vending machine company.

I started looking at one game, which looked like a standard run and gun. It had a joystick and buttons, not a gun. It had acknowledgments on the outside for the designer and programmer and for the guy who portrayed the player character. The guy who portrayed the player character looked somewhat bemused. This game looked both new and old at once -- it had that 1980s video game charm, but it was too advanced and well done to be from the '80s. I don't remember putting any money in, but I started playing anyway.

The plot started out like a first-person rip-off of "Postal." The main character (I assumed I was playing him) started hearing a voice, and some rendered ideal woman materialized, told him that "they" must pay, and that the best place to find "them" was in a mall. She had, it seemed, the ability to be invisible, as well as talk to the character and tell him where to go next. It seemed a standard game conceit, if a tad misanthropic. However, as the character I was playing ducked in and out of stores, killing "them" ("they" were really tall people with afros (or anglos, depending) and anoraks), I slowly became the chick.

I had a gun, which I would describe in more detail, except I don't know anything about guns at all. It seemed rather normal, if a bit big, and terribly shiny, as though it had been made out of chrome-colored plastic. I believe it resembled more than anything one of the guns hooked up to shooting video games, which is apt.

Anyway, I too was killing "them," when I stumbled into an import store. The store had weirder stuff than a Pier One, and was more dimly lit. The atmosphere of the jungle seemed to remain in this import store. I killed a couple of "them," then the manager and some of the help wandered by. Now, as I started becoming the chick, "they" were getting more and more zombie-like, stumbling and shambling and staring blankly. I was about to shoot these people as well, who were walking slowly and suspiciously. Luckily, the manager stopped me.

It turned out that the help at this store were all either mentally retarded or somehow had their mobility impaired: some of them had the mongoloid stare of Downs syndrome, some had crutches or braces. Meanwhile, "they" had become complete zombies, and were biting the customers. When the manager and the import employees escaped out the back entrance, I followed them.

Suddenly, another change of scenery. When I ran out of the bowels of the mall, the import gimps were nowhere to be seen. I was in the middle of an unkempt field, with a forest off in the distance in one direction, more fields in the other, and a couple of houses here and there. There was also one enormous house, on a huge plateau of rock. There didn't seem to be any way to get up there. I didn't see any zombies about, nor did I see whence I came, so I decided to investigate the smaller houses.

The first house I reached turned out to be a store, much like the imports store previously mentioned but brighter, dryer, and more wicker-oriented. There was no movement, so I started to relax. Suddenly, a zombie lurched through one of the displays, scattering Christmas ornaments and small fruit baskets everywhere. I managed to drill him right between the eyes, and he looked momentarily puzzled (for a zombie, I mean; those guys don't generally have much facial expression) before he fell. That's when the crew of this store, or perhaps some folks who had been hiding out here, showed up.

Waving their arms and generally trying to distinguish themselves from the zombies, they filed in front of me and introduced themselves. Some were adventurers, some were scientists, some were women and some were comic sidekicks. I don't think any of them had names. They were trying to hole up in the big house on the plateau, where they would wait until the zombie menace blew over. Naturally, I threw in with them immediately.

Zombies suddenly started appearing and shambling about. These zombies seemed to be the classic Romero zombies, although they had a uniform and hairstyle of their own. They didn't move very quickly, they weren't able to reason, and a shot to the head killed them. They were also, however, able to spread the zombie virus by biting, and occasionally one would see a zombie who didn't have an afro and an anorak. Not terribly often, though. Perhaps they managed to completely destroy most of their victims, or perhaps newly zombified people started to grow afros and visit camping stores. I dispatched with many of them. I seemed to be a crack shot, able to shoot a zombie in the forehead at quite a distance. My gun neither malfunctioned nor needed to be reloaded.

In the confusion, I managed to escape in the company of a leather-jacketed man. He seemed rather on top of the situation, and we both found ourselves on top of the plateau in no time. As no zombies could navigate the climb, we had some time to kick back. I asked the leather-jacketed man if he knew anything about guns, as I had only acquired mine a short while ago and didn't know how to properly maintain or reload it. He laughed at me for not knowing anything about guns and said his name was Ted. (I know that sounds awkward, but that's what happened, okay?) I was indignant and said that I knew I should know how to use it, that's why I asked. Sheesh. And that I had helped kill zombies, and was doing a damn good job, so he should cut me a little slack.

Ted apologized and examined my gun, with me watching. He slid the clip out, which I suppose is how a normal gun of this sort is loaded. I don't know. This one, however, immediately expanded to about twice its size, on contact with air. Prying the clip open, we found glowing red plasma surrounding rods of carbon, which hummed when we prodded them.

"Um," said Ted.

"I guess this is why I haven't been reloading," I said. I clicked the clip back together and was about to shove it back into the gun, when suddenly zombies burst out of the big house on the plateau. I scooped up the gun parts and ran for a while, then started trying to put it back together again. Zombies, meanwhile, ate Ted.

I still couldn't get the clip to fit back in the gun. I had figured out how it went back in, but there was a trick to it that I wasn't getting. The zombies approached, and I decided to climb a tree. As started shimmying up the trunk, I saw that some normal humans were distracting the zombies. I took this opportunity to reload the gun (it went smoothly; perhaps I needed to be distracted) and resumed shooting the zombies in the head. My, but I had good aim!

"What are you DOING?" screamed one of the humans. It seemed that they were herding the zombies into the chicken wire-fenced tennis courts on the other side of the house. I explained that I was helping them deal with the zombies, but he got more perturbed. They knew how many people were originally on the plateau, and they had to get an accurate head count of the living and the zombies. I tried to explain that they could just as easily count inactive zombies as live ones, but he would have none of it. Luckily, the zombie herding went rather well, afterwards.

These new living humans told me that there were fifteen people unaccounted for, and that I was welcome to help them search the house for the living or the undead. Instead, I offered to guard the zombies caged in the tennis courts, as they were starting to buckle the walls. The people allowed me to do so, and I made sure to note how many there were, so that I'd know how many potential zombies there were in the house. There were eight living humans.

As soon as they went back inside the house, I started shooting zombies again. It wasn't very sporting, them being in a cage and all, but I figured that since I had unlimited ammunition I might as well. They were packed so densely into the tennis court that when I shot one it remained upright. I decided to open one of the doors of the tennis court and let the zombies stumble out one by one. This actually worked rather well, and I had soon killed every zombie from the tennis court. I searched their corpses for money or keys, then booted them off the steep edge of the plateau.

Looking down the sheer cliff, I saw that the plateau was completely surrounded by zombies, at least several thousand. One interesting thing was that when I threw the dead zombies down, the ones at the bottom tore them apart and ate them. I wondered if the zombies could be induced to attack each other. I idly took a few potshots at the zombies below, and managed to maintain my previous accuracy. I would kill a zombie, his comrades would swarm and consume him, and then they would look back up at me. I felt a little worried that they might climb up here, but remembered that the trail was treacherous and nearly vertical at points. Zombies would NOT be able to follow it.

There were horrible screams from the house, but I elected not to go inside. It was an enormous house; at least seven stories tall, and looked as the Winchester Mystery House might have if Tim Burton had designed it. Instead, I stayed outside and shot at the zombies below. It rapidly grew tiresome, like a computer game that required no skill whatsoever, designed to keep one occupied during telephone conversations. No more zombies were appearing, though, so I was heartened by seeing the ring around the plateau slowly thin.

Suddenly, a zombie lurched out of the house. I shot it and booted it, then decided I'd better go in after all. At least I knew there were 16 zombies, max, and then I'd have my own house.

The interior was also gothic, but well lit. The plumbing and electricity still functioned, and a quick investigation revealed that the house was solar-powered and had its own well. I hoped that the owner had also laid in food supplies.

I found several corpses, eaten beyond the ability to rise again. I dragged each out the door and off the side of the cliff. I worried that I might forget how many of the people I had found, so I wrote "16" on my hand with a permanent marker and under it made four hash marks. Searching the house, I made sure to be loud and obviously alive -- singing, shouting hellos and please come out nows. I didn't want to be mistaken for a zombie.

I managed to find all but one of the people, and they were all either zombified or dead. The house was still in good condition, though, so I planned to stay. At least until I had dealt with the zombies at the base of the plateau. I found food, a cavernous basement with cans and boxes enough for an army. I found clothing that would serve me, and even a small aircraft, the kind one pedals. After an afternoon of pegging zombies from a distance, I searched the house again, this time faster.

No sign of the missing man. Had my informant made a math error? Had I? Or was a zombie on the loose? Worse, was there a madman intent on killing me stalking around the house? Or was there just a decaying torso under a couch somewhere?

I encountered some housecats, about a dozen. As in reality, I had a good rapport with them, and they purred and rubbed themselves around my legs. The cats calmed me, as I figured that I'd notice them prick up their ears if anything approached. That night, nothing did. I didn't get any sleep, though, waiting for the inevitable.

The next day, I searched again. The cats seemed to lead me to a wing of the house I hadn't seen before, and then to a locked room. When I broke the door down, a large infant in a crib started crying.

"Damn," I said, "a baby." There were another dozen cats keeping an eye on the baby, sleeping near it or prowling the room. Perhaps they'd been set to guard it. I picked up the baby and cradled it in one arm, and it stopped crying as it saw that someone had finally come. As the cats followed the baby and me out of its nursery, I saw the crumpled remains of a zombie in the corner. It looked like the nurse or the mother, and tiny bite and claw marks showed that the cats had killed it before it could turn on its tiny charge.

Investigation of the rest of the wing turned up nothing out of the ordinary. I took the baby to the main house and started looking for baby supplies.



This is the part where the dream faded into uneventful sleep, but I like to think that the cats and I raised the baby to be smart and well adjusted. And that we eventually did something about the zombies.