CHASING HUMANS Campus was overtaken Wednesday night by living-dead students in a zombie-style game of touch tag.

A pack of four alpha zombies invaded the U on Thursday night, chasing students across library plaza and past the Union, mercilessly transforming them into hoards of undead.
About 150 students met at the Union patio for the Union Programming Council’s second-ever game of zombie tag, based on the popular crowd game Humans vs. Zombies. An hour before the chase began, students were chowing down on pizza and listening to creepy sounds of the “Phantom of the Opera” playing over a loudspeaker. Zombie makeup artists were busy face-painting and covering participants in globs of fake, eerie blood, made with corn syrup, corn starch, cocoa powder, red food coloring and a few other mysterious ingredients.
Just before 8:15 p.m., humans and zombies alike scattered into the darkness to wait for the buzzer to sound.
Charles Burnett, director of innovations at UPC and a junior in English, sounded the buzzer and the chase began.
Zombies forced humans to join their ranks with a two-hand-touch tag, but the humans did have one weapon — tiny water pistols that were stored in three orange barrels hidden across the playing field and guarded by UPC officials. The barrels were stashed in front of the bookstore doors, LNCO and the Social and Behavioral Sciences Building. The barrel at the Social and Behavioral Sciences Building was the first to be descended upon by desperate humans, who laid hold on the water guns to prepare for zombies to attack. Each water squirt froze a zombie for seven seconds.
The event drew zombie buffs like a magnet.

Dan “The Zombie” Hammond, a junior in business, showed up in a blood-stained, ripped shirt and scraggly black tie. His face was pale from makeup powder and a glob of fake blood stuck to his cheek. His eyes were pale, all but the pupils, thanks to special zombie contacts. He said he saw the flyer announcing the game and knew he wanted to come.
“I saw the flyer, and I was like, ‘That’s me, right there.’ ” Hammond said. “I go to the zombie walks, the zombie prom, I’m a zombie at the Fear Factor Haunted House … Every year, I’m always doing stuff.”
Burnett is also a zombie buff, and his passion inspired him to get Humans vs. Zombies going at the U.
“Zombies have just kind of always been my thing,” he said.
The U’s zombie tag is based on the official rules on the Humans vs. Zombies website, but adapted for a smaller group. Burnett said he hopes to extend and expand the game in the future.
“I’d like to think that one day we could make it larger,” Burnett said. “In the original rules it’s designed to go for days … until the last man is standing.”
Last semester, 330 students showed up to chase and be chased, but the numbers dropped for the spring event, which did not surprise organizers, who expected a smaller turnout because of the game’s proximity to Finals Week. They also purposefully planned last year’s game around Halloween.
The boundaries of the game started at the Union and extended outward to the Student Services Building, the University Campus Store, the Marriott Library, Social and Behavioral Sciences Building, the business buildings, OSH and LNCO.
“Honestly, the boundaries are as big as we can make them right now without making [the game] exponentially more complicated,” Burnett said. “This is a very technical event … It’s really hard to communicate something so specific to such a large group of students.”
This semester, event organizers sent out emails to participants explaining the rules of the game, which helped get the game going quickly and kicking off the attack of the undead.