The group has just decided that the only way forward is to do our best zombie impersonation, and shuffle ahead.
It’s surreal. We cannot go back, and what we can hear lying in wait in the shadows will most likely bite and infect us.
Our nerves are so frayed that we are hanging together by threads. Our legs are barely keeping us up. We are beyond tired. We have been moving through this urban landscape with speeds ranging from a rapid walk to a death-defying sprint over the last three hours. It is London, but not the London we know. This London is infested with zombies, and we are trying to get to a safe area – after being discovered without some sort of pass that we never really understood we needed.
Ahead, piercings screams do equal damage to our ears and what is left of our nerves. We can see them in yellow pools of light under the street lights in this industrial part of the city. The infected – turned zombies. They are directly in our path to the Asylum safe zone, and I do not know if I can take another step. We have run so much, so fast, and so many times already.
Suddenly, we realise we have been spotted. One of them is coming toward us. No amount of zombie impersonation will save us now…
There is a timeless moment where everything stands still. The zombie gore glistens in the flickering street light. Then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I spot one of our guys making a break for it. He is almost a blur – a kamikaze blur – dashing down the pavement, zigzagging around the street lights, abandoned cars and the undead. And before I know it, my legs are also moving.
This is the last sprint to Asylum, and my heart, lungs and leg muscles all announce imminent bursting.
Earlier on, the group had leisurely trotted up six stories of an empty multi-storey car park, looking for the seventh floor that turned out not to exist – wrong building! Instead of finding a document forger who was supposed to assist us with fake passes, we were confronted by a very real and unimpressed security guard. I suppose Slingshot Productions who stage the 2.8 Hours Later zombie chase bonanza cannot fairly be expected to pay off ALL of East London to be in on the game!
Back then, and it seems like days ago now, we made small talk and jokes and jogged up stairs for the pleasure of it, and just because we could. We had not seen a single zombie yet, let alone heard their piercing screams.
Now, within eyesight of Asylum, I doubt a single member of the group will survive uninfected.
I become aware that my feet are barely touching the ground with the speed I am running at… Dodge left, right, and through the middle, as the zombies scatter to chase the other members of my group. For a fleeting moment, I convince myself that I am running so fast that the undead will not find me appetising – there is easier prey in the group, progressing at a less adrenaline-paced tempo.
But I had not spotted the crouching zombie lurking behind the skip to my left. As I approach, he blasts off after me like my worst nightmare out of World War Z – forget about the slow Walking Dead shamblers… Within the blink of an eye, he is hot on my heels. I can no longer see him, but what is worse, I hear him right behind me, reaching out toward me. I cringe – while at full sprint – in anticipation of what must surely come: the inevitable tap on my shoulder that means he has gored me, and I must stop to be splattered with UV paint on my arms. That is the sign that means infection, and it is what they will examine me for at the Asylum. If I arrive with that, I will not be a survivor. I have run so far and so fast, just to be infected with the end in sight…
Strangely, miraculously, the tap never comes. A siren blares ahead of me next to a rotund woman clad in an impressive hazmat outfit. She is beckoning me in her direction, but I am beyond the ability to make a rational decision or trust anything or anyone. She could be a mutant hazmat zombie! But she continues beckoning and waving me over. I approach, lost for other options, and nothing but zombies behind me goring the other members of my group.
She shakes my hand and says Welcome to Asylum – I am safe. My ears hear it, and my body is days from believing it, as I find out afterwards.
Later on, after the rest of my group arrive, we are processed inside the Asylum building , screened for UV gore, and I am one of the survivors. It is hard to believe. We are three out of my group of eight who made it through unscathed…
We share war stories around a big table in the middle of a “zombie disco” where rather undead dance moves are being thrown around us. I hear how the 2.8 Hours Later event in other cities had resulted in arrest and imprisonment for assault (when a player who was desperate to survive actually attacked a zombie actor – that was in Leeds!) or broken collarbones (when a player slipped on a muddy path while on the run – that was in London)… Some share how they return year after year, trying to survive the game uninfected. It’s not easy to get Survivor status. I still cannot believe I did it.
And I also cannot quite believe how involved with the story I became, totally immersed in the theatrics of it in a city I know so well. The lines between reality and fiction blurred bizarrely in those dark evening hours. While I could just have let the darned “zombies” gore me without further ado, I really felt like I was running for my life. Well done, Slingshot Productions!
Later still, and we are now talking more than two days further down the line, my nervous system is finally starting to patch itself back together, and my muscles are easing up. Perhaps I am indeed safe now!
I do not need to gamble my Survivor status again next time the show is in town, but I might give my zombie-acting skills a go as a volunteer! For those of you who dare, and want to run the gauntlet of survival, this cross-city zombie chase game is a good way to go do some interval speed training with some, shall we say, “undead incentive” on your heels! And it might just be me who gores you…
