Zombie slaying fun at StayDead Events

Times Reporter    

 

Last month, on May 3, former Standard resident Cai’lin Aird Kroon, her fiancé Shawn Paterson and a group of friends took part in a StayDead Event, which is a zombie-immersion game where people have to fight to survive. 

The day started at 5 a.m. at the Sportsplex in Tsu’Tina, where all of the survivors had to huddle in a line-up, waiting to be processed and searched before actually starting the event. They were loaded onto buses and told that one of the four buses was going to explode, immediately getting participants into game play mode.

While there was some excitement throughout the day – she used her in-game medic skills to bandage someone shot in the foot, during which he was almost bitten; losing all her weapons to a group coming after her with assault rifles, and making a daring escape; and collecting a zombie for a live specimen sample – the event all in all didn’t quite live up to expectations and the $150 ticket price. 

“We expected the game to pick up after about an hour, as people were getting comfortable, and we thought this was probably part of the game, and all hell was about to be unleashed,” said Kroon.

“People were fortifying themselves into bathrooms and locker rooms, but we kept wandering. We didn’t want to be stuck somewhere with no exit.”

The calm lasted much longer than expected and the next few hours involved the occasional ‘killing’ of zombies, which were seen about every 20 minutes.

Kroon said a lot of time was spent chatting with other survivors, playing basketball and generally killing time, not the zombies they had hoped for. At one point she and Paterson were beginning to consider going home, they were tired, hungry and tired of being bored. 

Around 1 p.m. things began to really get going. The UN came with promises of a supply drop. They needed to also get to the lab, but the doctor there didn’t trust them after having issues with the military in the past. 

“The next hours were full of fun. The UN held down the upstairs hallway, and eventually the food arrived. It was cans of soup, which I will not eat cold, but I took one anyway to trade if necessary,” said Kroon.

Zombies came slowly, and Kroon contemplated stealing one of the UN member’s sidearms, holding them hostage and taking the rest of the weapons for the other survivors. None of the scenarios seemed favourable, so she stuck to daydreaming it.

There was some hostile fire, and after a bit there was an offer of a truce. The truce only lasted for a short while. One of her group members had gone to check things out, and when he came back to warn the UN about what was happening someone got a little trigger happy, killing him and the information. 

Eventually Kroon and her fiancé both got M4’s and began taking out the zombies that were swarming the gate. Things picked up from there for Kroon, until she was hit in the back of the neck by a bullet from a bandit and was eliminated from the game.

After that Kroon decided to put on a zombie mask and try it from a different angle. Paterson was still out there and she wanted to make the most of it. The mask was horrible, she couldn’t see and eventually she gave up, discouraged by the whole thing. 

Paterson made it to the end, one of only five survivors out of the 200 who played. 

The guns were what made the game fun for Kroon and Paterson. 

“I had a great time in the end, but I’m not impressed by the lackluster start. The game ended at 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m., which meant that over half the game was boring,” said Kroon. 

She had heard rumours that many of the zombies hadn’t shown up, and while the show must go on, it put a damper on her view of the day. She did learn a number of valuable lessons for next time, and despite the slow start, the end half of the game was what she had hoped for, and Kroon does plan to attend another StayDead Event in the future.