Today’s Monday Mayhem is all about fun! That’s right. It’s that time again, folks. It’s time to put your thinking caps on and help me escape the zombies. Are you ready to indulge in some serious undead running? It ain’t gonna be pretty. Not today.
How it works: I present a scenario filled with zombies, and your job is to figure out a way to escape. Of course I’ll give you my answer telling you what I’d do, but it doesn’t mean that’s what you would do. That’s up for you to decide. And if you missed them, here are the first six parts: I, II, III, IV, V, VI.
Are you ready? All right then. Let’s go!
Scenario #1: You’re in the middle of a corn field. You see the stocks behind you wafting back and forth and you know that’s not a good sign. Thirty feet ahead, past the logs and trees, is a lake. If you don’t get a move on, you’ll end up as zombie meat. The only way out will be to head for the lake. When you get there, you realize something is swimming in the water. Schools of fish. You think nothing of it until you place one foot in the water. Piranha. Your choice? You either fight your way through a zombie horde or swim to the other side of the lake, hoping the piranha don’t get you first. What do you do?
My Answer: I don’t know about you, but I’d rather fight through a crowd of the undead. Piranha are much too dangerous for my taste.
Scenario #2: Twenty-three. You’ve counted them twice. Twenty-three. That’s how many of the undead have you surrounded on the roof of your neighbor’s garage. After seeing them on the right, on the left and in the driveway, your only chance would be to make a run across the backyard to the fence on the other side. There’s a catch, though. The jump alone will kill you. If you decide to hang by the roof and drop graciously, you may survive the fall, but by the time you get down there, you may also have zombies on your tail. Will you take a chance and make a run for it? Or will you die a miserable death while thinking of last year’s chocolate cake?
My Answer: I’m not going to starve to death. Every roof has debris in their eavestroughs. I’ll distract them, tossing the debris in the front, then I’ll make a break for it in the back.
Scenario #3: You venture into a general store that contains plenty of goods left to raid. You fill your backpack. When you’ve loaded it to the point you can’t carry anymore, you hear a ring in the front of the store and a shuffle on the floor. You drop the backpack and duck behind the deli counter. Five zombies head your way. You don’t know if you’ve attracted them when you dropped your backpack, but what you do know is you have to get out of there. With only one way out, through the front, your chances of surviving are small. Do you risk your life, make a run for the front door, perhaps leaving your backpack behind? Or will you sit tight, hoping they’d all go away?
My Answer: For this one, I thought of sitting tight. But then I thought every deli has a set of steak knives. I can do a lot of damage with a set of steak knives.
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What would you do?
Looking to God 
These are fun, Jack. Scenario #1: First, I’d hope the zombies look at my small stature and think, “she’s just not worth chasing.” 🙂 Failing that, I think I’d try to run the perimeter of the lake (away from the zombies), not really choosing either confrontation (fish or zombie). #2. You don’t mention if there’s a chimney or any trees nearby. Is there a second-story window that I could maybe reach from the roof? Heights aren’t my thing, but I don’t know that I’d want to wait either. I guess it really depends on what the zombies were doing: milling around below? not making an attempt to get me? actively trying to figure out how to get on the roof? climbing up the house somehow? Failing those alternatives (climbing a tree, going in a second-story window), I’d try to summon the spirit of Jackie Chan (or Yuen Biao; have you ever seen him exit a three-story building on fire in the movie “Millionaire’s Express”? he literally flips off the roof–amazing!) and get myself quickly & safely off the roof and run away. #3: This one is probably the hardest one. I guess I haven’t explored the store to see any alternate escape routes? There’s got to be a back room or back door or employee entrance, I’m thinking. I like your idea of the butcher’s knife and/or cleavers. I’d probably throw something to distract them, then get myself out of the back door, with the knife/cleaver, but leave behind the pack. I would plan to come back for it later. So, basically, running is the common theme here for me. I’m just not ever going to overpower a zombie!
Scenario 1: I don’t want to be on the menu for either zombies or piranhas, but I can’t swim. If these are regular slow-moving zombies, and they’re slowed even more by the terrain in the cornfield, I’m pretty sure I can make it past them without too much worry, so that would be my first choice. If not, I’d try to lure small groups of them to me as I move close around the water’s edge and force them in, one at a time. It shouldn’t be too hard to trip a zombie and run. I can even try to trip one, roll it into the water and run, as long as I don’t get sloppy and let too many too close.
Scenario 2: I don’t know any garages that are so high that the drop would kill me. Pretty much all of the ones I’ve ever seen are either a single story, or if connected to the house, might be 2 stories tall. I’m fairly certain I can handle a 1-story drop if my life depended on it. 2 stories would put a hurt on me though, and probably break something. In any event, I’m sure I could make it past slow-moving zombies if I dropped, so I’d take my chances with that. I’m half-tempted to try to get to the main house if its attached or jumpable and try being Santa Claus, but I don’t think that’d end well, as I have no idea if the bottom of any given chimney is locked or barred or something.
Scenario 3: I curse the zombies for ignoring the CLOSED sign and look for weaponry. There’s got to be plenty of stuff in a deli/bodega that I can use to both keep them from closing right in on me and to pick them off. So, first, I grab a Snickers and take a good bite, because I hate to kill the undead on an empty stomach and Snickers really satisfies. Then I go for whatever knife looks weighty and pointy enough that I could slice through expired meat and crack a vertebrae with. Butchers probably have their pick of that stuff, and I know that I’ll need a few good thrusts, so I slip on a pair of butcher’s gloves as well. Then, I try to put some obstacle at the end of the isles closest to me so that I can lure the deadbeats and beat them dead. A chair, small table, anything that would keep them from being able to reach me too easily and that I could potentially even raise and ram/press against them with to get some more leverage for my butchery. All it has to do is slow down whoever’s in front so that I can get a good slash or stab. And it keeps them from surrounding me. I’d probably need to do this a few times for each one before I fully decapitated it. I might even be able to run around to the other side of the isle and work from that side too, in the same manner – and I’d lock the door if I could, because if the store is stocked, I’d want to rest up afterward without any additional visitors.
Right. You’d think the zombies would have paid attention to the CLOSED sign. The nerve of them!
Scenario 1 depends on how quickly you want to be eaten! Stripped to the bone in two minutes or clumsily mauled in a quarter of an hour. I’d take my chances and go for a quick strip rather than be gnawed to death.
Scenario 2 – my neighbour’s garage isn’t big enough to hold 23 zombies and me, has a pitched roof and won’t result in a broken ankle if I jump off it. So, I’d jump off it and scarper over the back fences, tripping over the burglars hiding in the cotoneasters.
Scenario 3 – a general store with a deli; sounds like a Tesco Metro so I’d make Molotov cocktails out of the alcopops and throw them at the zombies, hoping I haven’t mistaken them for local youths. (Hard to tell the difference in the UK.)
Chris
ps I never thought Canada was such a perilous place to live.
If that isn’t perilous enough, we also have deadly winters to fend off between the zombie chases!
1. I can’t swim so I wont be doing that as I’m sure to cause a lot ofspalshign trying to get across. But no one said how large the lake is and whether or not I could work my way around the shore and kill zombies, depending on whatever weapons I have at my disposal and how many zombies there are. The ykey is to keep moving. Sitting still means dying.
2.Yeah, I’m not sure how this works either. Do I have weapons? How did I get up there? Is the house full of zombies? I’m certainly not going to jump, so the alternative is to fight my way back into and through the house, hopefully to a lower window, that I could survive jumping from. Distracting the zombies is a good idea, too.
3. Most stores have a back door ,as well. if there are still utensils available, then I would use those to fight my way out of the store, leaving the backpack behind. I could try to return for it later, if possible or just get a new one. Grabbing it on the way out may not be possible and also not a good option, as it would weigh me down.
I think a bigger question for me in any of these scenarios is: What the Hell am I doing all alone and why would I be in the middle of a cornfield or on my roof? I like those questions much better.:-D
Ha! The other scenarios in the series has more people for the zombies to chase 🙂 Not sure if that’s a good thing!
1- If they’re regular piranha then I’ll go into the water and gently swim to the other side. They aren’t as aggressive as people think and I believe they’re attracting to the sound of loud splashing. If they’re movie/zombie piranha then I’m fighting and trying to knock a few zombies into the water to distract the fish. Once enough are in there, I go for a quick swim.
2- Not really sure how this roof works. If leaping kills me without question then cutting 5’5” off won’t make much of a difference in my mind. At best, I’ll be injured and easy prey. Possibly the best thing to do is wait and stay out of sight. If I can find something to throw then I’ll try to set off a car alarm to get them into the street. How did I get up there?
3- Grab a meat cleaver for protection and go to the back of the store. Collect a few cans along the way. Hurl them as far as I can to get the zombies to the far side of the store. Use any reflective surfaces to watch them and wait for them to gather around the cans. Rush out and hopefully snatch the backpack on my way.
You caught the meat clever hint. I was wondering if anyone else would catch that, considering the back had a deli counter. Good job!
Thanks. I actually didn’t realize it was a hint. I saw you mention steak knives and began wondering if there was something heavier. Honestly, my first thought was if a deli had something like a paper cutter. Just take the long blade with handle off like in the Thomas Jane Punisher movie.
All the scenarios have a hint. Sometimes it’s obvious, but sometimes it’s not! 🙂