From left, clockwise, myself, Mark Malle, Lizzie Russell, Jade Mynott and Mark Wolverson, with our prey in the centre, picture by Vikki Kinnear
The world has been infected by a deadly virus. It’s finally happened, the zombie apocalypse has happened. Everyone you know and love is dead, or has been turned into one of these undead, bloodthirsty creatures. The question is, when it’s your turn, do you run or do you turn?
On Saturday I headed to Norwich’s University of East Anglia to join in the second annual Zombie Fun Run, organised by student fundraising association RAG (Raise and Give). I was joined by the boyfriend and a group of friends from home as a little warm-up before we headed to the Sub Focus gig later that eve – review posted tomorrow morning.
From left, Mark Malle, Mark Wolverson, myself, Vikki Kinnear, Jade Mynott and Lizzie Russell – looking good!
We were warned to prepare for a scare and sign up as a runner or zombie – of course we wanted to be zombies! Once we were made up in full terrifying make-up by the RAG team, we were sent along the course to hide in the undergrowth of the woods alongside Earlham Park and the university grounds where the aim of the game was tofind devious hiding positions to ambush our prey as the runners made their way around the 2.5k course and tried to keep their lives intact.
We decided our best chance of success of grabbing the red tags worn by the runners was to hide around the whole of the outside of a clearing in the woods so that the runners would not see us until it was too late, and so that we could attack from every angle. I don’t think that any zombies took it as seriously as we did – in fact we even took a guy out and ended up scaring him to the floor before he limped off – oops.
I like to think that we were really quite terrifying and we had plenty of fun finding hiding positions in the woods, scaring dog walkers and chasing the runners into the woods. One of the funniest moments was when Mark Malle chased one runner deep into the woods until we could no longer see him, then re-emerged slowly, groaning and dragging himself back through the bushes in full character with the band hanging out of his mouth – no sign of the runner. We were a little nervous until the runner came bounding out of the bushes and promptly tripped over a log.
After a while there didn’t seem to be any runners heading our way so we decided to head back along the trail and towards the university square – the promise of a BBQ just too much of a lure for our meat-starved zombies. Along the way we checked our bands and found we had collected a respectable about between us – not sure exactly how many because we had to give some back but I caught at least six zombies myself! Although we did bump into another team that had caught a ridiculous amount of runners – we couldn’t believe how many bands they had but they did have an excellent hiding spot and the runners had no choice but to go straight through them.
Myself and Mark in full zombie make-up
When we finally reached the main field, we did stop to catch a final few runners and entertain ourselves by having pictures of us attempting to eat someone – see top pic which has now become my favourite picture – before heading to the BBQ and back to get changed before the night’s events.
Overall it was a great event – really well organised and so much fun. A perfect Halloween event with just the right amount of blood and gore, and a great way to get us warmed up for the night ahead. I’m looking forward to seeing some more of the pictures and videos that were captured on the day.
AbsolutelyLucy 