Commando Performance

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Humans vs. Zombies

Students at Goucher College gear up to play a fifth round of the immersive tag game that can last for days or even weeks.

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By 4 p.m. Saturday, half the humans had perished, tagged here and there on the way to class or to a friend's dorm or to the bathroom. But Temkin remained at large. He was due any moment to return from a field trip, and the zombies had gathered at Van Meter to ambush him as he stepped off the bus. "I want Max to die so bad," said Cardona.

Suddenly Cardona yelled, "There's the bus!" But instead of coming toward Van Meter, the bus was traveling along the opposite side of campus to the student parking lot where the melee had occurred the night before. Cardona and the rest of the horde raced off in that direction, running past a group of perplexed groomsmen and bridesmaids gathered outside the chapel. But before she and her crew reached the edge of campus, a zombie who was on the bus with Temkin ran up to them and said, "Max got in his car and went off campus" -- which could be a violation of the game rules.

Weed, who had come out from his dorm room to watch what he supposed would be Temkin's demise, called Temkin on his cellphone. "Are you in the car?" Weed asked. When Temkin said yes, Weed said, "We have to talk about this."

The previous night, during the march through the woods, Weed had gazed at the dancing and singing humans and said, "I could die a happy man right now." But now, Weed was quietly and powerfully angry. Weed's phone kept ringing -- Temkin calling back -- but he didn't answer it. He wanted to delay the possibility of having to eject Temkin, the game's most ardent fan and most recognizable spokesman, for breaking one of the key rules of the game: Don't use your car to escape zombies.

A half-hour later, Cardona raced up the stairs in Tuttle House to discover the glass in the fire extinguisher case had been shattered: A zombie collided with it in the heat of battle. He suffered only a minor cut, but the word went out that someone was hurt, and Temkin, parking his car, heard and rushed to Tuttle. As he entered the building, his defenses down, a freshman zombie simply reached out and tagged him, and that was the end of Temkin's career as a human.

Later, Temkin explained that he'd worried during the entire field trip until he got the idea to ask the bus driver to switch the drop-off spot. When he stepped off the bus at the student parking lot, he shot one zombie to stun her then told the other zombie who'd been on the bus: "I'm leaving. Do you want to fight me?" After that zombie walked away, Temkin got into his car and drove to the store on an errand.

"If I had known people were coming toward me, I wouldn't have gotten in the car," he said. "I would have died."

Though some players believed him, some didn't, and their doubt would leave Temkin torn and troubled -- and uncharacteristically tongue-tied -- for weeks afterward. In the meantime, he checked the Web site. The tally stood at 86 zombies, 64 humans. He took a shower, changed his clothes and ran around with the zombies until 2 a.m.

BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, CARDONA HAD LOGGED 23 KILLS AND AT LEAST ONE IMPORTANT ASSIST: She helped kill Modine. She hadn't slept much, and every few minutes a zombie called to report information (or rumors) and ask her what to do. "It's a little exhausting," she said. "I'm not schooled in military strategy like some of the guys. I don't prepare for this game like they do."

Later, as the zombies were walking en masse toward the residential quad, Modine got a call on his cellphone. He hung up, then quieted the crowd before issuing a proclamation. "Jonathan Suss just killed Matt Sabine!"

The crowd chanted, "Suss! Suss! Suss!" Even on a campus full of eccentric students, Suss, a freshman, stands out. He is the polar opposite of senior Sabine, a militia commander Temkin describes as "an alpha nerd."

When someone asked how Suss made his glorious kill, Modine replied: "He was waiting in the shower stall in the bathroom for eight hours. He tagged Sabine on his way out of the bathroom."