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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.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

Fueled by the news that one of their weakest players had killed one of the strongest human players, the zombies prepared to charge the 20 or so remaining humans, who were gathered on the stone patio outside at the student center. After the zombies' initial rush, only four humans were left standing. Then the zombies charged again, and just one human remained.

Even though a few more humans were hiding in their dorm rooms, the game felt effectively finished: The zombies won. Emotions had run high and low. Alliances had been made and broken. People had revealed themselves to one another more fully in the previous few days than in a semester or year of sitting next to one another in a class.

Everyone was tired. Everyone was hungry. Everyone had homework to do.

In the days afterward, as players caught up on sleep and ate their first full meals in a while, Weed and the other mods pledged to create a centralized Web site that would make it easy for anyone anywhere to start a game of Humans vs. Zombies. They considered forming a limited liability company and incorporating new technology to make the game more immersive. And Weed daydreamed of buying a van and driving from campus to campus, an itinerant preacher spreading the gospel of Zombies to young people everywhere.

"We're never truly safe," he'd tell them. "And since we're not safe, let's have fun."

Laura Wexler is the author of Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America and a writer in Baltimore. She can be reached at laura@laurawexler.com. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at noon at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.