If a zombie apocalypse broke out during your
class field trip, what would you do?
We’re stuck out in BFE with no way of calling for
help. If any of us are going to make it out alive, we’ll have to scrape together as many brain
cells as possible to survive, or at least enough to keep from shooting ourselves
in the foot at every possible turn.
I’m going to break down the mistakes
made, what you should do, and how to beat the man made Zombies in UNHUMAN.
Ever is in need of some extra credit, and you know what that means: an
extra credit field trip. Of course, to get there, she’ll have to survive
a brief car ride with her best friend, Tamara, which doesn’t sound so bad until
you see how this chick drives.
Way to keep your eyes on the road
there, Danica. Oh, well. Serves him right for not looking both ways.
Fortunately for Tamara’s safe-driver discount, Roadkill Randall shakes it off the second
he realizes who’s behind the wheel. Yes, I’m sure a lifetime of back problems is
totally worth brushing off a car accident to ham it up for your crush. Face it, dude.
Your only chance with her is to milk this for all it’s worth. If I were you, I’d get back on
the ground and start writhing around in pain, really play up that sympathy card.
However, just when Randall thinks he ran into romance, the popular kids cruise by
to remind him of his station in life.
Nice one, bro. Keep that up and he’ll
be saying the same to you in the hallway next semester, or maybe even sooner.
Having had a good laugh, the girls leave the geek to his fate and get back on track, arriving
at the bus just as the insufferable Mr. Lorenzo is rounding up cell phones. Yeah, no way I’m
trusting my lifeline to society with this tool, especially knowing our little scholastic
excursion takes place out in nature. It should be simple enough to tell him we
don’t have one, which for some reason only Ever thinks to do. Too bad she’s not smart
enough to actually be lying about it.
Sure, whatever, screens are destroying
civilization. You live in an age where it’s possible to purchase a tiny supercomputer
with prepaid service for less than $100 at Walmart. Just pick up a shift somewhere if
Mommy won’t add you to the family plan. It could literally save your life one day.
And wouldn’t you know it, that might be today, cuz it turns out Tamara isn’t the only
one around here who sucks at driving.
Jesus Christ, it’s Jurassic World all
over again. “Gotta swerve to escape the blindness.” It’s almost like he was trying to get
everyone killed. Then again, with a bus full of bratty teenagers and Lorenzo breathing down his
neck, the temptation must have been real.
It seems the fun’s just getting started, however,
as all of a sudden, someone or something starts stomping around on the roof, and that’s not
all. Before the danger can reveal itself, an emergency broadcast message bellows out over
the speakers. Evidently, there’s been a chemical attack of some sort, which would certainly
explain all the fog that seemingly rolled in out of nowhere. Well, except for the fact
this is hardly the kind of densely populated area one would expect someone to target. Seems
like a waste of a war crime if you ask me.
Whatever the case, without any other information
to go off, we need to treat this like the real deal. First order of business is stuffing up
any and all vents and crevices with whatever we can find, most likely clothing. By the looks
of it, some of the gas already made it inside, but fleeing into a dense cloud of
indeterminate size isn’t a great idea, especially with an unknown creature prowling
around the area. I mean, I guess whatever it is probably wouldn’t fare any better in the gas,
but I’d rather not find out the hard way.
Next up, and this won’t be popular, we need
to fashion some PPE out of clothing to help filter out any contaminants. Not so bad, right?
Yeah, here’s the thing. Among the substances most available to non-governmental actors for
this application is chlorine, so just in case, we should take our improvised face coverings
and urinate on them like our forefathers did in the Great War. It’s not foolproof, but absent
a case of M50 gas masks under the driver’s seat, it’s pretty much all we’ve got.
Once that’s settled, I’m heading to the front of the bus and fishing a phone out of the bag to
call 911. Sure, if it’s truly a wide-scale attack, they’ll probably be too overwhelmed by other
calls to send help, but it’s always worth a try no matter what. I mean, the mere fact that Mr.
Lorenzo didn’t immediately think to do this after the bus ran off the road demonstrates not only
his total ineptitude as an educator, but also as a human being in general. And just wait until you
see what he does next. Remember all that noise on the roof? Well, look who’s come for dinner.
Hmm, I wonder what the lesson was here. Probably something along the lines of “never pick up
hitchhikers.” Either that or it’s about acting decisively to restrain your more idiotic group
members before they expose everyone to poison gas and/or face-eating metalheads.
As for where we go from here, it’s time to get tough, people. I know watching a grown man
get half his face ripped off is scary and all, but the alternative is running out into the
cloud, and while it didn’t seem to slow the attacker down all that much, it might have
something to do with his bizarre eating habits. If I’m the bus driver right now, I’m grabbing
the fire extinguisher he’s legally required to keep nearby and bludgeoning this weirdo until
the twitching stops. Might have to do the same with Mr. Lorenzo, ya know, for safety.
Oh, well, I guess we’re taking our chances with door number two. Never mind that it was
just a single unarmed man versus like twelve of us. Better to just abandon our only sanctuary
from the agent of unknown lethality and go running aimlessly into the thick of it. Yeah, don’t
even bother covering your face or anything, just breathe deep and think about the
rabbits. It’ll all be over soon.
However, by some divine intervention,
Randall spots a nearby tweaker motel the students can post up in. Well, the ones we
care about anyway. The rest apparently just stuck around to get munched on. I’m sure
we’ve seen the last of them, right?
Of course, now that we’ve found ourselves a
creepy, dilapidated tetanus museum to post up in, everyone immediately splits up to go poking around
the maze-like interior for weapons and build materials. Anyone got a problem with that?
Yeah, what is this, your first abandoned building?
Seriously, though, this dump looks like something from Condemned:
Criminal Origins, and there’s no telling if we’re actually alone in here. Not to mention the fact
this place is far from airtight. Sure, none of us have started convulsing or puking up our insides
yet, but there are some chemicals like mustard gas that can go hours without taking effect.
Until we know for sure what we’re dealing with, we need to stick together and find an interior
room deep within the structure we can fortify, preferably on the top floor as chemical
weapons are often denser than air. Oh, yeah, we’ll also want to remove our clothing
during this time as it may be contaminated, thereby prolonging our exposure to the gas
even after we’ve left the danger zone. Hey, it’s not my fault this is happening. Do you
want modesty, or do you want to live?
From there we just hang out quietly until
this whole crap-storm literally blows over, at which point we can focus on the other half of
this equation. Yeah, I get no one wants to use the “z” word right now, but rocker boy sure had all
the hallmarks. Whatever his deal was, we have no idea if there aren’t more bath-bomb enthusiasts
prowling around the area, so we need to keep an eye out for potential weapons. I mean, it’s not
like I expect to find a Left 4 Dead weapons cache lying around, but even a few 2x4’s would be
better than going at them empty handed.
Bruh, seriously. You found a perfectly
crafted spear and your first thought is to use it to reinforce the door?
Take a look around. This place is entirely indefensible. Even if you manage
to secure a single point of entry, there’s countless more they can file through. It’s
basically late-round COD zombies in the sense that boarding up the windows is at best a minor
inconvenience for them and at most a complete waste of time. Even worse because you won’t even
be earning points towards the mystery box.
Right now, our only chance of holding back the
horde is to make sure they don’t know we’re here in the first place, and that means, as far as
we’re concerned, there’s only two kinds of people: those of us on the inside, and those that
are pretty much already dead. Case in point, young brace face limping around out there.
Yeah, getting serious 30 DAYS OF NIGHT vibes from this one.
For real, this is the oldest trick in the book: wound one and let their agonized screams
draw in the rest for a multikill. Besides, even if this freakshow lacks the cognizance to
set this up, he clearly already sees her, so only a complete and utter moron would think she could
be saved without giving up our hiding spot.
Hey, great work. You totally saved her.
Did you guys seriously learn nothing from what happened with Mr. Lorenzo? The moment someone in
your group states their intentions to do something fatally stupid, you need to dogpile them and hold
their mouth shut until the opportunity passes. Oh, and just to make things worse, it looks like
the bus driver’s crossed over to team zeke. Fantastic. Ya know, this would be a great use
case for the spear if someone hadn’t thrown it away the second we found it. A lot of good it
did holding back a human battering ram.
Still unable to comprehend their overwhelming
numbers advantage, the students flee deeper into the building and barricade themselves inside the
Jackson Pollock suite. Gotta wonder how a place like this would still have power… and working
glow sticks. Okay, clearly someone came through here recently. Let’s hope whoever that might be is
sincere about all those welcome signs. Then again, I’d rather not meet anyone who enjoys
bumming around this crap hole. Either way, we’d better find some weapons fast, cuz
it turns out we’re not alone in here.
Yeah, group hug and all that. Here’s
the thing, if he could get in here, then so could the zombies, which is why we
should have started clearing this room as a group the second we got inside. And sure enough,
here comes the freak parade, only it looks like there’s a few new members in the form of
our fallen classmates. Better find a way out quick, or we’ll all be singing Thriller until
the end of days. In the meantime, the larger and stronger members of the group need to kick it up
a notch with some crowd control. Without weapons, we’ll have to resort to hand to hand like Danny
and Hunt. However, these new recruits don’t seem quite as agile as the other two, so we might be
able to rip down some of that plastic sheeting everywhere and wrap it around their heads
for a little hockey punch action.
Lucky for us, Randall is still on a roll.
Too bad it wasn’t fast enough to keep Hunt from getting dragged off to the other side. Now
down to only seven, the gang runs a little bit farther before stopping in yet another unsecured
room. This one even creepier than the last.
Weird, it’s almost like you’re all a bunch
of generic high school stereotypes.
I’m joking, of course; this isn’t
good. It seems whoever’s shacking up here has been keeping tabs on us, and
judging by the inclusion of a Ryan dummy, this is extremely recent. Hmmm, come to think of
it, if his mannequin is up, why would Hunt’s still be around unless the person who put these together
left before he got got, ya know, right around the time Ryan joined our group. No to mention the
fact he just happened to “stumble upon” our exact location in a massive complex.
Yeah, maybe walk us through how you made it off the bus one more time, cuz right now it’s
looking like you might have had a hand in all this. Of course, that still doesn’t explain
the zombies, or the apparent chemical strike, but it does mean we should keep an eye on him
going forward, and that pretty much goes for all our fellow survivors. Just saying, there’s
been an awful lot of coincidences today, and we shouldn’t be taking anything for granted.
In any case, sussing out the imposter is going to have to wait, because it turns out the zombies
haven’t quite forgotten about us yet.
Well, it’s about gosh darn time. Where was all
that raw animal instinct when there was just one of these things back on the bus? Whatever,
at least they have sense enough to go for the coup de grace, although we might want to find
something a bit more robust to hit him with. Sure, he might look dead now, but given our general lack
of information, I’d feel a lot better if his head were rolling across the floor right now.
Unfortunately, a quick search of his pockets doesn’t produce a cell phone, although our
findings do certainly explain his terrible driving. However, it seems the syringe
wasn’t purely recreational, and judging by Danny’s rapidly deteriorating condition, I’d say
whatever was in there is pretty fast acting.
Oooooh. Yeah, don’t look, Jacey, we’re gonna have
to beat your boyfriend to death with mannequin pieces before he becomes a liability. That
said, who’s ever heard of a zombie virus that spreads by injection? I mean, I guess, it’d be
just as effective as a bite, but are we really supposed to believe a mindless reanimated corpse
retained the dexterity to pull out a needle and jab someone with it while rolling around on the
ground? No, this doesn’t add up at all.
I’m starting to wonder if the bus driver
wasn’t in on it the whole time. After all, he is the one who crashed the bus, and he pretty
much just stood there doing nothing while Mr. Lorenzo was getting snacked on like a foot away.
Oh, well, I guess now’s our chance to ask him, cuz it turns out Randall’s flimsy double
tap didn’t quite do the trick.
Hey, looks like our Danny problem just solved
itself. Oh, no, never mind he got back up.
Having lost yet another named character, Ever
decides enough is enough. The way she sees it, the only way out of this nightmare is by leaving
the building and going back for their phones. Only problem is, the gas still hasn’t dissipated. Haha,
nah, everyone’s already forgotten about that. The real issue is that Randall really enjoys playing
the leader, and he’s not about to let someone else take the wheel. Well, that and there’s a decent
chance they’d all be brutally killed.
Fact is, the whole reason we chose to hold
up in this pile was to get out of the mist, so I definitely wouldn’t make a run for it until
that clears up. Once that happens, I think a hybrid approach is best here. After all, it’ll
be a lot easier for one or two people to slip out undetected than all six. Everyone else can find a
room to barricade and sit tight for a while.
Ultimately, this is the approach they end up
taking, with Ever and Steven going for the phones while everyone else stays hunkered down.
I gotta hand it to them, firebombing the van was a good distraction; however, waiting until
dark to head out is where you lose me. Sure, it’ll make them harder to see, but the same goes
for the zombies. Plus, good luck navigating a dense forest at night without even so much as a
flashlight. The school bus might as well be on the friggin moon, it’ll be so hard to find.
That is, if they weren’t the main characters. They actually find it immediately, but it’s not
quite the W they were hoping for. Turns out at some point all the phones got smashed to
crap. Wait, all the phones? How is that even possible? All right, either these are the smartest
zombies we’ve ever encountered, or we’re looking at the mother of all senior pranks, cuz this
right here was definitely no accident.
The trip isn’t a complete loss, however, as
Ever suddenly remembers the basics of disaster survival and checks the bus’ radio for news
from the outside world. Evidently, this chemical attack wasn’t all it seemed to be.
Yeah, and I’m thinking I know who.
Gosh dang Steven was in on it this whole time.
Guess that explains why he was so quick to join Ever’s rescue efforts; had to make sure she
couldn’t actually succeed. Oh, and that’s not all. Here comes Randall to incriminate himself
while loudly discussing the plan, along with none other than the head zombie himself, some random
local burnout named Chip. Well, you all know what this means. Brace for exposition dump.
So, we find out Randall and Steven were sick and tired of getting Slurpied by a bunch of
dumb jocks, so they concocted an over-the-top, scared-straight plan to show them all who’s boss, and win over a couple ladies in the process. Of
course, they couldn’t do it all by themselves, so they brought in Chip and the bus driver to
make sure it all went according to plan.
After deliberately crashing the bus, the
driver would play the emergency broadcast tape, at which time Chip would show up in costume to get
the party started. From there he would inject all the quote-unquote rando students with some kind
of psy-op serum to turn them all into mindless drones they could whip into a zombie-like
frenzy. Meanwhile, Randall would ensure the others made it into the abandoned building so
he and Steven could run around playing Chris Redfield while the others looked on in awe.
Now, you’re probably wondering why two grown men would even consider wrapping themselves up in some
teenaged fever dream. Well, it seems they both had a personal bone to pick with Mr. Lorenzo, which
is where things started going off the rails.
Oh, okay, Brando. You realize that little
stunt left your DNA all over the wound, right? That means even if by some miracle
you guys manage to make it out of here, the instant someone in your family does a 23 and
Me, you and everyone else running this dumpster fire are gonna wind up behind bars for the rest
of your lives. Well, except for the bus driver, but that’s because he already checked out.
As for the “zombies,” the plan was to let the green stuff wear off under the assumption
they’d all just forget what happened and move on with their lives. And they would
have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for their plan being so incredibly stupid.
First of all, this entire ordeal hinges on none of the other students sneaking their phone in at
the very beginning, something you could not have possibly controlled. Second, what if one or both
of you got seriously injured in the crash? Not to mention the possibility of everyone rushing Chip
and stomping his lights out the moment he got on the bus. At that point, you’d have to pretty much
call the whole thing off and just go with it, or jab everyone with the goop and hope they
all forgot about it. Speaking of which, unless this halfwit personally conducted rigorous
human trials with this crap, there’s absolutely no way he’d be able to predict how all these
different people might react to it. For all he knew at the time, some of them could have
been allergic and died on the spot. Either way, betting the house on it working like some kind of
amnesia potion, was painfully optimistic.
When it comes right down to it, there is literally
no way this scheme ever could have succeeded. It relies on too many things working perfectly to
even have a chance. Not to mention cornering the world’s supply of dry ice to create twelve
plus hours of fog across a massive area. For Christ’s sake, whatever happened to staging
a purse snatching or faking a major illness. I could think of a million ways to generate
artificial popularity that don’t involve mass poisonings and bus crashes. And if it’s just
about getting revenge on the popular kids, it’s called time. Go ahead and check in on some
of your classmates who peaked in high school. I’m sure they’re all doing great right now.
Of course, Randall and the gang are in way to deep to turn back at this point, which is
why things are about to get messy.
Ah, yes, I’m sure Plan B is every bit as
well thought out as the original.
Since they can’t count on the “zombies” to forget
everything, Chip has them all caged up for the final showdown between good and evil. The idea is
to get them all jacked up on back ally Mountain Dew and turn them loose for Randall and friends
to cut down in “self-defense,” ya know, cuz a pile of hacked up bodies all containing the same
mystery substance isn’t going to draw an enormous amount of police and media attention.
Stupid or not, it’s really bad news for young Ever, as she’s seen farther behind the
curtain than anyone else at this point, which is why instead of immediately pumping her
full of enough Minotaur to put Ozzy down, the two masterminds leave her alone with Chip and just
assume he’ll take care of her. I mean, it’s not like your futures depend on it or anything.
Fortunately for Ever, her plot metabolism allows her to shake off the dose while the would-be
executioner is getting properly motivated, but it’s not enough for her to make it out in
time. Dang, should have tried crawling under the seats to make yourself harder to spot. Oh,
well, I guess that’s it then. Looks like the bad guys are taking this one. Having fun winning
Prom King, and then spending the rest of your lives in constant fear of being found out. Nah,
you know Chip’s just gonna toss her around like a ragdoll until she lands next to something
she can hit him with, like this boombox.
Ugh, finally. I hated that song.
Now, obviously she’s going to heroically run back inside to try and save the day, but for
the love of God, at least try searching Chip’s body for a cell phone you can use to get some back
up on the way. Sure, they gave you the rundown on the bus, but there’s no telling what’s going on
in there right now, and with these morons at the helm, pretty much anything is possible.
Speaking of which, back inside, Randall has finished psyching up his canned horde for
the main event. All that’s left to do now is rally the troops and have Steven open
the cage at just the right time. However, just as he’s about to free the beasts, youknowwho
comes in out of nowhere and knocks him on his butt, throwing herself in the line of fire
right as the crusaders enter the room.
Yeah, saw that coming. I mean, you can’t exactly
blame someone for thinking that when it looks like she just crawled out of Raccoon City.
It’s a good thing Ever is still lucid enough to blow the lid off Steven and Randall’s insidious
plan. Otherwise, this might have ended with her own best friend tragically misreading the
situation and giving her the Darktide treatment. Of course, it also helps they didn’t bother
juicing up Danny so he can back up her story.
Now on the defensive, Steven grabs a syringe and
just tries the same thing over again. Ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Only it turns out he opened
the cage door after all. Yeah, say what you will about their smooth brained scheme, they whipped
up some pretty convincing zombies, at least enough to dish out a little poetic justice.
As for Randall, dude has like three false death scenes before they finally manage to
keep him down, all because no one here is old enough to remember Rule #2. Check this
out. First, he gets knocked clear across the room by his own crush:
Ya know that’s gotta hurt.
I mean, I can honestly understand why they
might have thought that was the end of it, considering she hit him hard enough to get
him airborne. Still, dude somehow shrugs off the TBI and comes back for more, this time
slashing Danny across the chest after he heroically leaps in front of Tamara. Yeah,
don’t worry though, he only slashed him. I made an entire video a while back explaining
why that’s not such a big deal. Of course, Jacey doesn’t know that, which brings us to false
death number two: Gordon Freeman Edition.
Okay, at this point, I gotta wonder why no
one thought to at least separate him from the broadsword. He already shrugged off
one devastating head injury. What makes you think he won’t come back after that one?
And sure enough, here he is for round three. Looks like it’s Ever’s turn this time. In keeping with
the fitting punishments, she straps up with Chip’s Fauci-Kruger glove and dodge, duck, dip, dive,
and dodges her way past Randall’s brain damage sword swings to administer the final dose.
Okay, this one they should have seen coming. I mean, the needles look like they just barely
grazed his scalp; she didn’t even get any skull penetration with that. See, look at all the green
lighting, now he’s got superpowers, not that he didn’t at least already have Deadpool regeneration
with everything he’s been through so far.
Seriously, what’s it going to take to put this
scrawny teenager down for good? Do we have to have Donny Donowitz come show us how it’s done? Nah,
they got him this time. I promise. It just takes four girls simultaneously beating the crap out of
him, followed by another beating from Ryan ending in a body slam, and then a good old fashioned
Mordhau from Ever using his own sword.
Please no. Let’s just get this over with.
Having foiled her classmates’ sinister plot to disrupt the social hierarchy and freed all the
randos to return to their lives of obscurity, Ever and friends emerge triumphantly from the
ruins to hopefully earn that extra credit. And with that, the field trip is finally over.
Oh, and on the subject of people inexplicably surviving crap that clearly should have
killed them, guess what. Randall and Steven, totally fine. Not only that, but it turns
out Chip is still alive, and braces girl, and even the bus driver. What gives?
Are you telling me that after all that, not a single person bought the farm?
I mean, what about Mr. Lorenzo?
Nope. Looks like he’s a-okay.
In the end, literally everyone survived, even the bad guys. I honestly don’t know if that’s
ever happened before. However, had even a single one of the students thought to sneak their phone
onboard the bus, they could have uncovered the hoax early enough to bypass the slums entirely
and summon help. Otherwise, had they immediately resorted to extreme violence after Mr. Lorenzo
got face munched, Chip would have been pretty much powerless to stop them all, thus sparing everyone
the hours of torment that would follow.
Moral of the story, there’s no
such thing as zombies… for now.
