I apologize right now if you think this is going to be an account of a near death experience or a walk on the other side. No celestial light or interactions with angels or relatives long since passed appear in this story. I “died” on April 21, 2013 because I participated in The Walking Dead Escape Philadelphia as the very thing that strikes fear, anger, and desperation in the living. Here are my accounts as a walker in The Walking Dead Escape.
I, like billions of viewers worldwide, watch AMC’s “The Walking Dead” like loyal Christians attend church, and when I got an e-mail to participate in The Walking Dead Escape course, I had to sign up. There were three different options for participating: a spectator—you watch people run through the course, a survivor—you run through the course and dodge zombies, and a walker—you are the deadliest obstacle of the course. With the options in front of me, I had to make some considerations. Let’s see. Why would I watch other people have fun when I could be in the fun? Sorry, spectator. I wasn’t limber enough to crawl through tunnels and climb nets, and my stamina wasn’t what it used to be. The website said, “Only the fast will survive.” Survivor was out. That left one option for me, and with an opportunity to get a professional make-up job, a mini lesson on walking like a zombie, and a chance to scare people, the decision was (I have to use this pun) a no brainer. I clicked on the “sign me up” icon.
The day of the event, I stood in the bowels of The Wells Fargo Center, the home of The Sixers and The Flyers, decked out in my dingiest clothes—a pair of blue and gray Airwalk sneakers so tattered that the sole flapped as I walked, a pair of torn workpants, a ripped Pearl Jam Binaural T-shirt with a constellation of holes like I stepped in the middle of a gun fight, and a grimy, blue spring coat. I waited in a cinderblock hallway with about 200 other participants who also endured a two hour wait with the occasional briefing and Walking Dead trivia to pass the time. Inch by inch, the line moved forward, and after twenty minutes of waiting, I finally reached the make-up room. It was a typical backstage room with random props like the T-shirt shooting gun and hockey nets. Rows of tables with mirrors framed with 15 to 20 75 Watt light bulbs aligned it as make-up artists scurried around, refilling their make-up cartridges and moving people out as fast as they moved in.
“Next,” a short guy in a black FEMA shirt and white fatigues said.
He directed me to the other side of the row of tables, and when I got to the assigned station, I found that there was an assembly line of make-up artists. Some did painting, others did blood, and one did hair. I stepped up to the station, and a guy about 27 poured gray goo in an airbrush gun. I instantly closed my eyes as he started, and a mist of cold droplets hit my face. He moved from right to left, first covering my forehead then my eyes, cheeks, nose, mouth, and neck. Yes, I felt like a car getting a paint job. I held my breath for the minute and a half non-stop—a real challenge since it wasn’t something I usually did. I took shallow breaths when he wasn’t spraying my mouth, but he sprayed a little up my nose and kept going. Another challenge took over—the urge not to sneeze. As he did the second coat of my face, I scrunched my nose and puckered my lips in an attempt to suppress the sneeze. The challenge increased when another mist of paint went up my nose, tickling the inside of my nostrils. The last thing I wanted to do was let loose and spray this guy’s face with snot as he sprayed mine with paint. I closed my eyes and turned my head.
“Are you alright?” he asked, and I admitted that the paint went up my nose.
I never sneezed, but I gave a light brush to my nose on the way to the next station. On my way, I snuck a peek in the mirror, and Casper the Friendly Ghost peered back.
The next make-up artist sprayed me with black paint, mostly at the eyes and cheeks to get the decaying look. Next, there was a girl holding a cup of red goop that had the consistency of cake icing. She smeared it from my bottom lip to my chin, my temple, and a crap load in my right ear. The reality set in like the warmth of the red goo. Soon I’d be a zombie.
Next, a tall brunette squeezed a white conditioner or hair gel in her hand and rearranged my hair. She spiked it, swirled it, and rustled it. Normally, it wouldn’t fly with me, but I made an exception for the sake of the zombie apocalypse. All I have to say is at least the conditioner smelled pleasant.
Then a make-up artist with a tin pale and a paint brush told me to hold out my hands. He slathered them with a shampoo-like substance. This paint left marks on passing survivors. If a hand print or smudge appeared under the black light, that meant the survivor was infected.
“Close your eyes,” the final make-up artist said as she held a red, saturated paintbrush.
I followed her instruction and felt a warm liquid splatter against my face. I thought, “Okay, this gives the splattered blood effect,” but then I felt the brush caress my neck and the side of my face. I stepped in the main room with newly zombified participants, only a handful I remembered what they looked like as humans.
They promised a lesson on being a zombie, and my preconception of a lesson was a 10 to 15 minute crash course with a group of 30 or so. As preconceptions usually go, I was way off, but it didn’t take away from the integrity and fun of the event. There were hints on how to be a walker, but not in a condensed time frame.
Liz, the coordinator, asked, “What part of the head does a walker lead with?”
The answer was the nose, stating that a zombie’s sense of smell leads them to people/food.
She stated, “To look like a convincing zombie, act like an unseen force is pulling at your nose.” She held her head up like she sniffed for an invisible scent.
We got our last lesson as we lined up to leave. One of the FEMA staff members ran down the same last minute tips like a sergeant briefs his men before battle. I didn’t hear all of his instructions, but what I caught was, “Don’t hide behind a wall or barricade and pop out in front of someone. That gives a haunted house effect, and that’s not what we want. If you really want to scare someone, stare blankly at them.”
In a fading voice, he repeated his speech to the next group of zombies. His voice disappeared in the anticipation of being assigned to our stations. In a single file of ten, a woman (also wearing a FEMA shirt) guided us through a storage corridor with collapsed basketball nets on one side, a wall of six foot tall piles of folded wrestling mats on the other, and the occasional meandering zombie. The ten of us halted at a pair of steel double doors. On the other side was an “L” shaped dock bay—the place where tractor trailers brought in shipments. The bay consisted of three 30 foot garage doors. One of the three doors was open, and a concrete ramp led to its exit. To our left was a tarp covered forklift and an iron railing, and to our right, was a long, cinder block wall.
The four of us—me, Jason, who wore a bloody bathrobe and pajamas, Linda, who carried a tattered teddy bear (a really nice touch), and another pajama wearing blond whose name I didn’t know or hardly interacted with—stood around, out of part, wondering if that was where we stayed or if they were coming back to move us. With no spectators present, we all figured that they’d move us somewhere we’d be seen. While we waited, I practiced my zombie walk just to practice it. I promised myself prior to the event that I’d always stay in part. I dragged my right foot like it was asleep. I put most of my body weight on my left foot and wobbled my knee now and then so it seemed like it was giving out. I swayed my upper body and let the dead weight of my arms dangle at my sides. I tilted my head like my neck broke at my “death,” and moved it forward on occasion, giving the effect that my head was about to roll off. I wore the typical, worn down, beat up facial expression like a person who had been to hell and back. I projected no expression in my eyes. I made that look one gives when he daydreams. I looked like a zombie; I had to be one, no matter if there were real people around or not. I approached it as if the producers of “The Walking Dead” hired me to be a zombie. Just because the cameras (or in this case, the survivors) weren’t present didn’t mean I had to break from my character. I also looked at it like this: I never knew when a survivor may run around the bend, and standing up straight, checking my watch, or texting wasn’t as convincing or intimidating as a preexisting trudging zombie. I perfected my shuffle, and anything else would be improvised. Then I wondered, “How was I supposed to sound? Was I supposed to make a droning ‘guh’ sound?” No one, besides my zombie cohorts, was around, so I knew I was safe for the time being. I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.
Faint screaming soared around the corner as a FEMA person ran around the bend, screaming and waving her arms, “Come on! Come on! This way!” That’s when I knew the fun began and my zombie growl or if I growled at all became irrelevant.
People ran in from the outside, and ninety percent of the time, people halted, surprised that we zombies occupied that part of the course. I paced about twenty feet from the garage door while Jason walked at the entrance. Linda and the other pajama clad zombie girl stood behind us.
Jason and I encountered incoming survivors, and most of the time, they breezed passed us. Only the scared or indecisive stopped, and that’s when we had our fun. Maintaining my zombie shuffle, I approached the wide eyed, jittery survivors and reached out with a limp arm. Most of the time, I swung at them with no intentions of grabbing or touching them. When I missed, I stumbled, giving the survivors a chance to pass.
Letting people pass, however, got old. We were zombies—killers, obstacles. If we let people pass then we weren’t doing our jobs. Granted, we were slow, deteriorating from the inside out with a bad case of rigor mortis and dry skin, but even the slowest of zombies got to feed. An athletic looking kid in Nikes, black khaki shorts, and a T-shirt zipped by me, and his backpack caught on my outstretched arm. A light went off in my still living, trying to be dead brain, “Survivors with backpacks or bags are more susceptible to getting caught.” I figured that the next survivor with a back pack or bag would feel my zombie wrath. It seemed like a fun idea, in theory, but executing it…well I went a little too far.
A short black girl with glasses and a handbag came up the walkway. She walked along the wall which I used to my advantage with any survivors who made that move. I reached out, cornering the girl, so she went back a few steps and reconsidered her move. It was me and her, and the other survivors passed us while the other zombies honed in on them. When she took a step, I took a step. Whichever direction she moved, I moved. I stumped her. She didn’t know what to do since I trapped her so well. She then faked right and zoomed passed me. Staying in part, I swung my limp arm and caught her bag. I thought, “Yes! I got her!” I tightened my grip on what I thought was her bag’s strap, but her momentum was too much. I heard a tearing sound, and resting in my hand was the flap of a pocket. On the outside, I was a wandering zombie waiting for the next kill, but on the inside, I thought, “Holy crap! I just tore that girl’s handbag!” A feeling of regret washed over me. I didn’t want to damage anything; I was being strategic. A huge part of me wanted to break character and apologize, but I pushed away the tendency.
As she ran away she yelled, “I don’t care! You can keep it!”
As I targeted the next survivor, two thoughts occurred: “Will I get reported?” and “For now on, no more grabbing. Any contact from here on out would be a brush of the fingertips.”
An hour or so into the event, the four of us (and one or two zombie stragglers who wandered onto our portion of the course) formed a strategic barricade, making the course very difficult for the survivors and making the role of being a zombie more worth while for us.
As I stated, Jason and I stayed at the entrance, and that got old fast. Linda and her tattered teddy bear hung out at the door where survivors exited to continue the course. She made it almost impossible for survivors to pass her. They could get by her five foot five, 98 pound frame but not without sacrifice. More survivors passed us, but they halted at the door because of Linda and the other pajama wearing zombie girl. The exit area became a backed up sewer pipe, so instead of waiting for more survivors, Jason and I headed toward the crowd forming at the exit, sandwiching the survivors. Finally the party started for us, and after fifteen minutes, we packed that 20 foot by 20 foot space with eight to ten survivors. We went toe-to-toe with scrambling survivors, trying to strategize and outsmart us walkers, but the more they thought, the closer we got. Instead of watching survivors zip by us, we looked directly into their fearful eyes. They screamed because of us. They tripped and stumbled because we heightened their fuel of adrenaline. We made our portion of the course the survivors’ biggest challenge. It turned into a massacre.
We encountered hundreds of characters during our killing spree—Captain America, a group donned in Michigan Wolverines football jerseys, Eagles fans, Flyers fans, and men in fatigues—but two people of those one hundred or so stick out in my mind. After a huge rush of survivors, the course died down a little. We stood around (yes, out of character) waiting for the next wave, and up the dock sashays this heavy set black woman with two inch neon pink nails, designer boots, and more make-up than I wore.
We jumped into character and closed in on her, and she fanned herself and put her hand up. “Look, you don’t have to go for me,” she said through huffing breaths, “I’m already dead. Let me tell ya.’”
She walked by us, and what was really funny was we didn’t try to go after her. When and if the zombie apocalypse happens, I’m taking that approach, pink nails and all.
The other person was a college age girl wearing a windbreaker, jogging pants, and a pair of sketchers. Survivors scrambled, trying to get through our barricade by using their own strategies. A cluster of five or six yelled, “Hey! Over here!” coaxing us away from other survivors. We played along; after all, as a zombie we followed our primitive instinct: hunger. A couple got by me, and I saw a girl contemplating her move. Remember, the indecisive were appetizers. She backed herself into a corner as I closed in on her. She cowered and laughed, realizing it wasn’t real but also that a zombie approached her. She attempted an escape, but I grabbed the rail, trapping her again. I continued closing in on her, building suspense, and she looked me square in the eye and said, “Do you need a hug?” I tried not to, but I broke character and cracked a smile. If we were being filmed, it would’ve ended up on the blooper reel. Lucky for me, she was one of the last survivors we encountered, and my status as a legitimate zombie remained in tact.
The event ended, and we got a chance to go through the course. We entered the main arena, illuminated only with a black light, giving that spooky effect. Blood splattered vehicles with smashed windshields, crunched doors and roofs, and decayed paint jobs occupied the arena, and dismembered mannequins hung from open doors or from shattered windows.
A part of the course consisted of the corridors of The Wells Fargo Center. Yellow caution tape sealed off elevators, and scattered trash covered the floors while severed limbs and sprawled out corpses decorated the halls. The stairwells displayed hand painted signs with messages of despair like “God Forgive Us.” They set up camouflage tents outside, stations where rescue crews checked survivors. Marks or smudges under the black light meant infection, and you know what they do to the infected.
The course led us to a Philadelphia sports bar called Chickie and Pete’s, where zombies, survivors, and spectators shared their experiences of the course while music blared in the background. I found out from a spectator that survivors talked about “the docking bay zombies,” and they christened Linda with the title, “the teddy bear bitch.” She embraced the title as we all embraced the impact we had on the course.
I got home a couple hours later, and it was time to remove all that make-up. The feeling reminded me of Halloween night after disbanding from friends, knowing that the only thing left to do was take off my costume. Doing so meant the illusion of being someone else ended, but unlike my younger self, I was ready to shed the make-up and face the reality of an upcoming work week. I stared at the sink’s drain as traces of red, black, and gray swirled down it. I discarded my zombie persona and returned to the land of the living with the memories of that day as stated above.
That’s my tale. No cherubs or singing angels featured in this story, but I hope I entertained you and surprised you nonetheless. Not a movie, either, but I appeared in a You Tube video from the point of view of a running spectator. I popped up in the background, my face a flash as the spectator dashed passed us. So much for my big screen debut, but then again, how many zombies in the series have more than thirty seconds of screen time before meeting their doom?
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