Like allergy season on crack, the semester-ly zombie outbreak arrived at Stony Brook University for the third consecutive semester on Thursday, March 31st 2011. However, due to budget cuts, more Undergraduate Student Government mishandlings and the fact that all of the University officials were busy doing blow with your tuition dollars, students were once again forced to fend for themselves during the course of the deadly outbreak.
When the first whispers of a zombie virus first approached the Stony Brook University campus in the Spring of 2010, it was met with apprehension. Students were unsure of the possible effects it could have on their educations; “If my professor is infected, do I still have to go to class?”, “If my girlfriend is infected and I don’t use a condom, can I get infected?”, and “Is that a Nerf gun in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?” were just a few of the burning questions on the minds of many of Stony Brook’s brightest. Questions that, unfortunately, led to inaction as opposed to action.
Statistically speaking, only 600 out of Stony Brook’s almost 20,000 students took up arms against the invasion. And, un-statistically speaking, most of those students were nerds. Although it’s my job as a reporter to remain impartial, at a time when our home needs to be defended, does it not seem that the job would be better suited for the Hockey Team as opposed to the Anime Club?
To help answer that question, I interviewed a number of students involved with the Resistance movement. “I’ve played a lot of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, so I’m pretty sure I can handle this,” replied one resistance fighter. “Yeah, and don’t forget about Dead Rising, that game ruled!” seconded another. When I asked them if anything other than prior video-game experience played a factor in their qualifications, one student shrugged and replied “Well, I jerk off a lot; that’s like cardio, right?”
When trying to question members of the athletic community on campus, I found it difficult to even get them to talk to me about the subject of the zombie virus. One member of the basketball team, who wishes to remain anonymous, answered only with “HvZ? Fuck no. That shit’s for nerds.”
So, it was up to a rag-tag band of Trekkies and chronic masturbators to take up arms for the good of the campus community. Unfortunately, due to strict codes enforced by University Police, the only “arms” that could be taken up were clean socks and Nerf guns. “Are you fucking kidding me?” said one campus police officer. “I can’t even carry a gun! What makes you think I’m going to let Poindexter and the rest of the Tri-Lambs pack heat?!”
Despite the obvious ineffectiveness of resistance ordinance, it didn’t stop students from trying their best to quell the invasion. “We all know how tough zombies are to take down with regular bullets” once resistance fighter told me. “But we’re hoping the zombies will be distracted by bright orange foam and the fresh scent of Tide.”
Throughout the course of the ever-growing invasion, resistance members rallied under the guide of a man known only as Commander Shepard. In an anonymous letter recovered by the Press, it appears that Shepard arrived on campus spreading a message of hope, saying that he would “bring back the Union and restore the States to their former glory.” I have interpreted this as meaning that he hopes to bring the Student Union Building, a notorious zombie headquarters, back under the control of the students. His second message about restoring the States, which I take to mean the campus newspaper The Statesman, appears to be a lost cause.
Unfortunately, Shepard’s missives appear to have been in vain, as on Wednesday April 6th at roughly 6:30 PM, Shepard and his forces were massacred by the overwhelming zombie population. Shepard and his group were executing a “final stand” effort to set off a zombie-killing bomb and escape via that weird spaceship looking thing on the Engineering lawn.
After their victory, the cries of hundreds of zombies could be heard throughout campus, echoing a simple, solemn message:
“BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS.”
With the last of the resistance slaughtered, this leaves our campus with a steadily rising zombie population. Most students are not worried, however.
“They smell kind of funny, and all they ever want to talk about are brains, but they’re really not that bad” said one student. “Yeah, my roommate is a zombie. He’s an okay dude, but sometimes I see him salivating while looking at my skull,” said another.
“Honestly, I can’t even tell the difference between my zombie students and my regular students” answered a University professor. “When I see a kid with his eyes half-closed and his mouth hanging open in a daze, I’m unsure if he’s bored, tired, confused, or if he’s imagining what it would be like to scoop out the insides of my head with a melon-baller.”
But a chat with a doctor at the Stony Brook Medical Center revealed much grimmer figures, however. “At this rate, most students should expect to become a zombie some time during their tenure at the University. We’ve found that the longer you’re at SBU, the greater the chance that you’ll end up a soul-deprived member of the walking dead.”
When I asked her what she thought would be the fate of other college campuses currently afflicted with similar zombie viruses, she raised an eyebrow and asked “what virus?”
