Have Your Brains and Eat Them, too

If anyone was downtown Saturday night, they probably got more entertainment in their evening than they'd intended as over 260 zombies streaked down the sidewalks of Lincoln.

Starting at the State Theater on 14th and O Street and marching our way through UNL campus, the Haymarket, and, in one zombie's case, some unfortunate bystander's dinner, it was two and a half hours to remember.

At first, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to go. I wasn't sure how to get there, didn't know if the people I'd been invited by were still planning to go almost two months after the initial invitation. With almost two hours to the Walk's start, I got onto facebook and immediately found five of my friends had decided to go - in fact, they'd been at the Theater for quite a while already. My mind made up, I grabbed the most obnoxious colored make-ups I could find and smeared blood (aka lipstick) across my face and arms, as well as some green and black eyeshadow for a mildy-decayed look. Once I emerged from the bathroom, my mom simply looked at me as if to say 'Where did I go wrong?'.

Having bribed one of my other friends into accompanying me, I picked her up and we promptly headed for Burger King, where we found we were just in time to not only scare some of the customers, but also eat with my mom and brothers, who had no idea we were there. Sadly, we really only recieved strange looks from an ex-cowoker who cheerfully called, 'Have fun!' as we headed out the door.

After two years of being able to drive on my own, I still have an abysmally small amount of knowledge as far as the streets of Lincoln. Once we finally managed to reach the right intersection, we were at a loss as to where to go.

"Where do you think we should park? Do you see the theater?" I asked, trying to navigate through downtown Lincoln's hellish maze of one-way streets. My friend Katie simply pointed straight ahead, where a newly-eaten bride and groom were making their way across the street from the nearest parking lot. Question one answered, anyway.

Inside the State Theater, we were told to sign a large list of participants, supposedly so we could be tracked down if we caused any trouble during the walk. After signing in, we made our way to the back of the theater, where we were immediately swamped by over 300 zombies who made my own make-up look like a bit of over-done lipstick.

We were soon told to 'sit down and shaddap' by a rather gruesome victim of the un-dead, who explained the three simple rules of the walk: no attacking bystanders who had no giant duct-tape X's on their person (the signature of a wanna-be zombie), no scaring small children, and no touching or entering establishments.

"Also," a slightly shorter, rotund zombie announced amid the murmers of excitement, "I don't want to see any of this." He quickly slunk across the stage in a rather creepy manner, stopped, straightened, and suddenly began smiling his face off and waving frantically to an imaginary audience.

After massive amounts of fake blood had been thrown on/at us (I was covered up to my elbows in the stuff before we even left the building), we made our way outside into a back alley, where more volunteers were waiting to spray us with blood before we took off into the street. Cameramen were lined up, running shoes ready for the chase. With a cry of 'BRAIIIIINS', we were off.

At first, most people were slinking along, occasionally doing a well-timed stumble or screech at bystanders and attacking duct-tape bystanders every fifteen minutes or so, covering them in massive amounts of blood. By the time we reached UNL campus, many had started to speed up and were now jogging along ala '28 Days Later'.

"Oh my God." I laughed, grabbing one of my fellow zombie-friends and dragging her over to look. "Pirates."

Against every concievable law of coincidence, our pack of 300 zombies had stumbled straight into the middle of a Frat party, where 100 or so 'Pirates' were loading onto three buses. Most of them flew straight onto the buses, with only a handful staying out on the lawn to wave flimsy 'ages 3 and up' swords at us at full arm's length. Deciding buses didn't count as establishments, many started flailing at the windows, screaming for 'brains', 'beer', and, in one apparent Vegan zombie's case, 'GRRRAIIINSSS!'.

Once past the pirate buses, our party picked up, streaking down into the Haymarket after a short break in the commons so the rest of the group could catch up (zombies are still prone to obeying traffic laws, apparently.) We made our way down into the Farmer's Market area, passing by several bars and one overly-confident, 300 lb. woman who decided to flash the party her 'goods'.

"We said 'brains', not 'breasts'!" Came from all sides as many of the zombies suddenly became more nauseas at the sight of her own exposed flesh than our festering wound-covered own.

As our party ground down to a close, we passed the formerly-known-as-Douglas Theatres, where the Christian Dude With the Giant Cross (tm) seized his opportunity to scream about 'servants of Satan', while more than one zombie considered crossing over to him simply for kicks. As we reached our final destination, 300 bodies collapsed onto the sidewalk amid cheers of triumph and calls of 'where the hell did my ride go? Damnit!'.

"Everyone," the crowd fell silent as the head zombie stood up for a head count. "Thank you all for coming out here tonight. The final count for this year's zombie walk..." There was a general intake of breath. "... Is 261!" We all burst into applause as the Walk organizers exchanged hugs and high-fives in congratulations. The first zombie walk, organized fall 2007 to promote a downtown haunted-house, had only been 131. The numbers had almost completely doubled.

Looking back, I definitely should have gotten there sooner in order to get completely zombied-up. But who knows, maybe next year....