Crawl and Tear

So this weekend I was dragged into a dark cellar. My captor -- a gritty, dark, complex experience. A heart-pounding, brain-pumping, adrenaline-inducing -- hardly loosening his grip it had around my mind.

I screamed, I cried. I yelled, and celebrated. I was often left brooding and downtrodden. I went from being a naive nothing to navigating a complicated land of ducking and dodging, running and diving. I crawled through the mud, jumped over barbed wire fences. I ran for my life and often was scared I wouldn't escape with it. The screams that chased me, blood curdling, knowing any moment the flesh on my shoulder could be ripped into at even the slightest of wrong turns. I hid in the darkness, and dragged my body through the light.

How I feel my character was dressed on my first life

I don't think I've ever had such a completely enchanting experience as I had this weekend when I finally broke down, and bust down the front door to a vast world. It cost me $30, and soon after I was a tourist in a foreign land, some band-aids in my knapsack and a flashlight in case I needed to find my socks under the hotel mattress. Probably planning on doing some light traveling and hiking through the woods, maybe if things get extreme you'll hook up with a local and do some hunting of the forest wildlife.

It took me a few times watching my stiff body hit the forested ground before I started to get the hang of it, and soon after I was a commando, displaced in the woods finding my orientation. Living off of what I could along the land, I have at times grown an inventory capable of fending off a large pack of wild men, and at other times still so vulnerable one smack from a rotten hand to the wrong part of my body will leave me unconscious and bleeding, flesh being torn from my bone.

DayZ is relentless. It's a world of its own, and not where you'll escape the darkest problems facing society today. Greed and fear run this world, nothing is ever certain in the face of a competition for your life. If you couldn't trust someone to pull a knife out of back, you had better trust they'll be the person to put one there.

For those who don't know, it's a very involved simulation of the zombie apocalypse scenario. Based off the ARMA 2 engine (which is comprehensive and amazing), it incorporates a huge variety of real-life concerns into a completely chaotic sandbox.

Imagine being a complete stranger left in a large section of land, left along the shore with nothing but a backpack with a bandage and flashlight in a world you've never explored before. The only other thing that accompanies your arrival into this seemingly calm world is the sound of waves crashing behind you. As you move inland, even that abandons you. Complete silence, aside from the distant singing of a bird. A modern world devoid of life. There's roads and rail tracks, but nothing has run along them in some time.

What is there to be afraid of? Dirt?

It is obviously a largely populated place, but you haven't seen evidence of a soul around. You look past both sides of the road, and venture into the wooded hills. As you walk along, you see a building in the distance. The view is foggy and distorted, but it seems like a house. For someone all alone with nothing, it seems like the most logical to first head towards. You excitedly trot towards the closest thing resembling comfort you can see, but slowly are filled with dread.

As you approach, you see something shuffling just beyond your field of view. You take a knee, and squint in the direction you were previously eagerly headed. You stare for a moment, and are increasingly convinced your brain is playing tricks on you. Playing it up to imagination, you continue headed in that direction. As you get closer, you realize this house is in poor maintenance. Perhaps this is good, maybe you can take a break and collect yourself without disturbing anyone around you. Confident, you continue, the pavement crunching underneath your hiking boots you picked out special for this holiday in the beautiful, vastly wooded hills of the Czech Republic.

You are forced to learn a lot once you realize that unknown, shuffling in the distance was previously a living human being, and after locking eyes, you felt the most primal fear you've ever felt in your life. It is instantly interested, and heads in your direction. Locked in fear, you stand still for a moment and suddenly make a running burst to the treeline. It takes up chase.

As you run to the trees, begging and pleading that it didn't' see where you went you hear a blood curdling scream, and see a monster take a swing at you. This zombie has one goal. It's you. And it will do anything to get to its goal. It will run, climb, crawl, and chase for as long as it can see you.

You run for an hour out of fear. You finally stop, look around, to be left in the solace of complete loneliness once again. It feels like the best feeling in the world, until you finally relax enough to feel your throat is scratchy and dry, and also start to notice your stomach is growling. After all that running, you definitely had better get something to drink, but food isn't exactly a minor need either at this point.

You have to run, explore and fight to find even the most basic of resources. You'll murder over a can of beans. Turn on a trusted associate for a can of soda. Smash in a zombie's skull with a hatchet to find a can of sardines.

You don't wanna know what people will do for a rifle, and more than likely go weaponless for long amounts of time. You'll have to hunt animals, cook fires, and are on a constant search in supplies to continue living amongst the dead.

I couldn't think of a better way to spend a weekend than feeling like I was thrust into an extreme world of survival. And I feel the skills I gained will not only improve the fun I have with the game in the future, but very well could be life skills to use in any sort of similar, apocalyptic, on-your-own shitting your pants situation. Still, I feel confident.