My name is Dereck and my life is a train wreck. I have no job, no money, no family, and no opportunities. Which is probably what made me a perfect candidate for the gameshow. This isn’t your typical gameshow though, it’s like Survivor on steroids. You need to survive 7 days in a zombie apocalypse any way that you can. You could hide the entire time and hope not to starve to death. Or you could become a zombie killing god and murder your way through the apocalypse. The choice was completely yours. They were also offering a 1 million dollar cash prize if you were to win. And in this case it was all under the table so that would be 1 million free and clear from Uncle Sam.
This seemed like the perfect thing for me to get into. I hadn’t been any use to anyone after gettin gout of the military. I had been an MP while I was in and I definitely didn’t want to be a cop when I got out. So after being approached about this opportunity I asked what the catch was. At the time they said there wasn’t a catch. If you didn’t survive the entire time you would just get to go home without any kind of prize. But if you did win you had the million to look forward to.
At that point I asked what I had to do and they said they would send a car to my location and they would take me to an undisclosed location. I agreed and got ready for them to come pick me up. They were at my apartment within 30 minutes and I was on my way to their facility. They said for my protection and theirs they had to blindfold me and also put headphones on me so that I couldn’t hear anything.
The drive felt like it took roughly an hour and I was ushered into what I assumed was the facility. I couldn’t tell because I was still wearing the blindfold and headphones. When we finally did stop walking the blindfold and headphones were taken off me and I was face to face with an older man. Probably in his 60’s who wore a plain black suit and had his hair slicked to the side. He told me his name was Thomas and that he would be the one conducting the trials.
He asked me if I had any questions and I wanted to make sure that there was really no possible way that I could get hurt during any of this. He reassured me that the simulation was completely harmless and that there was nothing to worry about. I breathed a little easier and followed him to the staging area.
We entered a room with a bed and what looked like a VR headset. they sat me down on the bed and explained that I needed to survive 7 days in a zombie scenario. On the 7th day I would have to face the horde. This was a massive swarm of zombies that I would need to deal with before the night ended. I need to scavenge, craft, and build a solid shelter to fend off the horde. Each in game day would only be 1 hour in real time so I needed to move quickly.
As they laid me down I was then strapped to the bed. Which he assured was just because the simulation is so immersive they are worried I’d roll out of the bed without realizing it. Just before he put the headset on he warned me that I needed to avoid being bitten or being killed. If I was killed in the game there was no way they could pull me out. I was about to scream but then the headset was put on and everything melted away.