You’ve got red on you…

Saturday evening was all about running away from people covered in blood.

Although this sounds like a night out gone terribly wrong, it was actually part of Zombie Earth: Apocalypse, which challenges you and your friends to survive in a zombie epidemic.

The evening started by meeting at a ‘secret location’, a multi-story car park in Leicester.

It was dark and the car park seemed oddly deserted, setting the scene perfectly for the night ahead of us. The organisers marked us with some branded mine tape: “so the zombies know who to chase”, they said gleefully.

We then had a warm up, safety brief and a run-down of the scenario (standard pharmaceutical company unwittingly causes zombie outbreak).

The different types of zombies were explained; walkers, runners and dormant-unless-you-make-noise-and-wake-them-up.

Zombies had special gel on their hands that would show up under UV light if we’d been infected. All very realistic, well, as realistic as zombie films get! We were given our first checkpoint coordinate and sent on our way.

The game itself was described as half urban navigation, half zombie chase.

The checkpoints were around 500-800m apart, each hosting a staged event to get the next checkpoint’s grid coordinate. After getting somewhat lost, we made it to the first checkpoint, a pub, just in time to see another group run out of it screaming.

Entering with a huge amount of trepidation, the barmaid (an actress) asked us what was going on outside.

After a strained conversation, the barmaid opened a door to go through to the back and a blood-soaked zombie came running at us. Sprinting out as fast as humanly possible, we were then forced to go down an alley where several more of the undead had taken residence.

The checkpoints were extremely varied, both in venue (including the guildhall, car parks and an abandoned hotel) and style. Whilst some were straightforward story progression, talking to an actor or actress, but others involved sneaking.

My favourite was the abandoned hotel, which involved sneaking by dormant zombies whilst checking the walls of rooms for the next coordinate. Although it quickly escalated to running away from them after someone made a noise! Even as a logically-minded and rational human being, that still scared the shit out of me!

The final checkpoint had our group screened at a building controlled by the military. Screened one by one by a chap wearing a full hazmat suit and respirator, we were either OK’d or sent to be ‘looked at by medics’.

Those infected members of our group were secretly being transformed into zombies, who were then instructed to chase us into the ‘end of the world party’, just around the next corner!

A fantastic finale! At the party you could have souvenir photos taken and there were cheap drinks on offer.

But the best part was seeing all the zombies and actors, who had spent the entire night scaring you, chilling, dancing and generally having a good time.

The whole experience was amazing and well worth the £17 it cost.