The first zombie Colin Stromberg encountered was his last.
The human resistance at Utah State University suffered an early casualty on Monday morning as Stromberg, a student and defender of the living, was attacked by the undead.
Stromberg was a first-year graduate student and rookie zombie slayer. While patrolling on campus just hours after the first zombies were reported, Stromberg said he had yet to witness any enemy combatants.
“I am being vigilant and I have seen zero humans or zombies on campus today,” he said.
Those were his final words.
Moments later, an undead warrior charged Stromberg from behind and sunk its teeth into the student's neck, tearing clean through to his jugular.
Zombie Death Capt. John Gillespie laughed maniacally as he welcomed the recent inductee to the ranks of The Horde. The legion of undead fighters intends to "kill everyone” on USU’s campus, Gillespie said.
“They’re hungry. They don’t think like we do,” said Michael Rushton, a veteran zombie slayer who survived a similar outbreak last year. “They want our brains.”
According to Nicole Wright, an outbreak monitor for the League of Supernatural Nations, plagues have been reported at “close to 250 campuses” this year.
Within six hours of the initial outbreak, the number of infected rose from five to more than 80 at USU.
In comparison to the current outbreak, Wright said, “last fall was much worse.”
In that fight, “the zombies wiped out over one-third of the human population,” she said.
But Wright believes this pandemic has the potential to become even more deadly than ones she has seen in the past.
UnDeadline reporters Tasia Briggs, Madison Stone, Chase Christensen, Rachel
Lewis and Kelsie Davis contributed to this report.
