Pastachip

I thought this would be a pretty simple thing to do (and maybe it is and I just suck at it), but I can't seem to ever escape from zombies. I was looting a house when a zombie glitched through the door and started chasing me around so I ran out and hightailed it across a field. I tried zig zagging and hiding behind bushes and trees and running up hills, all the things I was told would get them off me. But it never did. Eventually it stopped when I started running down a hill and I made sure there were no other zombies around and there weren't so I crouched behind a bush to rest my poor starving character when suddenly: Zombie! The same one that had stopped on top of the hill so far away I could hardly see it! And so I ran until I passed out from lack of food and it killed me. Is anyone else having this problem? I haven't found any weapons or anything so I couldn't fight it and apparently I can't run away either. Is there something I'm not doing that I need to be in order to be able to lose them?

Won't it hit me if I get too close?

I'm completely new to DayZ, since I waited for standalone rather than play the mod, and have no idea what I'm doing. First off, how do you run away from zombies (besides the obvious)? I was being chased by zombies so I ran down the road but they just kept chasing me for like 10 minutes. Do you have to run in zig-zags or something? And how does the zombie detection work anyway? In the above question, I tried to crouch walk into a house in the daytime and ended up attracting one zombie from outside the yard of the house, and then I couldn't figure out how to raise my fists so I ran away (and ended up with a train of zombies behind me as I sprinted frantically down the road). But then, in my next life, I spawned at night and accidentally flashed a zombie in the face with my flashlight just walking around but it didn't attack me. I know its alpha, but I was just wondering if that was normal and if I could get some tips on avoiding their notice in the future. Also, if you're trying to meet up with a friend, what's the best way to do it? I have the map link, but I'm not very good at reading maps and I don't know where I spawn. Are there any general "rules" for finding people? Thanks!

Thanks!