Young Writers Society

It was a one in a million chance. Today was your first day back from winter break. You attended college at Bellham University NC. Your first class was in the critically underfunded Biology wing. It was located in the basement.
At the same moment your lecture began, miles away, a meteor seven miles wide struck earth. Of course you’d heard about a meteor on the news, but scientists had thought it would miss earth entirely. In reality, it had changed course at the last moment, too late for anyone to do anything. In a matter of minutes, the continuity of humanity will change, and you will struggle out of the debris with your fellow survivors to find a world almost entirely alien to you. Buildings and trees leveled, wildfires raging, aftershocks of earthquakes splitting the ground, the sun blotted from the sky by a cloud of soot and dust. You know eventually the air will have to clear, but the light at the end of the tunnel is distant. Now your job is to survive and adapt in this strange new world.

WELCOME TO IMPACT ZERO

Player’s Handbook

Character Sheet

Code: Select all

Name:
Age:
Gender/pronouns:
Looks:
Personality:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Special skills (max of 3):
History:
Up for love/sexuality:
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Character slots
Healer- Dr. Lorene Lancefield @winterwolf0100
Scout- Riley West @Europa
Engineer- Ryan Mistri @Omni
Survivalist- Basil Chen @Spearmint
Scientist- Iridi Rodriguez @keystrings

Riley West: Impact

written in partnership with @winterwolf0100. Thanks love!

About an hour ago, my mom dropped me off in front of Bellham University. The first winter break of my college career was in the books, and now here I am, Just a couple miles away from Blowing Rock, standing in front of Dorm Block C. It’s this squat little building two stories high, lined with little two-room bunkhouses that you share with three other people. Sounds cozy, I know. The dorms weren’t the best thing about being here. The pipes froze in the winter, the AC breaks randomly, and more often than not we’ll have some handyman or other called in by the school to fix the sink or the shower or whatever has sprung a leak. I lived close enough that I could have stayed at home, but freshmen were required to stay on campus. I’m pretty sure they were just after the room and board money.
Anyway, my mom helped me unload my suitcases from the trunk, our feet crunching on the morning frost. She helped me lug them up the cracked concrete steps to the front door. Luckily my dorm was on the first floor, so I didn’t have to worry about dragging everything up any more stairs.
“You need help bringing your bags in?” my mom asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I looked indecisively at the two rolling suitcases, and the duffel bag slung across my shoulder. “Um, no, I think I can get them.”
“Alright, sweetheart.” My mom smiled and held out her arms for a hug. I leaned in and squeezed her tight, the moment of warmth a brief relief from the cold. “Be good,” my mom murmured. “Do good work. Call me if you need anything, okay?”
“Okay, Mama.”
With a fond peck on the cheek, my mom pulled away, eyes shining. “I’m so proud of you.”
That made me grin. “Yeah, I’m proud of me too.”
With a final hug, my mom got back in the car and drove away. I like to think that she made it home safely, maybe made herself a cup of coffee before going to work. That she found shelter somewhere when everything turned to dust and smoke. I set my bags on my mattress, stared at them for a minute, then shrugged. “Eh, that’s future Riley’s problem.”
I didn’t wait for my roommates. The heater was barely working, and it was cold, and anyway, I didn’t know any of them all that well, so I shrugged my coat back over my shoulders, burrowed my face in as far as I could, and went to class early.
Dorm Block C is the farthest away from the main building, and by the time I’d stepped inside, my fingers were starting to feel numb. I tucked my hands in my armpits, trying to warm them as I descended the flights of stairs to my first class of the day.

Room 112 was less of a classroom and more of a closet. Their biology department didn’t get nearly enough funding. All the prerequisite classes were down here, below the bottom floor. 112 had one window, on the door to the classroom, and a few rows of lights that thankfully worked pretty well because otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to see a thing. Our professor, Dr. Lancefield, was this graduate student, maybe five or six years older than me, who taught part-time here. She’s big and muscular with sepia skin and short black hair, and this way of giving lectures that was so smooth and even-toned that I’d caught myself zoning out or dozing off more than once, which I wasn’t proud of. She was probably one of my favorite teachers.
Dr. Lancefield looked up as I opened the door, and I hesitated.
“Sorry, am I too early?” I said. “I can leave.”
She shook her head, setting a file down on her desk and standing. “No, come in,”She said, straightening the bowtie around her neck and walking to the whiteboard.
I quietly crept to my usual middle row seat, and set up my usual note taking station–notebook in the center, pencil bag on the left, pencil sharpener handy on the right–before pulling my book out of my bag and flipping to the page I’d marked.
“Have a good break, Riley?” Dr. Lancefield asked distractedly as she picked up a marker and began to copy several things onto the whiteboard. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, then put down the marker and picked up the eraser.
I nodded, looking awkwardly up from my book. “My mom and I went camping. Spotted a pack of wolves in the valley while we were birdwatching.”
Dr. Lancefield glanced back at me, nodding, before she turned back to the board. “That’s fun,” she said.
I nodded again, more enthusiastic. “It’s a once in a lifetime sorta thing. Wolves hate being around people, I mean, we nearly hunted them to extinction in the 70s. If someone came into my house and beat up my great grandfather I wouldn’t want to be around them either.”
Dr. Lancefield looked back at me smiling, and I realized how long I’d been talking. I flushed and buried my face back in my book.
“That makes sense,” she said. “I’m glad you got to experience that. It’s clearly meaningful to you.” She glanced back down at her folder, then at the door as several people began to file in. I looked over, and picked out a familiar face. Tall, dark haired and olive skinned, dressed in a t-shirt and cargo shorts despite it being the beginning of January. Iridi and I shared a few classes since we were both taking similar majors. He waved at me. I waved back.
Say hi, Riley. You’ve wanted to talk to him since you started here.
The words stuck in the back of my throat. I looked back down at my book and continued reading.
Coward.
Compared to some of the big lecture halls, it was a pretty sorry turnout. I mean the classroom could only comfortably fit maybe ten people, and we has about half that, but I liked the small size. I barely said a word to any of these people but there was a connection there, simply because we were all together in this small, artificially lit space.
Dr. Lancefield set down her notes, and took up her clipboard to take attendance. It was about that time the world above us shattered into a million pieces. A few surprised and indignant yelps went up as the lights flickered and went out. Then everything around us exploded into noise and movement, and an ear-splitting boom roared through the air, shattering the glass in the window and the ground lurched violently, sending chairs and students flying, the screams and cries of fear and confusion just barely audible above the roar of the earthquake.
My heart hammered painfully in my chest. I rolled onto my hands and knees, trying to keep my balance as my panicked mind tried to dredge up the information from those elementary school emergency drills.
Cover, cover. Find cover.
I squirmed underneath the long, heavy table I had been sitting at, colliding with an unseen classmate, and curled into a ball. The ground rocked and heaved like a stormy sea. Above, one of the lights came loose and crashed across the tables in a shower of sparks and broken glass. I pressed my forehead against my knees, and tried not to cry.

Basil Chen: Aftermath

written in partnership with @Europa, @Omni, and @winterwolf0100

There were many things I'd expected to happen today. One, I would probably survive my first Intro to Biology class in the creepy basement. Two, I would go out for boba with Thomas afterwards, and maybe I'd finally figure out why looking at my best friend's been making me feel a little different lately (was it the new haircut? I knew I made fun of it when I first saw Thomas with his hair like that, but maybe it was growing on me). And three, I would definitely spend the evening catching up with the rest of my friends and baking back-from-break banana bread in Dorm Block B.

What I had not expected was for the meteor to crash into Earth, thus scuttling both two and three. And now it wasn't even certain whether I would survive one.

Darkness. Noise. Chaos. The first thought that flickered through my mind was that an in-the-dark escape room or something would be an epic dorm-hall-bonding activity. Clearly not an appropriate thought for a meteor hitting Earth, though to be fair, I didn't know about the meteor at the time. Still, that thought was quickly replaced by alarm as I felt someone blundering into me and elbowing my face sharply.

"Oh my stars, we're all going to die," they whimpered. I could hear the absolute terror in their voice. Something sharp grazed my leg-- glass? I'd heard the windows shattering a moment ago.

I gulped down my own fear. I didn't know what was happening, but this felt a lot like an earthquake. That meant... "Hey, it's going to be alright. We should find cover." I reached out towards where I judged the person's arm to be, and I nudged them towards the table we'd been sitting at only minutes ago.

We huddled there for what seemed to be an interminable length of time as the world broke around us.

I closed my eyes and did my best to shield the other person from the bits of debris that were flying around the classroom. This was worse than any earthquake I'd been in before. I wished I could be out in the open, in a meadow or something, where there were no broken bits of glass to stab us or chunks of building material to crush us.

My family would be worried. And Thomas-- I could only hope he'd be alright. He'd find cover too, right? And my friends, and the rest of the students on campus? I swallowed. There were so many things I hoped for.

The shaking stopped. The room grew quiet for a few minutes. But the light didn't return.

I heard the person next to me sobbing softly. Slowly, I began to hear other people shifting. Someone had the bright idea to turn on their cellphone camera. In the beam of the phone's light, I saw overturned chairs, people huddled beneath the tables, broken glass from the window and the lights everywhere.

We were silent for a moment. Then Dr. Lancefield spoke up.

"We need to stay calm." She sounded dazed, and I watched her stumble slightly as she pushed herself to her feet. "Stay calm everyone, let's--let's just regroup, and we'll--" Dr. Lancefield paused, breaking into a fit of coughing. Dust rained down all around us, filling the air and only making it harder to see. "We'll figure everything out," she said hoarsely. "Just--calm. Stay calm."

I let out a breath. I could do that. At least, faking being calm was easy, especially if it kept my fellow students from panicking. I turned on my cellphone. The wifi was spotty in the basement, but... I sent some quick texts to my family and Thomas letting them know I was okay. Hopefully they'd get through as soon as we got back to the surface. I'd just have to hope for the best. That was all I could do.

I turned to my unknown companion. "You okay? I'm Basil, by the way. He/him."

They were still in the fetal position, but slowly, they uncurled. "I'm Caylee, they/them. M-my girlfriend does metalworking," they whispered, almost choking on their voice.

Oh. Images flashed through my head of the myriad ways an earthquake could interfere with that. Sharp things and hot furnaces and the ground shaking did not combine well. I grimaced. "Maybe... maybe she was able to run out." But the words of comfort sounded weak to even me.

"I-I have to go check on her." They swallowed a sob.

Tinkle-crash. Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of glass. Dr. Lancefield was carefully making her way around her desk, kicking broken shards out of the way and leaning against her desk to steady herself. "Concussion," she mumbled, the other hand rubbing her forehead. "Okay, concussion. Okay." She looked up, eyes hazy as she squinted through the dust. "Who's injured? Is anybody injured?"

"I think I broke something," someone whispered to my right.

"I can't move my leg," someone else cried out. "It's stuck under the desk, I can't feel it."

"There's glass in me," someone mumbled, before they began to devolve into hyperventilating. "There's glass in me, what do I do?"

"Everyone stay calm," Dr. Lancefield repeated, breaking into a fit of coughing again before croaking, "stay calm, everyone. We're going to do a headcount, okay? There were twenty-six people who I checked in on my roster, okay? Let's start there. How many people are conscious right now? If you're conscious, raise your hand or say something."

"I'm Basil, and I'm conscious," I said, shining my phone's light towards the ground near Dr. Lancefield's desk. "Caylee's next to me as well."

"I'm here," came a breathy reply near the door that I almost didn't hear

A few more people called out confirmations of being conscious.

"I'm awake and don't think anything's broken." A shaky voice said in the darkness. The voice stifled a sob. "I don't know about the person on top of me..."

Dr. Lancefield's breath hitched, before she shook her head, rubbing the back of her neck and wincing with pain. "Okay, alright, it's okay, stay calm, everyone. Stay calm. If you can see a classmate and they aren't responding, try to check for their pulse. If you can't find one, let me know and I'm going to come check, okay? Need to just--" She paused, closing her eyes and swaying on her feet slightly. She held one fist in front of her mouth, like she was holding back the urge to vomit. After several seconds, she repeated slowly, "Need to just stay calm."

The number of times Dr. Lancefield had told us to stay calm in the last few minutes was slightly concerning. I closed my eyes again and tried not to let my breaths shake.

Slowly, Caylee's sobs ceased, and around the classroom, I could hear people moving into action, checking the pulses of those around them. I turned to my right, shining my flashlight across the student. "Oh, Maryl!" I offered her a smile, relieved to see a familiar face (I'd shared a few classes with them before) unharmed. "You, uh, you said you broke something?"

Maryl nodded, pointing at their right arm with their left. "My forearm." She winced and continued, "I think it was a piece of the ceiling that hit it before I was able to find cover."

"Okay. Anything else broken?" I tried moving each of my limbs as well, but besides some scrapes and bruises, I was alright. I breathed a small sigh of relief. But then I suddenly felt guilty, because there were so many other students injured, or possibly dead, and what if I could've saved someone's life by blocking a piece of rubble- I shook my head. There was no use in wondering that.

"I don't think so." Slowly, Maryl emerged from the desk and staggered towards Dr. Lancefield. "Prof, do we have anything we can use to splint a broken bone?"

Dr. Lancefield shook her head. She was a few yards away from me now, knelt next to someone with her fingers on their neck, searching for a pulse. "I know a broken bone feels urgent right now, but--" She paused, wincing and rubbing her forehead before she pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. "It won't kill. Once we've taken stock of everything, we can figure out..." She coughed violently, wheezing for several seconds before pulling herself together. "We'll figure out where to go from here," she said hoarsely.

Maryl nodded and started helping another student shift the rubble off them, moving cautiously with her uninjured arm.

I offered a hand to Caylee and pulled them upright. "Any injuries?"

They shook their head.

We started stepping around the bits of rubble, talking quietly to the other students in the room. I checked my phone's battery-- 76%. I turned the light off.

When we were done confirming the dead and collecting the alive, it was determined that there were twenty of us left.

Twenty six of us walked in here, I thought grimly. Now six are dead.

Dr. Lorene Lancefield: Escape

written with @Europa. Thanks for your neverending patience!

The pounding in my head was making it difficult to concentrate on anything anyone else was saying, and the nausea was repeatedly threatening to expell the protein bar I'd had as a poor substitution of breakfast. "Concussion," I mumbled again to myself, as if the word would slip out of my head with bad timing and a coughing fit. It might, honestly, which worried me more than the concussion itself. If I couldn't remember I had it, then I couldn't remember it was impeding on my judgment-- especially considering I was now the only person with medical training in a room of twenty college students who had unhealthy habits before the classroom exploded around us.

I squinted through the dust and broke into another fit of coughing. This was going to be a long day. I wracked my brain for any of the names of the students, tried to find the paper with the attendance list on it. When I found it, I squinted even more to see it in the dark, then began to mark off who was dead, who was injured that could be fixed--who wasn't going to last the night if first responders didn't show up. Professional, distant. Don't get attached or emotional, this is a crisis, this is the last place you can get attached or emotional. Don't gag at the dead bodies, just move them to the corner of the room and try to identify them. "Do you know who this is?" Was, but none of these students could keep their cool if I said that. They're already freaking out as it is. Use the rules of elimination. Face crushed in by a rock? Crystyl Rivera, seated on the middle row. Face maimed by glass? Tyler Dariel, the only person unaccounted for.

I could hear the students sobbing, trying to get ahold of themselves. I had to check the ones with no pulse first, to see if CPR was possible. What would I do if there were multiple people who needed CPR, but I was the only one who could do it? Who's most likely to survive, logical, cold, professional. Playing God with a concussion, Jesus help us.

"Riley," I called, nearly tripping over myself as I rose unsteadily from the newest body. It wasn't that they particularly stood out in the crowd, but more just that she had mentioned on more than one occasion several obscure facts about nature, and I was hoping that this could translate in some sense to remembering anything medical I told her. Riley's head shot up to look at me. They sat with a piece of fabric pressed against their palm, and it was clear she was barely holding herself together. I let out a long, steadying breath in an attempt to clear my head, which did not work. "Come here," I said, "I need your help."

Shakily, they stood and picked their way over the rubble to my side, eyes fixed on a point in the distance with that special wide-eyed, empty look of someone teetering on the edge of hysterics.

"Listen," I said, "I can see that you're having a difficult time, but I need you to do something, okay?"

Riley looked over at me and nodded with a barely choked-back whimper. Tears were starting to well in her eyes, and I knew I'd need to work fast. Maybe she wasn't my top choice, but she was here, and that was all I needed her to be.

"I have a concussion," I said, rubbing my forehead. "It's not life-threatening, but there is nausea and brain fogginess, which can also mean memory loss and impeded judgment-making. Do you understand what that means? Repeat it back to me."

Riley closed their eyes and took a few deep breaths, rubbing their face with shaking hands. "okay, um--" She stammered after a minute in a paper-thin whisper. "You uh...you're having trouble thinking straight, basically?"

"Yes," I said, breathing a sigh of relief. "Yes, exactly. So what I need you to do is to remember that. And if I start doing something that seems risky, especially if it involves the health or wellbeing of another student, I need you to tell me, and I need you to say "are you sure you should do that?" And then I need you to make sure I talk through my whole reasoning, and you argue with me any time something I say doesn't make sense. Can you do that?"

Riley nodded. I nodded back. "Good. Okay, good. And I know you don't like speaking against people, but I need you to argue with me if I say something that doesn't make sense. I don't care if I say it very convincingly, you need to call me out." I paused for a moment, overwhelmed with the sudden urge to vomit. After a struggle, I pushed it down and nodded again to myself, before turning to everyone else. "Alright, we need to try to find a way out for medical supplies. If you're able to, you'll come with me. Anyone who is unable to move will stay here."

I started to move towards the door, but stopped as a wave of nausea crashed over me. I grimaced. "Ryan," I said, saying the first name that popped into my head as I surveyed the group of students. I knew I should know all of their names. I had known all of their names until less than an hour ago. "I need you to try to open the door."

He blinked a few times, like it took him a few seconds to register I was talking to him, before he moved towards the door. He tried to push it, but no luck. "There's something blocking it," he said, wiping sweat from his forehead as he pulled back.

"Alright," I said dazedly. "Alright, okay. We need to try to find a way out."

"Where, though?" A voice piped up in the back. I tried to place it, but the name kept slipping just out of reach. "That's the only exit. Unless we want to tunnel through the wall we'll have to find a way to open that door."

"The window," another student whispered, then cleared their throat. "The window isn't blocked."

"Nobody's going to fit through that!" Another complained.

"We're stuck in here." Someone began hyperventilating. "We're stuck, oh my God, we're stuck."

"Quiet, please," I said, rubbing my forehead. I needed to think. Nobody here could fit through the window, but it was our only way out. Nobody except--

I turned towards Riley, whose eyes immediately widened nervously. "Riley," I began. I could tell they knew where I was going. "I need you to try to fit through the window."

Riley looked from me to the window, and swallowed nervously. "Um, Dr. Lancefield, are you sure that's safe? I mean, I can try, but that window's tiny. And what about the glass? Anyone who tries to squeeze through there is gonna get shredded."

"We can clear away the glass, but we need someone to try to go through. We need to have someone on the outside." I paused. "Do you think you can do that?"

Riley swallowed again one more time, then looked at the window, then back at me. It was like I could see her trying to steel herself, straightening a little and looking one more time between the window and me. "Um..." Riley hesitated, then said, "Ye-yeah. I can try."