[ STAGE TWO : THE CHARACTER ]

WORD COUNT 500

Martin Allen Smith ; Sixteen

White Pine's Death Toll : Thirty-Eight

"Are you living or just existing?" Doctor Newton clicked his pen, looking over the top of his clipboard at sixteen-year-old Martin, who gave no notion of hearing the question; his attention was directed to the large picture-window. "Martin?"

"Yeah?" he said, forcing his eyes back to the older man who was completely bald except for the few tufts of graying hair that clung to just above his ears; his glossy bulging eyes peering back through thick glasses. "I mean, aren't we all just existing?"

Images flashed through his mind—all those bodies. All those fathers, brothers, sons just ... existing in hospital-like beds that crowded the gym of the town's high school. Most had been dead for hours, but White Pine's only coroner just had too many corpses on his hands to attend to all of them.

"Do you fear the events that have been happening?" Newton asked, scribbling something on his papers.

"Don't you?"

"I have faith, Martin."

"All due respect Doctor Newton, but you can't pray a plague away...."

"Plague?" Newton coughed slightly, looking up. "Thirty-eight people dead is hardly a plague."

"This isn't just in our town, this is global—"

Newton just nodded and wrote something on his papers. Probably something like "Patient continues to show signs of potential mental illness." Martin's eyes wandered the small office space : certifications, diplomas, landscape art, and a stiff fake plant sat in the corner beside him. Newton coughed again.

Shifting on the worn leather couch, Martin shook his head. All thirty-eight people were male. That was strange, wasn't it? It didn't matter the age, he never thought he would have to see such a tiny coffin.

Newton turned over his paper, letting out another cough. This time he covered his mouth with a tissue and crumpled it in his wrinkled fist. "I have to ask, have you experienced any feelings of depression? Contemplated any acts of self-harm?"

He shoved a hand through his dark hair and scoffed abruptly. "No. But maybe you forgot my uncles the coroner? These people aren't just dying from the flu!" Death had always been part of his life, but those deaths had always come with a paper that said how and why and when; now there was nothing. Martin glanced down at his phone, "Your time is up."

And how accurate that statement was.

Newton set his notepad on the coffee table. "Same time next week?" He stood and a coughing fit burst from the old man's lungs.

His sagging face had gone pale. His eyes stared distantly. Martin's stomach wanted to hurl as blood-like-foam started to push itself out from between the man's thin lips and tears of red stained his cheeks. Something was very, very wrong.

"Doctor Newton?"

The old man stumbled towards his desk, his hand slipping off its edge, sending him tumbling to the carpet where he started to convulse violently.

White Pine's Death Toll : Thirty-Nine

Q 1 : Greatest Fear

Martin doesn't know why the virus hasn't killed him yet, but as the virus spreads and world falls to pieces he's no longer sure it's the virus he should be worried about. There's something wrong with them, the survivors ... the others.

Q 2 : Greatest Strength

It's hard to survive in a world filled with death and hostility. Martin survives by doing things that he knows are wrong — kill or be killed — it was a quick rule to learn, but the easiest rule he found to survive by.

Q 3 : Greatest Weakness

The weary and wise once said, don't walk among the dead; however, in a virus stricken world where males are greeted with an untimely gruesome death, young Martin can't get those thoughts out of his head. That the virus is feasting within him. That any second could be his last.

— also he's an asthmatic.