Jenn Martin



Jennifer Sue Martin





Age: 27

Height: 5’5”

Nationality: American

Former Profession: Assistant District Attorney with the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office


Any other languages/Accent: She doesn’t speak any languages other than English fluently. She sometimes speaks with a Pittsburghese dialect, though she often tries not to when talking to someone who’s not from Pittsburgh.


Personality: Jennifer is a hard worker. She always tries to do the right thing, and it is important to her that justice is done. She feels driven to protect the weak and innocent, which is why she became a prosecutor. She was a bit of a workaholic when she was a prosecutor, and felt like she was wasting time when she was relaxing and not getting something meaningful done. She is usually friendly and outgoing, but she does have a temper and can be a little hot-headed at times. She is a lesbian, but is ashamed of it because of her upbringing in a Christian family as the daughter of a preacher, and so she is in the closet and sexually inactive. Before the disasters struck she loved watching football, and was a big fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers.


Any special skills: As a former prosecuting attorney, she has knowledge of the law, law enforcement, and the legal system (which probably isn’t much use now that society has collapsed). She is a martial arts expert, holding black belts in karate and taekwondo. She can use simple firearms, and owned a Glock 23 before the disasters hit.





Jennifer was born and raised in a suburb of Pittsburgh. Her father George was an ex-convict who converted to Christianity while in prison, and became ordained after he was released. Her mother Ellen was a teacher at a local elementary school. Although they were rather poor, they were a close-knit and loving family. Unfortunately, Ellen passed away when Jennifer was a sophomore in high school, leaving George to finish raising Jennifer on his own.

As a child she was a tomboy and spent more time playing with the boys in the neighborhood than the girls. Some of the kids at school would tease her about it, and the teasing became a lot worse when someone found out that her father had been in prison and started telling everyone that Jennifer was the “daughter of a jail-bird”. With all the teasing and Jennifer’s quick temper, it wasn’t long before she was getting in trouble for fighting. She also began to have run-ins with bullies. Jennifer’s father George had a friend by the name of Allen Kruger who ran a martial arts school, and when he found out about Jennifer’s fighting he offered to teach her. Jennifer’s parents weren’t thrilled about the idea, but Kruger promised to teach Jennifer not only how to fight, but also how not to fight: discipline, self-control, and anger management. Jennifer was intrigued by the idea of learning the martial arts, and pressured her parents to let her take the class. Eventually her parents gave their consent. Kruger was true to his word, and Jennifer eventually stopped getting into fights at school. Jennifer found that she loved the martial arts, and continued her training up until the disasters struck.

By the time she graduated from high school, Jennifer had decided that she wanted to become a lawyer, not because she thought it would make her rich, but because she thought she could help society by fighting crime. Perhaps she felt some small amount of guilt over having a father who had been a criminal in his youth, and that she could help balance out the scales of justice by becoming a prosecutor. She went to Penn State for her undergraduate studies, and then applied to the Dickinson School of Law. After graduating and passing the bar exam, she moved back to Pittsburgh and got a job as an assistant D.A. with the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office.

After a couple of years on the job, George decided that his daughter was overworked and needed some time off, so he talked her into taking some vacation and joining him on a holiday cruise. On December 21, 2013, just a couple of days into the cruise, disaster struck. The ship was caught in a sudden, unexpected storm, and a massive rogue wave hit the ship. The ship must have struck an island or reef or some underwater rocks or something, because a huge gash was ripped in the hull and the ship started flooding. Forced to abandon the ship, the crew began loading passengers into lifeboats, women and children first. Jennifer ended up in a small covered lifeboat with 24 other women.

The lifeboat was equipped with a small motor, and they set a westward course, hoping to make it to the Atlantic coastline, but unfortunately the boat ran out of fuel before making it to the shore, and the boat was left drifting. After four days and nights, one of the women got sick, and within a few hours the sickness had spread to everyone on the boat except Jennifer. Nothing in the lifeboat’s first aid kit helped, and the other women started dying. A week later the boat was still adrift, and a deeply traumatized and frightened Jennifer was the last survivor.

The mass die-off on the lifeboat did have one positive: the lifeboat’s supply of food and water, which was initially sufficient to sustain 25 people for several days, could sustain a single person for a few additional days. But after a few more days, just as the supply of water was about to be exhausted, the lifeboat finally came to rest on solid ground (well, not really solid swampy and flooded, actually). Jennifer emerged from the lifeboat not knowing where she was and having no idea of the extent of the disasters and the collapse of civilization as she had known it.




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