History

Mama’s Little All-Star

Zach was born on August 25, 1999, to Sam and Paula Henderson, in Lakewood. He grew up in a pleasant suburban home in the upwardly mobile district of “west Lakewood”. Despite the picture perfect surroundings, there were fissures in the Henderson family: a tension between husband and wife that occasionally boiled over into violence. Though Paula did what she could to conceal the worst of this from her son, children notice things, and Zach was more perceptive than people assumed.

Growing up, Zach was an awkward kid. Overbearing and goofy, his strongest champion during his childhood was his mother. Paula encouraged him to maintain his sunny disposition. Zach had a great affection for his mother, who would do little things to make his day special, like creating little puzzles and ciphers in his lunchbox when he went to school.

A poor student, what Zach lacked in academic smarts he made up for in athletics, especially football. When he was 7, his parents enrolled him in a Peewee Football League sponsored by St. George Prep, Sam’s alma mater. There, Zach met Ryan Keller, an older boy from the rougher side of town. They were teammates, but didn’t form a close bond, though the friendly Zach tried his best with everybody in the league.

Unfortunately, the team was short-lived: a scandal concerning the St. George clergy erupted a few months into the season and the team folded before the end of the year. Zach stuck with football, though, maintaining a passion for the sport that lasted him through his adolescence.

Oh, Johnny

Zach entered George Washington High School in September 2014, as part of the Class of 2018, and immediately tried out for the football team, where he played runningback.¹ In the first weeks of the term, he befriended Brooke Maddox, whose father, the mayor, had been a friend of Sam’s at St. George’s; and Riley Marra, a newcomer to Lakewood whose family lived up the street from the Hendersons.

Zach’s star truly began to rise after the Homecoming game, where he secured the Lancers a decisive win against huge odds. The win secured Zach a level of popularity he’d never had before, and earned a spot in GW High’s “in-crowd”. Over the course of the year, Zach’s star continued to rise, with Brooke bestowing upon him the nickname “Johnny Football”, an allusion to the Cleveland Browns’ Johnny Manziel that she didn’t entirely understand but liked the sound of regardless.²

Unwitting Witness

On October 17, 2015, Zach was hanging out with the rest of the in-crowd at the Wren Lake Overlook. Zach was reenacting a play from a recent football game, oblivious to Jake’s “joking” efforts to trip him in the process.³ Emma recognized the car of her childhood best friend Audrey Jensen pulling up at the opposite side of the summit. Audrey, unaware she was being watched, began making out with another girl. Emma’s shocked reaction drew the notice of the others, who responded with scandalized glee.

Nina took a venomous pleasure in this bit of gossip, whipping out her phone and recording the girls’ intimate moment. Emma, offended on her old friend’s behalf, told Nina to delete the video. Nina promised to “take it off her phone”, and honored these exact words defense by deleting it from her phone, after uploading it to YouTube the next day, where it rapidly went locally viral.⁴

The video was uploaded the same night as Brooke’s Big Beautiful Bash, a house party thrown by Brooke ostensibly to celebrate the Harvest Moon. Zach was at the party, and was one of several guests gathered around Jake as he chugged from a keg in Brooke’s garden.

A furious Audrey crashed the party, pushing past Zach, who knocked into Jake, causing him to spill beer over himself. Audrey paid the boys no mind, going on to confront Emma, blaming her for the video.⁵ Though this confrontation was ultimately defused, Jake was promptly summoned by an angry Tyler to prove or disprove Audrey’s friend’s Amanda’s indirect allegation that Nina cheating on Tyler with Jake, a summons that involved the startled Jake spitting up the beer he was chugging over the hapless Zach.⁶

One thing led to another, and Jake ended up tackling Tyler into Brooke’s swimming pool, leaving Zach in the familiar position of mediator, trying to fish his friends out of the water. A furious Brooke stormed onto the scene, startling Zach into falling into the drink himself and needing to be fished out by a sympathetic Emma, by which time Brooke had ordered the party a bust and ordered everyone to leave.⁷

Always eager to be a helping hand, Zach stuck around to help Brooke clean up, assisted by Riley and Emma. Emma was rueful that Nina had gone ahead and posted the video, and Zach joined the overwhelming chorus that there was nothing Emma could’ve done to stop Nina once she’d made her mind up.

They were presently joined by a very drunk Jake, who’d been unable to leave when ordered, having lost the keys to his “Behemoth” in the pool. Before anybody could fish them out, Zach received a worried text from his mother: their neighbor, Stacy Winters, and her boyfriend, Zach’s teammate Brock Carmichael, had been murdered. Paula had found the bodies.⁸

Appearance

Zach is a tall, broad-shouldered young man with a sturdy, athletic build and brown eyes. When he was younger, he wore his hair a little longer, showing off its natural waviness. After attaining his short-lived celebrity on the football team, he changed his hairstyle to a more functional, if fashionable quiff.

Personality

Zach is outgoing and lighthearted, with a friendly demeanor that ensures he gets along with just about anybody. He’s not the brightest, but he’s not an idiot either, and can be quite perceptive, often to the surprise of his friends. Zach’s tendency to put a smile on everything leads to him masking deeper, rougher feelings. He feels things deeply, and internalizes guilt, anger, and grief so well most people would never guess he was bothered.

Origins and Development

Zach was created for the 2016 Season 2 AU by forum moderator TheDerpHowlsatMidnight. He played a central function in the game’s plot, with his (originally nameless) mother being the only character to die before the forum went dormant. Derp brought Zach back three months later for the Season 3 AU, which again saw Zach play a pivotal role, being abducted in what seemed to be an effort to split the characters up long enough to necessitate the murder of Terrance Smith.

Zach survived the ordeal, and was rescued by Brooke, Stavo, and Ryan. His survival ended up being moot, as the forum went defunct. Three years later, Derp founded another Scream game and brought Zach (and his other OC, Bridget Atwood) back. Only Zach appeared, however, before Derp disappeared and, rather than let the whole project fizzle out again, ThePlotMurderer migrated the small amount of material that had already been written to a new forum: Scream: The Final Retreat, where he took on the role of Zach.

When The Story so Far began in April 2019, Zach was retroactively added to the SRU’s equivalent of Scream: The TV Series Season 1. The 2015 Season 1 AU that Volume I of The Story used as a launchpad included Adam Daniels, an OC created by that forum’s moderator, Celebrity01. Adam was a popular jock who functioned primarily as a talk-to for Jake…a role similar enough to that which Zach ended up playing in May 2016 (Celebrity played Adam and Jake, just as Derp portrayed Zach and Jake) that Zach could easily supplant him. Thus, Zach’s role in the “in-crowd” was established from the beginning, with Zach playing a central role in the search for the missing Will Belmont that dominated the middle part of Volume I.

Trivia

Zach’s faceclaim, Gregg Sulkin, is shared by the roguish Englishman Lieutenant Alexander Harrow in Big Trouble in Little Lakewood: 1750.

Quotes

Dude, if you guys drown, Brooke’s gonna be so pissed…

Zach tries to break up a watery fight between Jake and Tyler

A tiger doesn’t change its spots.

Zach, on Nina

Gallery

1. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 8 ↩︎
2. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 7 ↩︎
3. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
4. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 2 ↩︎
5. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 1 ↩︎
6. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 4 ↩︎
7. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 5 ↩︎
8. The Story so Far, Vol. I: Chapter 1, Scene 7 ↩︎