Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2015 9:34:51 GMT -5
Full Name:
George Alfred Marshal
Aliases:
- None
Avatar Photo:
Age:
- 30
Gender:
- Male
Appearance:
Standing at six feet tall and of lean build this man is unremarkable in appearance. His dark brown hair, whilst a little messy, has been kept short. Cut back with a knife and swept back and to the sides as far as is possible with only a hand dabbed in water he does not look as neat and trim as he did before the outbreak. But it does keep hair out of his eyes and ears.
Similarly he no longer has his carefully groomed layer of tasteful stubble and now has a rough and inconsistent beard, again seemingly cut short with any sharp tool to hand but never so close to the skin as to risk drawing blood as, rightly or wrongly, he believes blood draws the walkers.
He has managed to avoid picking up any scars or disfigurements as a result of the outbreak. But he does often wear a tired and haggard expression with great bags beneath his eyes and a slightly grey pallor to what would be otherwise fair skin. This is sadly the result of the poor sleep he has been having over the last few months.
When out and about he is usually seen wearing a splinter pattern woodland camouflage jacket and trousers with durable walking boots to match. This is his old hunting gear from before the world collapsed. He also often wears a pair of thin gloves simply to keep his hands clean of infected blood. He also wears a Bigeard style cap in matching camouflage and would appear to have a pair of ski googles resting on his forehead as well as a thin, breathable and loose hanging neck sock about his throat. These are not so much for protecting him from the cold or even concealing his identity. But should he know he is going to get close to walkers he will put on his googles and tuck the neck sock up into them in order to protect his eyes and mouth from splatter.
Should anyone see him unzip his jacket and anything else he may be happening to wear underneath they will see that he is still wearing a white shirt, slightly stained by the apocalypse, and a red tie made of crushed silk. These were the shirt and tie he wore on his last day in the office, they are a holdover from a proper civilised world, a time when the world made sense, and he has been both unable and unwilling to let go of them. Indeed, he still has the rest of the suit neatly folded in his pack, just in case.
Occupation (studies and job before the outbreak):
Deputy Director for Infrastructure of the city of Raleigh and advisor to the State Infrastructure Commission
Hometown (city, state, country):
Living in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Born: Richmond, Virginia, USA
Relationships (relatives, friends,...):
-Father: Richard Marshal. (Alive as of 3 days post outbreak, contact lost)
- Mother: Sarah Marshal. (Alive as of 3 days post outbreak, contact lost)
- Brother: Bryan Marshal (Alive as of 3 days post outbreak, contact lost, had met up with parents)
- Sister: Victoria Marshal (Alive as of outbreak, contact never established)
- Survivor Friend: Paul Pritchard (dead, executed after infection by George)
Weapons (currently in possession):
- His scoped Browning X bolt rifle from his hunting days.
- Paul’s M9 berretta which Paul had taken from a dead soldier in Raleigh and which was ultimately used on Paul.
- A one handed axe (for walkers and wood)
Items (clothing, backpacks, first-aid kits, etc...):
- Hard wearing and well maintained hiking boots with socks to match.
- Waterproof, wind proof and breathable camouflage jacket, trousers and hat.
- ski googles, neck sock and thin gloves.
- Large olive green back pack
- Army webbing belt looted off of a dead soldier in the escape from Raleigh.
- water canteen x2
-Map & Compass
- Binoculars
- Torch with spare batteries and colour filters (principally red light to preserve the eyes low light adjustment)
- sleeping bag, small camping stove, flint and steel, tinder, nylon rope, mess tin and other camping supplies.
- Handmade snares for catching rabbits and other small creatures.
- A few days’ worth of tinned food.
- A medical bag occasionally restocked with mismatching supplies and some useful mosses and leaves where conventional medical supplies could not be found.
- A hardy survival knife
-A neatly folded suit in his pack along with a thermal fleece worn under the jacket in cold weather.
- Family photograph taken shortly after moving to Raleigh.
Mode of transportation:
- Bicycle and foot
List 3 or more good personality traits:
- Hard working: When a job needs doing this man keeps doing it until it’s done, come what may.
- Intelligent: This man did not advance so quickly without being smart and he continues to apply those smarts today.
- Dutiful: Whilst this can be exploited once he feels he owes a person or a group a duty he will not quit until he feels that duty has been discharged.
- Hard pragmatist: Whether it be setting budgets and deciding when to turn out the street lights or deciding who gets medicine and whether to kill the infected mother he will rarely allow unjustified sentiment or wishful thinking to cloud his judgement. He may feel guilty or doubtful about it afterwards but in the moment he has the ability to make sound, clear minded and difficult, yet pragmatic, decisions.
List 3 or more bad personality traits:
- Wracked with guilt: A combination of standard survivors guilt combined with a guilty conscious over some of his own actions and mistakes. Sometimes it can drive him on but it can be paralysing as well.
- Unrealistic expectations: He does not expect everyone to be as smart as him, But when he asks it of you he expects you to work as long and hard as him and with similar dedication and to follow all orders. He can ask people to do more than they are capable of.
- Snob: He is a well-educated man from a good middle class background who achieved much before the apocalypse. He never had to mix with many of those perceived to be of a lower social standing. He can respect the blue collar working class. The family that works honestly and hard at a manual job though he would rarely if ever mix with them and seldom do so well. But he has a positive contempt for what he would call the underclass. He is aware that it was his duty to help these people as a civil servant, and he discharged that duty. But he would far rather never have to talk to them, or see them.
- Hierarch: Whilst this can be a positive trait as it helps him work very well within organised hierarchies and makes him very good at organising people and their various responsibilities, it does have some real downsides, particularly in a world where the old order fell apart. He believes the world has its hierarchy. It is a complex hierarchy, highly dependent on situation, social standing and role and one in which a person can move, but a hierarchy none the less. You take orders from those above you and can expect to give orders to those below you. It is a world in which everyone is deferential to their properly appointed authority and those authorities conduct their duties properly. Those who reject the powers that be, or who have problems with authority, pose a substantial problem to George and he will often have difficulty interacting with them, becoming agitated by their anti-authoritarian stance.
List 3 strengths:
- Good Hunter
- Strong Planner / Organiser
- Decent Stamina
- Good Shot
List 3 flaws:
- Not physically strong
- Judgemental
- Can be blunt or insensitive particularly when vexed.
- Over time spent alone he has developed fitful and very easily interrupted sleeping making it difficult to get a good night’s rest.
Describe your character's life before the Apocalypse:
George’s life before the end of the world was a successful one, laden with future opportunities. Born to a middle class family, the son of an accountant and an ex accountant turned housewife, he was the eldest of three children. There was an expectation on him to perform from an early age. His parents were never cruel or unduly critical, but the most common feedback for even his infant scribbles and basic school work was “good, but could be better.” His parents would however, become quite stern if he showed a lack of improvement from assignment to assignment. Furthermore failing to give an adequate effort was never tolerated. Even at tasks which George could complete easily or which the family did not particularly value, the effort always had to be made.
As he grew this was turned into a constant competition. His parents would go to lengths to obtain the information about the performance of other school children and should they be outperforming George in any area they would demand explanations as to why he was not at the top of the class. They knew that no child could be perfect, or be the best at everything. But they were determined to make the child try.
His siblings got much the same treatment as him, though perhaps slightly less so. After all, George was the first born, he was the standard bearer for the next generation, it was his job to be the next head of the family. He was always very protective of his siblings, trying to fulfil the typical big brother role and if either of them had problems with the world that their parents could not get involved in George was there to sort the problem out. He also played good cop to his parent’s bad cop on occasion. Should any of his younger siblings be criticised for below par work he would swoop in later, provide a bit of comfort and actually try to instruct his brother and sister in whatever it was they were struggling with.
When he was older his parents were slightly surprised, though by no means angry, at the idea that George would not also become an accountant. He had become increasingly interested in what he often termed “the biology of cities.” He often thought of a city as a living thing, with roads, power cables and gas lines her blood vessels, sewage plants her kidneys, Power plants her heart, the city government her brain, the residents her flesh and muscle and so on. The metaphor never quite held true to the human body but it served as a good illustration of his approach to it all. With that in mind he opted to become a civil engineer.
With his grades he was able to study at MIT an whilst there he performed strongly, eventually graduating with a first class degree and the world at his feet. It whilst at MIT that he found his passion for hunting. It started out as an appreciation for the engineering of the weapon and a desire to compete. It began with clay shoots and target practice but when a friend invited him into the hunting club there was no turning back. Any game, whether it be hooved or winged, would eventually be hunted by George but he also became interested in woodcraft as part of this, and great multi day hunting trips out into the wild, well away from the security of the lodge. This was a hobby he would maintain throughout his adult life, right up to the apocalypse.
At first he took a job back in Virginia, his qualifications and hard work ethic swiftly saw him placed into a senior engineering position. But the men above him were young and the region was doing well, as such there were few further opportunities for promotion. However, the city government in Raleigh was undergoing some major overhauls due to a radical budge restructuring and senior positions were open. It was this cross state application, and the willingness to step into a seemingly failing authority, that allowed him to land a deputy director position at a surprisingly young age. Whilst there he would be instrumental in helping to turn his department and the city around, all the while keeping one eye on a state level job and the other eye on a federal position.
His plans for the future were sadly cut short when, on a hunting trip with some fellow city employees on a long weekend, the world ended.
What happened to your character on Outbreak Day?:
When George first heard the news coming over the radio he was reminded of that old radio play, war of the worlds. Apparently a great many people had tuned in part way through the broadcast and been so taken in by the program that they had called out the police and National Guard across the United States, not realising the news reports were fictitious. He clung to that hope, for the first hour.
But after that it became clear that the chilling reports coming over the air waves were no radio play. This was real, a little bit of channel surfing proved as much. With that much now patently obvious this group of city employees bundled into their cars with all of the hunting supplies they could carry and high tailed it back to Raleigh. Some were hoping to find friends or family. But George, George was heading back to do his job.
As deputy director of city infrastructure he had a key role to play in the city’s disaster and emergency plans. Terrorist attack, natural disaster, out of control fire, even the plague. The city had plans to deal with them all. The walking dead however, that they had not planned for. Of course, as part of these plans someone would do his job should he be incapacitated or away. But he knew his deputy was not quite as good at this as he was. For every hour he spent away from the city who knows how many people would be killed or injured?
He arrived at the office in full hunting gear. Half of the staff were absent, presumably having fled the city or worse. Amongst them was the Director of infrastructure and so it was that George made his way to the control room and, along with the city chief executive, took charge. Those staff that had made it here were doing a good job. Maps were plastered all over the walls, infection reports marked, they had even begun to put in place the disease emergency plan, attempting to establish quarantine zones and screening procedures.
George spent a long, long day on the phone to the police, hospitals, fire services, National Guard and regular army all working together to try and keep a lid on things. It was due largely to the exemplary efforts of these groups all working together that the city did not fall in a single night. George was largely responsible for ensuring that power and water kept flowing to key facilities as well as managing the roads, designating certain routes for use by military supply convoys, some routes for the movement of civilians and some routes for the hospitals. He was also responsible for setting up make shift evacuee centres, assigning patient numbers between the various hospitals and liaising closely with the army to help plan out a series of controlled demolitions that would slow the walkers down by blocking of roads an open spaces. Not only that but he provided advice to the others towns and cities in the state that had not instantly collapsed, they were the state capitol after all.
During a moment of calm George had slipped on the spare suit he kept hanging on the back door of his office, something about the shirt and tie helped him feel in control, like this whole crisis was somehow manageable. Of course it was not. Every time it felt like they had the situation under control, that a defendable line between the living and the almost dead had been drawn, a new outbreak report would come in and the safe zone would roll back again. Washington kept saying it would send help, until Washington stopped saying anything at all. Did the communications just go out, or something worse? George would never know for sure.
One moment that occasionally haunts him is the destruction of all of the bridges along the Neuse river. Whilst most of the city lay south of the river there were several out crops of survivors in the various schools and community halls to the north. But the walker density there was also growing at an alarming rate and there were reports of a swarm coming from the north. He had ordered an evacuation to the south of the city, but the survivors were slow, too slow. The undead threatened to cross the bridges in too great a number and so George authorised the destruction of all of the bridges on the request of the military. He sent boats out to sail up and down the banks in case survivors had made it that far. None were picked up. George often wonders how many people he had left to the mercy of the horde by destroying those bridges. Especially since it was seemingly fruitless, the city fell any way. The demolition had bought them a day or two at best.
A similar moment was when he had to turn the power off to the Duke Regional Hospital. The hospital had been surrounded by those shambling monstrosities and a meaningful evacuation was impossible. The helicopter pad was simply insufficient to the task. Not only that but many healthy survivors had set up fortifications around it, intending to mount a stand. But it was cut off, and every military assessment showed it could not be rescued. Furthermore, the military and CDC had set up new facilities in southern Raleigh that needed power. To make matters worse power stations were turning off one by one as absent staff could not see to essential or routine operations. George had made all of the easy decisions he could, turning of power to residential regions. But the CDC in particular had big power demands. He needed to shut off something more substantial to feed it.
Helicopters were sent but with orders to evacuate medical personnel only, with healthy survivors to be taken if there was time and capacity. It was not a decision that George was comfortable with. The purpose of a disaster plan was to save as many as people as possible, not leave them to die. But with the reports he was receiving from the evacuee centres he knew that they were already desperately short of medical staff and overburdened with the injured. Evacuating the sick would, if anything, result in more people dying as resources were spread thinner and thinner. Better a few receive adequate treatment and a few receive none than all receive inadequate treatment. Furthermore, he only had a tight time window.
About half the staff evacuated as ordered. Either glad to be saved or seeing the reality of the situation. The other half refused to leave until their patients were evacuated. It was much the same with the civilian defenders, many of whom were protecting friends or families inside. George could respect their principled stand, as unrealistic as it was. Desperate to try and save those he could George volunteered to be flown into the besieged hospital to plead with the more stubborn medical staff to come with him. He was soundly rebuked by the staff. Many of whom called him a coward, a murderer, a vile self-serving snake and all manner of other things. George of course disagreed, but he could see their point.
But time waits for no man. Eventually the call had to be made and George flew back to the control centre to cut off the power to the hospital and reroute it to the CDC. He could have done it with a simple order but he insisted on pulling the lever himself. It was his responsibility. The guilt, if there was any, was his to carry. The hospital was doomed from the moment power went out, as were all of those still inside.
Eventually, after several days of managed collapse, the decision was made by the city, all emergency services and the military, that Raleigh could not stand. All those still within had to be evacuated. The plan was to rally at Selma, then move on to Newton Grove. A mass effort from the army, city employees and any healthy person not holding a rifle, managed to clear the swarms of abandoned cars and vehicle pile ups on the major high way out of the city as far As Auburn. From there they could all get on lesser roads and make their way through the country to Selma. Every barely functional rust bucket of a car in the safe zone was put to the task of evacuation and in waves the scant few thousand survivors from a city of half a million made their way out of the death trap.
Every convoy was attacked and the noise of engines and gun fire drew more and more walkers every time. The first few waves broke out with little difficulty. But it then got steadily worse and worse. As one of the coordinators behind the whole effort George was on the last convoy out of town. He was carrying the clothes on his back, a few supplies scavenged from the office and the hunting and hiking gear he had with him when this whole nightmare started. Something told him that would come in handy again.
Unfortunately, as his was the last convoy out, it also faced the most resistance. The sheer number of rotting corpses that surrounded the trucks killed all momentum, their viscera jammed the gears and shafts. They were stranded on the edge of town. They had no choice but to ditch their vehicles and shoot their way out. Fortunately, as the last ride out of hell, they had a disproportionate number of military personnel who had been holding the tide until the last possible moment. This was all that saved them. Even then the casualties sustained in making their way to safety were obscene. Well over half their number died before they could make their way to even temporary shelter.
Ultimately the group made their way out of town two days later, after the horde outside their hold out, a small auto garage, had calmed down and dispersed. Still, they were too deep into the city to simply stroll out. It was then that George hit upon the somewhat desperate and clichéd plan of using the sewers. He knew how to read the signs and guides down there and he had spent long enough looking at those maps trying to work out how to relieve stress on the system towards the centre of the city. The sewers were not as abandoned as they had hoped. The dead had clearly made their way in, most likely via the storm drains. But it was a darn site better than the uncountable swarms on the streets above.
By the time they made their way to the sewage treatment plant a little outside the city there were only a half dozen of them left. Fortunately the facility was largely automated, meaning it had little staff even at the best of times. In these dark times it translated into no staff to turn into walkers and no meat to attract them. Now clear of Raleigh the group proceeded, on foot to the rally point. However, they were already delayed by some days and the journey on foot was far slower than the journey by car. By the time they arrived the place had clearly been abandoned.
Not wishing to give up hope just yet the team moved on to the second rally point. But there they were confronted with a far bleaker story. Trucks, cars, tents abandoned and in a state of chaos and disarray. Around the perimeter lay a small sea of walker bodies, in the centre, a fair few human corpses or the shuffling remains of those that had not had the fortune to be killed outright. But there was a silver lining. Yes there were bodies, yes there were abandoned vehicles and supplies. But not enough to account for all of the survivors by any means. Some at least had survived, but where had they gone? Fresh tyre tracks on the roads suggested they had gone off in any number of directions, all control and organisation lost.
It was at this point that group cohesion fell apart. Three of the four soldiers wanted to head towards the nearest military base. Meanwhile, George, a city electrician named Paul Pritchard and the remaining soldier wanted to follow the greatest density of tyre tracks. The debate lasted for quite some time, but it ultimately ended with the soldier joining his three other comrades out of loyalty and heading to the base. Meanwhile George and Paul followed the tyre tracks. Perhaps it was not the most sensible thing to do. But George would hear of nothing else. He had a duty to these people, it was his city to manage. Furthermore he had sacrificed people to save them. He had let good people die to try and rescue the citizenry as a whole. He could not let his actions be for nothing, he could not allow the loss of so many and then just give up on those he had protected by doing so.
So began his obsessive hunt.
Describe your character's life after the Apocalypse:
He spent the next few months trying to hunt down the survivors. He and his colleague followed the tracks from stop to stop. Every time the number of wheels on the road grew less and less, every time more bodies were found. They managed to scavenge what the needed along the way, barely, but they were always chasing this illusory goal that forever receded just out of their reach. Eventually though, the trail grew too faint to follow. The pair had been on the hunt for over half a year. But now, there was no realistic hope.
The following month very nearly proved lethal to George. The loss of the survivors he had sacrificed so many to save proved a devastating blow. With their loss he also lost the moral justification for the hard decisions he had made in Raleigh. Suddenly he was hit by a combined wave of guilt and depression. Poor spirits always impacted on real world performance, even in the old world. But now it could be deadly. He would become sullen and introspective on watch, the sound of his own thoughts would drown out the rustle of leaves from an approaching walker, the visions playing before his eyes would distort the real world.
The thing that eventually rose him from this state was one further loss. His own carelessness led to a number of walkers slipping into their bolt hole and almost overwhelming George. He could feel the cold, moist hands on his skin, trying to claw into his flesh, dragging him down to the ground, their weight pressing down upon him. What saved him was his comrade, dragging walker after walker away, smashing down, cracking skulls and rending limbs. Until eventually a pair of warmer hands could be felt on George’s shoulders, dragging him away, along with a cry of pain.
It later transpired, after the two had run for their lives into the woods, that George’s comrade had taken a bite to the forearm whilst dragging George away. Both men had survived out here for long enough to know what that meant. Soon there would be a fever, then death, then something worse. Paul had only one remaining wish. To die as a man, not a walker. He offered to let George walk away, this man only needed a gun and one round. But George would hear none of it. He knew that his inattentiveness had led to this moment, it was his responsibility to finish it. Furthermore he would not allow a better man then himself to die alone. Despite his shaking hands George was a good shot, at least he made it quick.
You might expect this incident to throw him into a deeper depression, and to be sure he carries a sense of guilt about it with him to this day. But it served to sharpen his mind and clear his senses. He had been confronted with the terrible cost his melancholy had caused. This realisation made him determined that no one would ever have to pay such a high price for his emotional self-indulgence again. Now many a psychologist and psychiatrist may have said quite rightly that his mood was an understandable reaction to what he had gone through, and not emotional self-indulgence at all. But there were no psychiatrists on hand. That was how George thought of it then, and it is how he thinks of it now.
Since then he has been staying away from metropolitan centres, moving from farm to farm, lodge to lodge, even to small villages if he feels brave enough, or desperate enough. Occasionally he has seen other survivors, often from a distance, but never approached. Either their behaviour put him off, or he spent too long making up his mind by which point they had already left. Occasionally he has wondered if they might be better off without him.
He would stay at any place with supplies until they were down to about a weeks’ worth of non-perishables for one man, at which point he would bury the remaining food nearby to come back to if times go tough. Squirrels did it, why not him?
But food and water have not been his problem, the dangers inherent in being alone have been. Sleep was always when he felt most at risk, no one to watch out for him, no warn to warn him of approaching danger. No matter how many locks he put between himself and the outside world they never felt like quite enough. On those rare occasions when he had to sleep outside he would climb up into the branches of trees and tie his sleeping bag to the sturdiest bow he could find. Every time he did so he would wake to find a small swarm of walkers underneath him, just waiting for the branch to snap and him to fall down into their waiting maws.
This had happened far, far too many times and when he woke one morning to find walkers beneath him and the branch above his head creaking alarmingly, he knew it was time to find company. Hang his reservations, hang his doubt, he was not ready to die just yet.
George Alfred Marshal
Aliases:
- None
Avatar Photo:
Age:
- 30
Gender:
- Male
Appearance:
Standing at six feet tall and of lean build this man is unremarkable in appearance. His dark brown hair, whilst a little messy, has been kept short. Cut back with a knife and swept back and to the sides as far as is possible with only a hand dabbed in water he does not look as neat and trim as he did before the outbreak. But it does keep hair out of his eyes and ears.
Similarly he no longer has his carefully groomed layer of tasteful stubble and now has a rough and inconsistent beard, again seemingly cut short with any sharp tool to hand but never so close to the skin as to risk drawing blood as, rightly or wrongly, he believes blood draws the walkers.
He has managed to avoid picking up any scars or disfigurements as a result of the outbreak. But he does often wear a tired and haggard expression with great bags beneath his eyes and a slightly grey pallor to what would be otherwise fair skin. This is sadly the result of the poor sleep he has been having over the last few months.
When out and about he is usually seen wearing a splinter pattern woodland camouflage jacket and trousers with durable walking boots to match. This is his old hunting gear from before the world collapsed. He also often wears a pair of thin gloves simply to keep his hands clean of infected blood. He also wears a Bigeard style cap in matching camouflage and would appear to have a pair of ski googles resting on his forehead as well as a thin, breathable and loose hanging neck sock about his throat. These are not so much for protecting him from the cold or even concealing his identity. But should he know he is going to get close to walkers he will put on his googles and tuck the neck sock up into them in order to protect his eyes and mouth from splatter.
Should anyone see him unzip his jacket and anything else he may be happening to wear underneath they will see that he is still wearing a white shirt, slightly stained by the apocalypse, and a red tie made of crushed silk. These were the shirt and tie he wore on his last day in the office, they are a holdover from a proper civilised world, a time when the world made sense, and he has been both unable and unwilling to let go of them. Indeed, he still has the rest of the suit neatly folded in his pack, just in case.
Occupation (studies and job before the outbreak):
Deputy Director for Infrastructure of the city of Raleigh and advisor to the State Infrastructure Commission
Hometown (city, state, country):
Living in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Born: Richmond, Virginia, USA
Relationships (relatives, friends,...):
-Father: Richard Marshal. (Alive as of 3 days post outbreak, contact lost)
- Mother: Sarah Marshal. (Alive as of 3 days post outbreak, contact lost)
- Brother: Bryan Marshal (Alive as of 3 days post outbreak, contact lost, had met up with parents)
- Sister: Victoria Marshal (Alive as of outbreak, contact never established)
- Survivor Friend: Paul Pritchard (dead, executed after infection by George)
Weapons (currently in possession):
- His scoped Browning X bolt rifle from his hunting days.
- Paul’s M9 berretta which Paul had taken from a dead soldier in Raleigh and which was ultimately used on Paul.
- A one handed axe (for walkers and wood)
Items (clothing, backpacks, first-aid kits, etc...):
- Hard wearing and well maintained hiking boots with socks to match.
- Waterproof, wind proof and breathable camouflage jacket, trousers and hat.
- ski googles, neck sock and thin gloves.
- Large olive green back pack
- Army webbing belt looted off of a dead soldier in the escape from Raleigh.
- water canteen x2
-Map & Compass
- Binoculars
- Torch with spare batteries and colour filters (principally red light to preserve the eyes low light adjustment)
- sleeping bag, small camping stove, flint and steel, tinder, nylon rope, mess tin and other camping supplies.
- Handmade snares for catching rabbits and other small creatures.
- A few days’ worth of tinned food.
- A medical bag occasionally restocked with mismatching supplies and some useful mosses and leaves where conventional medical supplies could not be found.
- A hardy survival knife
-A neatly folded suit in his pack along with a thermal fleece worn under the jacket in cold weather.
- Family photograph taken shortly after moving to Raleigh.
Mode of transportation:
- Bicycle and foot
List 3 or more good personality traits:
- Hard working: When a job needs doing this man keeps doing it until it’s done, come what may.
- Intelligent: This man did not advance so quickly without being smart and he continues to apply those smarts today.
- Dutiful: Whilst this can be exploited once he feels he owes a person or a group a duty he will not quit until he feels that duty has been discharged.
- Hard pragmatist: Whether it be setting budgets and deciding when to turn out the street lights or deciding who gets medicine and whether to kill the infected mother he will rarely allow unjustified sentiment or wishful thinking to cloud his judgement. He may feel guilty or doubtful about it afterwards but in the moment he has the ability to make sound, clear minded and difficult, yet pragmatic, decisions.
List 3 or more bad personality traits:
- Wracked with guilt: A combination of standard survivors guilt combined with a guilty conscious over some of his own actions and mistakes. Sometimes it can drive him on but it can be paralysing as well.
- Unrealistic expectations: He does not expect everyone to be as smart as him, But when he asks it of you he expects you to work as long and hard as him and with similar dedication and to follow all orders. He can ask people to do more than they are capable of.
- Snob: He is a well-educated man from a good middle class background who achieved much before the apocalypse. He never had to mix with many of those perceived to be of a lower social standing. He can respect the blue collar working class. The family that works honestly and hard at a manual job though he would rarely if ever mix with them and seldom do so well. But he has a positive contempt for what he would call the underclass. He is aware that it was his duty to help these people as a civil servant, and he discharged that duty. But he would far rather never have to talk to them, or see them.
- Hierarch: Whilst this can be a positive trait as it helps him work very well within organised hierarchies and makes him very good at organising people and their various responsibilities, it does have some real downsides, particularly in a world where the old order fell apart. He believes the world has its hierarchy. It is a complex hierarchy, highly dependent on situation, social standing and role and one in which a person can move, but a hierarchy none the less. You take orders from those above you and can expect to give orders to those below you. It is a world in which everyone is deferential to their properly appointed authority and those authorities conduct their duties properly. Those who reject the powers that be, or who have problems with authority, pose a substantial problem to George and he will often have difficulty interacting with them, becoming agitated by their anti-authoritarian stance.
List 3 strengths:
- Good Hunter
- Strong Planner / Organiser
- Decent Stamina
- Good Shot
List 3 flaws:
- Not physically strong
- Judgemental
- Can be blunt or insensitive particularly when vexed.
- Over time spent alone he has developed fitful and very easily interrupted sleeping making it difficult to get a good night’s rest.
Describe your character's life before the Apocalypse:
George’s life before the end of the world was a successful one, laden with future opportunities. Born to a middle class family, the son of an accountant and an ex accountant turned housewife, he was the eldest of three children. There was an expectation on him to perform from an early age. His parents were never cruel or unduly critical, but the most common feedback for even his infant scribbles and basic school work was “good, but could be better.” His parents would however, become quite stern if he showed a lack of improvement from assignment to assignment. Furthermore failing to give an adequate effort was never tolerated. Even at tasks which George could complete easily or which the family did not particularly value, the effort always had to be made.
As he grew this was turned into a constant competition. His parents would go to lengths to obtain the information about the performance of other school children and should they be outperforming George in any area they would demand explanations as to why he was not at the top of the class. They knew that no child could be perfect, or be the best at everything. But they were determined to make the child try.
His siblings got much the same treatment as him, though perhaps slightly less so. After all, George was the first born, he was the standard bearer for the next generation, it was his job to be the next head of the family. He was always very protective of his siblings, trying to fulfil the typical big brother role and if either of them had problems with the world that their parents could not get involved in George was there to sort the problem out. He also played good cop to his parent’s bad cop on occasion. Should any of his younger siblings be criticised for below par work he would swoop in later, provide a bit of comfort and actually try to instruct his brother and sister in whatever it was they were struggling with.
When he was older his parents were slightly surprised, though by no means angry, at the idea that George would not also become an accountant. He had become increasingly interested in what he often termed “the biology of cities.” He often thought of a city as a living thing, with roads, power cables and gas lines her blood vessels, sewage plants her kidneys, Power plants her heart, the city government her brain, the residents her flesh and muscle and so on. The metaphor never quite held true to the human body but it served as a good illustration of his approach to it all. With that in mind he opted to become a civil engineer.
With his grades he was able to study at MIT an whilst there he performed strongly, eventually graduating with a first class degree and the world at his feet. It whilst at MIT that he found his passion for hunting. It started out as an appreciation for the engineering of the weapon and a desire to compete. It began with clay shoots and target practice but when a friend invited him into the hunting club there was no turning back. Any game, whether it be hooved or winged, would eventually be hunted by George but he also became interested in woodcraft as part of this, and great multi day hunting trips out into the wild, well away from the security of the lodge. This was a hobby he would maintain throughout his adult life, right up to the apocalypse.
At first he took a job back in Virginia, his qualifications and hard work ethic swiftly saw him placed into a senior engineering position. But the men above him were young and the region was doing well, as such there were few further opportunities for promotion. However, the city government in Raleigh was undergoing some major overhauls due to a radical budge restructuring and senior positions were open. It was this cross state application, and the willingness to step into a seemingly failing authority, that allowed him to land a deputy director position at a surprisingly young age. Whilst there he would be instrumental in helping to turn his department and the city around, all the while keeping one eye on a state level job and the other eye on a federal position.
His plans for the future were sadly cut short when, on a hunting trip with some fellow city employees on a long weekend, the world ended.
What happened to your character on Outbreak Day?:
When George first heard the news coming over the radio he was reminded of that old radio play, war of the worlds. Apparently a great many people had tuned in part way through the broadcast and been so taken in by the program that they had called out the police and National Guard across the United States, not realising the news reports were fictitious. He clung to that hope, for the first hour.
But after that it became clear that the chilling reports coming over the air waves were no radio play. This was real, a little bit of channel surfing proved as much. With that much now patently obvious this group of city employees bundled into their cars with all of the hunting supplies they could carry and high tailed it back to Raleigh. Some were hoping to find friends or family. But George, George was heading back to do his job.
As deputy director of city infrastructure he had a key role to play in the city’s disaster and emergency plans. Terrorist attack, natural disaster, out of control fire, even the plague. The city had plans to deal with them all. The walking dead however, that they had not planned for. Of course, as part of these plans someone would do his job should he be incapacitated or away. But he knew his deputy was not quite as good at this as he was. For every hour he spent away from the city who knows how many people would be killed or injured?
He arrived at the office in full hunting gear. Half of the staff were absent, presumably having fled the city or worse. Amongst them was the Director of infrastructure and so it was that George made his way to the control room and, along with the city chief executive, took charge. Those staff that had made it here were doing a good job. Maps were plastered all over the walls, infection reports marked, they had even begun to put in place the disease emergency plan, attempting to establish quarantine zones and screening procedures.
George spent a long, long day on the phone to the police, hospitals, fire services, National Guard and regular army all working together to try and keep a lid on things. It was due largely to the exemplary efforts of these groups all working together that the city did not fall in a single night. George was largely responsible for ensuring that power and water kept flowing to key facilities as well as managing the roads, designating certain routes for use by military supply convoys, some routes for the movement of civilians and some routes for the hospitals. He was also responsible for setting up make shift evacuee centres, assigning patient numbers between the various hospitals and liaising closely with the army to help plan out a series of controlled demolitions that would slow the walkers down by blocking of roads an open spaces. Not only that but he provided advice to the others towns and cities in the state that had not instantly collapsed, they were the state capitol after all.
During a moment of calm George had slipped on the spare suit he kept hanging on the back door of his office, something about the shirt and tie helped him feel in control, like this whole crisis was somehow manageable. Of course it was not. Every time it felt like they had the situation under control, that a defendable line between the living and the almost dead had been drawn, a new outbreak report would come in and the safe zone would roll back again. Washington kept saying it would send help, until Washington stopped saying anything at all. Did the communications just go out, or something worse? George would never know for sure.
One moment that occasionally haunts him is the destruction of all of the bridges along the Neuse river. Whilst most of the city lay south of the river there were several out crops of survivors in the various schools and community halls to the north. But the walker density there was also growing at an alarming rate and there were reports of a swarm coming from the north. He had ordered an evacuation to the south of the city, but the survivors were slow, too slow. The undead threatened to cross the bridges in too great a number and so George authorised the destruction of all of the bridges on the request of the military. He sent boats out to sail up and down the banks in case survivors had made it that far. None were picked up. George often wonders how many people he had left to the mercy of the horde by destroying those bridges. Especially since it was seemingly fruitless, the city fell any way. The demolition had bought them a day or two at best.
A similar moment was when he had to turn the power off to the Duke Regional Hospital. The hospital had been surrounded by those shambling monstrosities and a meaningful evacuation was impossible. The helicopter pad was simply insufficient to the task. Not only that but many healthy survivors had set up fortifications around it, intending to mount a stand. But it was cut off, and every military assessment showed it could not be rescued. Furthermore, the military and CDC had set up new facilities in southern Raleigh that needed power. To make matters worse power stations were turning off one by one as absent staff could not see to essential or routine operations. George had made all of the easy decisions he could, turning of power to residential regions. But the CDC in particular had big power demands. He needed to shut off something more substantial to feed it.
Helicopters were sent but with orders to evacuate medical personnel only, with healthy survivors to be taken if there was time and capacity. It was not a decision that George was comfortable with. The purpose of a disaster plan was to save as many as people as possible, not leave them to die. But with the reports he was receiving from the evacuee centres he knew that they were already desperately short of medical staff and overburdened with the injured. Evacuating the sick would, if anything, result in more people dying as resources were spread thinner and thinner. Better a few receive adequate treatment and a few receive none than all receive inadequate treatment. Furthermore, he only had a tight time window.
About half the staff evacuated as ordered. Either glad to be saved or seeing the reality of the situation. The other half refused to leave until their patients were evacuated. It was much the same with the civilian defenders, many of whom were protecting friends or families inside. George could respect their principled stand, as unrealistic as it was. Desperate to try and save those he could George volunteered to be flown into the besieged hospital to plead with the more stubborn medical staff to come with him. He was soundly rebuked by the staff. Many of whom called him a coward, a murderer, a vile self-serving snake and all manner of other things. George of course disagreed, but he could see their point.
But time waits for no man. Eventually the call had to be made and George flew back to the control centre to cut off the power to the hospital and reroute it to the CDC. He could have done it with a simple order but he insisted on pulling the lever himself. It was his responsibility. The guilt, if there was any, was his to carry. The hospital was doomed from the moment power went out, as were all of those still inside.
Eventually, after several days of managed collapse, the decision was made by the city, all emergency services and the military, that Raleigh could not stand. All those still within had to be evacuated. The plan was to rally at Selma, then move on to Newton Grove. A mass effort from the army, city employees and any healthy person not holding a rifle, managed to clear the swarms of abandoned cars and vehicle pile ups on the major high way out of the city as far As Auburn. From there they could all get on lesser roads and make their way through the country to Selma. Every barely functional rust bucket of a car in the safe zone was put to the task of evacuation and in waves the scant few thousand survivors from a city of half a million made their way out of the death trap.
Every convoy was attacked and the noise of engines and gun fire drew more and more walkers every time. The first few waves broke out with little difficulty. But it then got steadily worse and worse. As one of the coordinators behind the whole effort George was on the last convoy out of town. He was carrying the clothes on his back, a few supplies scavenged from the office and the hunting and hiking gear he had with him when this whole nightmare started. Something told him that would come in handy again.
Unfortunately, as his was the last convoy out, it also faced the most resistance. The sheer number of rotting corpses that surrounded the trucks killed all momentum, their viscera jammed the gears and shafts. They were stranded on the edge of town. They had no choice but to ditch their vehicles and shoot their way out. Fortunately, as the last ride out of hell, they had a disproportionate number of military personnel who had been holding the tide until the last possible moment. This was all that saved them. Even then the casualties sustained in making their way to safety were obscene. Well over half their number died before they could make their way to even temporary shelter.
Ultimately the group made their way out of town two days later, after the horde outside their hold out, a small auto garage, had calmed down and dispersed. Still, they were too deep into the city to simply stroll out. It was then that George hit upon the somewhat desperate and clichéd plan of using the sewers. He knew how to read the signs and guides down there and he had spent long enough looking at those maps trying to work out how to relieve stress on the system towards the centre of the city. The sewers were not as abandoned as they had hoped. The dead had clearly made their way in, most likely via the storm drains. But it was a darn site better than the uncountable swarms on the streets above.
By the time they made their way to the sewage treatment plant a little outside the city there were only a half dozen of them left. Fortunately the facility was largely automated, meaning it had little staff even at the best of times. In these dark times it translated into no staff to turn into walkers and no meat to attract them. Now clear of Raleigh the group proceeded, on foot to the rally point. However, they were already delayed by some days and the journey on foot was far slower than the journey by car. By the time they arrived the place had clearly been abandoned.
Not wishing to give up hope just yet the team moved on to the second rally point. But there they were confronted with a far bleaker story. Trucks, cars, tents abandoned and in a state of chaos and disarray. Around the perimeter lay a small sea of walker bodies, in the centre, a fair few human corpses or the shuffling remains of those that had not had the fortune to be killed outright. But there was a silver lining. Yes there were bodies, yes there were abandoned vehicles and supplies. But not enough to account for all of the survivors by any means. Some at least had survived, but where had they gone? Fresh tyre tracks on the roads suggested they had gone off in any number of directions, all control and organisation lost.
It was at this point that group cohesion fell apart. Three of the four soldiers wanted to head towards the nearest military base. Meanwhile, George, a city electrician named Paul Pritchard and the remaining soldier wanted to follow the greatest density of tyre tracks. The debate lasted for quite some time, but it ultimately ended with the soldier joining his three other comrades out of loyalty and heading to the base. Meanwhile George and Paul followed the tyre tracks. Perhaps it was not the most sensible thing to do. But George would hear of nothing else. He had a duty to these people, it was his city to manage. Furthermore he had sacrificed people to save them. He had let good people die to try and rescue the citizenry as a whole. He could not let his actions be for nothing, he could not allow the loss of so many and then just give up on those he had protected by doing so.
So began his obsessive hunt.
Describe your character's life after the Apocalypse:
He spent the next few months trying to hunt down the survivors. He and his colleague followed the tracks from stop to stop. Every time the number of wheels on the road grew less and less, every time more bodies were found. They managed to scavenge what the needed along the way, barely, but they were always chasing this illusory goal that forever receded just out of their reach. Eventually though, the trail grew too faint to follow. The pair had been on the hunt for over half a year. But now, there was no realistic hope.
The following month very nearly proved lethal to George. The loss of the survivors he had sacrificed so many to save proved a devastating blow. With their loss he also lost the moral justification for the hard decisions he had made in Raleigh. Suddenly he was hit by a combined wave of guilt and depression. Poor spirits always impacted on real world performance, even in the old world. But now it could be deadly. He would become sullen and introspective on watch, the sound of his own thoughts would drown out the rustle of leaves from an approaching walker, the visions playing before his eyes would distort the real world.
The thing that eventually rose him from this state was one further loss. His own carelessness led to a number of walkers slipping into their bolt hole and almost overwhelming George. He could feel the cold, moist hands on his skin, trying to claw into his flesh, dragging him down to the ground, their weight pressing down upon him. What saved him was his comrade, dragging walker after walker away, smashing down, cracking skulls and rending limbs. Until eventually a pair of warmer hands could be felt on George’s shoulders, dragging him away, along with a cry of pain.
It later transpired, after the two had run for their lives into the woods, that George’s comrade had taken a bite to the forearm whilst dragging George away. Both men had survived out here for long enough to know what that meant. Soon there would be a fever, then death, then something worse. Paul had only one remaining wish. To die as a man, not a walker. He offered to let George walk away, this man only needed a gun and one round. But George would hear none of it. He knew that his inattentiveness had led to this moment, it was his responsibility to finish it. Furthermore he would not allow a better man then himself to die alone. Despite his shaking hands George was a good shot, at least he made it quick.
You might expect this incident to throw him into a deeper depression, and to be sure he carries a sense of guilt about it with him to this day. But it served to sharpen his mind and clear his senses. He had been confronted with the terrible cost his melancholy had caused. This realisation made him determined that no one would ever have to pay such a high price for his emotional self-indulgence again. Now many a psychologist and psychiatrist may have said quite rightly that his mood was an understandable reaction to what he had gone through, and not emotional self-indulgence at all. But there were no psychiatrists on hand. That was how George thought of it then, and it is how he thinks of it now.
Since then he has been staying away from metropolitan centres, moving from farm to farm, lodge to lodge, even to small villages if he feels brave enough, or desperate enough. Occasionally he has seen other survivors, often from a distance, but never approached. Either their behaviour put him off, or he spent too long making up his mind by which point they had already left. Occasionally he has wondered if they might be better off without him.
He would stay at any place with supplies until they were down to about a weeks’ worth of non-perishables for one man, at which point he would bury the remaining food nearby to come back to if times go tough. Squirrels did it, why not him?
But food and water have not been his problem, the dangers inherent in being alone have been. Sleep was always when he felt most at risk, no one to watch out for him, no warn to warn him of approaching danger. No matter how many locks he put between himself and the outside world they never felt like quite enough. On those rare occasions when he had to sleep outside he would climb up into the branches of trees and tie his sleeping bag to the sturdiest bow he could find. Every time he did so he would wake to find a small swarm of walkers underneath him, just waiting for the branch to snap and him to fall down into their waiting maws.
This had happened far, far too many times and when he woke one morning to find walkers beneath him and the branch above his head creaking alarmingly, he knew it was time to find company. Hang his reservations, hang his doubt, he was not ready to die just yet.