My story isn’t exactly one I’m proud of but I don’t see the point of trying to water it down, so here it is. My name’s Coltrane - Trane to friends. Some people describe me as a pretty imposing guy, strong like - I figure it’s just how I’m naturally built. Not that I want to be scary, but it helps when you have to knock heads together. Guess it makes up for not being much of an expert with knives or computers, I guess. If you ever need to recognise me, I’m usually wearing a set of cargo pants with a white vest, and I like to wear a leather cargo jacket most of the time. Never could tolerate anything more, I’m not a fan of burdening clothes – probably why I keep my hair trimmed down too. Don’t mind having a short beard, though. Usually I’m carrying my trusty fire axe too, as well as a reliable Glock 17 strapped under my waistband.

I grew up in South Central L.A in the late eighties in a neighbourhood which wasn’t what I’d call the best place to live around. Gangs, drugs - not the best of places to be, but I guess things could’ve been worse. I could’ve been dead, for instance, but no - I’m not gonna spin some bullshit about coming from a shitty family. I had a baby brother who was pretty smart for his age, destined for some good education at college or something like that. Moms was always soft spoken and kind. And my old man? Honest as they came - he worked at an Autoshop a couple blocks away and always had a love for cars, so I figure that’s where I got it from.

Hell, I remember he used to be proud of a ‘64 Chevy Impala which he’d been restoring over the years. Used to enjoy working on it with him, too, like when we had our little arguments about stuff and he’d take the both of us into the garage, throw some Marley tunes on the radio and start wiping down that car whilst we talked things out. See, he was always kind and understanding like that, never blaming me for anything, always encouraging me to find an honest living and to steer away from all the bullshit you’d find in a place like South Central.

At any rate, it was my own damned fault and nobody else’s that I ended up where I did. First, it was something you’d hardly notice - running errands for friends of friends, occasionally passing the ‘laundry’ to a corner captain in exchange for a small wad of cash. Was just a kid back then, but I should’ve known better. Even my old man started to take notice but instead of yelling at me - or even beating me as some might’ve - he tried to talk me out of the path I was going on and steer me the other way. But, as I said. I was a kid back then, and enough of a fool to ignore him, and now it still haunts me.

I got deeper and deeper into things. Saw some bad shit, did some bad shit until one day I ended up gunning down two kids in the same shit as me in retribution for the killing of a close friend. Got paranoid after that, jumpy, and ultimately it led to me winding up in prison. Then a couple weeks later I learned that my old man had been murdered, killed in a drive-by on my house as revenge against me.

After that, well.. I didn’t really talk to a lot of people on the outside. Moms was too upset to even see me. She’d lost a son and a husband at the same time. And my baby brother loathed me for it. For what I’d put the family through, and for costing our old man his life. I don’t blame him for it, he had every right - and I knew it even then. Sometimes I still wonder what happened to the both of them, you know. Moms... well, I know L.A got it pretty bad. I just hope she didn’t suffer long. And my brother? He ended up headed north, wanting to get away from the ghetto and all that bullshit with it. Last I heard was that he became a Detective. Good for him, I guess. Even with what happened between us, I hope he’s alright – that he made it and that he’s still out there somewhere. Markus – if you ever find this somehow, I’m so sorry. You deserved better.

I can’t remember how long I spent inside prison, other than that I wasted my best years - at least a decade inside, either way. Realised all that gangbanger ‘glory’ was bullshit and gave it up. You know the rest; guess the apocalypse was my lucky break. I managed to keep my head down during the riots and lived long enough to see the ‘new management’ take over. Those bastards everyone know as the ‘Condemned’. These people were dangerous, I knew their kind - killers, thieves, the types who hurt others because they could, and one day I just snapped. Turned on them after seeing something which got to me and couldn’t stand for; never did like seeing women or kids getting hurt. I never went back to the prison, not that I could, and headed out on my own.

I drifted around Southern Cali for a few years, never stopping in one place for too long. Back then the idea of a ‘safezone’ was out of the question for me, you either kept on the move or you got swept over by the next wave of dead or bandits. Occasionally I’d run across a couple of survivors who were decent enough to not bash my skull in over a can of beans, but any groups we had never lasted long and we went on our separate ways after a few months, one way or the other. It wasn’t until a couple years later, maybe, I learned something of interest - another one of those so-called ‘safezones’ up in Northern Cali, based in Chico. I was skeptical, but the least to say they said they’d seen it themselves, even had a detailed map of it all. The way I saw it, it wasn’t as if I was doing much else other than surviving. Southern Cali was running dry and I had my reservations about heading east.

So, ‘fuck it’ was what I thought. Following the highway, I ended up out on my ass towards the end of the journey and got lost, but that’s when I met those people, Abbie and the others. See, they were headed towards Chico as well, only difference was that they actually knew the road. So yeah, I took a gamble and ended up I followed them into Chico. And what a place it was.

Maybe for other people, kids who’d been raised in these safezones for a large part of their lives - it might not have been anything special, but for me it was... shit, I couldn’t have described it at the time. For the first time in... fuck knew how long, I saw kids playing on front lawns and out in the streets. People doing their business, going about working, not worrying about what was on the other side of those walls, it made me think. Made me realise that maybe there was a reason to keep on going out there, after all.

Hell, there’s a lot I have to say here, y’know? But that was just the start of things, and there was plenty more to come.

-Coltrane Anders, 202X