Background

James Ramos was born in 1977 on a stormy night at San Juan; he was the youngest of 4 in a strict Puerto Rican family. His father was never home because he was a lawyer and had to work late and by the time he got home, little James was already on his bedtime hours. His mom although she was always home, she was hyper focused on her own business, never had the time to sit down and dedicate time to her children. And at school although he excelled academically, he was always getting into fights and had trouble fitting in. Growing up this did not hold James or his brothers back because they had each other and always took good care of their family. Also, you can imagine being the youngest in a house of 4 is no easy thing. James's older brother was constantly challenging him to be better fast and they showed him gratitude through their tough love. But by the time James was 16 he felt that it was time for a change of scenario in his life and despite that his father wanted him to go to law school he decided to go live with his aunt in Florida. She was a prestigious doctor, and he could use some time to really decide what he wanted for his life. Once there he decided to take classes to become an automobile technician and with his complicit aunt's blessing he subscribed for the courses and graduated in 1994 at the age of 18. This same year on a dark rainy night James met a young lady about the same age as him with a broken-down engine on the side of the highway, her name was Mell Brooks a very smart botanist and for James it was love at first sight. OfCourse, he helped her fix her car free of charge and in exchange she gave him a first date. Years later by 1997 they got married and lived a very happy life, James had his own auto repair shop by that year in Florida near his aunt's office and Mell was working at an uprising phytopharmaceutical company that were experimenting with different exotic plants in hopes of curing diseases with a more organic approach.  But happiness does not last forever, by the end of the year 1998 Mell was excited to have been called upon to be one of the first botanists to study as part of a new experimental group the worldwide growth of daisies and their medicinal properties if any. For Mell this was it! the chance she has been waiting for to really put her work to some good and maybe save lives in the process. James was confused and with mixed feelings at Mell's excitement because this meant she would have to move upstate and far from his shop but could not stomp on Mell's dreams like his father wanted him to become a lawyer, so he approved Mell's new project in her support... A choice he would soon regret as his wife contracted a strange illness related to her studies of the mutated pollen she was gathering for her investigation. As the only logical thing to do he soon took her to his aunt to hear her professional advice, but Mell was already too infected, and the pollen was already rooted almost completely to her brain by the time she got there. Jame's aunt took care of her in her last moments. James was completely heart broken and filled with sorrow, something he could not even experience because by the time his aunt went to give him comfort Mell's corpse rose and attacked her violently, launching at her neck like a brainless monster. James took a few seconds to gasp and react to what had just happened before he realized they were gone. Throughout the following year James found out that his family back at Puerto Rico were also gone, they were called to join a mass refuge near San Juan that soon got overcrowded by the infected and became a dead zone. This made every hope of taking whatever means of getting back to the Island away from him, naively he thought that back there maybe the daisies wouldn't sprout in the tropical island but that was not the case and the fact that it was an island this made it easier for the infection to overcome since there is nowhere to run or hide. In the year 2000 when the people flock to Canada James decided to stay in the Florida communities but as a loner for the most part as the only human interactions he would have were only when a few survivors came for a repair at the shop. Or at least the breath that it lasted because soon in the middle of a rainy and dark night kind of like the night he met Mell a herd of infected rushed through his shop destroying everything on their path, James barely made it out alive and with none of his belongings. The life he knew was over in an almost identical night as it began. Now in 2009 James is very silent with his grief and does not talk about Mell and the crude way she was taken from this world while trying to do good. Nore, he talks about his family's fate. Obsessively trying to drown his thoughts of the old days with endless tasks one after the other, motor after motor, day after day. As rising conflict keeps forming throughout time James is curious as if he could also join a side and give his life a new purpose, but for the moment has remained surviving if only to keep the memory of his loved ones alive in him.