Background

One stormy night on November 16, 1989, Daniel was born. The parents who brought him into this world were named Blair and Curt Blackwood. For the first six years of his life, he enjoyed the pros and cons of growing up in a rural part of western Kentucky. Growing up he enjoyed going fishing, catching frogs and snakes out back of his parents house. Daniel also wandered his uncle's Jack's farm, always wondering why his uncle bought old military surplus. On weekdays he would go to his grandparents home. Often he would help as he loved to feed the geese and chickens they had. In the afternoons he drank sweet tea his grandmother made. Then the day came where he witnessed his father leaving in a rage, screaming about, “not paying a single cent to that cheating bitch.” After his father left their home it became rather empty. When Daniel turned ten, daisies began growing all over. The world he knew didn't end all at once like a book. Its pages were long and slow, news didn't make much sense anymore, neighbors locked & boarded up their homes, the stores became bare. Daniel remembered the day he would never forget. The day that everything went quiet, his mother clutching a half burned cigarette; her eyes void of life. She did her best to stay strong, at least for Daniel's sake, but something in her had snapped long ago. A week later, she was gone. No note, just a locked bathroom with an eerie silence on the other side & flowers seen sprouting when he looked under the door. Uncle Jack took Daniel away before he could see his mother come back. (She was infected) Most of the Blackwood’s had already fled to the family bunker, an old product of cold war paranoia, a bunker who now had purpose other than collecting dust. Daniel didn’t speak much that first year. Grief was the mind killer, Jack never gave up on him, after many talks he began to really come back to his old self. After three years had passed since Daniel lost his mother, the bunker, a cocoon buried deep underground with steel & old filtered air, making each day felt like an eternity. The adults of the bunker taught Danial everything they knew, like how to ration food in tough situations. On his thirteenth birthday when they felt safe enough to return to the surface, how to skin a deer, & how to clean a gun to the point it shined like new. They called it living off the fat of the land but Daniel called it surviving. They tried to celebrate birthdays & holidays but life was sometimes too rough. Just the endless hum of the diesel generators and the ticking of the clocks that didn't matter anymore. Sooner or later the supplies was going to dwindle & dwindle it did, they argued at night, moments he would rather forget, finally his grandparents who both were in their 60’s decided it would be best if they went further away to scavenge, his uncle tried to argue against it, but it was set in stone. They were old & it would be a hell of lot better than losing any younger member, hours went by, then days, they weren't back yet. Jack kept trying to tell Daniel maybe it was a storm, but he knew deep down, they were dead. He knew it and everyone knew it, but they all rather have some ounce of hope for their safety. Months turned to years and years would soon come and go. Suddenly it was just Jack and Daniel. Jack tried to stay strong, for both their sakes, but grief, the mind killer crept its way in, like a fox slithering into the chicken coop for a quick meal. Somedays, Jack talked and acted like he would normally, other days the pain was so strong he could hardly move or eat, this wasn't just grief it was something else, & soon he developed a cough. Jack raised Daniel for ten years before he too, like the rest of Daniel's family succumbed. Now Daniel is on his own looking for something out in the wastes.