Mal Deckard

Mal grew up a child of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s on a small family-run farm in rural Ohio, in Coshocton County. He’d always assumed he’d take over the family farm with his brothers someday, but fate intervened when his father was killed by a disgruntled farmhand when Mal was 17. He formed a friendship with the Sheriff and deputies in charge of the investigation, and once he was old enough and his brothers and mother had the farm well in hand, he left to pursue a career in law enforcement.

He joined the Sheriff’s Department at 20, and he married his high school sweetheart, Liz, shortly after that. The pair had three children over the next 17 years: Alex, the oldest, was 15 Beth was 12 and the youngest, Davey, was 7. Like any other couple, Liz and Mal had their ups and downs. They went through a lot of changes between ages 17 and 37, and often struggled to change together rather than drift apart. The past two years had been especially rocky, but they did their best to keep the doors of communication open. This wasn’t always easy, given Mal’s hours were often long and Liz often felt left behind.

But their common ground that never changed was their children. They always worked together as a team when it came to raising their children in the way they thought was best. So despite their problems, Mal never questioned that they would grow old together, surrounded by their children and someday, grandchildren.

But it wasn’t to be. When the bad weather hit, it was just a few days before Christmas at home in Jefferson, Ohio. It was very early in the morning and the tornados hit suddenly and without warning, with intense flooding from the storms compounding the damage. The boys were both killed by flying debris, with Alex trying to shield Davey. Mal had managed to get Beth to the cellar with Liz, and though the cellar remained intact, the house did not. Still, no one could have warned Mal that he would lose his wife and daughter to a strange illness that seemed to claim the lives of all the surviving women in the area.

In the days that followed, Mal tried to help hold things together locally, but with widespread destruction throughout the area, pretty soon it was just him and six other men, all of whom had differing opinions on how they should attempt to pull things together. Things fell apart horribly, and Mal found himself wandering east, hoping to be able to find others who sought out a peaceful coexistence rather than a quest for power and goods.

He just wanted to live, although lately, he hasn’t been wanting even that too much.