I
guess I have been at this whole Survivor Profile thing for a while now. This is
my first entry for the members of “Group 3” that made their way to us back in
the second week of July. It is funny how quickly that crew became family. You
know how they got here. Now, let me share a little bit about them.
Justin Burkes: I will have to admit, out of all the people
in our group, Justin is the most enigmatic. You wouldn’t know it to look at him
with his scraggily facial hair (that I constant rag him about) and the Legend
of Zelda ring tone on his phone but Justin was probably the most professional
in our group before Zero Hour. He was a store director down at a major drug
store chain in Tulsa. A store director. This means he was our Charley
Montgomery (the store director here) and he is younger than me. That is pretty
impressive to be running his own store at such a young age.
We have some
differences. He is obsessed with hockey where as I like football. … Okay, that
is really the only difference that I can think of. If we would have met in the
real world, I know we would have been fast friends. It just took the end of the
world to get us together.
Secretly, in the dark
when no one is around, I have inquired about what was going on in Tulsa when
the outbreak hit. I know I am the only one that he talked to about it. The
pandemonium that he described sounds horrible. I think he keeps it hidden to
shield the other members of our group. I remember in one of these behind the
scenes film documentaries, Tom Jane was discussing sharks and he said something
about the average person doesn’t understand just how many sharks are out there.
The Coast Guard knows. They understand how dangerous it is. Justin saw
firsthand how bad Tulsa was and from the way he describes it, we got off light.
Imagine trying to hold things together in your store as things are degenerating
outside. His facility was overrun. He grabbed what he could and made it out. I
don’t know if any of his other employees did.
Justin has family up
in Miami, Oklahoma which is in the extreme northeast corner of the state. He
was trying to get his crew to them when they were sidelined. But the more I
learn about Justin, the more I realized how he made it out. His girlfriend was
out of town on business. No brothers or sisters. No real ties to anything in
Tulsa, so he was able to just drop everything and bail out. And now, he is with
us.
Eric Nestor: I figured it would only be a matter of time
before we came across a member of either law enforcement or the military. Like
Powers Booth in Red Dawn, the police
and the military are just flat out better trained for something like this.
Okay, let me rephrase. No one is trained for something like this but the
military/police are better trained to improvise in a situation like this. So I
was not surprised when Eric came knocking on our doorstep. I was somewhat
surprised to see him hauling one bad ass police dog with him though.
It turns out Eric was
a detective down in Tulsa. Before he was promoted, he worked as a K-9 cop with
his partner Kilo. Kilo is a German Shepherd and while he was used to track down
narcotics, I can just see Eric yelling out something along the lines of
“Chopper, sic balls.” And if that happens, dude, I would be out. It is amazing
how this dog could be tremendously intimidating and yet he plays with Alex so
easily.
As it turns out, Eric
is the perfect person to lead a group from Tulsa to Langley. His father was a
pastor. So Eric seems to have this calm yet authoritarian way about him. You
want to do what he suggests but you don’t grumble or feel coerced into
following his lead. He’s a good guy. In the real world, we probably would have
been good friends.
Aside from mentioning
that his father was a pastor, Eric hasn’t delved too much into his family or
his history. He hasn’t offered and I haven’t inquired. I think it is one of
those things that he has resigned to the fact that his family is gone and
bringing them up just evokes bad memories.
Still, with his
training, his weapons knowledge, his accuracy and Kilo, Eric is a real welcome
addition to the group.
