SEX: Male
AGE: 17
IMAGE/DESCRIPTION:
Cody is rather tall, standing at 6'2". He has a lean build with noticeable muscular definition. Cody typically wears camo tactical overalls, a white cotton t-shirt, fingerless black leather driving gloves, and steel-toed hiking boots. He has scars on his back from when he was beaten with a whip by a group of raiders at the beginning of the apocalypse.
SKILLS/WEAKNESSES: Cody is a surprisingly skilled marksman, able to nail a target the size of a small rabbit from 150 yards away just using the iron sights on his carbine, and able to nail a headshot on a man-sized target from 75 yards with his Makarov. He is very skilled in the use of his Karambit, able to perform devastating slashing attacks that typically leave an opponent unable to move and doomed to lay paralyzed as they die of blood loss. He has above average but not excellent survival skills, able to live on his own out in the wild for some time. Cody is also a particularly skilled thief, able to get away with a variety of stolen goods without being noticed. However, his usefulness comes with a massive drawback: Cody is not just addicted, but dependent upon alcohol consumption. He will drink every day, multiple times a day, and very occasionally near to the point of poisoning himself. As well as this, he has a personality weakness as well. He has a worldview similar to that of Tex's, but different in a few ways. He is less of an "I'm on top of the goddamn world." kind of guy and more of an "I despise most everyone." kind of guy. He will have no qualms about taking a human life, but does not revel in enjoyment like Tex does. However, a piece of him remains that wants to trust people, and this leaves him somewhat in the middle, and as he is still a somewhat impressionable teen, a little nudging from Tex or from the other members of the convoy could send him in one of two directions: Either he becomes a depraved, murderous psycho or a helpful and productive person with antisocial tendencies. While his worldview is less than ideal, he isn't overtly unpleasant like Tex, and is mostly a quiet, reserved guy who maintains a stoic face and a cooler temper.
REASON/ROLE IN CONVOY: Hitchhiker wanting to get a ride to Boise, but willing to provide security in return for supplies.
GEAR/BELONGINGS: Hi-Point 10mm Carbine with a few modifications: The old polymer stock has been replaced by a dark maple wood stock in the shape of the "classic" Hi-Point stocks, and the grip has some rubberized tape wrapped around it so he can better control the weapon, especially with the lack of texture presented by the wooden stock. On the muzzle, a rather prominent flash hider/compensator is mounted, helping to keep the carbine on target. A surplus OD green M4 sling is mounted on the weapon, with part of it wrapped around the handguard to prevent burns from a hot barrel after continuous fire, and on the stock there is a mag pouch with space for 3 magazines and a cleaning kit. Cody has 24 magazines for the carbine, with each holding 10 rounds of 10mm Auto. He keeps 20 mags in pouches on his belt, 3 in the pouch on his rifle, and one in the weapon.
Bulgarian Makarov Pistol: An identical pistol to the Russian-made one, albeit much more common. Cody's Makarov is well-traveled, with scratches in the steel frame and bakelite grips showing its age, and the bluing is starting to fade. Cody put a lighter trigger in the pistol to help with faster follow-up shots. The pistol holds 8 rounds of 9x18mm Makarov in a mag, and Cody prefers to load it with higher pressure 115 grain lead hard cast rounds, which have much more stopping power than standard 95 grain FMJ ammo, which is more of a ballsy .380 than an actual fight-stopping round. The hard casts expand well and devastate flesh. Cody has 9 magazines for the pistol, 8 of which he keeps in his belt.
As far as ammunition goes, Cody currently has 450 rounds of 10mm on him, with 240 rounds being currently loaded in the mags and the rest kept in paper packages. All of his 10mm rounds are 180 grain JHP, good for anything from self-defense to hunting medium-sized game. Cody possesses 350 rounds of 9mm makarov ammo, 72 of which are loaded in magazines. 2/3 of the Mak ammo he has are 115 grain hard casts while the rest are standard 95 grain rounds. The extra ammo is kept in resealed "spam cans" that once held steel-case 9x18 rounds made by Tula in Russia.
As for the other supplies he has, he has a low-profile backpack that he keeps his extra ammo in as well as a military surplus flecktarn jacket for colder or rainy weather, a bottle of strong liquor or two, and a few extra shirts. He has a large Karambit style knife that he uses in tight quarters or for daily utilities.
BIOGRAPHY:
Cody Barrow was too young to see the things he saw.
At just 7 years old, the complete collapse of society robbed an innocent kid of his childhood. Living in a suburban neighborhood near Phoenix, Arizona at the time, the plague wasn't all that big in the area, but the real threat was the marauders and other criminal types that had emerged from the woodwork. A group of raiders stormed his home and tied 7 year old Cody to a chair and forced him to watch as they slowly tortured and murdered his family. After they were done with that, they took him outside, tied him to a lamp post, and beat him with a whip, and he has the scars to this day. In the ensuing week after the apocalypse had started, Cody wandered around what was left of his neighborhood, scavenging food while moving painfully slow due to the deep wounds on his back. It wasn't long before he was picked up by a passing convoy of what was left of the local police as well as some citizens who volunteered to help relieve survivors of the collapse of society. His wounds were tended to by doctors and he was given sustenance during his time with them. However, when it seemed his life was going as well as it could at the time, the convoy was ambushed in the night by a rather large group of raiders, with most of the people in the convoy being murdered. Cody escaped with an older man who took him in and became his adoptive father. Cody learned marksmanship and survival skills while with him, and 5 years later, when he was 12, he was much more hardened to the new world, his skills laser sharp. Yet his "duet with the devil", as he calls it, wasn't yet over. The man who took him in suddenly became very sick, and within days, due to lack of access to proper medical care, he died. This may have been what broke the young Cody Barrow for good. Tragedy struck thrice for the kid, and after this, he hitchhiked on convoys, having no real destination in mind. This is also when he turned to alcohol as a kind of cure-all for the depression that weighed him down. Over the course of his many journeys, he also became more ruthless, more willing to kill to get what he wanted. While he didn't go out of his way to kill people as Tex did, he did murder people who had something he needed or wanted, ranging from ammunition to a half-full bottle of whiskey. Eventually his travels led him to St. Louis, where he decided to stick around for a while, making a living by reselling stolen items to black market vendors, and often the items he stole were from other vendors or legal shops in the city. When he heard about a convoy heading to Boise, he decided to tag along and go out west again, maybe to start a new life or get some acquaintances, as he began to feel quite lonely as well as bored, and a good adventure, in his mind, would be just the remedy for that.
