Male Caucasian – 30 – 5’11” – 175 lbs

Dependents: Sister - Marie, single mother of Niece, Olivia, deaf (75% hearing loss)

Justin’s parents, Gus (Gustav) and Tina (Katina, maiden name Nadjosinski) Kazotchek were a newlywed couple living on Gus’s family’s farm west of Detroit when they had their first child. (Justin was touted as a honeymoon baby. “Born two months premature, but so healthy” was the way it was always told.) Gus got a job with the auto industry five years after Justin’s birth moved them into the suburbs nearer the city. Justin’s sister Marie was born about a year after that. For some reason, Gus abandoned his wife and children little more than a year later.

The family savings account was soon depleted. Tina’s parents had a house in the city (It was a quiet little neighborhood on the outskirts when they built, but Detroit expanded and absorbed them.) and made room for her and the children for several years while she saved money for her own home. Tina never remarried and lived in that house ‘til the day she was killed in a boating accident on Lake Erie a few years ago.

Auto shop was the only class in school where Justin really excelled. His grades in his other classes were just good enough to keep him eligible for sports. He was considered the star shortstop of his high school baseball team, promoted to the varsity squad his freshman year. There was another J. Kazotchek on the varsity team, no relation, so they had to use both first and middle initials. Justin’s first appearance with “J.V. Kazotchek” across the back of his jersey quickly earned him the name Junior for the rest of his high school career.

Justin’s skills on the baseball diamond earned him a scholarship to a tech college in the Midwest. His college career was cut short his sophomore year by the death of his girlfriend, Sarah Radcliff. She decided to try a “mood enhancing” drug, (Ecstasy) during sex and had a massive cardiac incident while they were fully involved. Although he still doesn’t remember it, Justin administered CPR (He’d learned it in Boy Scouts and was talked through by the 911 operator.) until the ambulance arrived. The hospital staff determined that all efforts had been in vain as Ms. Radcliff’s heart had been damaged beyond recovery in the original incident. (One doctor’s comments were, “Her heart virtually exploded from the palpitations; reduced to little more than a bag of hamburger. She was dead in ten, maybe fifteen seconds after she seized. Nothing anybody could have done for her.”)

The incident was hushed up as much as possible. Even though there was no wrongdoing on Justin’s part, this was still a scandal as far as the administration was concerned. A death involving sex and drugs and one of their star athletes was not good for alumni donations. The school’s lawyers brought an ethics and morals clause into play. Justin’s lawyer pointed out that the drug that killed the young lady was bought by her on THEIR campus and his client had no knowledge of this. A settlement was reached and Justin was allowed to finish the few months left in the year. As far as the records go, the university declined to renew Justin’s scholarship and he didn’t return to school.

Justin enlisted with the Army shortly after leaving college. Sarah’s death had really rattled him, leaving him feeling like a ship with its rudder suddenly torn off and left adrift. A counselor recommended a stint in the armed services to help him put his life back on track. It worked out quite well for Justin. With all the action movies of the time convincing young hopefuls that they wanted to be Seals or snipers or Special Forces or some other prestige job, the recruiters’ jaws practically hit the floor when they got a promising recruit who actually WANTED to be a ground vehicle mechanic.

Working in the Army motor pool was a good fit for Justin. He had always been good with mechanical things and this position really let him experience a wide variety of mechanisms and machines. He got to work on everything from cutting edge Hummvee combat vehicles to bulldozers that had been in service for more than fifty years. And he loved practically every day of it. After his first enlistment was done, he re-upped and gave serious thought to making the military his career.

During the conflict in the Middle East, Justin’s whole world outlook got shaken to its roots and his career with the military was shortly brought to an end. Sgt. Kazotchek and his unit were deployed early on, keeping the mechanized military up and rolling. They were far enough back to be out of the regular fighting but close enough to need to stay alert. They did their job, kept things running and kept each other protected.

Their base was attacked before full light one morning by what at first glance looked to be a massive crowd of bedraggled refugees. The sentries thought it was another troop of enemy soldiers, cut off from their supply lines and surrendering so they could get something to eat and drink. Those first sentries paid for that mistake with their lives. Other guards got the gates closed long enough to rally their own troops but the gates couldn’t hold against relentless push of that mass of bodies.

Justin had just rolled out of bed when the attack began. He joined in the fight with his boots still untied. Despite a withering hail of fire the creatures kept pushing forward and the soldiers’ numbers continued to dwindle. The ground was littered with bits and pieces of the creatures, yet they kept on coming. Justin and his fellows fell back from building to building, fighting a retreating action. One of the creatures would drop from time to time, but nobody ever figured out why one would drop but others would just keep coming.

The fight went on for more than an hour as the company radio operator kept calling in reports and practically begging for evacuation. They finally heard the sound of multiple inbound helicopters and the soldiers all ran for the helipad. From a full supply and repair unit, they had been reduced to few enough to fit on three Hueys. A large column of fire consumed their entire base after the helicopters were a safe distance away.

The soldiers soon convinced themselves their base had been overrun by refugees of a town that had been hit by some kind of bio weapon. Justin was the one voice of dissent; trying to give his debriefing officer all the facts as he had seen them. He quickly figured out that he was going to talk himself into a long stretch in a mental institution if he didn’t start “talking some damn sense” as they put it. He got his story in line with the rest of the soldiers soon enough and all were eventually redeployed to a support base in Europe. Justin was informed of his mother’s death several months later. His re-enlistment was up soon anyway and he was given a hardship deferment for early dismissal. Justin returned to his home town of Detroit, living with his younger sister for a short time until he got his own place.

He soon got back on his feet, leasing garage space and building a lucrative clientele. The whole time he was questioning whether he really saw what he saw during the war. He erred on the side of caution, becoming what some would brand as a survivalist nut as he reinforced his home and kept himself prepared for the worst. He was contacted by elements of the SAVE group not too long ago. The fact that there were others who knew about the creatures he had faced in the Middle East was a great relief.