THE BASICS
( alycia debnam carey ) liz dufort, 25, head of supplies. she used to be a nursing intern before the outbreak. she has been at the camp for four months. people say that they are + kind, + nurturing, + iron-willed, but also - stubborn, - impatient, - headstrong, - secretive. that’s why they are called the firecracker. the only thing left reminding them of the time before the outbreak is her mother’s necklace.
name: Liz Dufort
nicknames: Lizzy
age: 25
birthday: November 8th
sign: scorpio
gender: cis female
sexuality: heterosexual
place of birth: Paris, France
former occupation: nursing intern
current main role: head of supplies
BACKGROUND
Pre-apocalypse
Lis was born in Paris (France) but her family moved to the US when she was just a year old. She was raised in suburban North Carolina. She was extremely close to her dad whom she adored, and when he died from a heart attack at age 33 (she was just 7 years old), her world was literally crashed, but she was lucky enough to have a mom that loved her deeply and prioritized the needs of her kids, making sure she and her brother (Andrea) grew up in a safe, loving environment, despite the loss of their father and their various financial struggles. Lis was a wild, creative and free-spirited child, always wanting to try new things, reading books and watching films kids normally have zero interest in, practicing ballet and theater and making friends with older people, asking a million questions a second. Her mother taught her how to knit and sew and cook, and she never felt less than her classmates for being less rich or wearing handmade clothes, despite not being wildly popular at school; that all changed of course when her mother got married to her second husband (Frank) when Lis was around 16 years old. He was quite well-off and despite her inhibitions, Lis soon grew fond of him and accepted him into their family.
Before the outbreak, Lis was a driven, soft-spoken, and quite artistic 24 year old young woman who lived a normal life with her family in the suburbs. She lived in a little flat half an hour away from her mother and little brother, studying nursing at university and was just a semester away from graduation. She excelled at all her classes and, unlike her brother, was very self-sufficient and self-reliant, happy and excited and making plans for the future.
Post-apocalypse
As civil unrest grew, cities fell, and the dead took over, Lis’ mother and her step-dad tried to devise ways to protect their family. She moved back into her mom’s house a day after news of the outbreak broke, feeling lost and confused and scared; entirely unfit to comprehend, let alone face, the new world before her. Panicked and scared, she trailed after her mother and brother, keeping close and trying to make sense of what was happening, often venturing outside to try to make contact with friends or talk to people, only to be completely horrified at seeing downtown being literally burned and bombed by the military, hundreds of dead roaming the streets, riots happening everywhere and the power, soon, failing. Within a week of the outbreak, the National Guard arrived at their neighborhood, setting up a perimeter, a safe zone, and imposing a slew of martial laws in order to “keep people safe”, as they were told.
The National Guard put up a fence around the area, and were supplying the people inside it with food, water and some medical supplies. They were also enforcing a strict curfew. Nobody was allowed outside the fences, or even to leave their house after 8 pm. There were some people outside the fence who were close enough to be seen and they were loaded into trucks with one suitcase each – to go “East”, and Lis never really knew where they were taken, but life inside the fence was safe, they were settling into a routine and she wanted to believe that everything would work out, ignoring her gut feeling that something was really wrong and trying to just follow orders and adapt to the new situation, until people around the Safe Zone started mysteriously disappearing. The military had to follow their orders and kill off every sick and wounded person and upon discovering that the government was actually killing people off and bombing other safe areas, not caring about whether or not there were uninfected civilians amongst the dead, her family managed to devise a plan and eventually escape the “safe zone” during a chaotic riot that broke out in the neighborhood in the middle of the night as rumors started to brew and tensions were boiling over with people losing their faith in the military. Unfortunately, during their escape, Lis, her step-dad and her mother were separated from her brother. The loss of him, not knowing where he is, and being unable to do anything about it, had a huge effect on her, but she pushed on, and soon, the family joined a group of survivors who were heading out to Virginia to join a friend of their leader on his secluded farm near a former military base. Believing it to be the safest place and not having anywhere else to turn, they followed them. On their way to the farm, many of the group members died, with the worst incident being a little girl getting sick and dying and turning in the RV next to a sleeping Lis, because her brother didn’t want people to know that she was sick lest they abandoned them. Lis was lucky enough to wake up just as she was being attacked, and killed her first walker en route to Virginia. The incident sparked a huge fight between members of the group, resulting in her little girl’s older brother being exiled from their company, leaving Lis horrified at how little compassion and understanding people were beginning to display.
Once at the farm, the family stayed there for several months, sheltered from the outside world, and Lis began to believe that maybe they could start over there, tentatively making some friends and doing everything within her power to help and contribute to their small community, but within a few months, that dream was dashed when a para-military group attacked the farm, drawing a huge horde of dead to it.
That night was the worst night of her life as her mother was brutally attacked by several walkers while they were trying to escape through the woods, and she had to put her down to spare her the pain of being torn apart by the walkers, alive. Gritting her teeth, Lis shot her right in the head, before being forced to flee the area, leaving her body behind to be devoured by the dead. Not only did she lose her mother, but Lis lost several of her friends, the only safe place she knew of, and got separated from her step-father. They managed to meet up in the woods and flee the area together, but within a couple of days, they were once again being hunted down by members of the para-military group, and Frank– despite her protestations– used himself as bait to distract them so Lis could get away. Currently, she has no idea what happened to him right after being captured by the group.
Horrified and broken, she had been fearfully roaming the empty streets, armed only with a knife and with little to no combat skills, looking for shelter and just surviving, hoping that, one day, she would be somehow reunited with her remaining family– until finally finding shelter with her current group.
CHARACTER
Lis has gone through just as much shit as every other person in the apocalypse, and she may not be physically strong and powerful, but she’s so strong and brave and stubborn as hell and despite everything, she still believes the best of people. She has this incredible self-awareness about the fact that she’s perhaps the least suited for the world they live in, but she’s not going to let anyone look down on her because she’s made it this far, and she’s determined not just to survive but to live a life worth living. She is nurturing and maternal and would do anything for the people she loves fiercely, and despite everything that she’s been through, she still has a strong hope for a better future and still strives to keep people around her happy and make them smile.
She doesn’t want to change, and lately, she’s been terrified of losing herself. She believes that she can stab zombies in the head and still sing folk songs and take care of the people around her and braid that one piece of hair and cook, and remain gentle. She is a tactile person who instinctively takes care of others. Her compassion, her faith, her bravery, her nurturing instinct and her iron will are just some of the things that do so much more to inform who she is at the core of her character than her ability to cave skulls in. She may not be physically strong, but the other ways in which she’s contributed to her group are just as important and valuable as physical fighting - if not more so, because let’s face it, everyone can fight zombies; how many of them are willing to do domestic chores and take care of the sick and people they barely know?
That said, she is currently in a pretty dark place mentally, having lost her mother and still not knowing where her brother is, or if he’s even alive.
