Salem Campbell
Name: Salem Campbell Age: 44 Gender: Cis Male Pronouns: He/Him Sexuality: Everything goes! (Or well, everyone) Town Job: Council member/Construction worker (carpenter) Residence: Beautiful little apartment near the town center About me~
Headcanons:
Before the apocalypse hit, Salem was planning on getting his high school degree. If his life had continued as normal, he would have gone to medical school.
He always wanted to own a dog, even if his situation never really allowed it (and it’s not a dream he has given up on yet)
He got several tattoos. All of them are from when he was a teenager (and one of the very few times he could actually be considered a rebellious teen). He asked his siblings what their favorite animal was and got a simplistic version of that animal tattooed on his body. His parents never found out about his tattoos.
Despite liking kids, he never wanted kids of his own, saying that “his siblings were enough kids one could have for a lifetime.”
Family is, unsurprisingly, the most important thing to him. He would die in a heartbeat if it meant protecting those he loved.
He enjoys reading and prefers poems and short stories. Mostly for practical reasons, since he never had much time. Sitting down with thicker books makes him anxious because he doesn’t know whether he’ll get to finish it.
There was never a whole lot of time for romantic relationships in his life, and most of them were short-lived, though he one day hopes to marry someone. Salem’s life wasn’t an easy one, but it was a happy one.
Salem grew up as the oldest of seven siblings. His parent’s marriage wasn’t one of love, quickly arranged after his mother got pregnant in highschool, but after their marriage and the birth of their son, it quickly became one. Salem’s parents were kind and hardworking people, doing their very best to provide for their newborn son, and Salem grew up loved.
His parents had always wanted a big family and once their situation was a little more stable, their household began to grow, to the point that by the time Salem was seventeen, he had two brothers and four sisters. Salem’s parents never really asked their oldest to help with his siblings, but they didn’t need to - Salem stepped up on his own. His parents were both working to provide for them, so even when Salem was a child himself, it felt natural to take over some responsibility, calm one of his baby siblings when they were crying at night, entertain them so his parents could rest, pick them up from school when he was old enough to drive.
Salem became the glue holding the family together, and perhaps the sole reason why they didn’t break apart after his father passed away after a workplace accident. With his fathers death, his mother spiraled into a bout of depression she struggled to recover from, leaving it to her oldest to become the parent of the family. And Salem stepped up. At eighteen years old, just a few months away from graduation, he dropped out of school to get a full time job and help with his family.
The next few years were hard. Dealing with his own grief, his mother’s illness and seven young children sometimes pushed Salem to the limits of what he could take. He stayed determined, keeping track of schoolwork, soccer practices and performances, finances, doctors appointments, bills, taxes, work and everything else in order to keep the family running. Sometimes it wasn’t happy, and often enough Salem felt like he couldn’t do it, but when sitting at the dinner table, with his siblings eating warmed up TV-dinners, Salem knew he could never abandon his family.
Salem was the one who took his siblings out to trips to the local pool, the museum, the park. He came to graduations, to performances, he was the one who occasionally cooked dinner, who dried tears and patched up bloody knees. He was the one who created peace within the family.
Things got easier with the years. His mother, while she never fully recovered, became better, enough to get a part time job at the bank where she had worked before. He managed to secure an apprenticeship and soon enough became an official carpenter, all the while doing odd-jobs in his neighborhood, a handyman of some sorts. His siblings grew up, became old enough to take care of themselves, went to college or started apprenticeships.Some of them moved out, some stayed in the neighborhood, some moved far away, but their family always stayed strong. Finally, after everything, there seemed to be some sense of peace settling over the family.
Until the virus hit. Salem remembers calling up his siblings as the reports began coming in. His oldest sister, Delilah was close to one of the outbreaks, telling him not to worry, that it’d be fine, but Salem knew her well enough to hear that she was concerned too.
Salem lost his family in the outbreak. Delilah, always one of the more responsible ones, turned herself in after being bitten and had to be shot. Salem remembers the news of her death, feeling like the floor was pulled out from under him. To this day, he finds it hard to describe the kind of pain he felt. And he is convinced that losing her child was what ended up killing his mother too. Her physical condition seemed to deteriorate, as if the will to live had been sucked out of her. In a way, Salem thought it was a mercy. What followed was worse.
Salem can still remember the last time he heard from Jacob and Mary. They had moved out for college, and as flights were grounded during the pandemic, they decided to make the move across the country back to the rest of their family together. Salem remembers Mary calling from a truck stop, telling him that they were on their way, that they would arrive in a few days. He never heard from them again and to this day, Salem does not know what happened to them.
Sarah and Devon - they had stayed close by, moving into apartments within the city. They weren’t killed by zombies. The apocalypse brought out the worst in people. Salem does not know how it happened, some kind of dispute over food, but he remembers hearing the news from a neighbor that his siblings had been shot.
Lily was the only one who remained. Second oldest, halfway across the country with no way of communication. It was only through survivor groups that Salem knew that she was maybe still alive, even if the words of total strangers claiming to have seen someone who looked like her wasn’t trustworthy. It gave hope. It was then that he heard talk of a settlement, somewhere out in the country. Rumors, nothing more, but it gave Salem some hope. Knowing that if his sister had heard the same rumors, she would head there, too. So he made his way to Redwood. Salem’s time in Redwood was emotionally turbulent, but so far he has prevailed. Even if the situation is tough, he clings onto hope, knowing that they need to believe that they’ll make it through.
