Quest: Cast of characters

The Salazar clan
Rick: Patriarch of the Salazar clan. First to recognize Ebola was coming. Thoughtful, considerate, generally easy-going. One of the unofficial elders of Capiche
Kate: Rick's wife. She started a general store that was the nucleus that Capiche crystallized around.
Gabby: Rick and Kate's oldest daughter. Can be bossy. Runs Gabby's Pub
Luke: Rick and Kate's oldest son. Runs a store four miles north of Kate's
Mark: Rick and Kate's youngest son. Married to Betsy. Almost did not make it to Capiche
Janelle: Adopted daughter. Brilliant in the shop and fabricating metal items. Married to Chernovsky
Nyssa: Adopted daughter. Married to Milo. Nyssa is a nurse. Milo is the biggest owner of bio-fuel powered equipment.
Milo Talon: Married to Nyssa. Installed sea-walls before Ebola. Repaired farm-equipment. Excellent in-field repair skills. Learned about gassifiers from an old, Polish farmer near Buchanan, Michigan. Now owns a fleet of vehicles and tractors that run on trash, wood and crop-waste. Deceptively strong for his size.

The warriors
Chernovsky: Former four-season starting linebacker at a Division II university. Was able to apply lessons from the football field to the small-scale battlefields at the beginning of the Ebola epidemic. One of the unofficial elders of Capiche.
Gimp: Walks with a limp. High-end NCO. Good counterbalance for Chernovsky.
Quinn: Bow-hunter who showed a gift for battle. Caught several times in circumstances that should have been fatal but was able to land on his foot each time. Married to Dysen, Kate's niece.
Tomanica: Marine NCO. Very good at instruction. Specialties include shooting and demo and leadership. In his late 60s.
Pep: Mike has a long, Italian last name. Everybody calls him "Pep" or "Pepperoni". Was instrumental in convincing Duckworth to leave the original group of fighters. Noted bar-room brawler before Ebola.
John Galt: Was originally conflicted about need for using violence. Then he watched his squad-leader get killed because Galt was too slow to pick up a gun and start shooting. No longer conflicted.
Donnie Galligan: Was the other team-leader in Quinn's squad. Swiss Army knife skill set. Good runner. Was given jobs that were difficult to categorize. Liaisoned with the Amish. Grew up poor.
Sheila Galt: John Galt's mother. Ran the immigration station that blocked the main road from Delta Township to Capiche. A more mature version of Gabby Salazar: Organized, directive, results oriented.
Wohlfert: Was a mis-fit from the fighters picked up from Livingston County. Acquitted himself well when they defected.
Walt Shaw: Accompanied the Straeders to Iowa. Was commissioned to collect mud.
Wade Hawk: A hard, old man. Shot his own nephew for running drugs and breaking curfew. Not a man to trifle with.
Tory Hawk: Wade's niece. Learning to fly a Zenith 701 airplane with Dot. 16 years-old.

Warlords
Benicio: Warlord of Delta Township and Lansing, the heavily populated regions north of Capiche. Once an enemy, currently an ally. Capricious and unpredictable. Capable of great evil without remorse but also capable of great good. An example of "amoral". It is all about business. Rick Salazar is Capiche's primary contact with Benicio.
Bicklebaugh: Warlord of Ann Arbor/Washtenaw County. Keeps a low profile and works through others. Evil rather than amoral.

Miscellaneous characters
Dmitri: Romanian who holds an advanced degree in Radio Engineering from a university in Romania. Not recognized in US. Worked as an IBEW electrician. Rick Salazar's buddy.
Bazylewicz: A gifted family who lives in a compound in Huntington, Indiana near the rising-from-the-ashes Canton, Ohio -to- Osceola, Iowa railroad.
Wilder: A gifted family who joined Capiche after the first wave of Ebola abated. The Wilder family is wealthy in land and silver. Mrs (Dr.) Samantha Wilder is a Ph.D. microbiologist who had been working on an Ebola vaccine. Friends with Dr. Soo Hwan-Bae of Iowa who had developed a successful, but untested, vaccine in Iowa. John Wilder envisions a vast empire of sheep/wool/cloth and garments. John has a BA in History and an MBA in Business Statistics. John is one of the unofficial elders of Capiche.
Moe Pockets: Manages the Wilder Family Farms. Originally from New Zealand. Particularly gifted at Management Intensive Grazing and animal breeding.
Ozzie and Charise Virgil: Industrial chemists. Get-it-done personalities. Graduated from universities in South Carolina with zero name-recognition. Left with sound grasp of fundamentals and outstanding work ethic.
Straeder: A young couple who traveled to Iowa to collect the vaccine. They learned much about themselves on the road trip.
Wokes-Cold: A political officer in the Ann Arbor/Washtenaw army. Roll every grasping, venal, ambitious, sub-mediocre bureaucrat you ever met into a ball, multiply by ten. That is Wokes-Cold.
Thibodeaux: a Cajun who respected the competent officer that Wokes-Cold demoted because he was not a "Yes man".
Grandpa Ed and Peppermint Candy: Radio personalities from the very earliest days of the Ebola epidemic. Kate sponsored their shows. Grandpa Ed led off his broadcasts talking about "the tipple-of-the-day"
Paul Seraph: Retired big-city cop. High-energy. Knows everything and everybody in Eaton Rapids, the small city south of Capiche.

Who did I miss?

Next