Name/Nicknames: Russell "Rusty" McKenzie
Age: 20 (Born 1949)
Sex: Male
Ethnicity/Nationality: Caucasian/United States.
Appearance: Rugged, unshaven. He is never entirely clean and is invariably clad in jeans, leather and motor oil.
Personality: Always something of a simmering cauldron of discontent, Rusty, in the course of his experiences in Vietnam and his induction into the Wild Hunt, the club he has since taken leadership of in a very primal sort of way, now has access to the resources to live off the grid and on the outside. He grew up ostracized from the mainstream of werewolf society. The renegade outlook of other bikers has gotten him to thinking that they should use what they have to carve out their own little bit of society. That, of course, is a fight.
Bio: Rusty was born in Southern California after the War. His mother, Ulrike, fell in love with Roy McKenzie, a quiet fellow that didn't talk too much about his war in the Pacific. Ulrike's family, a werewolf bloodline, did not approve, but did not precisely act against her violently for this since she had never panned out as a werewolf. They just cut her off. From his mother, he learned some of the werewolf lore, but it was always in small bits. During puberty, relatives of hers would drop in, as well as, once, a gentleman with a European accent that made Rusty's hackles rise -- everyone else deferred to him, waited on the bastard hand and foot. Then, after he turned 17, they stopped coming around. The family left them alone after that, but his mother stopped telling stories, too.
Except for that brief period of family visits, Rusty grew up on the wrong side of the tracks as a result. He had a spotty schooling but learned, from his father, how to repair engines and farm equipment as they scratched out a living on the outskirts. During the War, Roy took a job as a factory mechanic and managed to maintain it despite being a werewolf, though hard times and cutbacks came after the war once more. Rusty, as a teenager, spent a lot of time in the shop class learning vocational trade type work.
When he graduated, it was safe to say that the draft board was waiting on the stage at high school graduation right behind the principal; he was practically inducted into the military from the moment he was eligible.
Rusty's dad was not much of a talker, but he told his son a few things about the ugly fights on the islands, the impenetrable jungle, the savagery. He shook him when he said, "Survive." He was pretty drunk; he'd always had an alcohol problem.
And so he found himself doing basic in Fort Lewis in a training battalion commanded by a hard-assed lieutenant colonel that had seen combat in Korea and Vietnam before being shipped out for AIT at Fort Polk, the infamous "Tigerland."
It was in Tigerland that he had a huge fever and convulsions; the medics were about to send him out for good when he snapped out of the trance and the coma. All the same, he was kept on sick call for a couple days. During those days, a full moon period, he underwent his first change, out in the Louisiana swamps, without guidance. He managed not to kill anyone, though he did mangle a gator. When he came to, he realized that he needed to sneak back in, clean himself off and present to be accounted for. After that, the dreams started to give him more information; it was jarring to have 'wolf hunting 101' taught to you by dream, or a segment on, essentially, mating and other things. But it expanded his self-knowledge. But then, if this was happening, why did his mother insist on passing down the lore?
Subsequently he was assigned to 1-8 Cav as an individual replacement and found himself in A Troop, carrying his secret along. He tried to remember what his mother had told him, cataloguing it. He arranged ways to make himself scarce during the full moons and drew attention for that from one of the NCO's, but he was otherwise not a troublemaker. As things started to brew up at Cochise, and the support grew thinner and the attacks picked up. He kept his mouth shut and his head down, even as he fought as a normal infantryman, not trusting the things that he dreamed of at night, not sure of any of it. Was he going mad?
The mood got bleak, as they started talking among themselves about how the REMFs were leaving them out to die in the mud, and Cochise was going to turn into a slaughter. Some of the guys that'd been in other fights, like X-ray, stated their fears, especially as the attacks stepped up against Cochise. The dream that came to him in exhausted sleep after day two of the siege was about 'how to make someone else into a werewolf.'
That was strange, but useful. He was watching his friends go down, the platoon get whittled for nothing. The instinct was, of course, to go ahead and get the hell out. He could do it, all too easily. During the night, as his position was being overun, he got cut off from his squad and turned; he killed at a ferocious pace, turning back the Vietnamese flank that was supposed to overrun that portion of the base. He had shot and killed before, he had hunted, but he had never engaged in such a slaughter...or been shot before. He could tell, based on the shreds of his uniform afterward, that he'd been shot quite a few times, but nothing showed from it.
When he managed to get back into safety, he was confronted by Dunlap; he confessed to it all. He also made an offer -- he knew he could make others like him, and they could survive. He was bloody around the mouth, wearing shredded jungle fatigues and wearing jungle boots that had their uppers split from their lowers. But it was all someone else's blood.
The first reaction was not good, but Dunlap went and told the other guys what could be done. Some turned away, preferring their humanity intact. Others took the offer of survival.
The night of Feb 2 and morning of Feb 3 was when the Vietnamese really came out in at least battalion strength, but they weren't prepared for opponents that raked with claws and tore with teeth and did not die when shot. They had no response for a thing that could leap on a DSHk position and rend the crew apart. Cochise stood by the time relief arrived on the morning of the 3rd, and the survivors were evacuated.
Whatever the official reports, there were two things that happened as a result of the battle at Cochise; reports popped up in the Central Highlands of man-eating tigers and the PAVN didn't assault Cochise ever again. In the meantime, Rusty served the rest of his tour with other survivors of the platoon as it dwindled and some started to go home. He watched as the replacements came in but never bit again. It wasn't right. When he finally got back to the world, his tour done, he hooked up with a friend that was running with a biker club called the Wild Hunt, a small outfit with a couple members. It had a heritage back to WWII, but lost a lot of members along the way. Still, they were friendly toward veterans. He became a prospect, along with some of the others from A Troop, and earned his membership the hard way. Then, of course, between brothers, he offered the bite again.
The Wild Hunt's criminal activity tends to be courier work, which is becoming increasingly lucrative as everyone and their granny is starting a revolutionary movement, growing mushrooms and is looking for muscle. In the course of that, despite keeping their heads low, a couple of the local werewolves have come to make threats. They could instantaneously smell that something was up with this biker gang, but haven't figured out, if they even know such a thing exists, that Rusty is an Alpha. But their master will know, and if he gets word out, there will be trouble...
Note: Rusty is junior in the club, but at the same time, he is part of why they are reviving as an MC. It's a strange position, since the club officers have to somehow cope with Rusty's natural role versus the structure of the MC. But then, werewolves are beasts of a dual nature...
