Michael Mogar

Bio
Born in and raised in Pensacola, Florida. The majority of my life was spent there. I have had two deployments, one to a completely safe country that had no combat. The second deployment was to a place called Colorado. I was a Staff Sergeant at that time. We were one of the first units in the area, our mission was to escort civilians to safe zones and to combat the undead. Things were going well until we lost radio communications with our support battalion and stopped receiving supplies and the buses to take the civilians away stop showing up. It was clear we were now trapped. We immediately set up a perimeter and got as many civilians as we could in. The hordes outside our lines continued to grow larger each day. Things took a turn for the worse when one of the civilians turned, he managed to bite four other civilians and a private who managed to take it down. We had no vaccine at the time and had to put them down. Our rations were running low and we knew no help was coming. Our First Sergeant gave a speech one night, he spoke of how we must fight for the people of this country, we must preserve our way of life and not fear death, but to embrace our mortality and do everything we can to protect those who cannot protect themselves. The one line of his speech that got to me the most was "those who have the ability to take action, have the responsibility to take action". I had always been an extremely patriotic man, but at that point I knew that I must spend the rest of my life to protect the freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The next day I lead a small reconnaissance operation in a nearby town in order to obtain vaccines and food. I had one HMMWV with four soldiers under my command. We made it to the city and managed to acquire a good amount of supplies. On our route back we encountered a large horde and spent almost all of our fuel reserves to avoid it. We ran out of fuel a mile from the FOB and I decided to hoof it the rest of the way and bring back fuel while my men guarded the supplies. But what we saw when we arrived was that the FOB had been overrun by a large horde. Massive piles of dead bodies lay piled at the walls, the barrels of the 240B warped from being fired for so long. A portion of the base was burning. The only thing that remained intact was the American and Cav flag that flew over our base. I don't know what came over me but I sprinted into the base, which still had several dozen undead within the walls. I expended all of my M4 ammunition by the time I reached the base of the flag pole. I managed to get the flag down and switched to my side arm, the undead closing in in a circle of death. I was down to my last magazine, the stench of the undead choking my lungs and their hands grasping at my uniform. I pulled my knife and was ready to fight to the bitter end when the rifles of my soldiers opened up. They cleared a path through the horde and I managed to escape. While I was gone a group of bandits had attacked the HMMWV. They were easily taken out by my men but the sounds of gunfire attracted a nearby horde and they decided to retreat. My men saw the flag in my arms, and the destroyed base behind me and quietly nodded. Ever since that day I carry that flag with me. One day I will raise it again. After those events I vowed to reform my unit and to protect the innocent and the weak. I will rebuild this proud nation once again.