You get a long way with a little luck, and if you got the skill you can turn the bad into good. Pinned to the hood of a cop car not long after things went to shit Candyman's arrest was interrupted by a fresh enough looking corpse that the officer Cuffing him didn't notice until it took a chunk out of her throat. A scramble on top the cop car and a heel dropped into the Zombie's skull a few times got Candyman the key's to his cuffs and a piece with a few rounds to last him the early days while hell broke out all around and head start on getting the hell out of town. It hasn't been that different since then though, Break into a house, steal a meal, move on before you get caught, just the people doing the catching now are looking for a fresh piece of meat then to throw him in a cell.

It made a long trip out to California from Dallas on that road, one house, one night at a time, the man going a bit... off... from all the alone time, his criminal past always having him in constant contact with some foul source or another, if he wasn't locked up with them.  Reality lost some of its grip on him, for all the death and loss around him he just couldn't take in the bad side of it anymore, just the new freedoms it allowed him, even the shambling undead just targets for him to pickpocket, or occasionally dispatch, in a new extension of the old crimes he used to commit. His long nights even got shorter for him, no telling how long  after the electricity stopped flowing and even longer since TV stations stopped broadcasting hed start killing his nights with a skunky old beer bottle laughing at delusional reruns of threes company on the dead screens. The long trail had beaten him down in a way, he was living, but not thriving, and would just carry on until he ran out of places to hide out or memories to stop reliving.

His trail led him to Arklay though, just through happenstance and no real goal of his own, almost an unreal experience finding more people alive, and this many all together at that. His own personal dystopian brainwashing took a while to wear off as he re socialized himself, a joke in his first few meetings about being the "Candyman" looking to deliver a candy gram sticking to him before he came back to his senses, adopting it as his new name as he seemed to pick right back up where he left off before the all of man, Pushing drugs on the street, albeit with some sense of legitimacy in the new order that he honestly couldn't mind at all, even if hed roped himself in with the criminal faction of the land out o habit or when those connections were a necessity.  So here he is, new name and a new life, forgetting the old one despite the occasional badgering for his real name as he makes the most of things while they last.