Before 2003, David was a math teacher who taught young teenagers. He was a survivor of the Cordyceps brain infection outbreak. He made his way to the Pittsburgh quarantine zone but eventually left it in 2017 after it collapsed from a conflict between FEDRA and the Fireflies. Upon leaving the zone, he established a group of survivors, allying them through their shared faith in Christianity. He proposed a reading of the Bible that the Cordyceps was the apocalypse prophesied.