Matthew Garret

Colonel **Matthew Garret** is a main character, mission giver, and the second main antagonist of *Days Gone*.

A U.S. military veteran and former addict, Garret founded the Deschutes County Militia during the apocalypse to eradicate the Freakers. However, his fanatical religious views gradually warped his mind, resulting in him becoming dangerously unstable.

## History

### Early Outbreak

Matthew Garrett served in the U.S. military a couple of decades before the Freaker apocalypse. He was a religious fanatic who believed that the end of the world was coming and that he received a vision from God to preserve the righteousness of humanity. He led a religious movement called "God's Army" and spent the last two decades warning his followers to prepare for the coming apocalypse and gather around him in the wilderness.

Sometime early into the Freaker outbreak, Colonel Garret founded the Deschutes County Militia and began quickly recruiting survivors into his army, leading them to attack government and NERO facilities, capturing supplies and weapons, and destroying bridges and highways to prevent the Freaker hordes from advancing. Garret led his militia to the Crater Lake region where he set up Wizard Island as his base of operations.

Believing that he and his militia are humanity's only hope for survival, Colonel Garret had been seeking to recruit more survivors, assigning scientists and engineers developing anti-Freaker weapons, and sending field teams to gather any crucial data and knowledge to be stored in the caves of Wizard Island, which he dubbed as "the ark," a repository for all of human civilization's knowledge.

### New Arrival

A drifter named Deacon St. John was brought in to potentially be a recruit for the Militia by Captain Derrick Kouri. Having heard of Deacon's efficiency at gathering supplies, Garrett quickly recruits him to be a requisition officer under Lieutenants James Weaver and Sarah Whitaker in order to gather supplies for their anti-Freak weaponry. Unbeknownst to the Colonel, Sarah was his wife and was the reason he joined the Militia in order to find her. Garrett also supplies Deacon with various jobs for the Militia.

A captain of the Militia and dear friend of Garrett's, Doctor Arturo Jiminez, is soon murdered by the new recruit, Private Wade Taylor. The loss of the irreplaceable Jiminiez sends Garrett into deep sorrow and orders Deacon to recover him alive. His anger is increasingly kindled when Deacon stages Wade's death as an accidental overdose so he doesn't suffer a humiliating execution. Colonel Garrett becomes paranoid at the loss of more extremely valuable Militia members and orders Weaver and Sarah be placed in the ark under constant watch by guards. This complicates Deacon's plan to airlift him and Sarah from Wizard Island via a NERO helicopter.

### The Decline

Colonel Garrett then claims to have received a revelation from God that the Freakers are not the true enemy of mankind that were sent to punish them, it was man. Garrett declares that a holy war has begun and the Deschutes County Militia must eliminate every survivor camp, they are all full of degenerates. Upon seeing the Colonel's descent into madness, Deacon immediately lets his NERO contact, James O'Brian, know that the time has come to airlift them from Wizard Island. Just when Sarah and Deacon arrive at the LZ, Colonel Garrett is showing new recruits around who had told him of survivor camps to the north. One of these new recruits is a man named Raymond Sarkozki, the exiled head of security for Lost Lake who betrayed Deacon by turning him into the Rippers. Skizzo immediately attacks Deacon which makes Garrett arrest the duo along with Sarah.

The three are brought to the Colonel's chambers in the ark where they are interrogated over their actions. Deacon claims he has never met Skizzo before as proclaims he and Sarah's innocence. Skizzo then mentions that Deacon threw himself upon a woman and, having saw Deacon's bare back while Rikki Patil patched his wounds, cites the Mongrels Motorcycle Club tattoo on his back as evidence. Garrett sees the tattoo and rebukes Deacon for his aiding of the Militia being behind a lie. He slaps and accuses Sarah of being a NERO spy due to her being in their refugee camps and Deacon's possession of one of their radios. Deacons comes clean by telling him that the radio belonged to him and is further proven correct when O'Brian calls and asks for the drifter. Colonel Garrett breaks the radio and apologizes for assaulting Sarah. He promptly orders Deacon be brought to lockup while he awaits trial. Unbeknownst to Garrett, Kouri takes Deacon near the northern border so he can gather forces to fight the Militia and save the imprisoned Sarah.

### Death and Defeat

The Colonel becomes increasingly erratic at the news of Kouri going AWOL. He promotes Skizzo to captain and appoints him to be his right-hand man in charge of the security of the ark. The new captain is ordered to lead an attack on his former home and does successfully kill many campers including the leader, Iron Mike. Deacon leads a counter-attack on Wizard Island with survivors from Lost Lake as well as, depending on Deacon's trust level, the Hot Springs and Copeland's Camp. Most of the fighting is done when Boozer crashes an explosive truck into the gate of Wizard Island and the survivors defeat the remaining soldiers who kept fighting. Deacon makes his way to Garrett's chambers in the ark and kills Skizzo along with numerous other soldiers.

Garrett holds Sarah at gunpoint while sitting down for tea surrounded by soldiers. This forces Deacon to surrender and Garrett rebukes him for destroying everything he had fought for. Deacon counters this by claiming Garrett is worse than the Freaks which angers the Colonel enough to point his gun at him. Sarah tries to grab his gun but is pistol whipped by Garrett. The Colonel chokes Deacon while attempting to aim at him but dies after succumbing to the tea that was poisoned by Sarah with hemlock. In spite of Garrett's death, the Colonel's Militia was defeated but still lives on, albeit a peaceful version without the rigorous military structure.

## Personality

Colonel Matthew Garrett is a brutal man who will stop at nothing to accomplish his goals. He leads the Deschutes County Militia with a fanatical fervor and has no qualms killing any outsider. Despite his claims of tolerance, he will not recruit any former criminals into the Militia under any circumstances. Garrett also cares not for the well being of those who are not soldiers and will put them into a work camp. It is implied that he even does not care for his regular soldiers if they are not irreplaceable, such as forgetting the names of even higher-ranking soldiers.

Colonel Garrett's most prominent trait is his militaristic strictness and religious fanaticism. Despite his zeal, it is implied he may be a charlatan using religion to form a cult of personality around himself. Evidence to support this being his breaking the third commandment and misidentifying prominent Bible stories as being part of different Books, such as Noah's Ark being a part of the Book of Revelation when it is actually in the Book of Genesis. Garrett is also prone to erratic behavior when the goals of the Militia are being put in jeopardy, such as with the death of Jimenez and the desertion of Kouri.

## Trivia

* His character is very close to Major Henry West from *28 Days Later.*
* Despite being referred to as a colonel, Garret has four stars on his shirt, which signifies the rank of general.
	+ Additionally, the insignia on his cap does not correspond to any U.S. military rank insignia. It most resembles that of a colonel, but differs in Garret's insignia having two stars in place of the eagle's talons while the U.S. military colonel insignia is an eagle clutching an olive branch in its right talon and a bundle of arrows in its left.
		- *The Art of Days Gone* by John Garvin further confirms that although he did serve in the U.S. military, it was decades before the Freaker apocalypse and he was never an officer, let alone a colonel.
* Despite being well-read in the Bible, he has a habit of misnoting where the quote he is using came from, causing Deacon to correct him on the passage.
* Colonel Garrett wields the Mayor as his weapon of choice.