After logging out in a room on the second floor of the Police Station in Grishino, logging in today seemed to reset my character as I started on the beach with the defaults.
I logged out in the same room as a friend of mine, and he had logged on after my initial log off with his character in tact so we were not killed during log off.
steam id: http://steamcommunity.com/id/deadstick
I'm not too concerned by the loss of the character (its to be expected), but figured I would report this as it may help you track down this bug.