New Eden

I get pulled out of my reverie by the suburban coming up the long driveway. I smile as I see the driver. Her name is Bella Verdandi. She's from Norway, originally. She speaks perfect english in a very light accent. Her voice to me is like the voice of a goddess. She had been in Aspen, Colorado on vacation. I never asked her why she would go to a snow filled state for vacation from a snow filled country. I'm sure there is an obvious reason, but I dont know it, nor do I want to sound stupid by asking the question. She has long, light brown hair, kept up when she goes outside of New Eden, as we call the community. A paradise for survivors. When her hair is down, it's to the tops of her slender thighs. Light blue eyes and an athletic figure, she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Five foot ten, she is one of the tallest women in New Eden. She gets out of the truck and comes up to me, she's wearing a red and blue snowsuit, it fits her like a glove. When we first met and I found out she was a firm believer in god, I got her a small cross to wear around her neck. I had Steve make a leather choker for it, since wearing any loose jewelery was a bad idea. She only takes it off when she showers, she cherishes it, and I couldnt be happier. She is holding a thermos of something hot. I raise an eyebrow and she smiles. "Chicken soup. I brought some for Steve too." Her, Barbara and I are the only people in New Eden who call him Steve. To everyone else, he's Spyder.

Bella Verdandi and Barbara McManus came to us on the same day. They were headed north, to Alaska where Barbara was originally from. There were two other survivors with them, but they died on the day we met. Barbara was shorter than Bella, standing at about five foot seven, with deep red hair. She had been in an accident when she was younger, blinding her forever. It was scary for people who saw what was going on, it was scarier for Barb who, at twenty five, had only her imagination. It was by chance she and Bella had found each other. They became immediate friends and helped each other cope with the immediate aftermath. Steve and I had been at New Eden for less than a month when we found them in a town named Troy, twenty miles from New Eden. We were on a supply run and they were holed up in a convienence store under attack. We fought our way through to them, and the first time I laid eyes on Bella, I instantly fell in love. She was standing in front of two children and a blind woman, brandishing a basball bat like a valkyrie on the day of Ragnarok. She would've died to protect those with her. Most other people would have run, trying to save only themselves. Things between us werent perfect at first. Bella is a very kind and generous woman. She saw me as merely someone who seem's to enjoy killing zombies. Barely more than human. I was cold to her as well, but in my defense, she is way out of my league and I didnt know how to approach her, so I kept it business as usual.

It was two weeks later, when I was helping build one of the fence's around New Eden when a woman came screaming down the street. Her five year old daughter had chased the family puppy out of the fenced in area. We hadn't cleared the area completely, and there was a good chance that there were zombies out there. While people were trying to decide what to do, I got directions from the woman, and the girl's name. Stephie. It was two blocks away. I ran through alleys and side roads to get there, the truck would have taken too long. Somewhere along the way I forgot to grab a weapon, I had left my rifle by the fence. My only concern was that little girl's safety. Getting to the womans house was easy enough, Iin my first week I made sure to study both a map of the town and the actual town itself. There was a hole in the bottom of the fence in the womans backyard. Just large enough for a child to crawl under. I jumped up and climbed to the top of the eight foot wire fence, dropping down to the other side and looking for tracks. It had snowed the night before, but it was drizzling slightly now. Not good for staying warm, but perfect for tracking. Any tracks left by the child would be nearly frozen over.

I finally found them, and began following them into the woods. It was febuary, and the snow was light. After nearly ten minutes of following the tracks, I heard a scream, and took off running in that direction. "STEPHIE!!!" I screamed her name over and over. I heard another scream and found my way over to it. I came to a stream where there were three zombies moving slowly through the water towards a huddled child in a pink jacket who was holding on to a yapping black puppy. She was crying and screaming for help. I ran across the stream and to the decayed corpse closest to me. It was then I realized I didnt have any weapons. Reaching out, I grabbed its head and twisted, breaking its neck. I didnt know if that would kill it, but I was hoping that its body still worked somewhat like it did when it was alive. The zombie fell into the water and kept moaning, but it wasnt moving anything but its head. The other tqwo began to turn around, and I reached down and picked up the zombie I had just felled. Using it's weight, I swung it into the second one, knocking it down and away from the girl. I reached down and picked up a fist sized rock from the bottom of the stream, and charged the last one standing. Swinging the rock, I hit it first in the forehead, which knocked it back and down. I then jumped on top of it and used the rock like a hammer, smashing the zombies head in and killing its brain. Then I turned to the other two, both down, and did the same thing.

When it was over, I went over to Stephie. She started screaming the second I touched her. "Calm down Stephie, it's ok, nothing is going to hurt you, I wont hurt you, calm down baby girl. Calm down." She seemed to realize that I wasn;t one of them and thrust herself into my arms, crying against my chest. I put my own jacket around her and picked her and the puppy up, cradling her as I turned to go back to New Eden. When I turned around, I saw Bella standing there, on the other side of the stream, staring at me. She had an odd expression on her face, like she was seeing me for the first time. "We have to hurry. She's been in this freezing water for a while, we need to get her back before hypothermia sets in." Bella nodded and we rushed back to the town. Stephie's mother was crying and relieved to see her baby. The townsfolk tried to celebrate, but I stopped them. "We need to hurry up and finish this fence, so no children will get out like Stephie did. It turned out for the better this time, but the next child might not be so lucky." They accepted the chastisement pretty well, and went back to building, reparing, and maintaing the fence. That night, as I was in the house Steve and I shared, Bella came calling.

"That was a brave thing you did, going after that girl." She said to me. Steve was out with Barbara, the two seemed to hate each other but you couldnt keep them apart. We were sitting in my kitchen as I made some chicken soup. Putting down two bowls, one in front of her, I sat down. "No, just what needed to be done, like when we pulled you out of that store. It's just the right thing to do." Bella smiled, but shook her head. "No, it was different this time. Then, you came across us and killed all of the zombies. Afterwards, you barked orders and were mean. It was almost like saving us was a side effect from killing the zombies. I wasn't even sure if you knew we were in there. But this, you knew that little girl was in danger and ran off to save her, without thought for your own safety. You didnt even bring a weapon," she said with a sly smile. "Hm, yeah, well, I forgot it. I was kind of in a hurry." I responded, I was embarrased that I had forgotten a weapon. She reached across the table and touched my hand. "Thats ok, " she said softly. "I thought you were just a guy who likes to kill, but I see it everyday. You care about the people here. You do what you can to help them. I notice it." I grinned. "So you've been spying on me, eh?" She laughed, "Dont get so full of yourself, Mr. Hero of the day. I just said I noticed, thats all." Yet she didnt take her eyes off of me, or her hand off of mine.

"Yuck, I don't think I'll ever get fully used to this," one of the diggers says. It pulls me out of my thoughts and back into the present. The diggers are people who can deal with the sight of mutilated and destroyed bodies, but dont have the stomach to do the killing. Being outside the gate isnt too much for them to handle, so burying the bodies is their way of helping out. I watch as they begin, then turn my attention to the surrounding area. It's ten in the morning, the day began six hours ago. The surrounding woodline is light on trees, but it gets heavier further up the mountain. In late December, it was almost impossible for zombies to get this far up here. After the diggers are done with their job, we mark the graves with crosses. I have never been a religious person. Though I have been closer to it every day since the first one a year ago. I fully accept the possibility of a greater power out there somewhere. It has many names, but the most common one in this day and age is God. I wont tell someone that God doesnt exist. If they believe in him, then I wont take it away. People need something to hold onto, hope. My faith is in humanity itself. The ones who are still alive are banded together in hopes of surviving another day. They dont give up, and the people I see every day are working hard to make sure we live. God may be a source of comfort for most, but he doesnt hold a candle to the determination and inner strength I see every day from human beings.

Steve gets into the suburban and Bella gets into the truck with me. We follow him down the driveway and onto the road. New Eden is close to ten miles away, on this old mountain road it'll be about a half hour trip. After we get going and the heater turns on, Bella looks at me, smiling. After a few minutes, I finally speak. "Ok, you're staring at me and smiling, whats up?" She shakes her head and a strand of hair comes loose. I take a sip of the hot chicken broth as she speaks. "Barb might be pregnant." I choke on the soup and almost run us off of the road. The radio immediately comes on and I hear Steve's voice. "Mark, bro, you ok?" I put the cup of broth down and Bella is holding her laughter. Picking up the radio, I speak into it. "Yeah man, i'm good, hit a patch of ice or something." Steve comes back on. "I didnt notice it, my bad." I put the radio down and look at Bella, who laughs. "I'm sorry. But it's true, she might be pregnant. We're going to have Doctor Samson examine her. But you can't tell Steve. She doesnt want him to know just yet."

I nod my head. Steve needed to know, of course I'm going to tell him. "We finished the house, by the way. Everything is set up. It's a good thing Barb knows a lot about electronics, I wouldn't have had a clue." She lays her head on my shoulder as I chuckle. Barbara McManus. Steve's fiance. Redheaded and hot blooded, her irish heritage shows. It destroyed her eyesight, but not her determination to make something of herself. She threw herself into her studies, and was a perfect student. She graduated at the top of her class from Boston University. A masters degree in architecture with a bachelors in electrical engineering. She is responsible for New Eden having power. I dont even know how she managed to get into architecture while being blind, but she did. "You know what today is, don't you?" Bella says softly from my shoulder. "Christmas Eve, right?" I feel her nod. Christmas has always been special to her. Her family traveled a lot, but every year, on christmas, they would drop what they were doing and come home. It was the only time of the year that she would get to see her whole family when growing up.

One of the things we didn't do, it was an unspoken rule, was ask each other about what happened to us in the first two months after that day. Those were the worst times for everyone who survived. I've always had a sneaking feeling that bella had experienced some of the worst pain in her life then. She had been vacationing with her entire family. It had been christmas. She is the only survivor. She'd had a big family. I couldnt imagine what she was going through, all I could do was be here for her. "You know, with the four of us living in the same house, it's like we're a family, you know? All of us are family here, but the four of us are lucky to have each other." I say, I want to make her smile, anything to cheer her up. I dont know if she smiles, but she say's three words that always sound the sweetest coming from her mouth. "I love you."


We arrive at the first outpost to New Eden. It's a triple layer fence, the kind they put around prisons. Wire, about ten feet high. There was a brickyard here and amazingly enough there was enough to put a small wall around the entire residential area of the town. Not nearly enough to encircle the entire town, but the residential are was a fallback spot if the outer post was breached. We dont have any type of barbed or razor wire on the top, so far we havent come across any zombies that can jump or climb, they cant even get up stairs. They can however mass in large numbers and break something down with sheer weight. We voted against making the brick wall ten feet high for the simple fact that we needed to see if anything or anyone was approaching the fence surrounding the homes of us residents. the top rooms of nearby houses were also used as tower posts. After we went through the first outpost, we passed into the center of the town. Certain buildings had been reconstructed internally as storage or arms rooms. Some were used just as they were in life before doomsday. City hall had been left alone, it was where the former mayor still lived. Everything was run by council now, but the mayor had requested that he keep his office. Everyone needed something to keep them sane.

The school gym was used as a public meeting hall. The survivor population had risen from two hundred to just under five hundred. The council was made up of ten people, two of which were steve and myself. The head of the council was the former mayor himself, Frank Thompson. He was a good man, in his fifties. He owned the brickyard, and was the one who suggested the five foot wall instead of ten. The first official vote on the council had been what to call those coming back from the dead. We decided on zombies, because zombie was what everyone was calling them anyway. It was an all too familiar sight now, so zombie was decided upon. It wasn't the subject of the vote that we were looking at, it was the ability of those gathered to decide on simple matters without much debate. Like the saying goes, if the opposite of Pro is Con, then opposite of Progress is quite naturally Congress. It sounds lame, but lameness doesnt keep it from being true. We also voted on jobs that needed to be done. Steve and I already functioned as a clean up team, for the most part. We were the youngest ones in the town with military experience. So we were also the ones who led teams out to bring in supplies. Training new people was Steve's job, I focused mainly on keeping order in the town. Sort of like a sheriff.

Driving past starbucks is always amazing for me. Even after the world as we knew it had ended, there is still a functioning starbucks. The second outpost is just ahead, and it is surrounded by the same type of fence that the first oupost has, a triple thick ten foot high wire one, and a five foot brick wall. After letting us in, we came into the heart of New Eden. Sitting in the middle of the town was the actual residential area. The houses were almost all two story, some were three. The one Steve and I share with Bella and Barbara was a two story. While Steve drove the suburban to the supply shed, I drove home. Once there, I parked as I usually do, with the tail end of the truck under the balcony on the second floor. Our house was light blue, with a white roof and trim. Two stories tall, with the master bedroom having a large balcony. We installed a jacuzzi on it, and spent some fun nights barbequing and relaxing there. Steve had been offered another house, but he had turned it down, instead deciding to tear down the wall in between two of the four bedrooms on the second floor, making his room bigger than my own. We had a good laugh about that.

Getting out of the truck, I noticed something different about the house. "You put up christmas lights?" I looked at the multitude of colored bulbs around the edges of the house. "Well, yeah. It's christmas, right? Have to have holiday cheer." I smile, it's the little things like this that make me love her more every day. She begins to walk away, "I'm going to go shower, you coming with me or are you going to stare at the lights all day?" she say's slyly over her shoulder. I take another look at the lights and rush after her. Like anyone would pass on an opportunity like that. Well, maybe a gay guy. Maybe.