New Eden

"So, it's time." Bella say's to me as we're laying in bed that night. We spent a long time in the shower, and Barb took Steve somewhere else. Her and Bella had apparently planned this out ahead of time. Crafty girl, my Bella. "It's time for what?" I ask her lazily. Her chin is on my chest, and her light blue eyes are turned to me. I push a strand of hair out of her face and she frowns. "You know all there is to know about me. I don't know anything about you other than you and steve were in the army together, and that you're from california." I look up at the ceiling. I dont like talking about myself because whenever I do, it sounds like i'm looking for sympathy. But I can't say no to Bella. "Well, let's see, what do I know about you? You were in college to be a chef. You're family was well respected in the art world. You vacation in snow filled mountains to get away from snow filled mountains.." She pinches my chest and I laugh. "Ok, fine. I'll tell you, but it's not a good story." She shakes her head. "Good or not, I want to know more about you, as much as I possibly can." I nod. I knew this day would come, eventually. So I began.


"I was born Mark Aeric Donovan in California. My mother was a drug addict, my father, well, I dont know anything about him. I had a stepfather. He was also a junkie and alcoholic. My mother abandoned me when I was four, my stepfather was very physically abusive. He treated women like he treated meat, beat, eat it, and shit it out. He left a large number of broken bones and hearts behind him. I hated him. I'm an only child. I had one brother, a year younger than me. He was beat to death, thats when my mother left. No other siblings. I don't know what happened to my mother after that. A few years after my mother left, my stepfather died from a drug overdose. I was put into foster care when it was found that I had no living relatives and they couldnt find my mother. I was seven, at the time. After being tossed around for eight years, from bad foster home to worse foster home, I'd finally had enough and ran away. I didn't know anything about the world, only what I had experienced of it. I thought it was more than enough at the time, turns out, I was wrong. In the first week after I had run away, I was beaten, mugged, and left for dead. I was found on the side of the road by a group of bikers on their way to a rally.

I dont remember much about the rally. Only calling out for my mother repeatedly, and a dark haired woman with a tattoo on her face. It was after the rally was over that I woke up, starving and dehydrated. I was in a trailer home being pulled behind a truck. There was a woman sitting on the edge of the bed. She had dark hair, was thin, and had a tattoo of a snake around her neck, the head of it coming to rest just underneath her left eye. Crows feet marked her age, but she had a very motherly smile, I remembered thinking. She introduced herself as Gypsy. She explained that her and her man had been taking care of me for the better part of a week. His name was Shank. She gave me some water and told me to rest, then she sang in romanian to me. I didnt know it was romanian, it was just a beautiful song that made me relax and think of a happier time and place. I can only asume it was a previous life, since happy times and places didn't exist for me at that point in my life.

I fell asleep, and I dont know how long I slept. When I awoke next, there was a very large black man standing at the edge of the bed. He had tattoos all over his body, was bald, and had a goatee. He was wearing a white tank top and dirty jeans. muscular in the arms, and a bit of a gut. Gypsy was asleep on the bed next to me, and he had a strange look on his face. My first thought was that I was going to be killed for sleeping with this guys wife, even though I didnt do anything with her. He apparently saw I was scared and shook his head, motioning for me to be quiet, then he whispered, 'Follow me, I want to talk to ya.' So I followed him outside of the trailer. We were here, in Montana, at a camping spot not too far from here. I had been out for nearly a week, all told. They had gone to Sturgis and back. The night was dark, the moon was full and I was so scared I almost wet myself. He spoke to me again.

'Whats your name?'

'Mark..."

'Call me Shank. Where do ya live?'

'Nowhere.'

'Gypsy has taken quite a liking to ya. We've wanted a kid, but adoption agencies arent so keen on us bikers. She can't get pregnant either. We found ya bleeding and dying on the side of the road, I had stopped to take a piss, almost pissed on ya. She has been taking care of ya since then, about a week ago. How did ya get there? Did someone toss ya out of a car like an unwanted pup or something?'

'Sort of, I was hitchiking and got picked up, then beat up and mugged.'

'Why were ya hitching?'

' I ran away from the place I was staying.'

'What do ya think your parents will say?'

'I don't know, don't know who my parents are.'

'Foster kid, eh?'

'Yeah.'

'How long?'

'Since I was seven.'

'How old are ya now?'

'Fifteen.'

'That's about the same age I ran away too. Tell ya what. ya seem like a good kid. I didn't see any track marks on ya, your teeth are clean and white, and asides being a little underfed, ya seem healthy. Gypsy likes ya, and I give my woman what she wants. So, your choice, ya can hang with us for a few years, until ya decide to move on, or I can give ya a hundred bucks and let ya off in the nearest town. What do ya say?'

I thought of everything I had ever been through in my life. All the pain, the suffering. Watching women bleed and cry as my stepfather hit them. Coming home and finding his body limp and bloated with a needle in his vein. Foster care with people who could barely be called human. If I left now, I would get some money and probably last a month if I didnt get robbed again. If they had wanted to hurt me, they already would have done it. So I spoke, and those two words changed my life for the better. It was my first decision I ever truly made for myself. I will never regret it.

'.....I'll stay.'

That was how I found my new life. Shank was a vietnam veteran. He got violent sometimes when he was drunk, but he never hit gypsy or me. They argued, alot, but always made sure to let me know it wasnt my fault. For the next four years, my home was the entire country. Shank taught me how to fight, combining what special forces had taught him with what he had picked up over the years, in Japan and Korea, when he had been stationed in those places. Mechanics, philosophy, politics, all of that came from him. Gypsy taught me a lot of things too, got me interested in books, caring about people other than myself. I learned spanish and romanian from her. She had been a hippie. Both of them, by the time they picked me up, were in their early fifties. But they were my family. Shank never called me Mark. He had dubbed me Pup. We went to Sturgis every year, we ran drugs, weapons, and mexicans across the border. Shank was too old to fight for money against some of the younger bikers at the rallies, so I took his place when I was sixteen. I lost quite a few at first, but I got better, and quick. Soon I had a bit of fame among the families. Outsiders referred to us as gangs. But we were mobile families.

When I turned nineteen, Shank got caught selling to an undercover DEA agent, and killed him trying to escape. He got caught and ended up with the death sentence. He chose firing squad, like they did it in the old days. He died with a smile on his face and a cigarette in his mouth. Gypsy never smiled again, no matter how hard I tried. Soon after that, I met Steve. We had settled down in one place, in San Diego. Shank had owned his own home, Gypsy got it after he died. Money was rarely an issue. We had a mostly vegetarian diet, and Gypsy grew our vegetables. Clothes were likewise not a problem, the biker community is just that, a community. If someone had no more use for something, it was passed around the community until it found someone who could use it. I contemplated joining the army, like Shank had, but Gypsy was against it. She died in her sleep, one week after the anniverasry of the day they had found me. I gave the house to someone in the community and joined the army a month later.

When I was twenty two, Steve turned eighteen and joined. Where I had gone with military intelligence, Steve went infantry. I had already become a ranger when he decided to join, and it just so happened he ended up in my unit and platoon. We went on some missions together, it wasn't an entirely bad experience. We trained on the side with dreams of joining a mixed martial arts league, but it wasnt to be. We got out out at the same time, myself about three months before he did. That was a year before everything fell apart. The two month rule starts there, so unless you want me to break it, thats everything."

I felt a wetness on my chest and looked down. I had been staring at the ceiling the entire time I was telling her the story. Bella had tears in her eyes, and she was smiling. I frowned. "I'm sorry..", she cut off my apology by stretching up and kissing me full on the lips. "No, don't apologize for your life. You had it bad, but you made the most out of it. Gypsy and Shank sound like they were wonderful people. I wouldn't have come out nearly as good as you have. I understand now, though. Why you look at this place, and the people in it, as family. I never thought that way. Neighbors were neighbors, not family. Now that I know you, about your past, I love you even more than I ever would have thought possible." I nodded. I tend to get very uncomfortable when people compliment me, even Bella.

Before I could say anything else, a thought popped into my head. The window was open. "Oh shit.." I get up and begin to throw on my clothes, Bella sits up and looks at me in concern. "What is it?" I turn to her and trip over my feet, falling hard on my ass. "Ow, fuck, Bella, the window was open!" She looks at the windows in the room, confused. "Argh, no, baby, listen, today, the house. When I did the walk around, the bedroom window was closed. But when I went into the bedroom from the inside, the window was open! Whatever was in there had gone out through the window! There were three people living in that house, rednecks all of them, but they were good hunters! No way a single zombie killed all of them and then lined the bodies up on the floor, it was too neat."

Her eyes widened and she began to get dressed as well. Once I finished pulling my socks on I ran down the stairs to the living room. Grabbing my boots and tugging them on, I reached for my jacket as the front door opened and Steve came in with Barb. Her metal cane clicking on the front porch. Steve had made her a thick metal one that weighed nearly ten pounds, she could break a brick with it. "Dude, whats going on?" He asked me after seeing me rushing around. Bella came down the stairs after me, almost stumbling as she reached for her boots. "Oh man, i'm so fucking blind! I can't believe I didn't see that! No offense Barb," I say. "Um, no...problem..?" The confusion in her voice is evident, but I dont have time to sit and explain. "Steve, get the council together, we have a serious problem."