I used to enjoy spring. The warm days, the cool nights; it was a great time to think about all the things you wanted to do outside, and all the things you should have gotten done over the winter but didn’t want to because it was too cold.

That was the spring of the past. Spring these days meant the dead were shaking off the rigidity of the cold weather and headed out hungrier than ever. Being dead, they were not bound by the same rules regarding the human body. They never tired, didn’t feel pain, and existed to feed and spread the infection that caused them to exist in the first place.

Such was my world, two years after the Upheaval, the name we called the end of our world when the dead rose and devoured the living. Some of us managed to survive the overturning of society and in the following years established places of relative safety-places where we could live, places where we could strike back at the undead hordes that still roamed the land. By my estimation, there were probably one or two hundred million zombies out there in our country alone. We couldn’t kill them all, but we sure could try to outlive them and take the ones who threatened our new way of life.

We had managed to save a number of communities and we had set up trade routes and lines of communication among the communities. Each community was responsible for itself in terms of basic needs, but we all relied on each other when the zombies came calling. I had just returned from a brief jaunt to Morris where a large crowd of roving zombies had attacked the town’s defenses.

I stood at the stone wall that surrounded my patio, overlooking the river and forest I now called my home. When I had come to this place originally, I was looking for my brother. But I came back, realizing it was the best place for me. I had been part of a community, but the isolation of this resort appealed to me on a deeper sense than I had thought and I found myself back here, claiming it as my own. To me, it was perfect. We had water, we had a forest for game, we had isolated land for livestock and crops, and we had peace of mind. I had no fear when I was here and I allowed myself to live, not just be alive.