“I’m here.” Charlie’s voice crackled out of the radio and I quickly tamped down the volume.

“What’s up?” I asked, swinging my leg over the bike and heading down the driveway. I had two choices for exit. Down to the river road or out back to the farm road. Both were going to require some pedaling.

“Need you to see something. I think we have a camper. Over.”

“Roger that. Where are you?” I asked.

“Out on farm two, near the entrance to Matthiessen.”

“Roger. See you in about fifteen minutes. Out.” I had about four miles to go, so it shouldn’t take me too long. I rode up the driveway and headed south, riding up to the south entrance. I saw a lot of new life in the woods and I was glad on a certain level that the earth was taking back what it could, given this limited opportunity. I couldn’t say for certain if humans were going to make a comeback, but for the immediate future, I think we reached an acceptable compromise.

After a mile I cleared the trees and saw our barricade. The grass hadn’t completely covered it yet, but I could see the weeds were making plenty of headway. We made no attempt to fortify the hill. I figured in time it would become brush covered and zombies never fared well in the brush. To my left and right was farmland and we used what we could take care of, growing vegetables and what not. We had planted some apple and pear trees, but they would take a while before they bore fruit. Right now we foraged for our fruits, getting what we could from salvaged cans. There was supposed to be an apple orchard around here somewhere, but I never did find it.

I rode up to our gate and stopped, taking a moment to pass through and re-lock it on my way out. Not that I was worried about anyone coming to steal something. We didn’t have that kind of problem these days. But occasionally a lone ghoul or three wandered around and they needed to be kept out.