"Thank you for the ride."
"You're welcome, soldier. Thank you for your service."
I let my bag drop on the pavement and look at the black iron gate cautiously: Ruby's house survived the apocalypse because it's far from downtown LA, nobody broke in and looted it, and remained closed all the time just as she left it before going shopping that day.
A very kind boy gave me a lift from the airport when he spotted me walking through the door, he told me Ruby's house was on his way home, although it wasn't true most likely... but the world has changed, barely half of the humanity has survived and the ones who are still alive show more solidarity. There's no other way if we want to get ahead... Reconstruction progresses at a good pace, people are optimistic and hope this new world will be better than the former one in many aspects. Several small and medium sized towns have been pretty much preserved and downtown LA looked good when we drove by some minutes ago. Thanks to the military plans and the stringent control that my superior officers from the NATO still exercise, the order has been restored, we got rid of corpses, assisted the hapless population, Doctor Ranjit Batra and his colleagues are making the croplands productive once again, hospitals are working at full capacity, kids will go back to school soon, they're organizing presidential elections in two years and TV and radio broadcast again.
Thanks to those, the population has learnt about the outstanding work carried out by soldiers all over the world both during the war and later: distributing vaccines, fighting against the creatures left behind, providing humanitarian aid and putting into effect a practical programme to deliver basic services as soon as possible. And they've made us famous, all my team in general, but above all Ruby, since she was a celebrity before this mess, and me because I'm her wife. I don't know who spilled the beans but I'd put my money on Issy, Jin and Kat... Last time I saw them they were resolved to have our merits recognized no matter how hard Nat was trying to explain them that we work on undercover operations and we're used to get our medals in discreet ceremonies. The point is that everybody knows what happened in Romania although, luckily, radio started broadcasting first and our faces weren't shown on TV till a few days ago. People don't know me when I'm walking down the streets yet and the boy who took me here didn't know who I was.
But they know Ruby: the Hollywood star that was present at the very end of the war thanks to a love story that deserves to be in a movie... apparently there're plans to film it. It'll be one of the first productions that the new film studios are going to release. My wife tried to be tactful at first and answered questions without going into detail but, when the whole story was made public, all of a sudden her pretty face was everywhere again and we've been labelled 'couple goals.' I'm not complaining at all, I've been working for 8 months trying to fix the consequences of this zombie mess and I barely was on leave 5 times to see her. Communication systems worked awfully at first and listening to her on TV or radio was the only way I had to feel her close. But that's enough, I'm done, I've done my share and it's time for other people to continue our work, I wanted to see my wife and my brothers wanted to hug their wives and kids so, once again, Gabriel went to meet with our officers and claimed that having holidays was our right... permanent holiday this time.
Of course, before we said goodbye Nat told me that, if I want to keep our friendship alive, I'd better go to the premiere of that movie wearing a long dress and high heels so she can win the 50€ bet with our Commander, otherwise she won't talk to me never again.
And here I am, it's been 2 weeks since the last time I talked to my wife. I warned her that I was about arriving but I couldn't tell her the exact day... these past months have been crazy and, even if our meetings were very intense, things are returning to normal slowly and Ruby has got back part of her former life and has met again lots of friends. I'm in a foreign world here and I don't know if she wants to keep this charade going on: she told me that she'd be honoured to be my wife during the zombie apocalypse but that's over. I'm pretty sure that Ruby loves me but I don't know how much of that love was based on the feeling of security she got when she was around me. Well, no point in dragging this out.
