It was, according to the chiming clock that sat on the dresser, a quarter past three in the morning. That was an estimate, of course. It had been twenty years since people were able to tell time to any degree of certainty. Matt knew that it was dark out and dawn would be coming at some point soon. He would need to dress and get ready to go out into the fields to harvest potatoes. The wall was holding and the town was prosperous. There were vegetables and the animals were producing all the things that animals produced. There was a town meeting that night. All was well in the town of Hidden Hollow. 

Matt sighed and got out of bed, sliding his feet into his slippers, and scuffed his way to the bathroom of the small cabin. It was a nice little cabin and Matt had it set up just the way that he wanted. He was able to see the lake out of his bathroom window and he knew this particular cabin had been an expensive rental back in the day. He had tried to rent something on the lake for a friend’s bachelor party in his twenties. All of them had been way out of their price range, even if they had all paid parts. In the end they had just camped on the other side of the lake. 

He was in his fifties now and he hadn’t seen any of those guys since the dead rose. Correction, he had seen one of them, but he was dead. That had been a hard day. He was trying to get used to the fact that people that he loved, were most likely dead. Even after all of these years, he was still trying to find things out about family and friends. There were a few people at Hidden Hollow that he knew before, but hardly any of them were friends of his, more like acquaintences. Those people, though, had now become friends. They were the ones that survived. You had to be hardy and hard to kill to survive now. 

After finishing his business and washing his face, he headed for the kitchen to find something to roll together for breakfast. It was most likely going to be what was leftover from dinner the night before. So, potatoes. He couldn’t escape them. It made him chuckle to himself. “Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes.” 

He pulled the potatoes out of the fridge and smashed each one, and fried it up. Crispy was a good texture in the morning. He was thankful for the power that they had. Solar panels scavenged from all over the place gave many of the cabin's power. Those that didn’t have power would go to the homes of the ones that did and fix their meals. He had two families that would use his kitchen after he left for the field. One was the town’s teacher and the other was one of the town’s night guards. He cooked around four, the guard cooked around five, and the teacher would be in at around seven to fix breakfast for herself and her small family. Everything worked like a finely oiled machine for Hidden Hollow.

About the time that he finished getting his breakfast cleaned up, the guard came in to fix his breakfast. He greeted the sleepy guard and went ot go get dressed to head out into the field.

Yes, Hidden Hollow was a good place to restart life at the end of the world.