The Haven Part 9

July 7, 2004

We have half of the windmills up but only two of them are working, the rest aren’t fully wired yet. We planned to have a farm with twenty-five windmills but we reduced it to twenty due to space and material restrictions. Vince and his guys are remarkably adept at this work and they learned how to put these together quite quickly. Vince and his men have been working almost non-stop over the past few months and their work shows it. They have finished the library, the utilities room, the storage and indoor training facility, the medical area, the operating room, the medical storage area, the labs and offices and the miscellaneous storage area. And they are almost finished with the kitchen and small food storage area. At the rate they’re going, they will be done by the beginning of November, earlier than expected, and we all get to go home sooner. Everyone in California has been improving with their general fitness and weapon skills, almost everyone is a half decent shot now, and Hank has high hopes for us. I have to fix the water filtration system, one of Andrew’s men accidentally dropped a rather large rock on it, and now it’s making funny noises and spewing some brown liquid. I have a feeling that until November I will be too busy to write much but I will try to make time, there still is a lot of work to do if we want this place ready for the wedding. Yes we decided to have the wedding here, in the entrance hall with just our small group. The wedding will be on December 12th this year and everyone is looking forward to it. I am actually going to take a week off to go down to see my fiancée at the beginning of August, but to do that, I have to work very hard until then.

Only a short one today. Happy Holidays to all, I'll write more after Christmas.
Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy

EXAM TIME

I am entering exams at my university soon so my posts will be few and far between for the next few weeks, I expect 1 per week, I apologize for the wait on The Haven Part 9 but I haven't finished re-writing it and I want it to be as good as possible before I post it.

SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 8

May 13, 2004

I asked Andrea to marry me while I was in Lompoc and she said yes, we are going to have the wedding close to Christmas time so we can celebrate the wedding and the completion of “The Haven” at the same time. I’ve finished the air circulation system and Vince and his friends are helping me install it tomorrow. Andrew and his guys have finished hollowing out the library and are going to pour the cement floor on the 16th. While I was in California, we took a vote on who should be the leader, there were rules to the vote, the leader had to have at least a fifty-one percent majority and no one could be nominated, everyone was eligible and no one could vote for themself. We all considered the leadership to be more of a burden than a reward because all of the blame would land squarely on the one person’s shoulders. The last rule was the person elected was stuck, they couldn't back down and we would have elections ever year. I was elected to be leader by a ten to one vote. I had voted for Eric. With my new responsibility I started getting people ready, we started training. Andrea designed programs specifically for each of us, to help work on our respective weakest areas. I also started getting people weapon ready, we took trips to a firing range to see who had skill and who needed help. Hank was in charge of getting people battle-ready because he had the most military training. Hank was the best with the guns but I was told that I had natural skills, I guess all of those hours playing Duck Hunt served me well. Eric also had talent, probably because he was sitting at the NES right beside me playing Duck Hunt too. The rest of them (who were there, Rachel, Vince and Andrew were absent for obvious reasons) were pretty bad, so Hank started training them and giving them tips. I started working on the wind/solar farm design and I’ll probably have one working by mid-June, I’ll get Vince and his crew to help me build them so we can get them up faster. I have a feeling that until “The Haven” is done, life will be rather monotonous.

I think I'm settling into a nice calm schedule of 2-3 updates per week. I think that my original schedule of daily updates was overly ambitious.
Happy Readings,
     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 7

April 7, 2004

They poured the floor of the entrance hall five days ago and they say we can walk on it today. Andrew and his men decided to pour the concrete and take food, water and sleeping bags with them and work while the cement was drying. They have been working at a ridiculous pace. I did a few rough calculations and if they maintain the rate at which they’re working now, they’ll have the rooms hollowed out, cemented and connected by late November this year. I have started to learn a bit about the mining and Andrew is being quite patient with me. I’m going back to California for a few weeks to visit Andrea and everyone else, but then I’ll come back and stay until November. I want to get “The Haven” done as soon as possible. I also realized that after it is finished being mined out and cemented, we still have to make it breathable. I have to get the air circulator made and working before the miners go too deep into the caves because if I don’t they might not be able to breathe in the farther back rooms. I’m going to put off the air circulator until after I get back from California because the miners won’t get that far into the mines in two weeks, they are still working on the kitchen and library. When I go home to Lompoc, I’m going to get everyone together to decide who gets what room and how things should be organized. I think we should have a vote for a leader because a group can be indecisive but a leader must make up his or her mind and their decision would be final. My flight for California leaves on the 10th so I have much to prepare before I leave. I want to have the plan for the air circulation system finished before I leave so I can have people check it over when I get home. I can’t wait to see everyone back home; I worry about them all the time. Our next order of business after the caves is weapons, Jeffrey tells me that he has started getting our group gun licenses and we will assess skill while I’m back. We need to find out who needs the most help with learning because we have to be able to keep ourselves safe but keeping ourselves safe requires keeping the rest of our group safe, and we need to work on that. We want a versatile arsenal, for example a few people specializing in sharpshooting, a few in hand-to-hand combat, etc. I hope we are working fast enough and I hope what the government thought was somewhat true, if Z-Day hits sooner than 2008 we could be in serious trouble. When I go back to California, I’m planning on asking Andrea to marry me, I’m madly in love with her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her, even if that means keeping her safe from an undead, infected world.


Here's another part of "The Haven", it's starting to get good. I've had to start posting less frequently because of exams which are starting soon. The number of posts will start to pick up closer to the Christmas break.
Happy Readings,
     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 6

March 21, 2004

Summer did some semi-legal research into some government databases to see if they had any clue when Z-Day would arrive. The closest estimates they have are early 2008. We are hoping that we have that much time to finish the fortress; we are progressing slowly and have no clue when we are really going to be finished. On the up side, both Vince and Jeffery read my book and were welcomed into our group with open arms. Vince is up here with Andrew, Rachel and me working with my brother’s mining friends. Vince has a few acquaintances that he is going to get to join in the work effort. I’m trying to help as much as I can but I’m finding that I get in the way more than I help. I am also helping in other ways, I’ve been designing different defence and survival systems that will help keep us alive throughout any apocalypse. The work was being done as fast as possible while still keeping everyone safe. We have almost finished our escape plan for Z-Day, we will drive from our homes in Lompoc to the southern coast, and then we will sail up the western coast in Angela’s boat until we eventually get to Brown Lake, British Columbia. Brown Lake is the lake at the bottom of the mountain where we are building our haven. We have been trying to come up with names for the place and the best one we have so far is “The Haven”, it’s not my favourite choice of name but it fits better than anything anyone else could come up with. We started making lists of things we want to keep, realizing that after Z-Day, we might be some of the last humans left alive on Earth; we have started buying every book we can get our hands on from children’s stories to religious texts. Due to this revelation, we added a large library to the cave plans. The main problem with the caves, the reason the work is being done so slowly, is because there are constant safety checks and hollowing out caves is a lot harder than it seems. Stalactites are very hard to remove especially when the roof is thirty feet up and you don’t want to drop any big rocks on people working below. The living room, or entrance hall as some people have started to call it, is scheduled to have the concrete floor poured in early April so we can work from there. It is hard to judge the timescale for work for the other rooms because we don’t know where other openings may be, how much we have to remove from them or if we need to make a few caves from scratch.

Ok, everyday posting is not going to be very possible because I am a student and my studies have to come first. Every other/three days it is.

Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 5

March 8, 2004

Andrew came with us to B.C. He’s not completely convinced about the inevitable Z-Day, but I think he’ll come around to the existence of zombies. He asked a lot of questions about them on the flight down, trying to get a feel for how I truly feel about them and I think he’s starting to believe more because I believe so much. Both Angela and Summer agreed to join the group. Angela was a lot easier to convince then Summer, Summer had a lot of questions regarding our sanity and only agreed to join after Hank offered her a much higher salary then she was earning at his company. I think that extended periods of hanging around us will convince Summer more of Z-Day then any amount of money ever could. Over the last few days Andrew, Rachel and I have been exploring the caves and coming up with plans. Andrew has found a bunch of caves that can be opened up further to accommodate living areas and still be structurally sound. Andrew and Rachel are working together to come up with a design for the fortress. They left it up to me to work on the outer wall. The basic design so far is a small plateau on the side of the mountain with a large walled fortress bigger than two football fields long and one wide with a reinforced steel door leading to the outside. On the other side of the fortress, the side against the mountain will be another heavier, stronger steel door leading into the caves. The first room will be the living room and from there, hallways branch off to the library, storage areas, medical area, labs, offices, kitchen and the living areas. In total there are going to be eleven living areas, each as big as a medium sized apartment, enough for everyone to have space to live. There will also be a large storage area and a room with all of the machines that will help us survive, such as a water filtration system leading to the lake at the bottom of the mountain, the air circulator so people can breathe in some of the farther back rooms and the power distribution system. The power generation was my idea, on the top of the mountain we will have a combination solar/wind farm. I am in the process of designing windmills that are covered in solar panels so that they generate energy as efficiently as possible.

We decided on two final people for our group, then we would be complete and we could start forming a plan. The two people left were Jeffrey Williams, mine and Eric’s lawyer and good friend, and Vince Hayes, an old buddy of mine who works construction.

Jeffrey Williams is my lawyer and friend; he knows everything there is to know about gun and weapon laws in California, which is useful for when we start to arm ourselves. He is one of the most trustworthy people I know and I am quite sure he thinks the same of me. Jeffrey is about six feet tall and in decent shape due to our weekly basketball games and the many trips to the gym. He is one of the most dedicated people I know and he will not stop a project until it is completely finished.

Vincent Hayes is a construction worker who Eric and I used to go to high school with. He, Eric and I go way back; we met back in elementary school and have been close ever since. He is a giant of a man at six foot six and two hundred thirty pounds. He is one of the strongest men I know and his knowledge of construction could be very helpful with the fortress in B.C. Vince is also one of the gentlest and kindest people I know and I would trust him with my life. He will make a valuable addition to our group.

Andrew, Rachel and I decided to stay up here for a while longer so I have asked Eric to organize everyone to try to get Vince and Jeffrey to join. Andrew is getting some of his mining friends to come up to British Columbia in a few weeks so we can start excavating and building this shelter. I hope we are working fast enough to be finished before Z-Day.

Hooray for late night posts!! Here's the next part of "The Haven". Enjoy.

Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 4

April 24, 2004

My brother still won’t speak to me after what I told him. He thought that I was playing some joke on him and after I kept pushing him to read the book he snapped and yelled at me to leave him alone. That was a week ago. I will try to talk to him again and to explain why he should read the book or at least listen to what I have to say, but I have my doubts. I hope he does listen but if he doesn’t I won’t be surprised. Rachel on the other hand was quite willing to listen and she now trusts us completely. To begin preparations, I have quit my job and am now employed by Hank Davis. Rachel and I are heading up to Hank’s land in British Columbia to start work on the caves. We’re going to leave on March 3rd and we’ll probably be there for a week. I want to have a plausible design completed by the end of March so we can get this shelter built and functional as soon as possible. Andrew is a miner so his help with the fortress would be amazing because he would be able to help immensely with the carving out of the caves. I’ll try to talk to him again soon and we have already bought a ticket for him to go to B.C. with me and Rachel just in case he has a change of heart. Our group now has six people in it, seven if we can convince Andrew to join. There are a few more people I want to add before I consider the team anywhere near complete. Next on the list are Summer Powell, and Hank’s wife, Angela.

Summer Powell is a computer programmer who works for Hank at his brokerage, mostly doing security and analysis but she is leagues above anyone else working there and would be a huge asset for the information possibilities. She could theoretically hack into and get information from classified sources such as the government so we can know what the real story that he government is hiding from us is, and so we have a rough estimate about how long we have to prepare. Summer isn’t the most physically imposing person I’ve ever met, she’s just a bit over five foot and she doesn’t have any muscle mass. But she does make up for her lack of physical attributes with her mental abilities.

Angela Davis is Hank Davis’ wife and a sailor. She never worked as a professional she has owned various boats with Hank. Their current boat is a sixty foot yacht and she can sail it like no one I’ve ever met. She is close to five foot ten and has just an imposing personality as her husband. Angela is a normal housewife because her husband supports them both with his stock brokerage. She spends enormous amounts of time on her boat while her husband is out of town at various work meetings.

I hope that Andrew comes around before we go to B.C. because I really need his help on the caves and I also want my brother to survive. It’s a horrible feeling knowing about a threat and working on a solution, but knowing someone who refuses to believe in the problem and refuses to be a part of the solution. If he doesn’t end up with us, I hope he does well on his own.

Ok, new idea for a schedule, I'll post a parts of "The Haven" daily or so and I'll interrupt whenever I have something else to post.

Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 3

April 10, 2004

We got him. Hank Davis has agreed to finance our group and be a part of it. He is currently making plans to move closer to us, to Lompoc for ease of planning and transportation of need be. He actually knew a little of the threat but not enough to act on it so when we offered information, he became immediately receptive and said “I’m in!” almost right away. He and I spent Sunday working on ideas for a permanent shelter. I’ve been working on a design for a while, but I never dreamed that I would be given access to the resources that I have now thanks to Hank’s funding. It turns out he already had a perfect spot, he owns a few acres in northern British Colombia and one of the mountains on his land has a small cave system inside. I stayed up all Sunday seeing what could be done to the caves so that we may eventually move in case of Z-Day. Andrea and I also found out over this weekend that Eric told his wife, Sarah, about the group and she is eager to join and help us all out.

Sarah Malkov is Eric Malkov’s wife and she’s a psychiatrist. She is nearly as an outdoorsy person as her husband and she is in just as good shape. She and Eric make the perfect medical team, one for the physical, one for the mental. She trusts Eric to the letter and will believe anything that he says.

We all believe that keeping family will be important through the eventually onset of Z-Day, so we agreed to get family involved next, so I will try to convince my brother, Andrew (full name Andrew Anderson, I think our parents had a sense of humour). Eric said he would convince his sister, Rachel.

Andrew Anderson, my older brother by two years, is a martial artist and a good one at that, he’s won a bunch of competitions and is amazing at what he does. It is some type of grappling art that I won’t give the dishonour of misspelling, so I won’t even try here. He is a much less caring person then I am but for his close friends, he will do anything. He is a bit shorter than me at about five foot nine, but he is in much better shape. I truly hope that I can convince him because he would be an amazing asset to our group and because he is my brother and I really hope I can help him survive.

Rachel Malkov is Eric’s sister; she’s an architect and a damn good one at that. I hope that she joins our group so she can help Hank and I with the caves in B.C. She would be a huge help because we need the fortress to be both strong and aesthetically pleasing because if Z-Day came, we would be staying there for many years. She is kind of short at five foot two but she makes up for it with her always charismatic attitude. She has a way of making people smile even in the worst of times, and that will be helpful in the future we are preparing for.

Ok, one day into my pre-planned schedule and it's already gone, I didn't have time to write anything new si here's the next installment of "The Haven".

Happy Readings,

     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 2

April 4, 2004

 I got them, I convinced them, they thought I was crazy for a bit but I eventually convinced them that the threat is real. Eric was relatively easy to convince, mostly because he has trusted me with his life before and getting him to read a book and do a bit of research isn’t too hard. Andrea on the other hand was quite difficult to convince. She wouldn’t read the book and she threatened to break up with me because I kept insisting that she did. She eventually read it after I told her I loved her and promised to leave her alone if she didn’t believe what it said, we’re back together now and she forgave me for what she thought was a slight psychosis. Andrea, Eric and I have decided to create a group and survive the eventual apocalypse. We decided to call this apocalypse Z-Day just because eventual apocalypse doesn’t roll off the tongue very easily. We are trying to determine when Z-Day is so we can prepare for the end. None of us is particularly rich, Eric with ridiculous med school loans, me and Andrea with our lower-middle class jobs. We decided that our group needed funding in a big way.

Our next group member hopeful is Hank Davis. Hank was close to forty-five years old when he decided to go back to school where he rented a room out to Eric. Hank ended up dropping out after a semester and going back into the military. He actually was a navy SEAL before he went back to school but left after a “disagreement” with his commanding officer over some confusing orders about questionable executions. Hank believes that everyone deserves a second chance and that if you look hard enough into someone’s life you can find a reason that they deserve to live. After he “left” the army he took what money he had and invested in a few risky stocks, because of these original risky investments, Hank is now one of the richest men in Los Angles. He doesn't really have a job but he always is willing to give financial and investment advice to those who have a free ear. He's always had what he describes as a “feeling” for what stocks are good to invest in for different people. Hank has always had an imposing personality and has been able to get the attention of any room he’s been in without any effort.

Eric, Andrea and I are planning a trip out from Lompoc (where we live) to Los Angles to go meet and hopefully get the financial support (and military knowledge) of Hank. It shouldn’t be too hard, apparently he and Eric have regular communication and Hank is a bit of a conspiracy theory fanatic, so convincing him shouldn’t be as difficult as convincing Andrea.

I just realized that I haven’t written anything about myself here, just in case someone reads this some day. Well, my name’s Marcus Anderson and I’m about five foot eleven. I will be twenty-seven as of this May. I'm a bit of an outdoorsman and I'm often out camping with friends or hanging out somewhere outdoors. I work in engineering, I'm a mechanical engineer but I also went back and took another few years so I could be a civil engineer too. I have been criticized by many people for going too far when trying to help friends out or when doing things for people. Andrea says that I can be and “over-giving” person. I think I can care too much sometimes. Anyway, we are leaving on Friday and are going to stay in Los Angles for the weekend so we can have as much time as possible to convince Hank to help us.



I think I'm going to post "The Haven" on a regular interval of every other day. I hope you enjoy this part. Any feedback (good or bad) is appreciated.

Happy Readings,
SammyShoffy

A bit about me and my stories

I'm in my first year at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and I'm studying Mechanical Engineering (great idea starting a blog right when work starts to pile on, good job Sam). I'm not the most creative person, you'll find that a lot of my stories tend to have similar characters because I often base my characters off of my friends. Being the narcissist that I am, often the main characters are based off me and often have greatly exaggerated traits. In "The Haven" the main character, Marcus, has some similarities to me (interests and whatnot). My other characters are often based off my friends, some exaggerated a lot but sometimes they themselves are enough. Along with my main story "The Haven" I'll sometimes post other things I've written; side stories, character descriptions, things completely unrelated. I've actually finished writing "The Haven" and I've got a few other projects on the go. I've got a few obsessions, some of which might pop up in my writing, some which might already have. I'm quite the fan of zombie fiction (zombie non-fiction on the other hand...) so most of my stuff is zombie related (pretty much all). Everything I post will be up around my school schedule so when the exams start my posts will be much less frequent, my apologies. Anyway, I'll answer any questions posed (except the ludicrous ones) but I've got to be going to my classes now.

Happy Readings,
     SammyShoffy

The Haven Part 1

February 17, 2004

I have had my worst fears confirmed. The dead do indeed walk and they yearn for our flesh. I just finished the book. It was a small brown paperback with only a title, no author, I think it was privately published because inside the cover there was an odd mark and a “7 of 50” so I assume that there were only fifty copies made. The title was “The Secrets of the Dead” and I picked it up for a few bucks at a used bookstore I know of. I hope that the other people who have copies of this book do what it said. After reading the book I started doing research like it said to do, and my fears are confirmed. The government is hiding things from us. Most of the serial killings have been where the killers have gotten wise to the threat and tried to eliminate it. Those who do what should be done are often blamed for just being there. After reading the book I have started to track these events and they are becoming more and more frequent, not just here in California, nor the United States, but in the whole world. The rate at which these incidents were appearing was increasing at a rate so huge I knew that the only possibility is that there would be a critical point at which there would be a global catastrophe and the infection would become a pandemic, the pandemic would become a war between the living and the dead and then the war would become an apocalypse. I care deeply for my friends and family and I want them to survive so I am going to try to convince them that I’m not crazy and that this book tells the truth. I will do whatever it takes to get them to believe. I will save their lives, no matter what I have to do. I am going to get them to read the book, no matter how long it takes, or how crazy I will sound, I know what I am doing will save their lives, so I must do it.

The first people I’ll try to convince will be Andrea Brooks and Eric Malkov. Andrea is my girlfriend, she works at Newhart Gym as a personal trainer and she is quite good at what she does. She always knows what to say to me to make me smile and we are perfect together. We finish each other’s sentences, and we like and hate all of the same things. She is about five feet six inches, and in incredible shape thanks to her job.

Eric is my best friend; we’ve known each other since we were in grade three and we’ve always been close. Eric is a doctor and he’s one of the best at his hospital. He is an outdoorsy person and he and I often go camping, he has gotten quite good at coming up with quick fixes for injuries out of things he finds outdoors. He and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, and often disagree about things but we’ve always trusted each other.

I’m going to try to convince Eric first then get him to help with convincing Andrea because he trusts me completely and I think it’ll be a bit easier to convince him then it will be to convince Andrea.




I wrote this story a while ago for a project and I'm re-writing it and extending it. I hope you enjoy, I'll add parts either daily or every few days. I may also interrupt with other stories I have on the go.

Happy Reading,
SammyShoffy