Eve was alone.

Don't get it twisted: She was fucking good with that.

She had her dog. She had her cats. She had her weed.

And she had her land.

Two acres in a tiny forested town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, just a couple of hours from Tahoe on the California side.

That was her hill, and she was more than happy to die on it.

Not many people were up there anymore — not after the fires swept through most of two counties in '25.

But the flames didn't stand a chance in her neck of the woods.

Up here, they took care of each other. At the end of her road, the Gibson boys jumped into action -- three generations of certified forest firefighters. With the water from the reservoir, it borders the Gibsons' land, they held those flames back like Moses holding back the Red Sea.

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And Eve, her engineer papa, and her ex — he went about the time the virus came, but that's a story for later — they built that little duplex to survive Armageddon.

Her papa lived til '27, and after that, she mostly kept to herself up until everything started coming apart.

She knew. By fall of '28, she felt it coming.

She called it Darkness.

And when she couldn't ignore it anymore, she found us. Took us in. Got us ready.

Protected us.

She never cared nothing about where we came from, who we rallied for, or what we called ourselves.

She was okay with disagreeing, as long as shit stayed civil.

She used to say that all of us — every single breathing soul  — was to blame for the hot mess that was coming.

Everyone was to blame, she'd say, and no one was to blame.

I never quite knew what she meant by that exactly, but her eyes always got sad when she'd say it.

Anyways, Eve always taught us to write everything down. Write down our stories and put them in the forever place.

She left me her journals before... before it took her.

So, I'm going to start with her story, cuz without that, we wouldn't fucking be here.

I just hope there's time to finish it...

-- L.M., March 17, 2030