Chapter 431
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Eve heard the gunshot, but she knew she was still alive. She opened her eyes, Adam was dead, his blood and brains on the ground. How was she still alive? Then Eve remembered, it was on instinct, at the last possible second she'd lurched her head away. Did Adam know, in his last moment, that she'd abandoned him? Eve wanted to join him, to follow Adam, wherever he might have gone. She put the gun to her head, but she couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger. Eve had lost everyone she'd ever loved. Right now, she knew that she was just delaying the inevitable. If she couldn't go through with suicide, she could only stay and await death. Or perhaps, there was a third option. Try to climb her way out, make her way to the Ark. The chances of making it, too small to compute. But it was better than just waiting around to die in the cold.
Picard made this house as a monument of love. Adam and Eve hoped this would last for a hundred years, become a museum for future generations. But that wouldn't happen now. Within hours what remained would be absorbed by the snow. The house she'd cleaned every day, the books, DVDs, the clothes, would soon be gone. Eve knew she had to leave. She put on the snow-suit, and two jackets on herself. She took what food she could carry in these jackets, the smartphone, and the gun. If the frostbite became unbearable, the gun was still an option. The oxygen would last a little over a day. The question right now was if Eve could climb the wall of snow. If she couldn't, she'd never leave here alive.
Eve had been a dead woman on furlough for more than three years now. She had lost everyone she'd ever loved, wasn't even sure she wanted to live in the Ark. But, she refused to just lay down and die, in large part because she feared what came after this world. With her oxygen tank on her back-pack Eve slowly began climbing the wall of snow. She tried not to look down, she didn't really want to know how far it was. Eve could see the top. At a certain point she knew that if she fell, she'd likely break her neck. There was always the possibility of hitting a patch that made her slip, no matter how determined she might be. Eve almost slipped a few times. She could hear the snow destroying the home that Picard once built for love. But eventually Eve reached the surface. She finally looked back down, saddenned to see her home destroyed. But Eve had little time to contemplate this, she had to keep moving.