The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 284

Chapter 284

Nicole stopped Beatrice before she left.

“The drought-resistant sweet potato seedlings are ready. Are you still planting yours?”

Sweet potatoes took four or five months to grow, but the floodwaters would probably be gone within another month or two. Planting them outside now wouldn’t make much difference.

Nothing was going to stop Beatrice from going home.

“You guys can keep them,” she said with a smile.

After the others left, Nicole turned to Zeph. “What if we plant some inside the storage space?”

Growing them outside meant constant work. They had to worry about the heat scorching everything, haul water every day, and keep moving the plants around. It was exhausting.

Zeph thought it over. “Let’s split them. Half outside, half inside.”

The soil inside the storage space was too fertile. If the crops grew too differently from everyone else’s, selling or trading them later would only attract unwanted attention.

This way, they could compare the results, too.

Nicole agreed immediately.

They divided the work. Zeph handled the plants outside while Nicole transplanted the others into the

storage space.

After dinner, Zeph sent Poppy and Cola to another room to play while he sat down with Nicole.

“The water’s already dropped to the fourth floor,” he said. “People are going to start scavenging soon. Do you want to head out tomorrow?”

Hughie’s group didn’t own diving suits, so bringing them along served no purpose. Besides, they had already decided to leave for the bases. They wouldn’t risk their lives gathering unnecessary supplies

now.

Nicole pulled out both the paper map and the offline map stored on her phone.

The floods had softened building foundations. The deep freeze made construction materials brittle, then the extreme heat expanded everything.

Once the ice melted, older buildings and shallow foundations had already started collapsing. After the earthquakes, the entire city would become a field of ruins. 1

Rebuilding required steel.

Westbridge itself didn’t produce steel, but it was home to Steelport, the largest steel market on the coast. The entire place was built around the steel trade, with processing plants, wholesalers, distributors, and

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industrial suppliers all packed into one enormous complex.

+15 Bonus

Once they had settled the plan, the two went to bed early. Before sleeping, they gave Hughie’s group a quick heads-up that they would be heading out for the day.

Cola stayed behind to watch Poppy. At this point, even Cola had learned how to smack the walkie-talkie button. If anything happened, the dog could bark into it a few times.

Extreme heat pushed sunrise earlier and earlier. By 5 a.m., the sky already carried a faint glow.

To avoid attracting attention, Zeph and Nicole got up at 3 a.m. and quietly headed downstairs.

Steelport sat out near the suburbs, over 25 miles away.

The two changed into temperature-regulating layers beneath protective suits, climbed into the

motorboat, and started toward the outskirts.

The suburban floodwaters were clogged with floating trash, and there was no telling what lay hidden beneath the surface. They had to keep the boat slow and steady the entire way.

The trip took nearly two hours.

There weren’t any apartment buildings nearby anymore.

As the water level dropped, part of the giant “Steelport” sign slowly emerged from the surface, half- submerged in the dim gray dawn.

Rust coated the enormous steel framework, tangled with collapsed support beams. Nothing remained of

the place’s former grandeur.

The sky hovered between darkness and morning, leaving visibility poor.

Using the massive billboard as cover, Nicole pulled out diving suits and oxygen tanks from the storage

space.

The diving suits were fully sealed, but once the air tanks were on, the weight hit immediately. Luckily, both of them stayed in good shape. Otherwise, just moving around in the gear would’ve been exhausting.

The moment they entered the water, Nicole stored the motorboat away.

They switched on the lights mounted to their foreheads and started descending.

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