The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 314

Chapter 314

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Nicole stood on the rooftop, studying the beach and the fishing village through binoculars.

People were everywhere. Packed together in dense, crawling masses, they made her skin prickle.

“We should go look around,” Nicole suggested.

Since they were already here, they couldn’t forget the real reason they had come.

First, they needed to scout the market.

So the three of them and the dog got into the car. Before leaving, Nicole turned up the current on the electric fence and posted a friendly warning.

[High-voltage electric fence. Touch at your own risk!]

The drive was quick. In a little over ten minutes, they reached the seafood trading market in the fishing village.

The market, once bustling with life, had gone strangely quiet. Dried seafood could be seen everywhere: shrimp, dried fish, scallops, squid, cuttlefish, anchovies, and other seafood.

The selection was overwhelming, almost too much to take in. The only thing missing was fresh seafood.

There was no helping it. Fresh seafood had to be handled the minute it came off the boats. In this heat, it would start to stink within hours if they left it sitting.

People who lived by the sea survived off the sea, so dried goods in the wholesale market weren’t expensive. Two pounds of grain could be traded for one pound of dried seafood.

Sea salt was even cheaper. One pound of grain for one pound of salt.

There was no helping that, either. This place could only produce salt and dried seafood.

Even though dried seafood was nutritious and counted as real meat, anyone would get sick of it after eating seafood three meals a day, every single day, no matter how good it tasted.

They wanted rice, noodles, fresh vegetables.

But the weather was too hot, and seawater couldn’t be purified well enough for farming.

Rice wouldn’t grow. As for vegetables, the moment green shoots appeared, someone would pull them up.

This area sat by the ocean, so unlike other cities, it wasn’t desperately short on water. If people dug wells dozens of yards down, they could still find some.

But because the surface water had dried up, seawater had pushed inland and contaminated the groundwater. Even after being filtered through layers of soil, it still carried a salty, fishy taste.

Drinking it made people thirsty. Not drinking it made them even thirstier.

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Because of that, a freshwater trade had even appeared. One pound of salt could be exchanged for ten quarts of fresh water, or one pound of dried seafood for twenty quarts.

Nicole had plenty of life experience. She compared prices from shop to shop and chose carefully. When she found a larger store with fair prices, she used potatoes or sweet potatoes to trade.

She didn’t buy much, just about one or two pounds at a time.

The fishing village seafood market was a mixed bag of honest sellers and cheats. Zeph stayed in the car with the two little ones, while Nicole went in to feel out the situation.

After leaving the seafood market, they headed to the marine goods exchange run by the city and the

military.

To secure survival supplies, the city government and the military had jointly formed a department with professional fishing boats and salt farms.

The seafood they caught could be sold to the public, but the quotas were strict.

With an entry pass, a private individual could buy ten pounds of fresh seafood and five pounds of dried seafood within seven days.

One pound of fresh seafood cost one pound of grain. Dried seafood cost two pounds of grain. Coarse sea salt came with a free half-pound.

After seven days, each person could only buy one pound per day, and the price doubled.

Zeph explained, “The marine department was mainly set up to send supplies to the city government and the base. Helping ordinary survivors who came to the coast is only secondary, and even then, it’s limited.”

They had a simple reason for not banning private fishing crews or salt makers outright. People needed some way to stay alive, and extra sources of supplies helped keep things from getting worse.

Nicole waited in line and traded cold-resistant potatoes for a pound of dried squid.

There was no fresh seafood left. Anyone who wanted it had to get there before eight in the morning. The fishing boats usually came in around two, and by eight, whatever was left could no longer be called fresh.

After buying the dried goods, Nicole went back to the car to compare them.

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