The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 816

Chapter 816

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Chapter 816

Sawyer and Levi thought it over, but neither could remember Jeremy or Hughie.

“What about Beatrice Blair?” Nicole asked, her voice tightening with worry.

“Tall, solid build, deep voice? Could lay a grown man out with one punch?”

Nicole nodded eagerly. “That’s her.”

There were few women among the submarine crews. Each crew trained separately at sea, only meeting the others for drills on land, so it was harder to remember individual men.

The women stood out, especially one who had knocked down several male soldiers in a row. Beatrice had earned quite a reputation among the crews.

Nicole felt a flicker of hope. “Do you know where she is?”

Sawyer shook his head.

The asteroid strike caught them off guard. His group was already training at sea, with all their belongings

aboard.

They spent their days out on the water and returned to the deepwater dock at night. As soon as the air-raid siren sounded, they took the submarines out.

Sawyer and his crewmates still had nightmares about the tsunami that followed.

Against something that powerful, there was nothing they could do.

Massive surges swept up from below, throwing the submarines upward and tumbling them through the water.

They had been hovering with their external equipment retracted. Otherwise, the force of the water would’ve destroyed their propulsion systems.

The reinforced hulls held, but even strapped in, many of the crew took a beating. For days, they lurched from one terrifying ordeal to the next. Vomit was everywhere.

They still couldn’t bring themselves to think about it for long. The memories left them struggling to breathe, as if death had them by the throat all over again.

If they hadn’t cut the civilization vaults loose in time, the force of the tsunami would’ve ripped the submarines apart where the vaults were attached.

They survived, but abandoning the vaults still haunted them. Each had a tracking transmitter and could preserve its contents for 20 years.

With the world so completely changed, though, there was no telling whether anyone would ever recover them. They might lie on the ocean floor forever.

Sawyer and the others felt they had failed in their duty.

“Someone could still find them,” Nicole said, struggling to offer some comfort. “And even if the records are lost, people can rediscover that knowledge. As long as we survive, we can rebuild.”

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Chapter 816

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Guilt wouldn’t bring the vaults back.

The base had made it clear that the Ark Project members themselves were essential to preserving civilization. Protecting the vaults was their duty, but staying alive came first.

Jacob had told them that time and again.

Still, Sawyer and his crewmates couldn’t shake the guilt.

Their group had actually been lucky. Jeremy’s crew was training on land, and both the training grounds and the dorms were far from the deepwater dock.

They would’ve needed to catch a bus, then transfer to a motorboat, all with barely any time to spare.

Even a slight delay could’ve kept them from reaching the dock. If anything went wrong along the way, they might never have made it out.

Hope gave people a reason to keep going.

Sawyer had married at the base. His wife worked in the trading hall, and his navy benefits helped them build a reasonably comfortable life. They even had a child.

But when disaster struck, duty kept him from taking his family with him. His parents, wife, and child had to evacuate with the army. He didn’t know whether they survived the tectonic collision or where they could’ve gone once the land sank.

After everything he had lived through, Sawyer feared the worst. Even so, he kept telling himself his family was alive and that he would see them again someday.

He needed to believe they still had a future together. That hope kept him going through one unpredictable disaster after another.

He had promised his parents and his wife that, whatever happened, he would do everything he could to survive. He wouldn’t give up.

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