The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 823

Chapter 823

It took two trips to ferry the supplies back to Sawyer’s submarine.

The submarine sounded its horn in thanks. Across the water, Sawyer and his crew saluted Nicole and Zeph before heading below.

Then submarine No. 1926 slowly submerged and disappeared beneath the surface.

Nicole watched the water settle, surprised by how much she already missed them. With nothing but ocean stretching in every direction, she felt alone again.

Zeph seemed to sense it. “You still have me.”

Nicole took his hand. “We’re a family. We count as one, don’t we?”s

He smiled and conceded the point.

“Does it feel a little lonely now that they’re gone?” she asked.

After nearly two weeks together, they were friends. Saying goodbye was bound to hurt.

“Do you want to go to the new settlement?” Nicole asked.

“Not right now,” Zeph admitted.

She turned to him, curious. “Why not?”

People were complicated. They fought and schemed when they lived together, then missed the company when they were alone. Even the people who drove them crazy could seem preferable to having no one around at all.

The need for companionship ran deep.

“A floating base big enough for 100 thousand people could take years to build. Maybe decades,” Zeph said. And even when it’s finished, we could end up squeezed into tiny living quarters with barely a wall between us and our neighbors.”

Nicole wouldn’t choose a cramped, crowded settlement while they still had other options.

For now, they were comfortable on their own. If that changed, they could reconsider.

She laughed. “You really have gotten inside my head, Mr. Dawson.”

Zeph gently pinched her nose. “Should I be worried about what I’ll find in there?”

He couldn’t read her mind, of course. But among the books she collected were plenty on psychology, and he often picked one up when he had time to spare.

By now, he fancied himself something of an amateur expert.

Nicole huffed. “I’ll have to figure out how to evict you.”

After nearly ten years together, Zeph took her teasing in stride. She wouldn’t get rid of him that easily.

They settled back-to-back in the sunshine, enjoying the cool sea breeze against their sun-warmed skin.

1/3

Спортын 808

+20 Bonus

Poppy and Cola came up on deck and chased each other around. Her laughter soon eased the sadness of saying goodbye.

With Sawyer and his crew gone, they faced more long, uneventful days at sea. Nicole gazed out at the glittering water, her thoughts returning to the Ardelonian attackers.

“How do you think they survived all this?

From the disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs to the Little Ice Age, history offered plenty of examples of life enduring catastrophic changes. The ingenuity of living creatures and their instinct to survive were hard to underestimate.

“They were already used to harsh conditions, and they’ve always been isolated, fanatical, and aggressive,” Zeph said. “Look at the atrocities in their history. I doubt there’s much they wouldn’t do to stay alive.”

The memory of the growths covering their bodies made Nicole’s stomach turn. “Do you think radioactive waste caused those mutations?”

Zeph had no answer.

Ardelon’s history included horrific biological and chemical experiments on people. Given that willingness to cross every ethical line, he couldn’t rule out other explanations.

He wasn’t sure about the contaminated water, but they almost certainly ate plenty of mutated sea creatures.

Whatever happened to their bodies, their minds remained sharp. They split into three groups for the ambush and coordinated their movements carefully. If anything, they seemed even more calculating and

ruthless.