The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 825

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Chapter 825

At first, Zeph mistook the dark patch for a current. But the wind was mild, and the darkness spread far too quickly.

The mass raced toward the fishing boat and surrounded it. Then countless tiny shapes swarmed up the hull in a dense, unbroken stream.

They were black, roughly the size and shape of beetles, and moved astonishingly fast. 1

The swarm poured over the boat like a black tide. Dense clusters never bothered Zeph before, but the sight

made his skin crawl.

He lowered the binoculars to tell Nicole they needed to leave. Before he could speak, Poppy screamed. “Bugs! There are bugs!”

They spun around. While they watched the fishing boat, black insects climbed aboard behind them.

More raced up the yacht’s hull. Their legs made an audible rustling as they scrambled over one another.

Each had a black shell and eerie green eyes. They covered more of the deck by the second.

They seemed to track by scent. As soon as they reached the deck, they headed straight for Nicole and the

others.

Nicole grabbed Zeph’s hand, ready to take the whole family into her storage space. Then she stopped herself just before making a terrible mistake.

The insects were already aboard. If she stored the yacht, the swarm would come with it.

She had no idea what they were, but the speed with which they converged on the fishing boat suggested they fed on flesh.

Losing the yacht would be a devastating sacrifice, even if it saved their lives.

She still had a cruise ship, but neither she nor Zeph knew how to operate it. The submarine couldn’t travel through shallow water, either, so they needed to save the yacht.

Then she remembered the escape capsule. Fortunately, she placed it on deck when she brought out the yacht, just in case they needed it.

Zeph was already moving. He hauled the capsule door open and rushed Poppy and Cola inside.

The swarm surged after them as they backed toward the capsule.

Its narrow hatch slowed them down, costing them precious seconds.

By the time Poppy and Cola made it inside, tens of thousands of bugs were less than ten feet away. Nicole and Zeph were still on deck, with no time for both of them to squeeze through.

Nicole pulled a bag of powdered lime from her storage space and flung handfuls at the swarm, giving Zeph time to get inside.

She scattered more than half the bag before the bugs stopped abruptly, then began backing away.

Chapter 2

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Nicole let out a shaky breath. All those different supplies she stockpiled were finally paying off.

Her relief lasted only a moment. Before she could catch her breath, the swarm surged forward again.

The lime barely slowed them down. Nicole quickly reached for something else from her stockpile.

She hauled out a sack of chili powder and threw handfuls across the deck, kicking it toward the advancing bugs to spread it farther. Within moments, she emptied nearly half the sack.

Fortunately, she grew plenty of chili peppers over the years and ground most of them into powder. She had more than enough to spare.

The pungent powder drove the insects back, but only briefly. It clearly bothered them, yet they kept coming.

“Nicole!” Zeph shouted. “Get in here!”

She couldn’t turn her back on them. They approached from every direction, and she couldn’t scatter the powder fast enough to keep them all away.