The Apocalypse Survival Manual (Three Days Before Doomsday, I Stockpiled Billions) novel Chapter 834

Chapter 834

The idea made sense once Nicole thought about it.

Whales were intelligent animals. Some approached people for help with tangled ropes, fishing nets, or other things they couldn’t remove themselves.

Blue circled the submarine, letting out low, mournful calls. After using their hull to scrape off its barnacles so often, it might have come to associate them with relief.

Nicole hesitated.

Blue was enormous even before accounting for its mutations. Getting close to it was dangerous enough. Pulling a harpoon from its back would mean risking a panicked reaction from an animal that could kill

them with one movement.

But it kept bumping the hull, each impact harder than the last. If they ignored it, the pain might make it even more frantic.

Nicole quickly weighed their options. The submarine could reach 30 knots, a little faster than an ordinary blue whale at a sprint.

But Blue was far from ordinary. They had no way to know how fast it could swim now.

Neither she nor Zeph wanted to risk getting into the water with it. After a hurried discussion, they decided to try escaping.

They pushed the submarine to full speed, all four hoping Blue would let them go.

It didn’t. The whale followed easily, swimming faster than either of them expected.

Every time the submarine veered left or right, Blue turned with it. An hour later, it was still right behind

them.

Nicole was running out of ideas. “Now what?”

Zeph frowned. “We may have to pull it out.”

The longer Blue chased them, the worse its injury could become. If the pain sent it into a frenzy, it might

turn on the submarine.

Even if it couldn’t break through the hull, it could still do serious damage.

They had no heavy weapons aboard, only fishing darts and harpoons. Nothing in their arsenal could kill an animal Blue’s size with one shot.

Injuring it would only make the situation worse. After considering their options, Nicole agreed they had to try helping.

They stopped the submarine and slowly surfaced.

Poppy and Cola stayed safely inside, while Nicole and Zeph lowered the motorboat into the water.

Blue surfaced nearby. A harpoon roughly eight inches thick protruded from its back, though they couldn’t tell how deep it went.

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It was nothing like the harpoons aboard their submarine. The vessel that attacked Blue had to be a different

model.

Nicole shook her head. “Even if they were desperate for food, why go after something this big?”

One whale carcass could feed an entire marine ecosystem. A crew of 40, roughly the complement of a submarine like theirs before the disasters, would have more meat than they could eat in years.

Preserving it all would be another problem. The hunt made more sense if an entire fleet depended on the

catch.

Nicole put on protective gear and secured a rope between herself and Zeph. They used paddles to ease the motorboat toward Blue.

The whale circled them for another 15 minutes. Only when it seemed satisfied they posed no threat did it

draw closer.

Nicole left the harpoon alone for the moment. Instead, she reached out and cautiously stroked Blue’s skin.

Somehow, in the middle of the apocalypse, she found herself petting a whale. It might even be the largest one left in the world.