(Chapter 9) Day 56 - Across the sea

It is with a heavy heart that I'm having to abandon my search in this country for human survivors. I've been to several rendezvous points so far, and they've all either been abandoned or destroyed. Nothing I've seen points to any human survivors making it out of the bunker network alive, or if they have they've either since moved on or been destroyed.

I now aim to take a ship across the ocean to an island nation that I can only hope still exists. Luckily it sits in a part of the world that is relatively untouched by natural disasters so I can only hope this luck has held out. Most of the docks and ports along this stretch of coastline have been destroyed, swept away with most of the coastline itself, but there are a few wealthy-looking neighbourhoods nearby that merit investigation.

It seemed commonplace for people to own water vehicles without actually keeping them in the water, the majority I found were, or had been, locked away in garages and completely pristine. Though the looting and chaos had reached this area, it seemed people had little use for luxury ships and instead opted for defacing them in whatever way presented itself. Most had some crude graffiti scrawled across the hull, windows broken, some had the floors torn up in the hopes of finding some hidden treasure.

I found the most serviceable of these, though rest assured that the writing scratched into the hull did not reflect the personality of either myself nor my mother. I'd classify it as a small yacht, enough for maybe ten or so to fit comfortably, the controls on the top deck left open-topped. While a lot of the flooring had been hacked apart and the glass broken in most places, it looked as sea-worthy as I was likely to find in a hurry. I'm not a seaman but a cursory inspection was all I really needed.

I took the liberty of allowing myself access to an abandoned truck nearby, hooked the rig up and towed it toward a stretch of coastline that was probably much closer to the town than it had been a little while ago. I didn't see the need to keep the truck so I drove it as far into the water as the engine would allow before disconnecting the boat. Luckily it stayed afloat and upright, it even had a full tank of fuel, whoever owned the boat originally might have been looking for a quick escape that they never had the chance to use.

As far as I could tell the planet was still in the correct orbit around the sun, so navigating by light and stars alone would not be an issue. There was an island to the east of my current location that I had high hopes for, this place was not within my jurisdiction after all. After a few attempts, the engine on the ship came to life and I set sail for the little island of dreams.