Chapter 101: Drifting: A Glimmer of Victory

Chapter 101: Drifting: A Glimmer of Hope

After waking up, Everly grabbed her phone to check it—no signal, as expected.

So she pulled out her only satellite phone, called Old John's, and let her grandfather know she was safe.

To save battery, Everly kept it brief—just that she and Misha were safe but might not make it to school on time, and asked him to call the school for them.

With that, she hung up and got started on breakfast for herself and Misha.

It was the middle of summer, and at just 7:30 a.m., the sun was already blazing. Under the scorching heat, the cabin was slowly turning into a sauna.

Everly opened every window in the cabin and the wheelhouse to let the river breeze blow through. Then she sat down on the tourist seat and dug the sausages out from under the cushions where she'd stashed them the night before. Sure enough, the "quilt insulation trick" worked like a charm—after sitting in the stuffy cabin all night, the sausages were still a little cool.

In summer, people sweat a lot, and these sausages would be a precious source of salt for her and Misha in the days to come.

Everly tore open the hot dog bun package, grabbed two buns, then opened the sausage bag and stuffed one sausage into each. With some bottled water on the side, that was breakfast.

She handed one of the makeshift hot dogs and some water to Misha, then wolfed down her own in a few bites.

She'd always had a solid appetite. The sausages were cold and had semi-transparent blobs of fat stuck to the edges—kind of a weird texture—but maybe because she'd skipped dinner last night, Everly thought they actually tasted pretty good.

After breakfast, Everly asked Misha if she wanted to rest. Misha said she could keep going, so Everly decided to deal with the bread and sausages before they spoiled in the heat.

The bread was easier—she found a sunny window, laid the buns out to dry, and once they turned into hard, dry chunks, she bagged them up to make them last longer.

The sausages, though, were fatty, so hanging them up to dry was the way to go.

American airlines didn't allow knives with blades over 10 centimeters, but you could check them in. When Everly left home, she'd checked Old John's Swiss Army knife in her luggage.

She found the cleanest-looking seat on the boat, stripped off the cover, and used the knife to cut the fabric into strips.

She cut 18 thin strips, 2 thick ones, and 1 extra-long one. After cutting, she wiped the knife and her hands with a wet wipe, then made four vertical slits in each sausage to help the moisture escape. Then she grabbed the dental floss, poked the sharp end through the top of each sausage, and threaded them onto the plastic handle.

Once that was done, Everly picked up one of the thin strips and tied a knot around one end of the floss.

That way, she could lift the strip, loop it over a drying rod, and tie the other end to the floss to hang the sausages in mid-air.

Everly had already picked the spot for hanging them—the stern of the boat.

She took the wooden pole with the net bag she'd found the night before, rinsed it in the river, and laid it across the stern railings, tying it down with the two thick strips. In just two minutes, she had a perfect drying rack.

Then, without asking Misha for help, Everly huffed and puffed, making a dozen or so trips back and forth until all the sausages were hanging from the pole.

Around then, she noticed bugs and birds starting to circle. The smell of the sausages must have drifted out, attracting bugs and birds from the forest.

Everly didn't want to eat meat that had been pecked at by bugs and birds—who knew what germs or parasites they carried!

She stood there, shooing them away while frowning, then ran back to the wheelhouse, grabbed the disposable raincoat she'd found the night before, spread it out, and draped it over the sausages, tying it off on all sides.

It was like putting things in a plastic greenhouse—the moisture would escape slower and she'd need to air it out now and then, but it would mostly keep the birds and bugs off.

And with that, the sausage situation was handled.

The heat was brutal. After all that, Everly went back to the cabin, gulped down the rest of her water, and used the Swiss Army knife to cut off the top ring of the plastic bottle.

She was making a rig for distilling water.

After seeing both people and zombies fall into the Chatta River, Everly didn't dare drink the river water anymore—even filtered, because who knew if it carried the zombie virus.

In times like this, making her own distilled water was the way to go.

With a bucket and a plastic raincoat, the setup wasn't hard to rig up.

Everly found the bucket, crouched by the edge of the boat, scooped up half a bucket of river water, then set the cut-off bottle inside, pouring some purified water into the bottom to keep it upright in the center.

Then she spread out the raincoat, covered the bucket with the plastic sheet, wrapped the extra-long strip around the outside, and adjusted the edges to make the center as taut as possible.

Once that was done, Everly dug through their backpacks, found Misha's keychain, and pressed it onto the center of the sheet, making the middle sag under gravity into an inverted pot-lid shape.

And just like that, a crude distiller was ready.

She put the covered bucket in the sun, and before long, the water would evaporate, condense on the plastic, and form tiny droplets. As the droplets gathered, they'd run down the curve of the sheet toward the center and drip into the bottle below.

The summer sun had its pros and cons—the downside was sweating and getting scorched, but the upside was that distilled water collected fast.

With the distiller done, Everly had nothing else to do, so she sent Misha off to sleep while she kept watch, checking the bucket now and then to collect water. After a busy morning, by noon, the bottle Misha had emptied earlier was already half-full of distilled water.

Lunch was hot dog buns without sausages, because Everly wanted to save their precious salt supply—max two sausages a day.

After sitting in the sun behind the window all morning, the buns had turned dry and hard, with a crispy texture that crumbled when you bit into them. But with some water to wash them down, they weren't bad.

Unfortunately, purified water was just as precious. With the sun even stronger in the afternoon, the distillation rate would pick up. To free up more bottles, Everly and Misha each had to down a bottle of soda at lunch.

They washed down the dry, tough food with the sweet, sticky soda, and inevitably, the cloying sweetness drove them to take a few sips of purified water.

Even after drinking, the sticky feeling in their mouths wouldn't go away.

Everly started regretting not grabbing some lettuce leaves when she bought the hot dogs.

Full and satisfied, Everly and Misha switched shifts, draped cloths over their faces, and settled in for an afternoon nap in the increasingly stuffy cabin, sweating the whole time.

And so, they took turns at the helm, getting up at set times to snack on dry rations, and made it through their second day drifting on the water.

By the morning of the third day, Everly woke up, habitually checked her phone, and still—no signal.

Outside, the forest stretched on forever. Standing at the bow and looking out, there wasn't a single man-made structure in sight—just mountains and trees.

Drifting with the current, it was easy to lose track of distance. Luckily, the satellite phone could check their location. Everly looked up their coordinates, compared them with the map on her phone, and found that the sightseeing boat would soon reach the lower part of the river.

Sure enough, from morning to afternoon, the Chatta River was visibly widening and the current slowing. By evening, the boat was still drifting, but it had slowed to barely faster than walking.

According to the map, after the lower reaches, the Chatta River would merge with a river called the Teflin, forming a wide river called the Aparachi, which flowed south and emptied into the Mexigo Gulf.

If the sightseeing boat could make it into the Aparachi and travel 13 kilometers downstream, Everly and Misha would reach their first riverside city: Graxiu.

As for how to get to the university after landing, they could figure that out later. Right now, the most important thing was getting back to civilization.

After two days in the stuffy cabin, Everly's sweat had dried and re-soaked so many times that her clothes were practically marinated. To save water, she and Misha could only wipe down the essential parts with a damp towel each day, and they couldn't even drink their fill—their mouths were always dry.

On top of the hygiene and water issues, the monotony of their food was driving Everly crazy. It had only been two days, but just thinking about bread and sausages made her mouth go dry and bitter. She desperately wanted to get to land and eat some fresh, juicy veggies and fruit.

She swore she'd never call salad "cow food" again.

In short—hurry up and get this damn boat moving...

At night, alone on watch, watching the boat crawl along slower than a turtle, Everly regretted not stopping by the woods during the day to chop a couple of branches with the fire axe to use as poles.

At this rate, when would they ever make it to shore...

Thus, another night passed in torment. When Everly woke up the next morning, she discovered that, while she had been asleep, the sightseeing boat had quietly drifted through the river's confluence and entered the Aparazi River!

By now, the river had widened so much that you couldn't see the southern bank from the northern one. The forests lining both banks no longer felt as wild as before. As the boat drifted along, Everly even spotted a wooden cabin tucked away in the trees along the riverbank!

If the cabin hadn't looked so run-down, like it had been abandoned for ages, Everly would've been itching to dock and ask for help.

"Just one last stretch—let's kick on the propeller and make a run for it."

Checking the fuel level, Everly said.

Even though the engine hadn't been running these past two days, the fuel had still been draining steadily to keep the boat lights on, leaving only 11% now.

With this 11% of fuel, covering the 13 kilometers might be a stretch, but the closer they got to the city, the higher the chances of her and Misha being spotted. Everly felt it was well worth the risk!