The thod of producing fresh water with a plastic bucket was very simple.
Two years ago, when Everly escaped from the zombie city of Radyard, she had made a simple solar distillation device on a sightseeing boat. This used a similar principle.
First, pour seawater into the dog food bucket until it is about one-third full, then stretch a condom over the opening. The tip of the condom was shaped like a tiny point, like the tip of an umbrella, and when fitting it over the bucket, that little point had to face directly toward the bottom of the bucket.
Tie a piece of yarn to the pointed tip, and tie the other end of the yarn to the middle of a thin wooden stick.
The stick had to be longer than the mouth of the mineral water bottle. That way, after inserting the stick vertically into the empty bottle’s opening and pulling the yarn, the stick would turn sideways inside the bottle and beco firmly wedged across the mouth, suspending the bottle in midair.
When this setup was left under the blazing sun, the seawater inside the bucket would evaporate and form condensation on the condom. The droplets would slide along the curved surface toward the tiny pointed tip in the center, then travel downward along the yarn at the tip and drip into the plastic bottle hanging below.
However, this drinking-water device could wait until after they boarded the raft. For now, the plastic bucket had other uses.
After eating lunch by the riverbank, Everly and Misha got busy.
The two of them first carried everything from the riverbank—the folding pot, backpacks, dog food, dog food bucket, and so on—to the beach below the cape.
Next, they were going to lash together a raft there, which was currently their top priority.
As for boiling water and storing cooled drinking water, they could do that along the way while building the raft. After all, they now had the dog food bucket and were capable of collecting condensed water from sunlight, so their need for fresh water was no longer as urgent as before.
The weather was scorching hot, and the water boiled by the riverbank had not completely cooled even after half a day, so the folding pot was still unavailable.
Compared to the riverbank, the beach lacked fuel even more. Therefore, on their first trip to the beach, the two of them did not fill the dog food bucket with river water. Even if they brought water over, they had no iron pot free to boil it in anyway. Instead, they stuffed the bucket full of dry branches collected from the far side of the river, along with charcoal gathered from the burned forest, and carried it all to the beach.
After arriving at the beach and setting their things down, the two picked up the emptied dog food bucket and Everly’s axe, then headed back to the riverbank once more.
Once there, Everly and Misha split up briefly. Everly crossed the river and went into the forest to chop down “fir trees” for lumber, while Misha filled the dog food bucket with water, carried a bucketful of river water back to the beach, then hurried back empty-handed to the forest across the river to et up with Everly and help transport the processed logs.
Fortunately, even the thickest logs were only about fifteen centiters in diater. Misha carried one end while the other dragged along the ground. Crossing the river with them was troubleso, but barely manageable.
With one chopping trees and the other hauling logs, the two made trip after trip until they finally gathered enough wood and could focus fully on building the raft.
The rope used to lash the raft together was hemp rope taken apart from the trapezoid-shaped cat scratching board. It was about five milliters thick and roughly eighty ters long. The length was sufficient for binding the raft, though its durability might have been a bit lacking.
Fortunately, there was plenty of it.
Everly and Misha studied the logs and rope for a while before finally deciding on the safer thod: first wrapping the ropes around the logs horizontally in a figure-eight pattern to bind the round logs tightly together, then adding longitudinal lashings to fasten the lower logs securely to the crossbeams above.
After securing the front and rear ends, they saw that there was still so rope left over, so they reinforced the middle section of the raft with two additional bindings as well.
By the end, however, the hemp rope fell short by a small amount. Luckily, they still had the leather whip confiscated from Bean. After splitting it lengthwise down the middle with a knife, they ended up with two flexible leather straps. Tying those onto the ends of the hemp rope barely gave them enough material to finish.
The process of building the raft was exhausting and unbearably hot, all hard manual labor. If any section was tied incorrectly, they had to loosen the rope and start all over again… Even though Everly and Misha had once built model rafts before, actually constructing a real one still left them scrambling and clumsy at tis, causing them to make quite a few unnecessary detours.
And while building the raft, the two of them also had to divide their attention and constantly keep an eye on the folding pot nearby. Whenever the water in the pot had cooled down enough, they had to hurry over, pour the boiled water into condoms, tie them shut, then continue filtering river water and start boiling the next batch…
Busy without pause, they worked from noon all the way until after four in the afternoon. Finally, with the completion of the last cross-knot, a neat and sturdy raft, still carrying the fresh scent of wood, appeared before them.
The newly made raft could not be launched yet. Because it had been built in such a rush, the wood still contained too much moisture. Everly wanted to leave it spread out on the beach under the remaining sunlight to dry a little longer.
anwhile, in the shadow of the cape near the raft, five large water-filled “water balloons” full of clean water had already been prepared.
The weather was still far too hot. At room temperature, boiled water took a very long ti to cool to sothing close to body temperature. On top of that, condoms were made of latex, and prolonged exposure to high heat would make the latex brittle and prone to cracking, so the speed of producing drinkable water simply could not increase much.
Fortunately, the raft was now finished, and Everly and Misha were finally freed from the heaviest labor.
From this point on, while cooling water, one of them could carry the pot to the seaside and use seawater to help draw away the heat from the boiled water, speeding up the cooling process.
Everly assigned this task to Misha, while she herself took the sickle and the dog food bucket and headed across the river once again.
When she returned, she brought back fresh fuel along with several flexible softwood branches about as thick as thumbs.
These softwood branches were intended to serve as the fra rings for hand nets.
The process involved selecting flexible wooden branches that would not snap easily, then heating them beside a fire while gradually bending them to one side. As the moisture inside the wood evaporated from the heat, the wood fibers contracted, and under external force the branch would quickly bend and hold its new shape.
In her previous life, Everly had learned an old line of classical Chinese: “Wood that is straight as a taut inked line, when bent into a wheel, assus a curve that fits the compass.” The word “bent” referred to the craft of heating wood over fire to bend it into shape.
While heating the wood, she kept bending the branch bit by bit. Once the two ends finally t and ford a complete ring, the net bag sewn earlier that day could be fitted over it.
After that, the connected part of the wooden ring was tied securely with yarn, and the wooden pole serving as the handle of the dip net was fastened in place as well. Just like that, a beautiful stocking dip net was completed.
There were still two stockings left afterward. However, using them for dip nets would be a bit wasteful, and besides, they still needed stockings for filtering water while boiling it, so they could not spare them for now. Thus, in an unusual act of rcy, Everly let them remain intact.
She set the dip net aside and began kneading the AB epoxy putty.
It was also ti to make seals for those mineral water bottles.
…
From four in the afternoon until a crescent moon hung high in the sky, they kept working. At last, when the final pot of boiled water had cooled and been poured into condoms for storage, Everly and Misha finally completed the last preparations before setting sail.
The two packed up all their belongings. Whatever could fit went into the backpacks, while the rest was piled in the center of the raft. Then, standing on opposite sides, they lifted the heavy raft together, dragged it into the sea, and gave it a powerful shove forward—
One end of the raft floated steadily on the water, slowly moving farther away from the shore under their push.
Good. Judging from how deep it sat in the water, the raft’s buoyancy was excellent.
Once the rear end of the raft was fully afloat as well, the two braced themselves against the sides and climbed aboard one after the other. After settling down, Misha lowered the mineral water bottles, condoms, and other floating items from the raft into the sea one by one to reduce the raft’s load.
At the right mont, Everly used the Blessing of her Lamia Mother, causing an ocean current to gather beneath the raft.
Without needing sails or oars, the raft shot westward as if it had a motor attached underneath. And once the raft began moving, the condoms and mineral water bottles tied behind it with yarn and stockings were dragged along too. Seen from above, the entire raft looked like a fish trailing a transparent crystal tail behind it.
The direction they traveled in had also been carefully chosen by Everly.
The “Killer Rabbit” had once ntioned that the island where the killing ga was held was an unnad deserted island in the Atlantic Ocean.
Judging from the island’s climate and vegetation, it was located in the subtropics.
Combining those two points, there was a high probability that the island lay sowhere off the eastern coast of the United States, a very small possibility that it was near the southeastern coast, or perhaps in the Gulf of xico farther south.
And according to Everly’s observations, every helicopter that ca to the island to deliver supply drops always appeared from the west, and when leaving, also flew westward.
Assuming the helicopters took off directly from land and returned there after dropping supplies, then the odds were extrely high that the island was east of the mainland.
After weighing everything, Everly decided that they would ride the raft straight westward and only adjust course once they approached land.
As it happened, their current location was already on the island’s northwestern side, so traveling west ant moving away from the island and deeper into the open sea. As long as they got far enough away, once they reached the vast ocean, no one would be able to find the two of them.
Horror Movie Survival Rule #22: Never let down your guard until you are absolutely certain you are safe.
Worried that sothing might still go wrong, Everly controlled the seawater to push the raft onward, drifting across the ocean for the entire night.
Before this, Everly had never sustained the use of this ability for such a long ti. At first, lacking experience, she constantly urged the waves to push the raft faster. The result was that the raft rocked violently, and after a while she began suffering dizziness and headaches from excessive ntal exhaustion.
Later, as she used the ability more often, she gradually discovered that controlling seawater required maintaining the right balance—keeping the current flowing at a pace that was neither too fast nor too slow.
Imagine a sea breeze passing over the ocean, ruffling the surface water into soft, veil-like waves. Generating a current of this gentle intensity was slow, but it cost almost no ntal effort. As long as Everly stayed awake, the seawater beneath them could continue pushing the raft forward indefinitely. Over ti, this steady movent actually covered more distance than the earlier bursts of rough waves.
After persisting through the entire night, when the sun finally rose in the east, the raft had already reached the middle of the vast open sea.
No matter which direction they looked, there was only endless ocean. No islands, no ships—they had completely escaped the killing island.
What awaited them next was a struggle against nature itself.
“I’m going to sleep for a while. You take over.”
As the sun fully rose, Everly finally reached her limit. Rubbing her faintly aching temples, she said this to the now-awake Misha.
“Okay. Sleep.”
Misha nodded, picked up the oar tied to the side, and signaled that Everly could leave everything to her.
Everly nodded in return. She opened a pack of biscuits, ate a couple casually, then twisted open a bottle of mineral water and gulped it down. After that, she lay down on the raft and fell asleep almost imdiately.
When she woke again, it was already noon.
She was awakened by the heat.
Misha was sitting in front of her, pitifully holding up a half-used leather apron, using its shadow to shield Everly from the scorching sunlight pouring down from above.
Even so, Everly’s lower body was still exposed to the blazing sun. Her black clothes and pants absorbed heat easily; lying in the sun for too long made her feel as if she had turned into a grilled squid on a hot plate.
Yes—this was a serious miscalculation. She and Misha had completely forgotten to build a sunshade.
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