I woke slightly before sunrise. Quietly snuck down to the kitchen (Lin usually slept in. I'd only woken her on accident once, it hadn't been a good experience) and grabbed the guts of the previous day's catch. I used them as bait and by noon, I had two camping coolers full of fish. Lin came out to the deck around 10 am, looked down at the cooler and a half I'd filled by then, shook her head, and went back down.
The habitable part of the sailboat was hardly larger than an RV. The kitchen was essentially a hallway that led into the dining room. If one of us was cooking and the other needed to pass, the one cooking would need to move to the dining room area (which consisted of one diner-style booth) to let the other pass. Past the booth was the cabin where Lin slept and spent most of her time (she'd let me see her PC once. She had downloaded hundreds of movies and had a steam backlog that would keep her occupied past the end of the world). To the left, another door led to the bathroom.
Uneasily, I went down below deck and knocked on her door. Faintly at first, when she didn't answer, louder. My knuckles were practically bloody by the time I got her to open it.
"What?" she asked.
Her hair was ruffled, she'd been wearing headphones. Beyond her shoulder, I could see a game paused on her PC.
"I was thinking we could head into Neo Orleans. I've caught plenty of fish to trade."
She looked at her PC, then back at me, "It can't wait till tomorrow?"
"I don't think there's enough ice. They might spoil."
"Fine," she groaned. "Give me ten minutes." She shut the door without waiting for a reply. I went back up and started gutting the fish. This time throwing the guts into the sea. Ten minutes passed by and she hadn't surfaced. Twenty and I was done with the first cooler. I was halfway through the second one when she finally came above deck.
For once, she didn't seem like a complete mess. I think she'd even showered which was shy of a miracle.
"Come on fish boy, we've got a non-existent market to get to."
We weren't too far off the coast so it didn't take long to pull into the port. Neither one of us knew what to expect. There had been one other attempt to go onto the mainland. Around a month and a half after the news hit.
We'd run out of food (Lin had kept the ship stocked with junk food and alcohol; all I'd brought with me was a bag of rice) and weren't used to sustaining ourselves on seafood. We moored the ship in the early morning, slightly before daybreak. Within half an hour I was running back to the ship yelling at Lin, who'd stayed on board, to cut the rope and start the engine.
Two guys were running after me. Drunk, shooting, and laughing their asses off. They yelled curses from the pier as the boat pulled out of the docks.
"Here, take over," she said and stepped away from the steering wheel. I took over and she went below deck without saying a word.
She was gone for a few minutes then resurfaced with a large duffel bag slung over her shoulders.
"I don't know if they're all charged so make sure you check them. If there aren't enough batteries I have a box of spares in the cabin." She dropped the bag at my feet and pushed me aside before I had a chance to react.
I shuffled around her and knelt down to inspect the bag. It opened at my touch, bio-synthetic, and revealed an assortment of electric rifles and handguns.
"You've had this down there the whole time?" I asked.
"Yeah. There's, well there were, pirates around the key. It's kind of a requirement on a boat."
I picked a rifle up. It turned on at my touch. A small display lit up, showing it's battery was at thirty percent. I aimed it at the sea. The display switched to an infrared camera. I pulled on the trigger and let out a volley of shots into the water. The screen showed the dark blue water turning bright red. The heat lingered for a second then quickly dispersed.
I checked the battery. It was at seventeen percent.
"Not the most efficient," I muttered.
"I got them on a clearance sale," she said.
"You said something about spare batteries?"
"Yeah. There's a cardboard box under my bed," she said.
She'd never let me go into her room unsupervised. We weren't far from shore so I didn't have time to find something I could tease her for later. There were multiple cardboard boxes stuffed under her bed. The first one I opened was full of books.
I didn't know she read. I quickly closed it and grabbed another. Which, was full of manga and graphic novels. The third one had the batteries.
There were ten in total and only four were fully charged. I threw them into my backpack and headed back up to the stern. I grabbed two shotguns and threw them in my bag. I loaded one of the fresh batteries into the rifle.
"I take it you're staying here?" I asked Lin.
"Yeah. Someone's gotta be waiting when you show up running, chased by drunks with guns," she replied.
"It was one time," I said.
She eased the vessel into the docks and I tied a rope around the cleats. I saluted her and started towards the interior of the city with a bag fall of guns and fish.