Her emotional high lasted until she started struggling to stay awake again. She knew her body was healing from all the exertion and probably some minor hypothermia, but being this out of energy was ridiculous. She didn’t have the time to spend sleeping today. Today was too important.

When the boat pulled into the harbor, Lily noticed a few things right away. The fires had burned considerably lower, but there were a few places that still looked like they were smoldering. The docks looked bad, but not completely unusable. Several of the… uh, lanes? What were they called? Several long rows of dock had burned away, and a number of those boats seemed to have sank as well. But, on the far side there was one that looked scorched but intact. So, she decided she’d try to park there. Was it still called parking? Oh well. It was now!

But before she could, she noticed the third thing. A few miles away one of the still smoldering smoke plumes was rising. It was a notably different color than the rest of the smoke though. More of a dark purple than an actual black. She stared at it for a while. “Do I investigate, or stay away? What if it is radioactive, or some weird chemical? Hmm. But what if it’s a person sending a signal or something? Wait… do I want to find another person?” She had to think about that. A society of people would be probably good. But a single person… She remembered reading a story in middle school about a woman meeting a strange person in the post apocalypse, and that person being increasingly cruel. She shook her head. Time for that later. For now, parking.

She gently drove the boat forward, trying to get a good angle to place it right next to the dock. All her experience in games paid off, she nailed it! Well. Sort of. The boat definitely hit the dock a bit. But, she was going slow, so it didn’t count right? But… now what? If she just hopped down she wouldn’t have a ramp. How did she get a ramp? Also, how did she make sure the boat didn’t just… drift away? Anchor it? She pulled out her phone. She had signal!

Without hesitation she brought up youtube and searched “How to dock a boat”. The first video she watched only covered pulling the boat up to the dock, and the presenter said a lot of words she didn’t understand at all. But, it seemed like she’d done most of it… adequately. He said at the start the most important thing was not to pull in faster than you were willing to hit the dock, and she’d done that! Even if she hadn’t got the angle quite right.

The second video she watched covered the ropes and ties you had to do in order to tie a boat securely to a dock. It was arcane nonsense to her. But, she was pretty sure that if she had the video up while she was doing the knots she could follow along. So that was good enough.

But… that sense she’d gotten a few times now that something was off was building in her stomach again. There was something wrong that she hadn’t noticed quite yet. So, she thought about it. Something to do with the ropes and the boat. Rope on the front, rope on the side, rope on the back, that all was pretty simple. At least she thought she could manage. What was she missing then?

Deciding to just move on, she went to find the spots that the ropes tied to on the boat side. She found the one on the front of the boat, and instantly she realized what was wrong. The boat hadn’t been tied to the dock last night. She didn’t untie any ropes before she left. Whatever magic had conjured the boat had also kept it totally still while she loaded her things until she had pulled away. Well. Okay. That was weird, but no weirder than a boat showing up out of nowhere, right? So, she shrugged and continued on.

It took her about fifteen minutes to get the boat secured to the dock in a way that she felt comfortable; it wasn't just going to drift away immediately. She’d had to put on her damp clothes again, but at least she wasn’t freezing anymore. The scariest part was when she had to jump from the boat to the dock the first time. She must have pulled away without the ramp last night. But, she was able to find one on the dock that was for another ship and bring it back to use with her boat.

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With that, she was ready to go into town! She marched up to the parking lot and found her car! It was a burnt out shell.

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Walking was hard, but she made herself do it. Up the little road that led down into the harbor, and it’s stupid little incline. She had to take a break half way up, like a mountaineer doing a challenging climb. So, she opened her phone again and looked around with the GPS. Where should she go first?

Maybe a walmart? The doors shouldn’t be locked because they were usually 24 hour right? They’d have clothes, and if she was lucky maybe power and an internet connection. That sounded a little too hopeful though. The thought of entering such a huge store while it was completely empty was unsettling. But, it would have what she needed…

Wait, if the power was off, how was she even supposed to see? Wouldn’t it be super dark? Oh, she hated that. Going through an abandoned store that big with only a flashlight, if she could even find one? Wait. Her phone had one right? She checked. It did! Still, that seemed super scary.

“Do I just have to get over myself and do it? It’s not going to get any easier, and I’m going to have to scavenge places like that eventually, right…?”

She had her phone point her to the nearest walmart. It was over an hour’s drive away. “Wait… really? This town doesn’t have a walmart? How did I not even know?” So, she tried a target instead and found one right away. Typical bougie bullshit. They were basically the same anyway.

Now for the next problem. It was several miles away, and she needed a way to get there. Well, the only thing she could think of was to walk in that direction and keep her eyes out for cars that weren’t burned out.

Walking was such a problem. Her legs felt like jelly, and all her body really wanted to do was lie down in the middle of the street and sleep for a few hours. But, she knew she was on a time sensitive mission, so she pushed herself hard. She wanted to cry.

The scenery was about as she’d expected. Vaguely the shape of the city, but apart from the burnt frames of the buildings, it was hard to see anything usable. She didn’t want to go into any of the burned out buildings, because she wasn’t sure if they’d still be structurally stable. Even if she lived through a collapse, no one would be coming to save her.

“That’s an awful thought…”

She kept vigilant to look for anything that might help her though. Once, she spotted a bike and got excited, but not only was it locked up, the wheels were entirely melted. She kicked it, and immediately regretted it as pain radiated through her leg. Continuing on, she saw a lot of ruined vehicles, but nothing particularly usable. She was wishing she knew how to hotwire a car when she saw something strange.

In the middle of the road there it was. A fire. A little fire. Only about the size of her palm, but still burning. Initially she thought maybe it was some kind of still ignited sewer gas leak from beneath the pavement. But she got closer. Something was still off about it. She couldn’t tell what it was that was burning without closer examination, but it was small and not at all showing signs of going out.

She continued to edge closer. It didn’t look real somehow. Her mind wanted to say ‘video game fire’, but that wasn’t quite right. The flames definitely were just flames. There was just something a little uncanny about it that didn’t feel right. She decided she would get closer until she could feel the heat on it.

But, she didn’t. She bent down right next to it. It wasn’t putting off heat. Then she realized what had seemed wrong in her mind. It wasn’t putting off smoke either. No heat, no smoke. Just flames.

“What the hell…?”