late again – sorry people – got really busy.
Anyway – here is this weeks.

Most people seemed satisfied with that. He kept moving south along the coast, although at one stage, he had to detour to a considerable distance inland to avoid the radioactive ruins of a large city. He had a run-in with a small group of armed refugees, or thugs, or survivors. They’d tried to shake him down for whatever he possessed, which at the time wasn’t much, but he took exception to it. Unfortunately for the six thugs, most of them allowed themselves to get too close to him, so when he moved at his genetically enhanced speed, they died quickly and without being able to injure him. One man did manage to get a couple of shots off, but they went wide in the confusion of the fight.

The little battle presented him with weapons, useful supplies, and some useless money, as the economy had collapsed completely by that point. He did gain some half-decent clothes to replace the rags he had been walking around in for months. His other problem was that his combat boots were getting pretty ragged, but he had to keep them as none of the other men’s boots fitted. In the end, he only took three guns. He took two of the assault rifles the men had been armed with, with nearly all the available ammunition for those weapons, and a small pistol he didn’t recognize, but the man had clips for it, so he found a pocket on his uniform to fit them in and kept the gun.

One of the men had a usable backpack which he added to his ensemble and left all the other bits and pieces where the men lay. And the bodies. He felt no need to waste time and energy burying them. After that, it took him months but eventually, he reached the port of Karwar, which had somehow not been nuked. Although it was so damaged, it looked like a bomb had hit the city. He had to detour inland to finally get across the Kali River as the bridge had been destroyed at some point. As had the dam further up the river, which had caused a lot of destruction in the city, he guessed.

He spent some considerable time at Karwar, passing as a native from the north with his yokel accent. Eventually, his lack of apparent aging led to him taking a job on a ship as a deckhand. The ship mostly traveled the western Indian Ocean, calling at ports that hadn’t been bombed during the war. The trading wasn’t brilliant, and the lack of a suitable port where the ship could be dry-docked and the hull maintained would eventually result in the ship sinking.

Andrew wasn’t sure how long Mikail spent on the first ship, but at some point, he swapped vessels to one that traded between Southern Africa and South America. The ship was attacked by pirates in the South Atlantic some years later. Mikail was instrumental in driving them off but having shown his martial abilities to the crew, he thought it best to disappear and he jumped ship in South Africa.

–