-And yup, the bird just flipped the fish in its beak and is now eating it?

This is presumably helpful to the bird, since its doing most of the work.  It's hard to tell for sure whether it's helpful or not to the fish, though it doesn't look especially pleasant. 

The fleet has a handful of old novels from the dead world.  A few mentioned that pokemon would eat each other, though exactly why or how had been so obvious to the people writing that they hadn't bothered to explain.  If that information had made its way to the fleet, it had done so in the crystal data banks which had failed upon launch.  It was subject to quite a bit of scholarly debate that Azure typically avoided.  The two main camps were that pokemon must have been made from meat and bone like a human and fed like humans, or that they were made of whatever daemons were but had stomachs which could absorb energy in some way from the golden dust particles given off upon death.

Either way, it doesn't seem like a good time to experiment.  Bad enough to potentially rely on wild berries if they went without finding intact food cans for long enough.  Berries of some kind are something he knows humans can eat. 

Well, the bird gives them a brief look, and then stalks away, wading further downstream.

There's a few insects buzzing around near the surface of the water, and they can probably hear birds singing but... Yeah, they're still pretty much completely alone, at least of anything more complicated that the bird.

They'll watch over the water as it boils for a few minutes, then cools enough to being drinkable. Still-warm water isn't very refreshing, but it's better than nothing.

Then it will be time to keep walking.  

And they will find much the same thing as they continue to walking, and eventually, on the horizon, they'll spot an actual village!

That seems like a good place to find either people or clues.  Does it look as badly damaged as the outlying cabins?  Either way, he's going to check it out.

From a distance it seems to be in a bit of a better state? Although approaching shows that that isn't entirely true. Still, these buildings do, in fact, appear to be in better repair than the ones he's passed so far! There is not, however, any immediate presence of people?

He'll go closer and look for clues for where the people went.  

At first, it's much the same as what they've passed so far, buildings, left to the elements. (Does that building look like something burst out of it?

And then, there's one with an arrow daubed on it, somewhat weathered, but not overly so, pointing to the next building, and on that, there's another arrow, daubed on the door, pointing...up? It might be supposed to be 'in'.

It makes as much sense as anywhere else to start looking.  They try entering the building, Florentho going first. 

We wrote what we could on the walls.

That seems like a strange choice, but he doesn't know what options they were working with.  They'll keep following the arrows and reading.

Paper might decay, might catch fire. If there's going to be anything left for people to find, it won't be paper.

Humanity's rule has ended.

That sounds ominous.  Unless there is a set of arrows suggesting a different order, he'll just go around the room clockwise, reading for details.  Florentho keeps watch.

There's not a set of arrows, and clockwise is as good a direction as any. It's not massively coherent, and some of the sentences don't make much sense, as though the person couldn't keep what they were trying to write straight in their head and the words got jumbled. But so long as he persists, he'll be able to piece a basic story together.

Some kind of contagion appeared - whether it evolved, or was engineered, is unknown - and it's effect was horrifying. It either killed, leaving twisted, broken corpses, or it transformed. Twisted humans beyond all recognition into horrifying, grotesque creatures that seemed biologically impossible, that are dangerous. Monsters who prowl and hunt and attack, who make travel dangerous, and who can come from anyone, and for anyone. There was, as far as anyone could tell, no cure, although rumours that people were working on it had persisted.

Underneath the declaration that humans no longer rule there's a roughly drawn map, labelled to identify where they are, and then an arrow with a question mark pointing to the north east, with the word 'Sanctuary?' written over a crude drawing of a walled house.

He'll have to be more careful to avoid the monsters, if there's a chance of infection from them.  Does it mention how it spreads?

Whoever wrote it doesn't seem particularly stable, but the map is better than going off in another random direction.  Azure will memorize it as well as he can.

There's vague references - to people being bitten, wounds being bled on, but no definite answer, although from the references, it's probably reasonable to assume that the infection is spread by bodily fluids.

The map, handily, has crude drawings of landmarks - although how similar they actually are to reality is another question.

He'll be careful, and in particular careful of bodily fluids.  If they were once humans, that means they might be easier to make bleed than something more like a daemon would be.

Azure will look through the rest of this building.  

It seems that the people here, at least somewhat, hadn't panicked when they left. There's a couple of stocks of non-perishable food, piles of cans in cupboards, these ones still labelled. There's even a few oddly shaped tools which might be designed to open cans?

There's not much else of interest, although one of the porches does have a seemingly serviceable rucksack, and another has a set of discarded hiking boots. The boots are slightly worn, but the leather is still intact and they're probably better for walking in than Azure's current footwear.

He replaces the old rucksack with the better one.  His old shoes are also thrown away.  It's a shame to leave them behind, but they aren't worth the space they'd take up in the bag since it doesn't look like he'll be walking anywhere sufficiently flat and clean for them.  More food and the can opener can be taken.  Florentho's blades can also open cans, but its messier than with technology.  

They check the position of the sun.  It might not be a good idea to set out too close to sunset.  

Unfortunately, the sun does look like it's starting to begin its descent from the sky, slowly sinking towards (approximately) the western horizon - if he doesn't have a strong internal compass, he might want to mark which direction that is so he can orient himself to follow the map the next day.

Getting to sleep in one of the intact buildings here doesn't seem like a bad thing, even if it does slow them down a little.  

Well, the buildings are mostly sturdy, and even aside from the house with the (literal) writing on the walls, there's a couple to choose from. There's one with a bedroom on the second floor, the bed tucked into a corner away from the window, and there's a bolt on the inside of the door. The blankets are a little musty, but in the way of something that hasn't been aired in a while, there's no sight or smell of mould, or anything else unpleasant, and a brief exploration of the still-intact chest of drawers will reveal other bedding.

This seems like as good a place as any.

Not having seen another person in so long is starting to get to him, but Azure does his best to ignore that as he prepares to sleep.  At least he's never had difficulty sleeping in unfamiliar places.