Don’t worry about clearing a town at the start. No matter what stats and skills you give yourself it won’t happen. Clearing a town is an objective for mid-to-late game, although even from the start clearing section by section is pretty simple (aka kill everything around a house you intend to loot, rest and heal up, kill everything around the next place you intend to loot etc.)
As for water, I’d strongly suggest looting house fridges. Orange juice, apple cider and cans of coke and root beer should be able to sustain you for a while. Once you’ve got a nice little place settled, make sure you have a container (plastic bottles, gallon jugs and the holy mecca of water refinementing~ jerrycans) just go to the bathroom and use the toilet. fill up your containers with water (and make sure you have some spare containers to empty the cleaned water into)
Grab a pot or frying pan, which can usually be found right next to the fridge in any house-- just examine the oven. Then, get some smashed wood or skewers (use your pocket knife to carve wood). drop a skewer or piece of wood outside and use a lighter or matches. enter the crafting menu, go to drinks and voila, boil up some clean water. 
Here’s some more tips:
[ol][li]a weapon. See about grabbing a rock and making a crowbar or a nailboard from the stuff in the evac shelter. pointy sticks are another great weapon for throwing.[/li]
[li]Clothing. Grab some for storage. Cargo pants, army pants, trenchcoat/hoodie, backpacks etc.[/li]
[li]Books, food, tools. A hammer and screwdriver are essential. Later on you’ll need a hacksaw and wrench too.[/li]
[li]a sewing kit. Gather all the thread you can find. You can use it to make clothing fit to reduce the encumberance which is an absolute must for combat and reinforce it so a small scuffle doesn’t mean you’re wandering around in tattered rags.[/li]
[li]combat: Take zeds on in ones and twos. Kite them (i,e, let a few come to you at a time don’t wade in right away.) If you can get them to step onto a vehicle, window or shrub it takes them longer to pass the terrain-- so you get longer to bash them in the face ;)[/li][/ol]
Lastly, welcome to the forum! I hope you have fun, it’s a great little game.
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask, any ideas for additions to improve the game etc… let us know
Funnels.Just need to say now, you need to drop a water container on the funnel before it will actually be able to collect anything-- and remove the collected water before acid rain or drizzle unless you want acid water. which can be good for other uses, but I digress.
