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SIXTEEN
171 HOURS, 12 MINUTES
“YOU HAVE TO boil the water first. Then you put in the pasta,” Quinn said.
“How do you know that?” Sam was frowning, turning a blue box of rotini around trying to find instructions.
“Because I’ve seen my mom do it, like, a million times. The water has to start boiling first.”
Sam and Quinn stared at the big pot of water on the stove.
“A watched pot never boils,” Edilio said.
Sam and Quinn both looked away. Edilio laughed. “It’s just a saying. It’s not actually true.”
“I knew that,” Sam said. Then he laughed. “Okay, I didn’t know it.”
“Maybe you can just zap it up with your magic hands,” Quinn suggested.
Sam ignored him. He found Quinn’s teasing on that front annoying.
The firehouse was a two-story cinder-block cube. Down below was the garage that housed the fire engine and the ambulance.
The second floor was the living area, a large room that encompassed a kitchen, an oblong dining table, and a mismatched pair of couches. A door led to a separate, narrow room lined with bunk beds, space for six people.
The main room was almost but not quite cheerful. There were photos of firefighters, some in stiff formal poses, some goofing with their buddies. There were letters of thanks from various people, including illustrated letters from the first-grade class visit that all began with “Dear Firefighter,” although the spelling was sometimes mysterious.
There was a large round table that had displayed the remains of an abruptly abandoned poker game—fallen hands of cards, chips, cigars in ashtrays—when the three of them first arrived but had since been cleaned off.
And there was a surprisingly well-stocked pantry: jars of tomato sauce, cans of soup, boxes of pasta. There was a red lacquered can of homemade cookies, now pretty stale but not inedible if you microwaved them for fifteen seconds.
Sam had accepted the assignment as fire chief. Not because he wanted to, but because so many other people seemed to want him to. He hoped no one would call on him to actually do anything, because after three days in the firehouse the three of them still barely knew how to start the fire engine, let alone drive it anywhere or do anything with it.
The one time a kid had come rushing up yelling “Fire,” Sam, Quinn, and Edilio had half carried, half dragged a hose and a hydrant wrench six blocks only to discover that the kid’s brother had microwaved a can. The smoke was just from a burned-out microwave oven.
But, on the plus side, they knew where to find all the emergency supplies in the ambulance. And they had practiced with the big hose and the hydrant outside so they could be quicker and more efficient than Edilio had been at the first fire.
And they had totally mastered the fireman’s pole.
“We’re out of bread,” Edilio said.
“Don’t need bread if you have pasta,” Sam said. “They’re both carbs.”
“Who’s talking about nutrition? You’re supposed to have bread with a meal.”
“I thought your people ate tortillas,” Quinn said.
“Tortillas are bread.”
“Well, we have no bread,” Sam said. “Not of any kind.”
“In another week or so, no one will have any bread,” Quinn pointed out. “Bread has to be made fresh, you know. It gets moldy after a while.”
Three days had passed since Caine and his posse had swept into town and basically taken over.
Three days with no one arriving to rescue them. Three days of deepening depression. Three days of growing acceptance that, for now, at least, this was life.
And the FAYZ itself—everyone called it that now—was five days old. Five days with no adults. Five days without mothers, fathers, big brothers and sisters, teachers, police officers, store clerks, pediatricians, clergy, dentists. Five days without television, internet, or phones.
