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106 HOURS, 29 MINUTES

SAM TEMPLE WAS on his board And there aves Honest-to-God swooping, crashing, churning, salt-s, white-foam waves

And there he was about two hundred feet out, the perfect place to catch a wave, lying facedown, hands and feet in the water, almost numb from cold, while at the sa

Quinn was there, too, lolling beside hi for the wave that would pick them up and hurl them toward the beach

Sa on dust

He blinked and looked around at the dry landscape Instinctively he glanced toward the southwest, toward the ocean Couldn’t see it fro time

Sam believed he’d sell his soul to ride just one more real wave

He backhanded the sweat from his brow The sun was like a blowtorch, way too hot for this early in the day He’d had too little sleep Too much stuff to deal with Stuff Always stuff

The heat, the sound of the engine, and the rhyth of the Jeep as it labored down the dusty road conspired to force his eyelids closed again He squeezed the himself to stay awake

The dream stayed with him The memory taunted him He could stand it all so much better, he told himself, the constant fear, the even more constant load of trivia and responsibility, if there were still waves But there had been no waves for threebut ripples

Threeof the FAYZ, Sa to drive would have been one , one more hassle, one more pain in the butt So Edilio Escobar drove the Jeep, and Sah sat stiff and quiet Beside hi to his iPod

Sa He hadn’t had a haircut in more than three months His hand came back dirty, clotted with dust Fortunately the electricity was still on in Perdido Beach, which ht, and perhaps better still, hot water If he couldn’t go for a cold surf, he could at least look forward to a long, hot shower after they all got back

A shower Maybe a few minutes with Astrid, just the two of the slimy was not a reens

It was ah And Sary

He closed his eyes, not sleepy now, just wanting to see Astrid’s face clearly

It was the one compensation He’d lost his mother, his favorite pastime, his privacy, his freedoained Astrid

Before the FAYZ he’d always thought of her as unapproachable Now, as a couple, they seemed inevitable But he wondered whether he’d have ever done aze wistfully from afar if the FAYZ hadn’t happened

Edilio applied a little brake The road ahead was torn up Soled lines across it

Edilio pointed to a tractor set up to pull a plow The tractor was overturned in the middle of

a field On the day the FAYZ ca with the rest of the adults, but the tractor had kept right on going, tearing up the road, running straight into the next field, stopping only when an irrigation ditch had tipped it over

Edilio took the Jeep over the furrows at a crawl, then picked up speed again