Chapter Three: The Big Day

Saturday.

Annabeth had planned to wake up at nine, maybe ten or eleven if she overslept. So of course she woke up at one instead.

She was blissfully unaware of the disaster as she rolled out of bed and stretched, groaning happily as her body came to life. The sun was shining faintly through the curtains, no surprise. Her mind felt fresh and alert, fully rested after a good nights sleep. Today was Saturday, the big day, and as far as she knew it was off to a good start. She meandered down the hall into the upstairs bathroom.

The first whiff of trouble came as she was changing out of her pyjamas and making her bed. A warm, pleasant aroma had filled the house, wafting up the stairs and through her open door. The alarm bells started to ring in the back of her mind.

She walked out of her room just as her father came up the stairs. His face lit up as he saw her head pop through the doorway.

"The zombie lives!" Frederick Chase greeted her cheerfully. "Lunch is ready. Or I should say breakfast, for you. Beef stew."

That was the delicious, horrifying aroma she had smelled as she arranged her duvet, the scent of disaster on this momentous day, with her father the inadvertent messenger of doom.

"What…what time is it?" Annabeth stammered. She fled back into her room before her father could answer, snatching up her phone from her nightstand.

"It's one pm," Frederick answered, looking amused by his daughter's sudden panic.

Annabeth stared at the 1300 on her phone, the image burning into her mind like a fiery brand. A brief shudder went through her. Everything was going horribly wrong.

"I have to get to the supermarket." She snatched up her wallet and fled from the room. Her father grabbed her elbow as she headed for the stairs.

"Slow down there. I know you're worried about the dinner, but you won't be thinking straight on an empty stomach. Have some lunch first. Dinner is five hours away."

Annabeth swallowed painfully, knowing he was right but not wanting to accept it. Her entire instinct screamed at her to rush to the supermarket and buy up as many capsicums and chicken legs as she could possibly carry.

She let her father guide her down the stairs, one arm around her shoulders. She slipped the wallet and phone into her pocket in preparation of the anticipated getaway.

"Glad you could join us," her mother said to her as father and daughter walked into the dining room.

"Hey sis," her brothers chirped.

"Hi," Annabeth said faintly. "I'm awake." In her highly agitated state, she looked and sounded anything but.

"You don't look awake," Bobby pointed out.

"You look like a zombie," Matthew agreed.

"I'm awake," she insisted, trying to convince herself as much as the rest of her family.

"You'll be awake once you've cleared your plate," Frederick ladled stew into her bowl and stuck two slices of bread into it.

—

It was two in the afternoon by the time she had eaten and finished with the dishes. She grabbed wallet and phone and rushed out of the house.

She found a six-pack of frozen chicken legs with no problem, but the morning crowd had ransacked the capsicum shelves long before she arrived. The remaining survivors looked a sorry sight; wrinkled and soft, pitted with torn skin and blemishes from being thrown around. Annabeth began sorting through them, desperately hoping to find a few good ones.

"No, no, no." She felt like the whole world was crashing down around her.

It was hopeless. None of the capsicums were in good condition. She stared in dismay at her almost-empty shopping basket. The dinner would surely be a failure without any vegetables.

She was just about to turn away when movement on the far side of the supermarket caught her eye. A worker had just emerged from a side door marked 'Cold Storage', wheeling a large trolley in front of him. Annabeth glimpsed a familiar shade of red, green and yellow from the trolley just as it disappeared from sight behind a shelf. The trolley and worker emerged into view a few moments later, clearly headed toward the vegetable section. Annabeth's spirits soared.

Like a miracle, the trolley of capsicums rolled to a stop right in front of the half-empty shelves. A small gasp escaped Annabeth's lips as her shoulders sagged in relief. The frazzled-looking worker, oblivious to her euphoria, began restocking the shelves with a bored look on his face.

Annabeth snatched up a paper bag and began stuffing capsicums in. Red, green and yellow, the complete set. There was even a bright orange one that she'd never seen before. She put that one into her bag as well, then grabbed her basket and headed for the self checkouts, her confidence and good mood restored.

The cheese!

The realisation hit her as she was halfway through the queue. She hurried out of the line, to the pleasant surprise of a half-dozen people queueing behind her, and made her way back to the row of sliding door refrigerators.

The chiller radiated cold so intense it made her shiver. All the dairy packaging seemed to have the same bright yellow colour, making it difficult for her to find the one she needed. She specifically remembered Percy had used grated mozzarella and hunted through the cold, misty shelves for it.

She arrived back home just past three o'clock, heading into the kitchen and dumping all the groceries on the kitchen counter. She lined the capsicums up next to the sink and placed them in a plastic tub, ready for washing. The grated cheese went into the chiller and the chicken legs into the freezer.

Her mother walked in as she was putting the food away, observing her as she filled a glass of water from the jug.

"Not bad," she told Annabeth. "I didn't think you were capable of going grocery shopping at all."

"I'm not completely useless, you know." Annabeth snapped. "And your super fridge doesn't have any cheese in it. I thought you said it had everything I could ever need."

Her mother raised her eyebrows. "Even better. Looks like there's hope for you yet."

Annabeth slammed her hand down on an empty paper bag, crumpling it. "For once in my life could you talk to me like a decent human being?"

Her mother's fingers tightened around the glass. "I don't think that's any way to speak to me."

"You want respect?" Annabeth spun around, glaring at her. "Why don't you start showing some?"

She stormed out of the kitchen, shaking with anger.

"You come back here, Annabeth!" Her mother shouted. "I haven't finished talking to you!"

"You're never finished!" Annabeth screamed from halfway up the stairs. "I'll come back when you finally say something nice!" She marched into the room and slammed the door so hard that the whole house shook. She froze then, astonished by the impact reverberating through the walls.

"The house is falling apart!" Bobby ran past her door, panicked footsteps adding to the tremors. "We're all gonna die! Daaaaaaaaaaad!" He bounded down the stairs in search of Frederick.

A second set of footsteps came banging down the hall as Matthew joined his brother's panicked flight, but unlike Bobby's, his stopped at Annabeth's door. The flustered six-year old burst into the room, eyes wide with excitement.

"Hurry!" He darted over to her bed and started pulling her pillows into his arms. "The house is falling apart! We gotta save ourselves!"

"With pillows?" Annabeth asked incredulously.

"We gotta use the pillows to make a fort!" Matthew grabbed a corner of her duvet and gave a massive tug, pulling it halfway off the bed. His arms full of pillows, he tripped on his heel and fell backwards.

"Oof!" Flat on his back, he locked eyes with her as she stared down at him, halfway between amusement and concern. "The pillows will save us from the impact. But we gotta hurry and finish building it before the roof comes down!" He scrambled to his feet, tripped on a pillow and fell onto it. "Oof!" He got up again "Let's go! We'll make it big enough for you!"

Swept up in his infectious enthusiasm, Annabeth bundled her duvet into her arms and followed him into his room.

The twins slept on single beds separated by a rectangular nightstand identical to Annabeth's. Matthew had spread their two blankets on the floor in the space between the beds and dumped all their pillows and bolsters onto it. He threw Annabeth's pillows into the small space, then dashed to his bed and started pulling it out of the frame. "Help me! We'll use the beds as walls!"

Together, they levered the beds out of the frames and onto their sides, wedged between the empty bed frames and nightstand to keep them from falling down. Matthew spread Annabeth's duvet across the top to make a roof, using their bolsters as doorposts. He arranged the pillows on the blankets like floorboards, then stared hard at the makeshift shelter, eyes darting back and fourth as his mind raced.

"We need more pillows!" He spun around and ran into their parent's room next door. "BOBBY GET MORE PILLOWS FROM MOM AND DAD'S ROOM!" He yelled over his shoulder as he flashed through the adjoining hallway.

"I'M ON IT!" Bobby yelled back from downstairs.

Annabeth followed her brother into their parents' room. The six-year-old had already pulled all the pillows into his arms and spun around, ready to dash back. When he saw Annabeth, he dumped the pillows into her arms instead.

Bobby materialised at the doorway and shot past her in a blur of arms and legs, lunging across the bed to grab one of their parents' long bolsters. It was taller than him and couldn't fit in his arms so he dragged it by one end out of the room. Matthew grabbed the other one and followed his brother out.

"Go, go, go!" He tugged on Annabeth's arm with his free hand. "Stop stopping! Go!"

The three siblings hurried back into the twins' room. Bobby and Matthew worked like fiends, throwing all the beddings into the fort. They dashed about the room, tossing more random supplies in. Surprisingly, a lot of the things made sense. A flashlight, water bottle, whistle, two bundled-up Parkas, packs of wet wipes, a chocolate bar, a jar of jelly beans, a tin of cream biscuits, an alarm clock for some reason. Others were downright silly: a plastic Spartan sword, mosquito repellent, a ruler and a pencil. Annabeth threw that last one out before somebody dived into the fort and impaled themselves on it.

"The bears!" Bobby gasped. He raced to their shared desk. A half-dozen stuffed teddies were lined up against the wall and he grabbed them all in one impressive sweep, shoving them into Annabeth's arms.

"Protect them with your life!" He ran to save more stuffed animals from Matthew's side of the room.

Annabeth threw the bears into the fort, then suddenly remembered her own plushies. The twins' antics had scrambled her sense of reality and she dashed into her room to grab them.

She came back into the twins' room to see Bobby pull on a plastic Iron Man helmet. Matthew was leopard-crawling into the fort's entrance, his own head protected by a plastic Spartan war helm.

"This one's for you!" Bobby threw a much more sensible bicycle helmet to her.

"Come on!" Matthew, safely inside the fort, gesticulated to her.

Annabeth strapped the helmet on, threw her plushies inside and followed him in. Bobby came in last, clutching a notepad and ballpoint pen in his hands.

"What do you need that for?" Annabeth asked incredulously.

"To write our wills in case we die!" was his enthusiastic response. He pulled Annabeth's duvet down over the fort's opening, plunging them into darkness. The twins stacked pillows against the covered entrance to reinforce it.

"We also need to label ourselves, in case someone finds our bodies." Matthew took the notepad from his brother and started tearing out pages. "Here," He handed one to Annabeth. "Write your name and slip this inside your shirt or something."

"Wouldn't the rescuers already know who lives in this house?" Annabeth asked him.

"We're twins," he answered. "Nobody can tell us apart."

Bobby switched on the flashlight and passed the pen around. The three of them each wrote their names on a slip of paper. Matthew fumbled around and came up with the alarm clock.

"What's that for?" Annabeth asked.

"I'm setting an alarm for twenty-four hours." He explained. "If nobody's saved us by then, we'll have another twenty-four hours to dig ourselves out before we pass out from exhaustion."

"What if we're already passed out by then?" Bobby asked him.

"Then the alarm will alert them to our location." Matthew declared. "Did you bring your phone?" He asked Annabeth.

"I did." Annabeth reached back and managed to pull it out of her back pocket.

"Set your own alarms." Matthew instructed. "The more noise we make the better."

"Shouldn't we be concerned about things falling down on us?" Bobby wondered out loud. "There's only a blanket covering our heads."

"That's a good point! Everybody follow my lead!" Matthew wriggled onto his back and grabbed a pillow, holding it up above him like a shield. Annabeth and Bobby copied him, bracing pillows against the duvet roof.

"SPARTANS! HOOOLD!" Matthew yelled, almost deafening Annabeth.

"Stop yelling," she gasped. "I don't think the house is going to fall."

"You never know," Matthew said. "Best to stay in here for another few hours."

"I'm having a jelly bean," Bobby said, fumbling around for the jar.

"Pass me one, too." Matthew said. "And one for Annabeth. We need to keep our strength up."

"I want two jelly beans, then." Bobby said.

"No!" Matthew gasped. "We gotta ration our food. We might be stuck here for a whole week!"

"It won't take a week to excavate our house," Annabeth reassured him.

"It won't," Matthew agreed. "But our house is at the end of the street. If all the houses collapse together, they'll start their rescue operations from the outside end and work their way in. We're finished then!"

Annabeth marvelled at his intelligence. The whole operation, from the mattress-walled fort to the flashlights and food, was incredibly well-organised. A sudden thought came to her.

"Have you two been practicing this?"

"We go through the plan almost every night," Matthew said proudly. "We try to do live drills once a week."

Annabeth stared incredulously at him. "You're six years old and you plan for earthquakes?"

The horsehair crest on Matthew's helmet almost hit Annabeth in the face as he nodded. "We've contingencies for almost every disaster you can think of."

"Okay…" Annabeth tried to think of something outlandish. "What about a zombie apocalypse?"

Bobby brandished the plastic sword. "That's what this is for."

"And this," Matthew held up the mosquito spray.

"And there's a nerf gun in the dresser." Bobby added, kicking it with his foot.

Annabeth laid back against a pillow, her head spinning. She wiped her forehead with the back of one hand and was surprised when it came away wet with perspiration. All three of them were sweaty and panting. She couldn't believe she'd just worked up a sweat building a pillow fort for a make-believe earthquake.

"You two are unbelievable." She shook her head. "Is that why Bobby ran downstairs to find Dad but Matthew came to get me? Was that part of the plan as well?"

The twins nodded. "We can't live in a world without you." Bobby said solemnly.

A deep ache built in Annabeth's chest. She pulled the twins into a hug.

"That's so sweet." Something else occurred to her. "What about Mom? No one went to get her."

"She's our least priority," Matthew said, and Annabeth smirked. "If it really came down to it, you could replace her."

"Me?"

"Yeah. As long as we have Dad to keep drawing a salary, we'll survive. It's not ideal, but that's the worst-case scenario."

"No sacrifice, no victory." Bobby said seriously.

"You two have been watching way too many movies. It doesn't work like that in real life. Why'd you come back up without Dad, then?"

"He wouldn't come," Bobby shook his head sadly. "Maybe he thinks the fort would be too small for all of us."

"We should've built a bigger one!" Matthew said angrily.

"Maybe he's saved himself." Annabeth suggested, trying to keep them from melting down. "He's on the ground floor. He might've run out of the house."

"Why don't you call him?" Bobby said excitedly. "If he's still alive he can save us!"

Bemused, Annabeth dialled her father on her phone. He picked up after five rings.

"Dad!" Bobby shouted, making Annabeth wince. "Are you alive?"

Annabeth wondered how their father could have answered his phone if he wasn't alive, but nonetheless pressed the speaker button so they could all hear him.

"Yes, I am very much alive," Frederick laughed. "Hale and fit, as they say."

"Come up to our room!" Bobby said urgently. "We've finished building the fort. It's big enough for all of us!"

"Hurry! The house could collapse at any moment!" Matthew added.

"All right, I'm coming." Frederick sounded amused. "See you in a minute, over."

"Roger that, out." Bobby responded and ended the call.

"For heaven's sake, Frederick, don't encourage them." Their mother sighed as he started up the stairs. "They'll be doing this every week now."

"Maybe they will," Frederick agreed. "But this is the perfect chance to teach them how to react to a real earthquake."

It was four pm by the time Annabeth finished helping the twins return all the pillows to their respective rooms. She figured she'd best start early and so walked into the kitchen to start making dinner.

The first thing she needed to do was assemble all the ingredients. She found salt, black pepper, cooking oil and baking paper in the pull-out larder and placed them on the kitchen counter. The metal trays were easy enough to find, but the problem was that they had a big pile of plates and crockery stacked on top of them. It took Annabeth a long time to shift everything out of the cupboard below the stove.

After that she turned her attention to the food. The capsicums were still in the tub next to the sink. She pulled the pack of frozen chicken legs from the freezer and ripped it open. She shook out four legs into a plate to thaw and placed the remaining two back in the freezer. Bobby and Matthew weren't big eaters and would probably only finish one leg between them.

"What're you doing, sis?" Bobby asked as he came into the kitchen to get water.

"I'm making dinner." She replied.

Bobby's eyes went wide. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Cool! Why's Mom not doing it?"

"She's challenged me to make dinner."

"What're you making, then?" He asked.

"That's a secret." Annabeth smiled. "You'll find out at six."

"Okay. See ya." He walked out with his filled cup.

Annabeth turned her attention back to dinner. She glanced at her phone.

1630.

"Great." She preheated the oven to one hundred and eighty degrees, just as Percy had shown her.

She filled the tub of capsicums with water and sprayed pesticide remover in it. She swirled the capsicums around until they were floating in a frothing, soapy mix. Her father had taught her to wash fruits that way before eating them. She supposed she could do the same for capsicums too.

She rinsed the capsicums off and placed them on the chopping board. She got out a steak knife from the drawer and started cutting them into wedges.

Unfamiliarity and caution made her slow and it was five pm by the time the capsicums were ready to be placed in the oven. She slid them in carefully with a pair of oven mitts, closing the oven door with a sigh of relief.

"That's one down."

She turned to the chicken on the counter and frowned, sensing something amiss. She picked up a chicken leg. Alarm shot through her. The leg felt hard where it should be soft, and very, very cold.

"Oh, no." She backed away from the plate of chicken as if it had a contagious disease. "Oh no, no, no."

It's still frozen! Her mind screamed at her.

"It's okay," she told herself, taking a deep breath. "There's still one hour left."

She picked up her phone and dialled Percy.

"Please pick up," she murmured.

The line connected after three rings.

"Annabeth? What's up?"

"Percy, I made a mistake. The chicken." She stammered. "It's still hard."

"Frozen, you mean?" He clarified.

"Yeah. Yeah. They're still frozen. Is there any way to get them to defrost faster?"

"Sure there is," Percy's voice was relaxed, casual. "Put them in a ziplock bag and push out all the air. Then soak the bags in water. That'll make it soften pretty quickly. If you want it to go even faster, drain the water away after five minutes and replace it from the tap.

"Percy, you're a lifesaver." Annabeth closed her eyes in relief. "Thank you so much."

"No problem." Percy said. "How's the rest coming along?"

The capsicums are in the oven," Annabeth reported. "They should be done by the time the chicken is ready to go in."

"That's good," Percy said encouragingly. "Don't forget to check on them every now and then. They burn easily."

"Right," Annabeth nodded her head. "I'll remember to do that." That uneasy feeling was still there. She frowned, tilting her head to one side.

"I feel like I'm forgetting something." She told him.

There was a pause on the other end. "Have you started the rice cooker?"

A chill went down her spine. That was what she had forgotten.

"Oh no," Annabeth stared around the kitchen with wide eyes. "I totally forgot about that. Rice cooker. Yeah. Where is—"

Then she remembered. Her mother had banned all rice cookers from the kitchen ever since the last one had had an electrical malfunction and caught fire six months ago.

"Oh shit," Annabeth was in full-on panic mode. "I-I don't have a rice cooker!"

"You don't have a rice cooker?" Percy sounded surprised.

"I don't! How am I going to cook rice without a rice cooker?" Annabeth's voice cracked with despair.

"Calm down," Percy told her. "A rice cooker is merely an automated system. You'll just have to boil the rice manually."

"B-boil it?" Annabeth had a horrible vision of a pot exploding on the stove like a volcano, sending rice shrapnel and steam clouds flying everywhere. "You mean with water?"

"Yes, with water." Percy said calmly. "But you better defrost the chicken first the way I explained. You can call me back after."

"Right, right. I'll do that." Annabeth ended the call and cast a searching gaze across the kitchen. Where did her mother keep the ziplock bags? She strode over to the cabinets and started pulling out drawers.

Once the ziplock bags of chicken were in the water, she grabbed the large pot her mother used to make stew and put it on the stove. She poured a hailstorm of rice into the pot and rinsed it off, then filled it with water from the tap and turned on the stove. She changed the chicken water, then dialled Percy again.

"How's it going?" He asked.

"The chicken is being defrosted," she told him. "And I've just put the pot of rice on the stove."

"Right. Once the rice boils, you can lower the fire so that it simmers the rest of the way."

"What's a simmer?" Annabeth asked.

"It's a less intense version of boiling." Percy explained. "Basically the water is much calmer, but still bubbling. By the way, have you checked the capsicum lately?"

"Oh no." Annabeth ducked her head down to stare through the oven door. "The cheese is turning a little brown. Is that a bad thing?"

"No. That just means that it's ready. Turn off the heat and evacuate them. Now."

"Got it." Annabeth put him on hold while she pulled the capsicums out. She transferred them to another plate, then pulled the chicken legs out of the water. To her surprise, they felt soft and no longer cold.

Time was running out. She seasoned them with black pepper and salt, then covered them with a thin coating of oil and put them into the oven. She glanced at the pot of rice and frowned when she saw the water still not boiling. She tapped her phone.

"The chicken is in the oven. But it's strange. The rice still hasn't boiled yet."

"Switch to video call," Percy said. "I want to see this myself."

Annabeth made the switch and showed him the pot.

"Aha," Percy said the moment he saw it. "You didn't put the lid on."

"Does that make a difference?" Annabeth asked cluelessly.

"It makes a lot of difference," Percy told her. "A lid will trap the heat, making the water heat up a lot faster."

"Won't that make the pot explode?" Annabeth asked.

"No, it won't." Percy stifled a laugh. "Just turn down the heat when it starts to boil so the water doesn't start spilling out."

"Got it." Annabeth put the phone down and started hunting around for the lid. It turned out to be wedged into a corner of the cabinet and the water in the pot was starting to bubble by the time she was ready to cover it.

"Oh now you start bubbling," Annabeth growled. She put the lid on and picked up the phone again.

"I take it you've found the lid?" Percy asked when he heard her voice.

"I found it," Annabeth confirmed. "What now?"

"Let it simmer until the rice grains start to resemble the kind you eat. If the water evaporates, add some more. You can scoop a few grains out to try when you think it's ready. If its still hard, then let it cook some more. It's smooth sailing from here on."

"Thanks, Percy." She was shaking with relief, though she didn't realise it. "I wouldn't be able to do any of this without you."

"Cheers," he replied. "I hope your family likes it."

The rice and chicken took longer than she expected to cook; It was six on the dot when she finally switched off the stove and oven. Her two family cats had appeared in the kitchen doorway, drawn by the smell of roast chicken.

She carried the trays of capsicums and chicken legs out to the dining table as her father laid out plates, forks and spoons.

"Looks great," he told her.

"Thanks, Dad." She smiled gratefully.

By six-fifteen everyone was seated at the table. All of them bowed their heads as Frederick gave thanks for the food, then Annabeth lifted the lid off the large pot in a vaporous cloud of rice-smelling steam.

"Good gracious!" Her parents' eyes widened as the steam finally dissipated to reveal the pot full of rice.

"Er…" Annabeth blushed. "I may have overestimated the amount of rice."

"Overestimated?" Frederick laughed. "You could feed your whole football team with that! And the reserve team, too! The rice bin must be completely empty!"

"I didn't use all of it." Annabeth said defensively.

Rice, chicken and capsicum wedges were distributed to each plate. Her family members all dug in, particularly Bobby and Matthew, who were starving hungry after spending half the afternoon building and dismantling their pillow fort. Annabeth waited in anticipation, feeling a tinge of dread.

Her father was the first to smile at her. "It's delicious."

"I love it!" Bobby exclaimed, half a wedge of cheesy capsicum lodged in his mouth.

"Me too!" Matthew agreed, his mouth smeared with chicken grease.

Her mother was the last one to comment, a small smile on her face.

"Well done, dear. You must show me how you did it, one of these days."

Annabeth could barely believe her ears. This was the best day of her life.

End of Part One.