Burnout

2

By dinnertime, everyone knew that Burnouts had been spotted by the barricade. It was quieter than usual as most of their group filed into the Royces' spacious dining room. Lydia moved through the line behind Ava and Grandpa, listlessly spooning canned chicken, peaches, and mixed vegetables onto a glass plate. She couldn't stop thinking about what she'd overheard in her grandfather's kitchen. Were they really running out of food?

She knew their supplies weren't exactly plentiful. Most everyone had a foodsynth these days, and the fully-stocked pantries and cellars Lydia saw in books and old movies hadn't been commonplace in a decade or two. Why would you need to keep cans of vegetables and boxes of pasta on hand if you could just synth whatever meal or ingredients you wanted? Grandpa and the Royces had been smart enough to start synthing as many nonperishables as possible once services started failing, but they'd only had a few days before safety measures in the energy plants started kicking in and the power grid went down. Backup power in house batteries had only lasted about a week after that. Another neighbor, Eric Grant, had a portable generator that he had managed to rig to a few car batteries, but they wouldn't use that to run the foodsynths unless it was the only thing keeping them from starving.

Mr. Grant's generator had a much more important purpose.

How had she not noticed how short supplies were getting? She grabbed a glass of water, and moved into the living room, which was the only room on the first floor that still had seating in it, and plopped cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch. Ava dropped down beside her a moment later, and began stirring the mushy pile of peas, corn, and carrots on her plate.

"What is this even supposed to be? It tastes like metal," she said, curling her lip.

"I thought everything was supposed to taste like chicken," Lydia replied, stirring her own pile of mixed vegetables with a similar expression.

"The chicken doesn't taste like chicken."

"It can't be that bad." Lydia poked at the rubbery, white and pink lumps of meat on her plate. Synthesized food was supposed to be indistinguishable from non-synthesized food; it was all made of the same proteins and fats...but the quality did suffer the longer you ran a foodsynth without having the filters changed.

"You think chili powder is spicy, I'm not trusting your opinion on this."

"I was nine, and Grandma's family was from Germany, let it go!"

"You still think chili powder is too spicy," Ava said with a disdainful sniff. Lydia rolled her eyes, but couldn't actually offer a counterargument. "I'll give you half my peaches if you eat this, too," Ava muttered after a moment, lifting a spoonful of the vegetable medley only to let it slide back onto her plate.

"Eat your vegetables," Grandpa interrupted dryly, nudging Ava's leg with the toe of his shoe. Lydia bit back a snort of laughter at Ava's disgusted look. Ava wrinkled her nose, but immediately began shoveling the stuff into her mouth, obviously deciding that if she couldn't foist it off on her friend, she may as well get it over with as soon as possible.

And also obviously trying to chew without actually tasting anything.

Lydia shook her head and bent back over her own plate. She wasn't a picky eater, but her stomach was knotting unpleasantly. She had never heard Grandpa sound like that, not in the entire time since the Burnouts had appeared. If he was that worried, their situation had to be even grimmer than she thought. What would they do if—when—they ran out of supplies?

Grandpa and Mr. Perry had argued long and hard about sending a few people into town to try and scavenge what they could find before deciding to make do with what they already had. Going to the surrounding houses would be a risky endeavor, too. No one was exactly sure how many Burnouts roamed the neighborhood, and, well...