Dave laughed. “Come on, Carl. Let’s go to Charley’s den and see what the new president has to say in his first official speech.”

AT THREE IN THE AFTERNOON, Manuel Quintana stopped work so he and the boys could take a short lunch break. His muscles ached from the unaccustomed work of digging, and his hands were stiff, raw, and swollen. He looked at his boys’ hands. They were blistered and bleeding, but no one complained. The five short trenches were almost complete. They went inside the transmitter building where Cathy had made lunch.

Manuel moved the big warehouse fan closer to them to help create a more constant breeze, and then as the family sat down at the table, he reached over and flipped the channel selector to one of the satellite stations just in time to watch a replay of the president’s speech on CNN.

The boys were stunned silent by what they saw. The past few days had been very difficult for them. The heat was stifling. But the day’s events left them speechless. And there was something else too. Because it was television, there was an aura of unreality to what they saw taking place on the screen. They knew that this was a deadly serious time. They had seen the terror in the streets of Altadena earlier in the day; yet they were aloof, distant. “Dad?” Juan asked. “We are going to make it, aren’t we?”

Manuel looked at his youngest son and reached over and gave him a hug. “Yeah, I think we’ll make it, Juanito,” he said. “The meteor is going to hit somewhere out there in the ocean. We’re high enough on this mountain to escape the surge of water. At least, I think we are.

“But the problem,” he said, “is going to be the heat. That thing is really hot and getting hotter. If we can just survive the heat, then I think we’ll be okay. But we need to keep praying, boys. We’re alive so far—and with God’s help, we can make it. But, let’s eat now and get back to work. We have to finish digging those holes and then fill up all five pits with water as fast as we can.”

The boys ate their sandwiches and then went back to work. Manuel gave Cathy a hug, then started dragging several large rolls of commercial sheet plastic out of the storage room. With his pocket knife, he cut off five huge sheets of film and quickly fashioned five makeshift linings—one for each of the shallow trenches. He was careful not to cut or tear the film, and as each boy finished his digging, Manuel shoved the plastic down into the hole so that it extended over the rim. The boys weighted the sides and corners down with rocks, logs, and other heavy objects they found lying outside the transmitter building.

By five o’clock, they could all see the clouds of smoke billowing up from hundreds of forest fires to the north and south of their location. Forest fires would pose a whole new set of dangers for them, provided they survived the impact.