Post by cinnamin on Jun 9, 2010 13:58:03 GMT -6
I sent this in to a Canadian company called "The Claremont Review" that publishes short stories and poetry. They didn't want it...so maybe it can have a home here instead.
The Signal
Backing down the stepstool, Newe grabbed a large can of corn to go with his tuna. Canned meat was hard to come by, leaving him with maybe four times more cans of vegetables; so he had rationed the meat out to one can every three or four days. Everything else – soups, sauces, fruits, and vegetables – were plentiful; each category would take up one eight foot tall by four foot wide shelf, at least. By his estimates, he had enough food here to last him maybe five years since the shelves were all so deep.
Newe sat down beside his modified stove and fished a can opener out of his box of kitchen things. It was all well to cook the food in closed cans, but they never exploded without lids. Once the cans were open, he plugged the power-draining oven into his one power strip and put the cans right in the middle of the cooking rack. Closing the oven door then, he threw his swatch of black cloth over the door’s window. The glow that came out once he turned it on would otherwise have been blinding since, arranged straight and nice, old heating lamps were welded to the inside. He had found them all in a nearby fast food joint, and since they somehow used less electricity than the stove itself, he had set the rig to connect to his water wheel’s power strip almost immediately, although he usually kept it plugged into the wall socket – just in case.
He sat listening to the food cook, the soft noise of boiling already echoing in his tin can cooker; but the concrete was beginning to give him chills. Since his little block of a house was about fifty feet underground, the floor was always an even, cold temperature. He had never put a thermometer to it, of course, but it always made him cold even with the few area rugs he had found.
Standing, Newe dusted off the back of his pants and turned off his radio set so he could better hear the food cooking. He had rigged the radio to scan through every AM channel continuously although it had taken him a lot of troubleshooting to get it to work. It had ended up as two pulleys – one to turn the tuning knob and the other, with a stiff plastic tip attached to it, to change the setting of the other pulley from forward to backward and vice versa. Since none of the radio stations functioned anymore, he had the volume turned all the way up, so he could catch even the faintest signal – not that it was too hard.
Connected to both his handmade telegraph and his radio receiver, a huge tower of dishes, antennae, and twisted metal sat above the ground. It potentially could catch a host of radio signals as well as boost the signals from the telegraph. Newe had found every part of it, some off people’s houses, others from old factories, yet more from junkyards. Newe supposed that his twisted tower was probably a landmark for whoever was still up there, but he did not want to find out.
A long time ago, more than five years if Newe were to count the tally marks scratched into his walls, the surface of the world had been laid to waste. Great bombs had fallen, decimating most cities; and after that apocalypse had passed, chemicals had dropped. The majority of those directly exposed had perished; everyone else that had been exposed to it went crazy. No one that had breathed surface air remained sane; they turned into violent monsters of people that, before, would have been categorized as psychotic or mental cases. Henceforth, Newe expected that everyone on the surface would be hostile. The surface dwellers might occasionally work together on some things, but they also cannibalized each other. Naturally, everything about the surface was purely survival, no place for a rational person to be.
Judging by the sounds of the oven then that his food was done, Newe switched the heating lamps’ plug back to the wall socket. Just as he was about to pull the black cloth away, however, a metallic crash assaulted the metal tower above.
Although he rushed over to, and looked up, the ladder tube as if he could see what was happening, Newe was only looking for the shadows that would show if someone was coming down. Seeing nothing of the sort, he retrieved the gas mask and anti-radiation suit he had found in his home the first day he had moved in. Pulling the gear on, Newe checked all the suit’s seals before heading up the long ladder. He ascended so quickly in an unconscious haste that he was at the first hatch sooner than he anticipated.
Bashing his head on the hatch’s wheel, Newe gingerly rubbed his now throbbing temple before crawling through and sealing it behind him. It was a precaution; two hatches made sure none of the surface air made it down into his home because the filter system had a primary intake duct hidden somewhere in the passage between the two hatches. That way the filter system could neutralize all of the chemicals in the air before he went below.
Going up to the next hatch, he saw no one’s shadow, heard no one’s movement, and emerged onto the surface for the first time in maybe two months. Truth be told, he only came up when it was necessary because a group of mindless surface dwellers had taken up residence near his tower. They had a bad habit of attacking Newe whenever he came outside.
Today, however, the group was nowhere to be seen although they were most definitely the cause of whatever damage had been done. Maybe it was a ploy to finally capture him and force him to breathe the mind-stealing air, but maybe it was just another botched sabotage mission since the group’s only recent activity had been throwing things at him. Quickly scrambling up onto his radio tower even if the group was nowhere to be seen, Newe checked for damage as he went up, having to peer deep into the twisted mess to see any internal problems. It all looked in working order, for all the chaotic style he had put it together, until he was maybe thirty feet up.
Lodged between a re-purposed satellite dish and the main structure, a crumpled chunk of metal was threatening to fall on one of the internal support cords. Newe frowned at the strange shape. It looked like a super-sized ball of aluminum foil, except made of sheet metal; and who had the strength to crumple up sheet metal, much less throw it thirty feet up into the air? Maybe one of the surface dwellers had finally come to their senses and used a bit of common sense: a car-crusher could have smashed down any sheet metal and a catapult could have thrown it – no matter how preposterous the idea seemed.
Newe hoped he would discover nothing else about the foreign metal body as he went up to the top of the tower to fetch a crowbar. His toolbox was five feet from the tip of the structure so none of the surface dwellers would try to get it. That way it would always be in reach but never be under the threat of thieves.
Coming to said metal box, Newe found the welds holding it to the tower had been weakened, one even broken. That meant someone or something had been smart enough to successfully climb the side of the tower without being cut on the sharp edges. Only a fraction of the surfaces of the metal was flat or dull – Newe had made sure of that so he would only know how to safely climb. Every surface dweller that had attempted to scale the tower so far had sliced off part of their hand or obtained a monstrous gash in the bottom of their foot.
His confidence severely shaken because of the failed infallibility of his tower, Newe carefully opened his padlocked toolbox, but no sabotage was in it. He had been expecting a firecracker at least, a rigged gun at most – as he had seen in old video games – but everything was all the same. Still, he took the hidden knife as well as the crowbar before he descended the tower again.
The crowbar wedged behind the oversized tinfoil ball, and Newe pulled hard, nearly sending himself tumbling since the foreign object was not stuck as badly as he thought. His balance sent him leaning a little too far out and away from the tower, so he had to reach out quick. He was not thinking about where his hand was going, and it alighted on a sharp edge although it kept him stable and saved him from the deadly fall. Nonetheless, his hand was cut near to the bone, bleeding all down the side of the tower.
Gingerly pulling himself back onto the safe handholds, Newe looked at his hand, which was soaking the anti-radiation suit in red; and he could not help thinking about Tetanus. Only nineteen, the world had been torn to shreds before Newe had received the immunization; and he had not thought to retrieve one from a hospital just after the bombs had fallen. He had finally run out of the luck that had kept him alive for years, but if he could clean out the wound well enough, he might save his own life.
Carefully beginning to descend the tower, Newe barely hear the sound of approaching feet in time to stay at a safe height. He was too concentrated in keeping his balance without using his injured hand, but the surface dwellers were not very good at sneaking up on anything.
“Wha’d’ you want?!” Newe shouted, waving the crowbar like it meant something.
The group, most only a little younger than Newe, snickered and laughed harshly. “Come join us!” one called from amid the group, his voice full of false caring. Then they broke into a chorus of hollers and invitations, all of which were biting with severe sarcasm and malice, but as the called, they came forward, stopping at the base of the tower. None of them were smart enough to climb, yet one stepped forward.
Bedecked in gaudy trinkets that hung about her in ruin, she had the airs of a leader but not the stature for it. She was thin and lanky, almost awkward; and an old biker’s leather helmet smashed down overtop a sheet, which was draped to hide most all her face, obscured whatever shape her head might have been. The rest of her clothes were ripped hideously and held together with makeshift safety pins that were more akin to iron spikes. She held up a hand, covered in patchy leather and thick wire stitches for silence, and the crowd went quiet. With everyone’s full attention, she removed her helmet and cast the sheet off her head so it fell about her shoulders in a fluttering cape.
“Brother, come down from your tower.”
Newe went very silent, for that indeed was his long lost sister, but an evil now resided in her eyes. She had changed into a wild creature over the years that he had not seen her, and he instantly knew it. Therefore, he silently hooked the crowbar into his belt and started back up his tower.
Newe’s sister looked at him with only passing interest, but the others bid her to climb. With merely a thought, she began to clamber up the tower like a monkey would a tree.
Newe had expected this. His sister had been very intelligent, exceptionally more than he was even now. Those smarts, even if they fell through the degeneration, were still at a level higher than his were; so he entertained no doubts about her being able to climb the tower, most likely faster than even he could.
Still, with his thirty-foot head start, Newe got to the top first. Putting all emotions out of his mind and smothering them with logic, Newe pulled out the heaviest tool he had: a sledgehammer. His sister was not looking up since she was too concerned with her handholds, so she would be an easy target. Dropping his tool onto her head, however, was not what he had in mind. Instead, he waited until his sister’s hand came to one handhold strategically marked green.
Then Newe swung the hammer with all his might, and the heavy head smashed into a concealed lever. Because of this, the tower shuddered in protest, a chain-reaction taking place deep within its core; and then a large plate dislodged. Since her anchor points were all connected to this plate, Newe’s sister slid down the side of the tower as metal ground against metal, but she did not scream. All the fear seemed to have gone from her long ago despite all of her remaining intelligence; she only looked up at him with her harsh eyes burning holes deep into him. Even when the plate hit the ground and his sister went tumbling, although was relatively unharmed, Newe felt those holes burning so far in his depths that his soul was smoldering. It hurt him so badly that his sister would come here, taunting him – and those eyes. The malice, that evil stare, was horrible. Newe supposed that someone could have impaled him through the stomach on a rusty spike and it would have hurt less. His sister hated him. It was not because he had done something atrocious but only because he was there, safe from the putrid surface air. She may have been insane, but at least some of her emotions should have survived. Some of the family love should have still been left.
After all, Newe still loved his sister despite her insanity, and he could not bear that glare as she and the group of surface dwellers stalked away. Newe had to avert his eyes, look somewhere off in the dark sky as they disappeared over the horizon. Then he went down, back into his hole in the ground, and sat down on his old, ratty bed.
Newe put his head in his hands and, for some reason, thought of his radio. Its monotonous buzzing was not filling the room, but he could not help thinking about it. Who had he been looking for? His mind had the answer in a second, but he did not acknowledge it, instead searching for a different answer until he found one. He supposed he was looking for a military base or some government installation hiding out in an underground vault, but it was just a lie. Whenever he thought of, or dreamed of, someone calling out across the radio waves, he expected a familiar voice – someone he knew. At the same time, however, he had seen all of his friends die; they had been in New York when the bombs fell. All that was logically left was his family: his researcher father somewhere in an insignificant, unmentioned state, his college professor mother most likely in the university basement shelter, and his sister who had been studying the old hideout escape of previous presidents – some bunker under a new hotel.
Of all his family, Newe expected his sister to survive. Her intelligence should have kept her off the surface, but here she was, just as crazy as everyone else was now. If she had fallen victim to the chemicals, then everyone else must have.
Newe got up off his bed and slowly moved over to his broadcasting desk. The telegraph code key was right there, calling for him to send out one last message; and he suddenly hated it. For all the signs he had given the world to prove he was not dead or insane, no one had answered. The radio waves never answered him when he called out, and the telegraph had failed him. It had done nothing to help him, had done nothing to save his sister.
In fury, Newe ripped the key from the desk and threw it across the room. It crashed against a wall and clattered to the floor, but the radio facing Newe’s back had come to life. The force of the detached key having bumped the sensitive power button on, the sound of static filled the room. A film of red over his eyes, Newe tore the gas mask off his head and threw it away, its small weight crashing into the back of a shelf and sending the cans spilling all over. Then he snatched off his gloves, causing himself severe pain as the torn fabric ripped off a chuck of his torn skin. Lastly, he turned to the radio – that infuriating sound – the fingers of his one hand dripping splashes of red all over as he lunged for the radio set.
He froze inches from the speakers.
The fuzzy sound of a voice came and went back into the static, and Newe tore the frequency sweeper from the knob of the radio. Ear pressed up against the furiously buzzing speaker, he manually scanned the frequencies until the voice came and went again. Gingerly, he tuned the radio, his neglected – and now worsened – hand wound bleeding all over the tuning dial.
Then the fuzzy voice came into focus: “…Sector 42 Coast Guard. Calling all refugees, military shelter available…”
Newe paid no more attention to the words, even as the Coast Guard mentioned the telegraph signal he had sent out yesterday at five o’clock. He had run across the room to retrieve the telegraph key and was frantically reconnecting the wires. From what Newe could remember of the emergency broadcasts just after the bombs falling, sector 42 was where he was; and that same “Sector 42” may have been on the outside of the top hatch. The only problem was he could not remember what was what; all Newe had to go on was that he could hear them.
Before he could start his transmission, however, the voice went silent. Newe’s hands flew through the finishing steps, but the connection was secure. He tapped out a message at lightning speed, adding as many extra letters as he intended to transmit; and then he stopped, listening so intently that he gave himself a headache.
The static droned on, but then came a voice, from the same frequency as the first but sounding unsure. “Copy? Please…erm…repeat transmission.” The voice was young, that of a teenage boy, confused but excited all the same.
Newe, more careful this time, tapped out his message again; and the boy on the other end was overjoyed: “Copy! Message received; what is your location?”
Newe tapped out the answer, and the teenage Coast Guard-in-training left the microphone on as he ran over to the man who had spoken before. Then the older, more experienced voice came back over the radio. “Location confirmed. Rescue vehicles should arrive within two days. Keep radio contact to monitor progress.”
Newe tapped out the end message confirmation and sat back in his chair as the radio faded to static. He was in awe. It was hard for him to believe that this had even happened, but with the gaping wound in his hand giving him a constant reminder, he was not sleeping. Newe smiled at that and understood, for once in his five years of this accursed lifestyle, that he had been wrong about something.
“Everything’s not lost,” he whispered to himself, putting his head down on his folded and blood-covered hands, relief washing over him.
The Signal
Backing down the stepstool, Newe grabbed a large can of corn to go with his tuna. Canned meat was hard to come by, leaving him with maybe four times more cans of vegetables; so he had rationed the meat out to one can every three or four days. Everything else – soups, sauces, fruits, and vegetables – were plentiful; each category would take up one eight foot tall by four foot wide shelf, at least. By his estimates, he had enough food here to last him maybe five years since the shelves were all so deep.
Newe sat down beside his modified stove and fished a can opener out of his box of kitchen things. It was all well to cook the food in closed cans, but they never exploded without lids. Once the cans were open, he plugged the power-draining oven into his one power strip and put the cans right in the middle of the cooking rack. Closing the oven door then, he threw his swatch of black cloth over the door’s window. The glow that came out once he turned it on would otherwise have been blinding since, arranged straight and nice, old heating lamps were welded to the inside. He had found them all in a nearby fast food joint, and since they somehow used less electricity than the stove itself, he had set the rig to connect to his water wheel’s power strip almost immediately, although he usually kept it plugged into the wall socket – just in case.
He sat listening to the food cook, the soft noise of boiling already echoing in his tin can cooker; but the concrete was beginning to give him chills. Since his little block of a house was about fifty feet underground, the floor was always an even, cold temperature. He had never put a thermometer to it, of course, but it always made him cold even with the few area rugs he had found.
Standing, Newe dusted off the back of his pants and turned off his radio set so he could better hear the food cooking. He had rigged the radio to scan through every AM channel continuously although it had taken him a lot of troubleshooting to get it to work. It had ended up as two pulleys – one to turn the tuning knob and the other, with a stiff plastic tip attached to it, to change the setting of the other pulley from forward to backward and vice versa. Since none of the radio stations functioned anymore, he had the volume turned all the way up, so he could catch even the faintest signal – not that it was too hard.
Connected to both his handmade telegraph and his radio receiver, a huge tower of dishes, antennae, and twisted metal sat above the ground. It potentially could catch a host of radio signals as well as boost the signals from the telegraph. Newe had found every part of it, some off people’s houses, others from old factories, yet more from junkyards. Newe supposed that his twisted tower was probably a landmark for whoever was still up there, but he did not want to find out.
A long time ago, more than five years if Newe were to count the tally marks scratched into his walls, the surface of the world had been laid to waste. Great bombs had fallen, decimating most cities; and after that apocalypse had passed, chemicals had dropped. The majority of those directly exposed had perished; everyone else that had been exposed to it went crazy. No one that had breathed surface air remained sane; they turned into violent monsters of people that, before, would have been categorized as psychotic or mental cases. Henceforth, Newe expected that everyone on the surface would be hostile. The surface dwellers might occasionally work together on some things, but they also cannibalized each other. Naturally, everything about the surface was purely survival, no place for a rational person to be.
Judging by the sounds of the oven then that his food was done, Newe switched the heating lamps’ plug back to the wall socket. Just as he was about to pull the black cloth away, however, a metallic crash assaulted the metal tower above.
Although he rushed over to, and looked up, the ladder tube as if he could see what was happening, Newe was only looking for the shadows that would show if someone was coming down. Seeing nothing of the sort, he retrieved the gas mask and anti-radiation suit he had found in his home the first day he had moved in. Pulling the gear on, Newe checked all the suit’s seals before heading up the long ladder. He ascended so quickly in an unconscious haste that he was at the first hatch sooner than he anticipated.
Bashing his head on the hatch’s wheel, Newe gingerly rubbed his now throbbing temple before crawling through and sealing it behind him. It was a precaution; two hatches made sure none of the surface air made it down into his home because the filter system had a primary intake duct hidden somewhere in the passage between the two hatches. That way the filter system could neutralize all of the chemicals in the air before he went below.
Going up to the next hatch, he saw no one’s shadow, heard no one’s movement, and emerged onto the surface for the first time in maybe two months. Truth be told, he only came up when it was necessary because a group of mindless surface dwellers had taken up residence near his tower. They had a bad habit of attacking Newe whenever he came outside.
Today, however, the group was nowhere to be seen although they were most definitely the cause of whatever damage had been done. Maybe it was a ploy to finally capture him and force him to breathe the mind-stealing air, but maybe it was just another botched sabotage mission since the group’s only recent activity had been throwing things at him. Quickly scrambling up onto his radio tower even if the group was nowhere to be seen, Newe checked for damage as he went up, having to peer deep into the twisted mess to see any internal problems. It all looked in working order, for all the chaotic style he had put it together, until he was maybe thirty feet up.
Lodged between a re-purposed satellite dish and the main structure, a crumpled chunk of metal was threatening to fall on one of the internal support cords. Newe frowned at the strange shape. It looked like a super-sized ball of aluminum foil, except made of sheet metal; and who had the strength to crumple up sheet metal, much less throw it thirty feet up into the air? Maybe one of the surface dwellers had finally come to their senses and used a bit of common sense: a car-crusher could have smashed down any sheet metal and a catapult could have thrown it – no matter how preposterous the idea seemed.
Newe hoped he would discover nothing else about the foreign metal body as he went up to the top of the tower to fetch a crowbar. His toolbox was five feet from the tip of the structure so none of the surface dwellers would try to get it. That way it would always be in reach but never be under the threat of thieves.
Coming to said metal box, Newe found the welds holding it to the tower had been weakened, one even broken. That meant someone or something had been smart enough to successfully climb the side of the tower without being cut on the sharp edges. Only a fraction of the surfaces of the metal was flat or dull – Newe had made sure of that so he would only know how to safely climb. Every surface dweller that had attempted to scale the tower so far had sliced off part of their hand or obtained a monstrous gash in the bottom of their foot.
His confidence severely shaken because of the failed infallibility of his tower, Newe carefully opened his padlocked toolbox, but no sabotage was in it. He had been expecting a firecracker at least, a rigged gun at most – as he had seen in old video games – but everything was all the same. Still, he took the hidden knife as well as the crowbar before he descended the tower again.
The crowbar wedged behind the oversized tinfoil ball, and Newe pulled hard, nearly sending himself tumbling since the foreign object was not stuck as badly as he thought. His balance sent him leaning a little too far out and away from the tower, so he had to reach out quick. He was not thinking about where his hand was going, and it alighted on a sharp edge although it kept him stable and saved him from the deadly fall. Nonetheless, his hand was cut near to the bone, bleeding all down the side of the tower.
Gingerly pulling himself back onto the safe handholds, Newe looked at his hand, which was soaking the anti-radiation suit in red; and he could not help thinking about Tetanus. Only nineteen, the world had been torn to shreds before Newe had received the immunization; and he had not thought to retrieve one from a hospital just after the bombs had fallen. He had finally run out of the luck that had kept him alive for years, but if he could clean out the wound well enough, he might save his own life.
Carefully beginning to descend the tower, Newe barely hear the sound of approaching feet in time to stay at a safe height. He was too concentrated in keeping his balance without using his injured hand, but the surface dwellers were not very good at sneaking up on anything.
“Wha’d’ you want?!” Newe shouted, waving the crowbar like it meant something.
The group, most only a little younger than Newe, snickered and laughed harshly. “Come join us!” one called from amid the group, his voice full of false caring. Then they broke into a chorus of hollers and invitations, all of which were biting with severe sarcasm and malice, but as the called, they came forward, stopping at the base of the tower. None of them were smart enough to climb, yet one stepped forward.
Bedecked in gaudy trinkets that hung about her in ruin, she had the airs of a leader but not the stature for it. She was thin and lanky, almost awkward; and an old biker’s leather helmet smashed down overtop a sheet, which was draped to hide most all her face, obscured whatever shape her head might have been. The rest of her clothes were ripped hideously and held together with makeshift safety pins that were more akin to iron spikes. She held up a hand, covered in patchy leather and thick wire stitches for silence, and the crowd went quiet. With everyone’s full attention, she removed her helmet and cast the sheet off her head so it fell about her shoulders in a fluttering cape.
“Brother, come down from your tower.”
Newe went very silent, for that indeed was his long lost sister, but an evil now resided in her eyes. She had changed into a wild creature over the years that he had not seen her, and he instantly knew it. Therefore, he silently hooked the crowbar into his belt and started back up his tower.
Newe’s sister looked at him with only passing interest, but the others bid her to climb. With merely a thought, she began to clamber up the tower like a monkey would a tree.
Newe had expected this. His sister had been very intelligent, exceptionally more than he was even now. Those smarts, even if they fell through the degeneration, were still at a level higher than his were; so he entertained no doubts about her being able to climb the tower, most likely faster than even he could.
Still, with his thirty-foot head start, Newe got to the top first. Putting all emotions out of his mind and smothering them with logic, Newe pulled out the heaviest tool he had: a sledgehammer. His sister was not looking up since she was too concerned with her handholds, so she would be an easy target. Dropping his tool onto her head, however, was not what he had in mind. Instead, he waited until his sister’s hand came to one handhold strategically marked green.
Then Newe swung the hammer with all his might, and the heavy head smashed into a concealed lever. Because of this, the tower shuddered in protest, a chain-reaction taking place deep within its core; and then a large plate dislodged. Since her anchor points were all connected to this plate, Newe’s sister slid down the side of the tower as metal ground against metal, but she did not scream. All the fear seemed to have gone from her long ago despite all of her remaining intelligence; she only looked up at him with her harsh eyes burning holes deep into him. Even when the plate hit the ground and his sister went tumbling, although was relatively unharmed, Newe felt those holes burning so far in his depths that his soul was smoldering. It hurt him so badly that his sister would come here, taunting him – and those eyes. The malice, that evil stare, was horrible. Newe supposed that someone could have impaled him through the stomach on a rusty spike and it would have hurt less. His sister hated him. It was not because he had done something atrocious but only because he was there, safe from the putrid surface air. She may have been insane, but at least some of her emotions should have survived. Some of the family love should have still been left.
After all, Newe still loved his sister despite her insanity, and he could not bear that glare as she and the group of surface dwellers stalked away. Newe had to avert his eyes, look somewhere off in the dark sky as they disappeared over the horizon. Then he went down, back into his hole in the ground, and sat down on his old, ratty bed.
Newe put his head in his hands and, for some reason, thought of his radio. Its monotonous buzzing was not filling the room, but he could not help thinking about it. Who had he been looking for? His mind had the answer in a second, but he did not acknowledge it, instead searching for a different answer until he found one. He supposed he was looking for a military base or some government installation hiding out in an underground vault, but it was just a lie. Whenever he thought of, or dreamed of, someone calling out across the radio waves, he expected a familiar voice – someone he knew. At the same time, however, he had seen all of his friends die; they had been in New York when the bombs fell. All that was logically left was his family: his researcher father somewhere in an insignificant, unmentioned state, his college professor mother most likely in the university basement shelter, and his sister who had been studying the old hideout escape of previous presidents – some bunker under a new hotel.
Of all his family, Newe expected his sister to survive. Her intelligence should have kept her off the surface, but here she was, just as crazy as everyone else was now. If she had fallen victim to the chemicals, then everyone else must have.
Newe got up off his bed and slowly moved over to his broadcasting desk. The telegraph code key was right there, calling for him to send out one last message; and he suddenly hated it. For all the signs he had given the world to prove he was not dead or insane, no one had answered. The radio waves never answered him when he called out, and the telegraph had failed him. It had done nothing to help him, had done nothing to save his sister.
In fury, Newe ripped the key from the desk and threw it across the room. It crashed against a wall and clattered to the floor, but the radio facing Newe’s back had come to life. The force of the detached key having bumped the sensitive power button on, the sound of static filled the room. A film of red over his eyes, Newe tore the gas mask off his head and threw it away, its small weight crashing into the back of a shelf and sending the cans spilling all over. Then he snatched off his gloves, causing himself severe pain as the torn fabric ripped off a chuck of his torn skin. Lastly, he turned to the radio – that infuriating sound – the fingers of his one hand dripping splashes of red all over as he lunged for the radio set.
He froze inches from the speakers.
The fuzzy sound of a voice came and went back into the static, and Newe tore the frequency sweeper from the knob of the radio. Ear pressed up against the furiously buzzing speaker, he manually scanned the frequencies until the voice came and went again. Gingerly, he tuned the radio, his neglected – and now worsened – hand wound bleeding all over the tuning dial.
Then the fuzzy voice came into focus: “…Sector 42 Coast Guard. Calling all refugees, military shelter available…”
Newe paid no more attention to the words, even as the Coast Guard mentioned the telegraph signal he had sent out yesterday at five o’clock. He had run across the room to retrieve the telegraph key and was frantically reconnecting the wires. From what Newe could remember of the emergency broadcasts just after the bombs falling, sector 42 was where he was; and that same “Sector 42” may have been on the outside of the top hatch. The only problem was he could not remember what was what; all Newe had to go on was that he could hear them.
Before he could start his transmission, however, the voice went silent. Newe’s hands flew through the finishing steps, but the connection was secure. He tapped out a message at lightning speed, adding as many extra letters as he intended to transmit; and then he stopped, listening so intently that he gave himself a headache.
The static droned on, but then came a voice, from the same frequency as the first but sounding unsure. “Copy? Please…erm…repeat transmission.” The voice was young, that of a teenage boy, confused but excited all the same.
Newe, more careful this time, tapped out his message again; and the boy on the other end was overjoyed: “Copy! Message received; what is your location?”
Newe tapped out the answer, and the teenage Coast Guard-in-training left the microphone on as he ran over to the man who had spoken before. Then the older, more experienced voice came back over the radio. “Location confirmed. Rescue vehicles should arrive within two days. Keep radio contact to monitor progress.”
Newe tapped out the end message confirmation and sat back in his chair as the radio faded to static. He was in awe. It was hard for him to believe that this had even happened, but with the gaping wound in his hand giving him a constant reminder, he was not sleeping. Newe smiled at that and understood, for once in his five years of this accursed lifestyle, that he had been wrong about something.
“Everything’s not lost,” he whispered to himself, putting his head down on his folded and blood-covered hands, relief washing over him.