by Harley Tate
Walter searched him as well, pocketing a lighter but finding nothing else of value. He stood and made his way to the man his daughter killed. The one who almost took his baby away from him.
The one thing he lived for more than anything in this world. He would go to the ends of the earth to protect Madison. He bent beside the body, avoiding the now-congealing pool of blood. Fishing in the man’s pockets, Walter struck gold.
A ring of keys. He held them up, using the flashlight to read the label. Communications Building.
Bingo. With the keys on his belt and his rifle at the ready, Walter walked back out of the room. After checking to make sure Brianna still stood guard over Madison and Tucker, he cleared the next room.
“This room is clear.” He motioned for the kids to follow him. “Stay here. I’ll be back when I know the building is secure.”
Brianna ushered Tucker and Madison inside before turning around. “Do you need any help?”
“No. I need you to stay here.”
Brianna nodded.
Madison frowned as she sat down in an empty conference chair, her eyes still cloudy and troubled. In the dim light, the blood blended into her face and she looked almost clean. “Be careful, Dad.”
“I will.”
Walter exited the room and waited until he heard the click of the door lock before exhaling. The kids were safe. He could clear the rest of the building without worrying about them.
The rest of the hall went by in a blur with keys and empty rooms and quiet. He shut the door to the outside and turned to face the interior once more. Based on the map he’d passed, there were only a handful of rooms left.
Walter worked in calm precision, his heart slowing to normal levels as it became evident they were alone. At last, he unlocked the broadcast booth and stepped inside.
The stench of death hit him hard and fast and Walter brought his arm up to his face to shield his nose from the smell. Scanning the room with his flashlight, his heart sank as he landed on the source.
A young woman lay in a heap on the floor, half of her head bashed in, dried blood crusting and flaking from her ashen face. Walter stepped forward and bent to read the ID card hanging from a lanyard around her neck.
Mandy Patterson
Junior, CSU, Chico
He swallowed. Madison was right. Mandy was real and they were too late. His daughter wasn’t the only one who took the chance on finding Mandy and her friends alive. Only the people who came to rescue them weren’t their saviors, but their destruction.
Walter stood up and searched the rest of the room, coming up empty. He didn’t know whether the others had escaped or were killed and dumped somewhere else. It didn’t matter now. Whatever chance Mandy had was gone.
At least he’d killed the people who must have been responsible. Walter said a brief prayer and slung his rifle back over his shoulder before bending to pick her up. He would take her somewhere, lay her to rest as best he could, and go back for Madison and her friends.
They couldn’t save Mandy, but maybe, with Tucker’s help, they could find out what the hell was going on in the rest of the world. A single green light glowed on the panel of controls and knobs in the booth.
The label read, Solar Ready.
After all that had happened that day, that one little blip of light gave Walter hope.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MADISON
Communications Building, CSU Chico
7:00 p.m.
Madison wiped her neck, her own blood tightening as it dried on her skin. If they made it out of the communications building alive, she would find a way to take a shower. This blood would come off. It wouldn’t define her.
Brianna eased down into the chair next to her. “Are you all right?”
Madison glanced over at the roommate to whom she’d never given enough credit. “Yeah. How about you?”
“All things considered, I’m all right.”
“But?”
Brianna kicked at a scuff on the floor. “I should be out there helping your dad. He shouldn’t be clearing a building this large on his own.”
“He’s trying to protect you.”
“He should know by now that I’m capable of protecting myself.”
Madison frowned. “Aren’t you scared? Don’t you question what we’re doing and what’s going on out there that we don’t know about?”
Brianna sat the shotgun on the table behind her and turned back around. She smiled at her boyfriend who sat at the other end of the conference table, fiddling with audio equipment he found in the cabinet on the far wall.
At last, she answered. “I haven’t stopped to think about it. I can’t until we make it to the cabin and I talk to my mom and dad.”
Madison remembered the fear and worry that dominated her thoughts before she reunited with her family. To have that linger and stretch on for weeks… It would have driven her mad. That Brianna channeled it all into this commando girl, able to fight and kill and do anything to survive, made sense in a way.
But it still didn’t quell the rising tide within Madison. She reached behind her and picked up the shotgun Brianna discarded on the table. If she looked carefully enough, she could make out the spatter of blood from her first kill.
“Do you regret it?”
Brianna’s question caught her off-guard and she glanced up. “Killing someone? No.”
She turned the gun over in her hands as she tried to put the teeming ocean of her thoughts into words. “My dad thinks I’m an innocent kid, someone who needs protecting. And in a way, I’ve acted like that. Unsure what to do, brave one minute and terrified the next.”
“That’s to be expected. We’re not soldiers, Madison.”
“I know. But that’s not why I froze back there. I shot that man because I had to. If I didn’t he’d have cut my throat.” She reached up to run her fingers once more along the wound at her neck. The bleeding had stopped quickly, but the gash still hurt.
“I froze because in that moment it hit me: this is the best it’s ever going to get. This right here.”
A clang made Madison jump. Tucker eased out of the chair at the end of the table and reached for a metal spring that rolled across the floor. “You can’t think that. This isn’t forever. Humans are resilient. The power loss is only a temporary setback.”
Madison smiled at Tucker’s optimism, but she no longer shared it. “I wish I could believe you. But I can’t. Not anymore. Look at everything that’s happened to us. Wanda is dead. Drew lost his fiancée and is seriously injured. Peyton is still recovering. And we’ve been lucky.”
“I wouldn’t call getting your house burned down lucky.”
Brianna spoke up. “I agree with Tucker. Sure, we could have faced worse, but we’re alive because we’ve been smart and vigilant, not because of luck.”
“Fine. Maybe I haven’t given us enough credit, but still. No one is coming to help us. No one is going to put society back together. Everything is breaking down.” Madison rubbed her shoulder, bruised from the shotgun blast. “We’re never going to be safe again.”
Tucker leaned back in his chair, focusing on the acoustic ceiling panels as he spoke. “I’m not giving up hope. Until we hear from the government or find out what’s going on in the rest of the country, I’ll be optimistic. For all we know, the East Coast has power. The federal government could be mobilizing right now.”
“No way.” Brianna shook her head until a few stray curls sprang free. “We would have heard or seen something.”
“You know how slow the government is to do anything. It could take months for aid to reach us from across the country.” Tucker tucked his shaggy hair behind his ear. “I’m not giving up until we have proof.”
Madison opened her mouth to respond when three short chirps interrupted. “Dad!” She jumped up and rushed to the door, unlocking it and pulling it wide as quickly as possible.
Her father stood in the doorway with an unreadable expression. “The building is clear.
” He glanced down at the shotgun still in her hand and frowned. “Are you okay?”
Madison nodded. “Did you find anyone else?”
He stepped into the room, shoulders drooping and aging him a decade in a single breath. “We were too late.”
A block of cement wedged in Madison’s throat.
“Mandy was real?” It was Tucker’s turn to voice the fears they all felt inside.
Madison’s father nodded. “I don’t know if she was with the people who attacked us, but it doesn’t seem likely. She had a CSU Chico ID. The others…” His lips quirked in disgust. “Meth heads, most likely. They won’t be a problem anymore.”
“What about Mandy’s friends? She said on the broadcast there were five of them.”
Her father ran his hand over his head, mussing up the strands. “No sign of them. She could have been lying in an effort to dissuade thugs from finding her. Five college kids are harder to overpower than one. Or they could have fled. I don’t know.”
He raised his head and met Madison’s stare. “I’m sorry I doubted you, honey. We should have come sooner.”
Madison shook her head. “Don’t apologize. You were right. We shouldn’t have come. It was a mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Her father’s face brightened for the first time since stepping into the room. “Everyone grab your things. I’ve found something.”
Thirty minutes later, Madison, her father, and Brianna all crowded around Tucker as he worked the radio controls. Madison couldn’t begin to understand half of the lingo Tucker spewed out as he flipped switches and pushed buttons, but it didn’t matter if he could turn the radio booth into a receiver.
“You really think this will work?”
“Yes. The antenna on the roof is massive. If I can just figure this out, we should be able to pick up anyone broadcasting on the West Coast. We might reach a whole lot farther. Hold on.”
Tucker rotated a knob and flipped another switch. “I’m betting if anyone is broadcasting, it’s over AM, but we’ll pick up a bunch of interference since the sun has set. And if the effects of the space weather are still in the atmosphere, who knows what we’ll get.”
Madison squinted at the radio. “The sun can disrupt AM radio?”
Tucker nodded without turning around. “AM radio in the United States is all short and medium wave. These types of sound waves travel in a straight line from the broadcast source until they hit the ionosphere, a layer of our atmosphere a few hundred miles above sea level.”
He bent down and fiddled with a cable beneath the controls before popping back up and continuing. “During the day, the ionosphere is full of free electrons from the sun’s rays, and when an AM station is broadcasting, the waves it spits out hit the lower level of the ionosphere and bounce back to the ground.”
Tucker paused to flip another switch. “But at night, the sun isn’t there to ionize the atmosphere, so the lower layers of the ionosphere lose enough free electrons for an AM radio wave to penetrate further. When the electrons higher up in the layer encounter an AM wave, they oscillate at the frequency of the wave.”
With another push of a button, the control panel began to glow. Tucker spun around in the chair with a smile on his face. “Think of it like a skywave instead of a groundwave. During the day, we’re limited by the sun’s effects, but at night, we can harness the atmosphere to broadcast for thousands of miles in the right conditions.”
Madison shook her head. She had no idea the radio she grew up scrolling through in her parents’ car and the one she listened to in the greenhouse at UC Davis were built on so much science. “Did you learn all of this in your astrophysics classes?”
Tucker shook his head. “No. My dad was a HAM radio operator. It’s actually because of him that I’m into astrophysics at all.” The corners of Tucker’s smile slipped as he mentioned his father.
“Sorry.” Madison tried not to bring up Tucker’s parents. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like losing the pair of them as a kid.
“It’s okay.” He brightened. “Let’s see if this works, shall we?” Tucker turned back around and reached for a knob, twisting it until a burst of static filled the station.
Madison’s father patted Tucker on the back. “Good job, Tucker.”
“Did you know this would work?”
Her father shrugged. “I thought it might. I’m not an expert like Tucker here, but thanks to all the international flights I’ve been on lately, I’ve learned a bit more about radio waves and how they function.” He turned back to the control panel. “Now we have to hope someone is out there.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WALTER
Communications Building, CSU Chico
9:00 p.m.
The first hint of static transforming into voices sent Walter’s stomach straight into his throat.
“—inside Saddleback College. It’s bad down here. Stores are all looted. Everything’s either on fire or burned to the ground or smashed into bits. A bunch of military came and blocked off Los Angeles. We can’t get in and they aren’t letting anyone out.”
Walter swallowed. He knew what those barricades were like.
“San Diego’s the same way. They haven’t come down as far as Mission Viejo, I guess we’re not important enough.” The man broadcasting let out a half-snort, half-laugh. “My friend Ricky went up to the barricades yesterday, trying to learn something about his parents inside. He got a gun pointed at him and told to back off or he’d have a bullet in his chest.”
The man paused and Walter exhaled. It was the same across the entire state of California. No power. No assistance. Nothing but barricades and a bunch of national guardsmen scared shitless and without pay.
“We need help. Food and water and an explanation for what the hell happened. Where is our president? Our governor? Shouldn’t they be on the radio? Shouldn’t we have heard by now? We can’t be the only radio station running on solar power, can we? Again, this is Jake from Saddleback College.”
Tucker clicked the dial. It didn’t take long to find another voice.
“—saying years. That can’t be true, can it? No power for years? If it weren’t for the wind turbines up here we wouldn’t have anything. How will we survive without power? We’re only sixty miles outside of Portland. When I stand out on my porch at night, I can still see the fires burning. Those people can’t survive much longer.”
The woman’s voice cracked on the last word and she paused. Walter reached out and took his daughter’s hand. The entire West Coast was in the dark. He’d seen it from up in the air, but he knew Madison held out hope.
“Will the government let people starve? Will they step in to help or just hide somewhere and do nothing? I can’t believe this is America. We used to stand for something. Believe in something. Now…”
Tucker moved the knob and the woman’s voice faded into static. “Let’s see if we can find someone farther east. I don’t know how long of a charge the solar panels have. Without the sun shining, we could run out soon.”
Walter nodded and waited as Tucker scrolled through more static and more voices, moving on when they determined the station was still on the West Coast.
“Wait! Go back!” Brianna spoke up for the first time in a long while. “I thought they said Chicago.”
Tucker clicked back slowly until a voice filtered back through.
“The mayor declared martial law, but it’s not doing any good. Every drug dealer and petty criminal in this town has a gun, but none of the good people do. We’re barricaded in our homes and offices. Trapped. I heard the police are leaving. The national guard are abandoning their posts. The grocery store on the corner still has food, but the owner won’t take cash. He’s demanding crazy things like prescription drugs and gasoline and fuel. What twenty-something has a spare can of gasoline in his apartment?”
Walter glanced at his daughter. The muscles in her jaw twitched as she ground her teeth together. Was she angry? Sad? In shock? Walter wanted to com
fort her, but he didn’t know how. He squeezed her hand.
“I thought about bartering with my half bottle of Xanax, but then I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t just keep it. When the food runs out, a bottle of pills and a bottle of scotch might not be a bad way to go. So much for living the good life. A job in the Loop, an apartment with a view of Lake Michigan, and I’m going to die because the power won’t turn back on.”
He laughed, cold and hollow. “So much for all this modern technology! My boss rigged the solar panels so that we could broadcast in the event of an emergency, but he didn’t think to hook them up to anything but the damn transmitter! So here I am, a radio DJ, sitting in the dark, talking to no one until my luck runs out. This is Billy D, broadcasting from the heart of Chicago.”
Tucker turned down the volume. “Now we know it’s as far as Chicago.”
“And it doesn’t sound good.” Tucker reached for Brianna’s hand and held it, his eyes as full of fear and confusion as those of his friends.
Walter wished he could do something to show these kids they would make it. But he didn’t know where to begin. If what all these broadcasters said was true, it didn’t matter how far they ran or how long they waited. At some point, they would have to accept that society as they knew it was gone.
He nodded toward the controls. “Let’s try a few more. It’s pitch black out now. We might get lucky and find some broadcasts from the East Coast.”
Tucker slipped his hand out of Brianna’s and turned back around. After fidgeting with the knob for a few minutes, he landed on a promising voice.
“Again this is Sergeant Lee Branson, I’m a 25Q with the 63rd ESB out of Fort Stewart.”
Walter interjected. “Fort Stewart’s in Georgia.”
The three kids leaned in to listen.
“I’m broadcasting on a modified HCLOS radio hooked up to my Humvee. I don’t know how long I can broadcast before they find me and bring me back, but I swore an oath when I enlisted to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I’m aiming to uphold that oath to the best of my ability.”