Ashen Winter

by Mike Mullin

  The little girl I’d grabbed in the middle of the night turned out to be named Lisa. Her mother had gotten pulled away from her in the crush of fleeing people. The only good tears I saw that day were the ones when mother and daughter were reunited.

  Hoping for Black Lake to take action seemed futile, so we spent an exhausting day preparing for the night to follow. We organized more fighters, distributed captured knives, and made plans for refugees to flee to the protected zone at the center of the camp if the DWBs came again. I had no time to do anything about my escape plan amid the rush to prepare for another attack.

  Dad planned for everyone on defensive patrols to sleep in the late afternoon. We would need our sleep if the camp got attacked again. But organizing and getting cleaned up took far longer than it should have. By nightfall, neither Dad nor I had had so much as a nap. We were drunk with exhaustion. If the DWBs came again that night, we’d be useless.

  So of course they did.

  Chapter 67

  One of the prefects Dad had assigned to watch the gate sprinted up to us. I was out of breath myself, having just returned from running orders to a patrol on the far side of the camp. What the scout said made further orders irrelevant.

  “DWBs, sir.” The woman was gasping, out of breath. “Just came through the main gate.”

  “How many?” Dad barked.

  “Just two so far.”

  The three of us ran back toward the gate.

  Trey was there, carrying one dirty plastic WalMart bag in his left hand and two in his right. A guy I didn’t recognize was with him. They sauntered toward the center of the camp like they didn’t have a care in the world, but I could see two separate groups of prefects shadowing them at a distance. I caught Trey’s eyes darting sideways and realized the truth: That huge muscle-bound dude was scared out of his mind.

  “Stop!” Dad ordered them.

  They stopped.

  “You brought our radio?”

  Trey lifted one of the WalMart bags. “Shortwave transceiver.” He hefted the other two. “Batteries.”

  Dad strode up to them, his eyes shifting warily from Trey to the other guy. I followed along. He took the bags from Trey.

  “You going to flense us now?” Trey asked. His eyes darted from me to Dad.

  “Why’d you decide to hand over a radio?” Dad asked.

  “You kicked our asses yesterday. If it was up to me, we’d come back with shotguns and street sweepers and wipe this latrine pit off the map. But it’s not up to me.”

  “You’re not allowed to bring in guns, are you?”

  “Nope. Some kind of candy-ass deal between the guards and Wolfe.”

  “Wolfe?”

  “He’s the captain. Guy who told me to bring you this here radio.”

  “I’m surprised the guards let the radio through.”

  “You bribe the right guard, you can get almost anything in. Except guns. So you going to skin us? Or keep your bargain?”

  “What bargain?” I said. “By attacking us last night, you broke whatever bargain there was.”

  “Told Wolfe not to trust the cattle.” Trey shrugged, making an effort at being nonchalant, but his shoulders were trembling.

  Dad said, “Let’s see if the radio works.” Then he called out to the prefects, “Hold these two here for now.”

  I carried the radio to our tent. Dad got out the flashlight and started shaking it while I dumped the bags on my bedroll.

  When the flashlight was charged, Dad held it on the radio. I grabbed the pair of wires coming out the back: one red, one black. They were greasy, as if they’d been installed in a car at some point. “Does it matter which one connects where?” I said, eyeing the terminals on the battery.

  “It matters,” Dad replied. “If it’s like jumper cables, the red wire is positive and the black is negative. Hook up the positive side first.”

  “I can’t tell which side of the battery is positive.”

  “Should be printed on the casing.” Dad aimed the shake light at the battery.

  The terminal labels were embossed into the plastic battery case. There was no obvious way to connect the wires to the battery. They terminated in a strip of bare copper wire—there were no alligator clips.

  I held onto the insulated part of the red wire, pushing the copper lead against the positive battery terminal. When I pushed the black against the other terminal, sparks flew, searingly bright in the dim tent, and I dropped both wires.

  “Least we know the battery’s good,” Dad said wryly.

  “Is it supposed to do that?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine. Try the other battery. And just hold them there a minute so I can see if the radio works.”

  The black lead sparked again, but once I had it firmly against the terminal, it quit.

  “Here goes nothing,” Dad said, pushing the power button. Nothing happened.

  “Bum radio?”

  “Don’t know.” Dad pushed down the button again, holding it a couple of seconds this time. The radio crackled to life, and a staticky hiss filled our little tent. He dialed through the channels quickly but picked up nothing.

  He pulled the mic off the side of the radio and depressed the lever. “Any idea how to check if this thing works?”

  “Not a clue,” I said. “Ben might know. It looks like some kind of military radio. He’s gaga over anything military.”

  “That meltdown the other day didn’t inspire my confidence.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  Dad spoke into the mic, “Hello, hello, anyone there?” When he let up on the lever, the staticky hiss resumed. He shrugged. “Let’s get some sleep. I’ll take you off the patrol rotation tomorrow. You and Ben can try to raise someone on this thing. Might be more likely to reach someone during the day, anyway.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Jones!” Dad yelled. “Round up all the DWBs we’ve got and march them to the front gate. Let ’em go, and then keep a sharp watch to make sure nobody else comes in.”

  “Yes, sir!” Jones yelled from outside the tent.

  Dad started pulling off his boots. “G’night, son.”

  “’Night, Dad.”

  • • •

  The next morning, I searched out Ben and told him about the radio. He practically ran back to the tent Dad and I shared. Alyssa and I trailed along behind him.

  When we caught up to him, Ben had folded his arms and was giving the radio a dubious stare. “That’s not a military radio.”

  “It says Yaesu FT-897,” I said, reading the label at the top of the transceiver.

  “That is not a military designation.”

  “Okay, Ben, but can we contact someone on it?”

  “Maybe. It looks a little bit like an AN/PRC-70.”

  “Can you run it?”

  “Run it?”

  “Operate it?” Alyssa said.

  “Maybe. I read the operator’s manual for the AN/PRC-70 once. But this doesn’t look exactly the same.”

  “Can you try?” I asked.

  “I do not think I should,” Ben said.

  “Why not?”

  “An AN/PRC-70 will be damaged if the operator attempts to transmit without an antenna.”

  “We ran it briefly last night. Is it wrecked?”

  “I do not know. But an AN/PRC-70 will not operate without an antenna. This radio probably will not operate without an antenna, either. Where is the antenna?”

  Chapter 68

  I had to ask three different prefects for directions, and even then wound up running halfway around the camp to find Dad.

  “What’s wrong?” he said as I huffed up.

  “The DWBs,” I replied. “They ripped us off. That transceiver is no good without an antenna.”

  Dad sighed heavily. “That’s as much fun as a failed backflow preventer. Nothing to be done for it, I guess.”

  “Couldn’t we make an antenna?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. What does Ben say about it?”
/>
  “He doesn’t know how. But I was thinking, there are what, twenty thousand people in this camp?”

  “Almost thirty thousand.”

  “Someone’s got to know something about radios.”

  “Yeah. A ham radio operator. Or electrical engineer. I’ll organize the prefects to ask everyone.”

  I spent the rest of the morning going from tent to tent, asking everyone I could find if they knew anything about radios. All over camp, other prefects were doing the same thing. When we were asked why we wanted a radio expert, we told folks we were trying to turn some old cell phones into radios. We had two cell phones we could surrender to Black Lake if they got wind of the project. They were worthless—none of the cell transmission towers had worked since the first day of the eruption more than ten months ago.

  Early in the afternoon, a prefect found me. “The Dean wants you. We found a ham radio guy.”

  When I got back to the tent, Dad was standing outside with Jones, talking to an older guy with a salt-and-pepper beard peeking from under his scarves. He stood out because his beard was neatly trimmed—most guys let them run wild since personal grooming was a lot more challenging without safety razors, hot water, or electricity. Not that I had to worry about it. I grew just enough wispy facial hair to look stupid, but not enough to bother shaving.

  “Oh hey, Alex,” Dad said. “This is Ken Bandy.”

  We shook hands as Dad continued, “Alex doesn’t have a formal role in the prefects yet, so I’ll assign him to help you.” That “yet” was interesting. Not that I wanted a role. I wanted to get out of here already.

  “Help me what?” Ken asked.

  “I’ll show you. But first I want it understood that you can’t reveal what’s inside this tent to anyone, not even your wife.”

  “Got it. But how long are you going to need me for?”

  “I don’t know. A few days.”

  “I can’t leave Carol alone that long.”

  “Jones,” Dad said. “Organize a three-person, twenty-four-hour guard detail for Mr. Bandy’s wife until he’s done here.”

  “Roger,” she replied and left.

  Dad ushered Ken and me into the tent.

  “Is that? It is!” Ken knelt by the transceiver. “A Yaesu. Nice model, too. Probably would have set you back $800 before the eruption. I can’t imagine what it’d cost now. What kind of antenna do you have?”

  “We don’t,” I replied.

  “Nice boat anchor you’ve got, then.”

  “Couldn’t we build an antenna?”

  “You have an antenna tuner?”

  “Um, no.”

  “You don’t want much, do you?”

  “Can you do it?”

  Ken rubbed his fingers together. “Maybe. What frequency do you want to transmit on?”

  I shrugged. “You tell me.”

  “Well, how far do you want to transmit?”

  “Can we reach Washington?”

  “With a good antenna, sure, no problem. Twenty meters would probably work best. I might be able to make a dipole antenna, but without a tuner . . . I don’t know.”

  “What do you need?”

  Ken was silent for a moment. “Forty or fifty feet of copper wire, any gauge will do. Co-ax cable. Fifty feet should do. Two six-foot copper grounding rods. Enough posts to suspend the whole antenna thirty feet off the ground.”

  I looked at Dad. “Where are we going to get all that stuff? And how are we going to put an antenna that high up without the guards noticing?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter 69

  Getting the supplies turned out to be much easier than I’d anticipated. A lot of the refugees had been rounded up on the road while they tried to flee the disaster zone. They’d fashioned crude tents with whatever came to hand, and FEMA had allowed them to keep their improvised tents when they’d entered the camp. For some of them, the best raw materials available had been items ripped out of their homes. Wire torn out of walls—both electrical and co-ax—served as crude cordage for guy lines. Copper pipes substituted for tent poles. The prefects fanned out across the camp again, looking for the materials we needed and arranging replacements or tent upgrades for refugees who allowed us to take parts from their shelters.

  While I searched for materials, I also kept an eye out for unused canvas. Unfortunately, tent materials were at a premium—all the canvas in camp appeared to be in use. I wasn’t sure how I could manage to steal an occupied tent. Maybe Ben would have an idea.

  We didn’t find a forty-foot length of wire, of course. We had to splice it together from dozens of scraps, joining each chunk with its neighbor with the tightest twist we could manage. One of the prefects found a family using chunks of a tailor’s cloth measuring tape as improvised belts—an invaluable find since Ken wanted the wire measured precisely. He did a bunch of calculations in the snow outside, muttering something about 468 megahertz to himself. When he finished, he told us to make each of the two legs of the antenna sixteen feet, ten inches long. With all the splices, Ken said he’d be shocked if it worked. The co-ax cable was even harder to splice than the copper without connectors or tape.

  We used six-foot lengths of copper pipe as grounds, driving them into the earth by pounding on them with heavy rocks. The ends of the soft copper pipes belled out, and we couldn’t get them driven more than a few feet into the frozen ground. It was as good as the rest of the hap-hazard setup, I guessed.

  Raising a thirty-four-foot antenna thirty feet off the ground proved to be impossible. We simply didn’t have any poles long enough. Plus, an antenna that tall would be visible from the guard shack—a risk we couldn’t take. Instead we strung the antenna across the tops of the tallest tents. Ken wanted it thirty feet high—he got about eight.

  By evening, we were ready to try it. Ken, Ben, and I crowded into the tent while Dad and some prefects kept watch outside. Ken slowly turned the dial on the transceiver, listening to static and squeals with the silent intensity of a priest at prayer.

  He’d been at it fifteen or twenty minutes when something occurred to me. “Why don’t you call out? Maybe someone’s listening but not transmitting.”

  “Transmitting takes more than twenty times the juice as listening. We’ve only got the two batteries, right? Which do you want? Four hours of transmitting, or eighty of listening?”

  “Oh.” That made sense.

  More than an hour passed before Ken gave up scanning. “I really can’t tell if this is working without an antenna tuner or an SWR meter. Maybe the antenna is too long. Go trim an inch off each side. That’ll change its harmonics, maybe even help.”

  Cutting the copper wire without proper tools was a pain. I had to get the end of the antenna down off a tent, lay the wire against a brick, score it with a knife, and then bend it back and forth until it broke. Ben came along to help, holding the shake light for me. Still, it seemed like it took a long time.

  Ken spent another hour scanning channels, then sent me back out to trim the antenna again. Almost immediately upon my return, we heard a voice.

  “Peace with the Lord, for the hour of judgment is upon you.”

  A huge grin cracked Ken’s face wide open. “Damn, can’t believe this spitwad setup actually works.” He picked up the mic. “CQ, CQ this is station KJØB, Maquoketa.”

  “Welcome to our newest listeners!” the voice crackled back. “Sit back, relax, and hear the words of the Lord. Please keep the frequency clear of transmissions out of courtesy to our other listeners.”

  Ken started to lift the mic back to his mouth, but Ben took it from him and laid it on top of the radio. The voice continued, “Welcome, listeners, to our 127th broadcast of the Hour of Judgment, the radio program with all the answers you need for surviving purgatory, so you, too, can be called up to sit by His side when Jesus returns. I’m your host, Pastor Manny, coming to you from Crooked Lake, Florida. Our opening reading for today’s show is from the Book of Matthew, chapter
24, verses 21 and 22: ‘For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.’”

  “This guy’s a lid,” Ken said. “He hasn’t even given his call sign.”

  I had no idea what he meant by a lid, but it didn’t seem important. I picked up the mic.

  “He said to keep the channel clear,” Ben said.

  “Whatever.” I mashed down the push-to-talk switch on the mic and said, “Come in Pastor Manny, come in.”

  Pastor Manny kept right on reading from Matthew.

  “He can’t hear you when he’s transmitting,” Ken said.

  “Oh.” That presented a bit of a problem. Pastor Manny barely paused to take a breath, let alone long enough to let me talk. We listened to him talk about Matthew’s end-of-times predictions for ten minutes or more. Then Pastor Manny announced a reading from Revelations, and our speakers filled with static. Maybe he was hunting for the right verse.

  I pushed in the switch again. “Pastor Manny, come in, Pastor Manny.”

  “You’re acting like a lid, too,” Ken said. I ignored him.

  The static ceased “Another new listener? How wonderful. Please keep the channel clear out of consideration for our listeners.”

  “This is urgent. I need to contact someone in the government. Maybe FEMA.”

  “Put not your trust in princes.’”

  “This is urgent. People are disappearing.”

  “Son, I asked you nicely to keep the frequency clear.”

  “Do you even have any other listeners? Why aren’t they transmitting?”

  “Of course I do. They’re far more courteous than you.”

  “How do you know? That anyone else is listening if they never talk?”

  “I prayed on it, of course. Ah, here’s the next reading, Revelations, chapter thirteen.”

  He read breathlessly for another ten minutes. He was an excellent reader—hollering and whispering, changing his voice to suit the words. I might have been impressed if I weren’t so pissed off.