“Just like hot-wiring a Mustang,” he murmured contemplatively. “Used to be able to do it in under eight seconds. Beemers took longer, ‘vettes kind of in-between.”
Reese didn’t understand. “Is that good?”
This time Wright did reply, though without looking up from or pausing in his work.
“Owners didn’t care much for it.” Concluding the rewiring, he started to bring one color against another, then paused to smile softly at the girl. “You want to see some magic, Star?” She stared back at him. “Don’t look at me like that. Make yourself useful. Press the button.” He held out the radio. “This one here. See if you can make it come alive.”
The radio was cheap and its speaker crummy, but the static that crackled from it as he adjusted the tuner was as welcome as any music any of them had ever heard.
The girl’s mouth and eyes widened as she stared at the device. The look she then turned on Wright was so penetrating and adoring that he was forced to turn away. Caught in her stare of childlike wonder, he had for just an instant forgotten who he was. That was not only dangerous, it was unwarranted.
Wright advanced the dial one tiny increment at a time, not wanting to chance skipping over the faintest, most distant signal.
Static. More static. Nothing but static.
Wright saw the youth’s expression fall, watched his shoulders slump. He was just as disappointed as the lanky teen, but there was nothing he could do about it. In a life that had been filled with disappointment the silence of the radio was just one more. Used to dealing with disillusionment, he would handle this latest bout as stolidly as he had all that had preceded it.
As for the kid, well, he had obviously learned how to cope with worse. He would deal with this, or he wouldn’t. Either way, Wright figured, it wasn’t his problem.
Reaching the end of the dial, his expression set, he starting turning the knob back. As if in his careful search he might somehow have missed something. Static, rising and falling. The music of nothingness and nowhere.
Unexpectedly, a scratchy voice emerged from the speaker. Stunned, Wright nearly forgot to stop turning the knob. Doing his best to fine-tune the reception, he had to settle for turning up the volume. The distant words remained faint but intelligible.
“...the effective range of their main weapon is less than 100 meters. Your best plan is to outrun them.”
Weak as the reception was, the speaker’s assurance still came through clearly. Without really knowing what was going on or what had happened to the world he once knew, Wright found himself drawn to the spokesman’s voice. You could tell a lot about someone not only from how they carried themselves but from how they carried their vowels.
“This guy sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Who is it?”
Equally fascinated by the confident transmission, Reese could only stare at the radio and shake his head.
“I don’t know.”
As for Star, she did not care about the words that were being spoken. She did not begin to understand everything that was being said.
What mattered to the nine-year old was that somewhere, someplace, there were still others.
It had become an intermittent but highly anticipated ritual. Scattered across what remained of the western United States and parts of northern Mexico, groups of survivors gathered together to listen to the unscheduled broadcasts on motley assortments of cobbled-together radios and amateur receivers. No dearly lamented sports play-by-play, no important political speech, no jocular social commentary or international reportage was ever listened to with the rapt attention that the still-living paid to those sporadic transmissions. Knobs were turned, wires pressed together, components coddled, speakers constantly cleaned as the often intermittent, sometimes scratchy, but always mesmerizing voice of John Connor resounded through crumbling buildings, desert canyons, dense forests, and shattered lives.
“If you can’t outrun them,” declared the by now familiar voice as it spoke from its unidentified location, “you have one or two options.”
Somewhere in Utah, a group of bedraggled citizens huddled closer around a campfire, listening intently.
“The T-600s are large and pack a lot of firepower, but they’re a primitive design.” Connor’s voice hissed from the remnants of a radio.
***
In a cave in New Mexico, the senior male present stretched skyward a hand holding a makeshift antennae, fighting for every iota of improvement in the sound his family’s scavenged equipment was receiving.
“The small of the back and the shoulder joints are vulnerable to light weapons fire. As a last resort, ventilation requirements leave the motor cortex partially exposed at the back of the neck. A knife to this area will slow them down. But not for long.”
Sitting in front of the broadcast unit in the outpost, Connor halted. Many times he had delivered the irregular evening address. Many times he had fought to find the right things to say. He was not a comfortable speaker, not a natural orator. He did not intuitively know how to reassure people, how to comfort them, how to offer hope. Practice alone had made him better at it.
Practice, and necessity. Still, there were times when he just came to a dead end; out of words, out of thoughts, out of encouragement.
It was at such times that a comforting hand on his shoulder was of more help than volumes of instruction on public speaking. Seeing Kate smiling down at him enabled him to resume transmitting.
“Each and every one of you....” he continued.
Huddled around a fire near the ruins of the observatory, two determined children and one very mystified adult found themselves captivated by the broadcast.
