Chapter 4 The Tower Light #2
Nell stood near the desk, cooler at her feet now, watching Otto work.
He noticed and tried for a smile.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“Good.”
“I can probably get the receiver scanning.”
“Bad?”
“The microphone cord has been cut, the transmitter panel smells like a toaster full of pennies, and there are bullet holes in the sideband unit.”
Nell frowned.
“Why would someone shoot a radio?”
“Historically? Panic, ignorance, or a sincere objection to country music.”
Rosa glanced back from the door.
“Otto.”
“Right. Not the time.”
Dane stood beside Otto and looked down at the equipment as if staring hard enough would make it translate itself.
“What do you need?”
“Power, time, and fewer bullet holes.”
“Pick two.”
“Power and time.”
“You have one.”
Otto pushed his glasses up and began stripping the cut microphone cord with a pocketknife.
“Then I choose power and lie about time.”
Outside, Elias coaxed the generator. It coughed once, twice, failed, then turned over with a rough metallic bark that set the tower wires humming. Lights flickered fully awake inside the relay room. Fans began to spin in the racks. Somewhere behind a panel, a relay clicked like teeth.
Otto almost kissed the equipment.
“Hello, beautiful.”
Rosa made a face.
“That’s the first thing you’ve sounded confident about.”
“Machines are less emotionally punitive than people.”
“Machines kill people all the time.”
“Yes, but rarely through conversation.”
The receiver crackled. Static filled the room, rising and falling like waves over rocks. Otto adjusted the dial slowly. Voices appeared in fragments and vanished.
“—northbound blocked—”
Static.
“—children, please, if anyone—”
Static.
“—Milemen corridor tax applies west of—”
Static.
Dane’s head lifted.
Rosa turned from the door.
Otto adjusted the dial back, but the signal was gone.
“They’re on multiple frequencies,” Otto said. “That means repeaters. Organization.”
“We noticed,” Rosa said.
Nell crouched beside the cooler.
“Find Harbor Nine.”
“I am trying.”
He scanned lower. Static. A burst of music so warped it might have been a hymn or an alarm.
A man speaking Spanish too fast for Dane to catch more than every fourth word.
An automated weather warning still cheerfully reporting flash flood risk for counties that had no functioning county governments left.
Then, faintly, a woman’s voice emerged through the static.
“—Pacific medical refuge Harbor Nine receiving on emergency band seven-two. Repeat, Harbor Nine remains under controlled quarantine. Medical personnel, immune anomaly cases, and verified transport teams may request approach protocol. Unauthorized arrivals will be turned away from outer perimeter.”
No one breathed.
Otto froze with his hand on the dial.
The woman’s voice repeated, weaker this time.
“Harbor Nine remains under controlled quarantine. All immune anomaly cases must declare condition prior to arrival. Concealment will be treated as biosecurity threat.”
The signal faded into static.
Nell whispered, “Real.”
Rosa’s face had gone tight, but not with relief. Dane understood. Real was not the same as safe. Sometimes real was worse because it could make people walk willingly toward cages.
Otto adjusted the receiver.
“I can transmit if I bypass the damaged panel, but the signal will be ugly.”
“How ugly?” Dane asked.
“Like a dying robot yelling through a blanket.”
“Will they hear it?”
“Maybe.”
Rosa stepped away from the door.
“What do we say?”
The question entered the room and changed its temperature.
Nell stood.
“We say we’re coming.”
Dane shook his head.
“We don’t give names. We don’t give route. We don’t say what truck.”
“They need to know I’m—”
“No,” Dane said.
Nell’s eyes flashed.
“You heard them. Immune cases have to declare.”
“You declare when we can see the gate, not two thousand miles out over a frequency anyone can listen to.”
“I’m tired of everyone deciding when I exist.”
Rosa opened her mouth, then closed it.
Otto looked between them, hands hovering over the radio controls as if the machine itself might intervene.
Nell took one step toward Dane.
“Dr. Quist died getting me out of that clinic. He didn’t die so I could hide behind code words because you don’t trust anyone.”
Dane felt the hit of Quist’s name. She knew he would. That made it hurt differently.
“Quist died because men came looking for you after someone learned enough to ask the wrong questions.”
“Then what’s the point of Harbor Nine if we don’t tell them?”
“The point is getting you there alive.”
“And after that? What if they don’t let us in because we lied?”
Dane did not answer fast enough.
Nell’s voice shook, but she forced the words through.
“What if they let the cooler in and not me? What if they call me an anomaly and put me in a room and everyone says it’s necessary? You keep telling me to decide, but every decision I make becomes too dangerous as soon as you don’t like it.”
Rosa moved closer to Nell, not touching her.
“She’s right about one thing.”
Dane looked at her.
“Only one?”
Rosa ignored the tone.
“If Harbor Nine’s signal is real, they might have patrols, outposts, people monitoring corridors. They might also shoot us dead for arriving wrong. We need approach protocol.”
“We ask without details.”
Nell stared at him.
“You mean you ask.”
“No,” Rosa said.
The word surprised everyone, including her.
She looked at Nell.
“You speak. But we do it carefully. You don’t give your full name. You don’t explain the blood serum. You say we have a possible immune survivor and need safe approach instructions. That is your decision and our caution in the same sentence.”
Dane wanted to object. The objection was ready. It sat on his tongue, heavy and practiced. Then he saw Nell watching him not like a child waiting for permission, but like someone waiting to learn what his word was worth.
He looked at Otto.
“Can you make it brief?”
“I can make it brief. Whether the radio makes it comprehensible is between physics and God.”
Elias’s voice came from outside.
“You all might want to hurry.”
Dane went to the door.
The hill below the tower was moving.
At first it seemed like wind in the fields.
Then the shapes separated under the last strip of daylight—infected coming through the wet stalks, drawn by the generator, the tower light, the faint noise of human voices carrying downhill.
Dozens. Maybe more beyond the first rise.
Not running, but steady. The kind of steady that turned distance into a promise.
Rosa saw them over Dane’s shoulder.
“How long?”
“Ten minutes before the fence,” Dane said. “Less if they climb over each other.”
Otto swallowed hard and handed Nell the repaired microphone.
“Press the side button when you talk. Short sentences. Pretend you are ordering a pizza from the moon.”
Nell took it with both hands. The microphone looked too large against her fingers.
Dane came back inside but stayed near the door.
Otto adjusted the transmitter, jaw clenched.
“Ready in three, two—now.”
Nell pressed the button.
“Harbor Nine, this is westbound medical transport requesting approach protocol.”
Static swallowed the room.
Otto motioned for her to continue.
“We have a possible immune survivor and medical samples. We are not military. We are not Milemen. We need instructions.”
She released the button.
The static returned, endless and indifferent.
Rosa whispered, “Again.”
Nell pressed the button.
“Harbor Nine, westbound medical transport requesting safe approach instructions. Possible immune survivor on board. Please respond.”
The receiver hissed.
Outside, the generator rattled. The infected moaned downhill in gathering layers, one voice becoming many.
Otto adjusted the dial, sweat shining on his forehead.
“Come on. Come on, somebody be alive and competent.”
The radio popped.
A man’s voice came through, faint but clear enough.
“Westbound medical transport, Harbor Nine relay copy partial. State authentication code.”
Nell looked at Rosa.
Rosa looked at Dane.
Dane said nothing.
Otto mouthed, authentication code?
Nell pressed the button.
“We don’t have one.”
Static.
Then the man again, colder.
“Unauthorized medical transport, state authentication code or identify sponsoring agency.”
Dane stepped forward and reached for the microphone.
Nell pulled it back.
She pressed the button.
“The doctor who sent us was Harlan Quist from Sallow Creek, Nebraska. He said your labs could use what he made. He died getting us out. I don’t have a code. I have his cooler.”
Rosa closed her eyes.
Dane stared at the floor.
The static stretched so long that the dead outside seemed to fill it.
Then a different voice came through. Female. Older. Controlled.
“Transport, repeat physician name.”
Nell’s hand trembled.
“Dr. Harlan Quist.”
A pause.
“Is the patient ambulatory?”
Nell looked confused.
Rosa whispered, “Can you walk?”
Nell pressed the button.
“Yes.”
“Has the patient shown aggression, fever, tissue necrosis, or cognitive degradation?”
Nell’s face hardened.
“I’m holding the microphone, so no.”
Otto made a strangled sound that might have been terror or admiration.
The female voice returned after a beat.
“Transport, maintain westward movement. Avoid major interstates. Approach protocol will be transmitted when within two hundred miles of outer perimeter. Do not use open bands to disclose route. Do not surrender patient or samples to military remnants, corridor authorities, private militias,
or refugee compounds. Do you understand?”
Dane slowly lifted his eyes.
Rosa whispered, “Corridor authorities.”
“The Milemen,” Otto said.
Nell pressed the button.
“We understand.”
“Transport, be advised. Multiple unauthorized groups are actively seeking immune anomaly cases. Harbor Nine cannot provide extraction east of the Sierra line. Repeat, cannot provide extraction. You must reach the Sierra line independently.”
Rosa’s mouth tightened.
“Of course.”
Nell pressed the button again.
“What happens when we get there?”
Static answered first.
Then the woman said, “If viable, patient will be evaluated under quarantine protection.”
Nell did not release the button.