12. No Signal
No Signal
Solace
Dreaming of Jude was like standing in a desert.
With desperation clenched around my heart, I watched the mirage fall apart before I could taste a single drop of water.
Sometimes a screeching alarm shattered the dream.
Other times it was a foul smell—like the time I hadn’t shut the door to that room tight enough.
Most nights I woke to the dull ache of hunger clawing through my stomach.
Once, it was to the sound of children singing in a different language.
For a moment I thought I’d finally lost my mind, until I realized I’d forgotten to turn off the radio.
The other Scourge survivors were celebrating something, their voices drifting through the bunker.
This time I woke to the bright glow of the monitor. The monitor that was previously not working.
I sat up, throwing the blankets aside. The control panel was lit up like a Christmas tree—buttons glowing in every color, some flashing, others steady.
Across the screen was a dashboard of sorts.
A basic map of the area, temperature gauges, and system reports from the air filtration units.
My eyes snagged on a chart in the lower left corner. The water reservoir.
“Fuck. Patricia!” We didn’t have to worry about running out of food if the water was already gone.
“Patricia!” I spun in a slow circle, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as my gaze snagged uselessly from one thing to the next.
If the numbers were right, I had already run out of time.
I didn’t even know how I’d gotten the stupid thing to turn on.
Last thing I could remember was the feeling of Jude between my thighs.
The scratch of his jaw against my skin. Then nothing. I must’ve slipped deeper into sleep.
I stumbled backward, my heel catching on something hard.
“Shit—” I lurched forward catching the edge of the console to steady myself.
At my feet sat Patricia’s terrarium. I blinked down at it.
The gecko was curled on her basking stone, eyes closed, spotted tail wrapped neatly around her body.
The lamp above her tank glowed warm and bright.
I stared at it.
“...What?”
That bulb had burned out weeks ago. I knew, because I’d tried to fix it twice before giving up and draping a sweater over the tank to keep the heat in. When that didn’t work I let her sleep in my shirt.
Slowly, I crouched beside the glass. Patricia cracked one eye open, unimpressed with the attention, as I reached out to touch the lamp. Warmth lingered beneath my fingertips, twisting my stomach. “I didn’t fix this,” I murmured. Patricia blinked slowly, the mystery clearly boring her.
I was losing my mind, so I did the only thing I could do—my routine. I went to the pantry, grabbed my ration for breakfast, and ate it quickly before moving through my stretches in the common room. It didn’t help the wrongness clinging to me like a dark cloud.
Halfway through, I stopped, my fingers brushing my lips. It was crazy, but I could still feel him there against me. I dropped back down and forced myself through a few more push-ups before cleaning myself up, changing my clothes, and turning the radio on.
The control screen taunted me from across the room.
It was hard to ignore the blinking water gauge in the corner.
Every time my gaze caught on the warning, my heart raced, so I fled the room in search of a book.
As I passed by, I turned the speakers as loud as they would go so if anyone came on the radio, I’d hear them.
I should have picked something useful. A manual on mechanics, maybe.
Instead, like the glutton for punishment I was, I picked the psychology book that seemed to hum from where it was stacked beside a pile of magazines on the bookshelf.
Putting Patricia carefully in my pocket, I carried the book to the middle of the room and sat down cross-legged on the floor and flipped to the beginning.
The part I’d already read at least six times.
Trauma often traps the mind between two competing realities: the one that was, and the one that is.
Survivors frequently spend months or years waiting for their reality to return to its former shape, even when every piece of evidence suggests it will not.
This is a function of the human mind’s need for continuity.
“What about consistent dirty dreams of your childhood crush? What does trauma have to say about that, Dr. Whelan?” I flipped to the next page.
Acceptance is often mistaken for surrender. In truth, it is the opposite. Acceptance is the moment the mind stops looking backwards and begins to ask a different question: What will my path look like moving forward?
Certainly not dying of thirst. I threw the book across the room, watching it skid across the polished concrete before slamming into the bunk room door.
For years now, I have been waiting. Waiting for Bridget and Paul to come back.
Waiting for the radio to make sense. Waiting for the world above me to become survivable.
Waiting for something—anything—to change.
It hadn’t.
The truth had been sitting with me all along—Bridget and Paul were not coming back. No one was coming. My family was gone. The others were gone. Whatever version of my life that had existed before the Scourge, was gone too. If I stayed here waiting much longer, I would be gone with it.
I wasn’t brave, and never had been. I hadn’t offered to go on the supply run. I hadn’t been the one people looked to when things got bad…
Which, if I was being honest with myself, was probably the only reason I was still here.
When I moved to New York, it was with a self-made promise that I’d stop waiting for things to happen to me, but that I’d make them happen. Somewhere between before and after—I’d forgotten.
But if there were other survivors, then hope wasn’t gone yet.
I reached into my pocket and held Patricia gently between my palms. She blinked at me, unimpressed. “Thanks for keeping me sane, Patricia,” I said quietly. “I’m going to fix this.”
Carrying her over to the tank I set her back inside, where she padded lazily onto her basking rock, then got to work.
I began by dragging everything I could find into the middle of the room—boxes of dry goods, stacks of cans, emergency rations, medical kits, tools, batteries, anything that might make a difference in the matter of my life and death.
To my surprise, the pile grew quickly. I grabbed my last marker and began making lists.
The numbers weren’t great—my food supply was low and water was going to be an issue. Paul’s bunker was meant to house ten or so, with a limit of five years.
There had only been seven of us, and since we were being painfully honest around here, it had only been me for the last three.
Which meant I was able to stretch the food longer than he’d no doubt originally planned.
My eyes flicked back to the control panel.
The water reservoir warning blinked in the corner of the screen.
When we got down here and shit got really bad, Paul ran us—Paul, Bridget, me, Paul’s sister, his groundskeeper, and Bridget’s parents—through all the systems until we all knew how this place worked.
The bunker had a well somewhere between us and the main house but also operated a recycling system.
Considering the water reservoir appeared to be nearly empty, my guess was the recycling system failed months, if not years, ago.
I couldn’t decide if I was thankful the screen magically began working again, or if I’d prefer to shake hands with death blind. Probably the latter.
Knowing I was going to eventually thirst was fucking with my head. Remember that Worst Days of My Life List? Well, dying was undoubtedly at the top. The Scourge would remain a close second.
If I wanted to survive down here, I would need three things: food and water and clean air. Lucky for me, the air filtration seemed to work fine. It was the other two things that were an issue.
I was halfway through removing batteries from random electronics when the radio crackled to life. Voices burst through the speakers, loud and excited. I was pretty sure I was patched through to children, because there was no way any adult was that happy to live through the apocalypse.
Sitting down in the control room I tapped the microphone on.
“Hey guys.” The voices paused. “Yeah… still have no clue what you’re saying.
” I glanced behind me at the piles through the doorway.
“But I hope you’re doing better than I am.
” My gaze caught on the stack of sheet music scattered across the floor.
That gave me an idea. “Do you guys like music?”
Music was universal.
There was a sharp screech over the radio, like someone dragging a chair across the floor, and then the small voices started up again.
“It’s not the best. They’re high schoolers—but I’ve got a recording of our last performance.
Tell me what you think.” I reached over and pressed play on the old stereo balanced on a pair of upside-down crates beside my cot.
The recording truly wasn’t great, but it was better than Paul’s garage band collection—which, for the record, I’d also listened to on repeat because your girl was not a complainer.
I’d give anything for a new divorced-dad rock album right now.
One of my student’s parents had recorded our fall concert and burned it to a CD for me.
I’d shoved it into the bottom of my work bag and forgotten about it until my first real mental break.
That was after Paul and Bridget left. After the others had gotten too sick to do much of anything but lie around.
I dug it out, popped it into the stereo and played it for them then, hoping it might offer some kind of comfort. Or rather ironically, some measure of solace. I don’t know if it did, but it helped me through their deaths.
I played it again a month later when I bore the task of dragging death’s first victim to the sealed room. I played it when I cut all my rations, trying to give myself a few extra days. I played it when I needed something to fill the cold.
My thoughts drifted to Jude as the song now filled the room.
I’d dreamt of him nearly every night and for a while we’d never touched.
Except there was more to hunger after than only food.
It had been years since I’d touched anyone—even a hug, or a brush of a hand.
Years since I’d talked to another human face to face. I was starving.
Leaning back in the chair, I closed my eyes to pretend that I was back in that auditorium as a teenager myself, conducting Satellites, and wishing that the boy I’d written it for would kiss me already.