Sunrise

I’d been trying to get a shortwave radio. I wanted news from back east, to know if there was still a government in operation. It was best to act as if we were completely on our own, though I couldn’t help but hope that some kind of functioning government was left.

One of the newcomers had been a licensed shortwave operator, but he’d left his equipment at home, halfway between Iowa City and Des Moines. I stared at the spot on a map for a while, thinking of mounting an expedition to retrieve it, but his transceiver was too far. And there was no guarantee that his shortwave set would still be there and in working condition.

We caught a break when Grant Clark trudged into Speranta. He had survived in the postapocalyptic world by traveling and trading information and supplies for food and clothing. He was the same gleaner who had sold a camp roster to Rita Mae, the librarian in Worthington, nearly two years earlier—the roster that had enabled me to find my parents. He said he had a working shortwave setup hidden in an abandoned town not far away, but he didn’t want to trade it to me. He powered it on batteries scavenged from cars and sold the information gleaned from the shortwave chatter. I finally convinced him to part with it in return for a custom-made, one-man Bikezilla loaded with two hundred pounds of kale and the promise that he could make Speranta his home base and listen in on the shortwave anytime he wanted.

There was depressingly little chatter on the shortwave bands. Nothing at all from back east. All the government bands that had been full of transmissions only two years ago were dead and silent now. The religious broadcaster who I had asked for help when I was in the FEMA camp in Maquoketa was off the air. Even the strange stations that read lists of numbers were gone. We did make contact with a few isolated communities—a group in Georgia, another in Mexico, and one in the mountains of northern California. They were barely hanging on; there was nothing we could do for each other except share tips on compost piles and greenhouse construction. When conditions were good, we caught snippets of transmissions in Chinese, Spanish, or languages nobody recognized. I hoped the reason we didn’t reach more communities was the difficulty in powering a radio transceiver. The possibility that everyone else was dead was too horrible to contemplate.

I asked Ben to monitor the shortwave, clicking through the bands and transmitting occasionally. He didn’t want to do it at first—it wasn’t a military shortwave set and therefore not interesting to Ben. We talked for nearly an hour about the importance of military intelligence, discussing all the things we might learn from monitoring the shortwave, before he finally agreed to monitor it. Once I convinced him to take the job on, he was amazing at it. He would sit at the set for hours on end, patiently listening and transmitting in impeccable shortwave code. I didn’t know a CQ from a QRA from an XYZPDQ, but Ben took the time to study the manual Grant had brought with the transceiver and learn all the terms, using them perfectly.

A few days after he had started, Ben came charging up to me at the construction site where I was working. We were building . . . wait for it . . . yet another greenhouse. Our nineteenth, or Greenhouse 5-C.

“Mayor Halprin, Mayor Halprin,” Ben yelled.

“Ben,” I replied when he got close enough so I didn’t have to yell, “you can call me Alex, you know.”

“Yes sir, Mayor Alex Halprin.”

I sighed. “What is it, Chief Radio Operator Fredericks?” I said it sarcastically, but it went right over Ben’s head, of course.

“I have a contact. Someone who knows you and wishes to speak to you. I sent them a QRX.”

“What’s a QRX?”

“A request to wait.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Station WB0SX.”

“Yes, but who is that? You have a name or location?”

Ben looked at his shoes for a moment. “I forgot to ask for their QTH,” he said finally. “I am sorry, Mayor Alex Halprin.”

I put Ed in charge of the construction site and left with Ben, ru

I picked up the mike, depressing the talk lever. “This is Alex Halprin. Over.”

“You are supposed to say CQ, CQ from K9LC,” Ben said.

“Alex! You survived! Guess I owe Rita Mae a pound of hamburger. Sorry about betting against you.” The voice was a woman’s but so crackly over the co

“She is supposed to say K9LC here is WB0SX,” Ben said.

“Who’s speaking?” I said.

“I’m sorry,” the woman’s voice replied, “Kenda. Mayor Kenda from Worthington.”

I heard some muttering in the background that I couldn’t make out, and a new voice came on. “Alex, Rita Mae here. I knew you’d make it. Darla told me you were too stubborn and stupid to die, and I believed her.”

“Thanks, I think. Glad to hear your voice.”

“Well, I’ve been sick, but I can’t kick the can yet. Afraid if I weren’t here, Mayor Kenda would strap on a pair of jackboots.”

“Rita Mae!” Kenda yelled, muffled in the background.

“I’m kidding. Keep your pants on back there, Madame Mayor.” Sotto voce, she added, “She hates it when I call her that.” For a moment the airwaves were filled by Rita Mae’s cackle. “We’re hard pressed here, but if you and Ben need a place to stay, you know we’ll always welcome you.” Rita Mae hesitated a moment. I wanted to break in but couldn’t while she was transmitting. “How’s . . . everyone else . . . Darla okay?”

I understood her hesitation. So many people had died, it was risky to ask about family. She’d only heard me and

Ben over the shortwave so far, so she couldn’t be sure who else had survived.

“Rita Mae,” Mayor Kenda said, her voice faintly audible in the background, “you’ve got to say ‘over’ and let up on the lever, or he can’t respond.”

“So excited I plumb forgot,” Rita Mae said. “Over.” “Darla’s fine,” I said. “We got married, oh, four months ago. And thank you for the offer of a place to stay, but we’re doing okay.” I filled them in on Speranta, my election as mayor, our greenhouses, and current population of just under six hundred. So many people had died in Worthington, we had over three times their population now.

“Congratulations!” Rita Mae said when I had finished. “Alex, I hate to even bring this up, but we’re sore pressed here. Flensers control all the cities near us. We’ve sent expeditions to Dubuque, Waterloo, and Cedar Rapids. We lost a lot of good men and women. Food’s way too tight. Ammo’s short. Flensers attack Worthington again, they’re likely to win. There’s been some talk of packing up, trying to head east—abandoning Worthington. Over.”

“We’re short on both ammo and weapons,” I said. “We’ve got a good source of supplies for building green-houses—glass, wire, pipe, and caulk—stuff like that. If you do move east, you’d be welcome here. I’m not sure how we’d cope with two hundred newcomers all at once, but if it comes to that, we’ll figure it out. Over.”

“Got lots of extra guns here. Be happy to share them and anything else we can spare in return for a little help on the greenhouses or our flenser infestations.”

“That’s not your bargain to make,” Kenda protested in the background.

“Shush,” Rita Mae said in her most authoritative librarian tone. “Oh, sorry, forgot again. Over.”

“I’ll talk to my advisers, see what I can do.”

We chatted a while longer before I signed off. When I started to walk away, Ben called to me. “Mayor Halprin, may I have a small plot of land in one of the greenhouses for personal use?”

“Everyone’s entitled to a personal vegetable plot if they want it. See A