“Just know it’s important that I do.” His voice was devoid of ego or bravado, his expression even. “Beats the alternative.”
In his largely misbegotten life Wright had associated with men and women who considered themselves tough, even dangerous. None surpassed the resoluteness or conviction he sensed in this slim teen. It stood in stark contrast to his own youth.
He was still working with the radio’s insides when Star returned. The phone she offered him could have been newer and in better condition, but he was glad to have it nonetheless. Lining up his thoughts, he found that he was glad of something to do. Something to focus on besides his unrelievedly depressing environs and the unexplained process that had dumped him here.
“Thanks, Star. I could use another hand. Think you can help me out a little?”
She looked at Reese, who nodded approvingly. Eyes wide and attentive, she turned back to him.
“Here, hold this.” Wright handed her the back panel of the radio that, thanks to careful work, he had managed to remove in one piece. As he probed deeper into the electronic guts, he took no notice of the little girl’s increasingly worshipful stare.
“Where is everyone?” he murmured as he carefully removed the ends of several cords and began rewiring the radio’s interior.
“They’re gone,” Reese told him simply.
“Why are you still here?”
“Star and me, we’re the Resistance.”
Wright forced himself not to smile as he regarded the boy and the girl.
“You and her are the Resistance?”
Reese nodded assertively. “L.A. branch.”
“Resisting what?”
The teen’s gaze narrowed while he studied the enigmatic stranger, as if wondering if perhaps he had escaped from the moon. Or more likely some half-destroyed mental hospital.
“It’s not funny. The machines. Skynet.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yeah.”
Using his free hand Wright pointed to the red band that encircled his arm.
“Then why don’t you have one of these?”
“I haven’t earned it yet,” the youth shot back pointedly.
Wright nodded. “Your parents? Are they Resistance? Did they feed you that crap?”
“They’re dead.” Reese spoke coolly, as if discussing the obvious. “Death follows you very closely in this world. It sucks. But you get used to it. You get used to whatever you have to get used to in order to survive.” He glanced meaningfully at Star. “Some handle it better than others. Some just handle it differently.”
Wright understood completely.
“Pain can be controlled. You just disconnect it. Along with whatever else is necessary. It’s better that way.”
Wright flipped the radio’s “on” switch and was rewarded with—nothing. He was disappointed but not surprised.
“Dammit. Okay....” He handed Star the opened device. Colorful wires trailed from its interior like the intestines of some ancient hard-shelled sea creature. “Hang onto this.”
Childlike curiosity prompted her to study the inside of the radio while he searched through the surrounding debris. Finding a microwave oven, he used the knife Star gave him to unscrew the back and began sorting through the components. Finding the parts he wanted and yanking them free, he strode back to where Star was holding the radio and took it from her. What he really needed was a soldering iron and a crimper. Though the circumstances were radically different, what he was doing was not so very different from similar exercises he had engaged in before.
Sitting down, he resumed working on the radio’s interior.
“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.