“I only know SOS,” Jack cut in. He wrote the letters in the dirt with his finger and made three dots next to the first S, three short-line dashes next to the O, and another three dots next to the last S. “I saw that in a film.”
Charlie got up to peer at the writing. “Oh, is that what that is?” He reached over to rummage in his backpack. He pulled out the Survival Skills book and flipped to the inside back page. He turned it so it was the right way for me to see and handed it over.
“Is that Morse code, Mummy?”
It was.
Jack was up and heading toward the car with most of the others following him. I sat in the dirt with Charlie for a few seconds longer.
“Well done, Charlie.” He flushed all pink around the ears. The fact was, we’d had everything we needed right from the beginning, but I had been running around too quickly to realize it.
We easily picked out the phrase “SOS,” and the book listed an individual code that meant “start.” We listened again and again and got the start and the SOS, but beyond that it was too fast to make out the letters.
“This is rubbish,” said Charlie. “You could get a computer to do this.”
“Unfortunately, we no longer have an app for that. Or, indeed, anything else,” I said. “Let’s just take it one letter at a time. There’s a tiny gap after the letter, like in SOS it goes, ‘dot dot dot, gap, dash dash dash, gap, dot dot dot,’ right?” They agreed. “Okay, then let’s concentrate on the first one after the gap after SOS. See if we can get it.”
We let the rhythm of the Morse code wash over us. Eventually, there was a pause, followed by the code for “start.”
“This is it,” said Lola.
“Shh.”
“Dot dot dot.” S.
“Dash dash dash.” O.
“Dot dot dot.” S.
“SOS,” said Charlie.
“Shh!”
“Dash, dot, dash, dash, dot, dot.” The signal ran on, and I turned down the volume.
“It’s too hard,” said Charlie.
“It’s so quick,” said Jack. “I got dash, dot—then what?”
Lola sang the rhythm out. “Bah, bup, bah, bah, bup, bup.”
We all agreed. Bah, bup, bah, bah, bup, bup: dash, dot, dash, dash, dot, dot.
“That doesn’t make sense.” Jack scanned the book. “There are no letters that long.”
We sat through the message again. Picked out the pause, the “start,” and the SOS. Then: bah, bup, bah, bah, bup, bup.
“That’s definitely right,” I said.
“Okay, well, ‘bah, bup’ or ‘dash, dot’ is the letter N. So that would make ‘bah, bah, bup, bup’ the letter Z.”
I wrote “NZ” onto the windscreen with a stub of crayon. We all looked at it. The Morse code melody niggled away in the background.
“What does it mean?” Charlie asked. “New Zealand? Capital is Wellington.”
“It can’t be right.” Jack turned the pages of the survival book, as though there might be an explanation readily available.
“Let’s just carry on with the next letters and see what we have,” I said.
There was groaning. “It’s too hard.” “We don’t know what it means.” “What’s the point?”
“Just keep your eye on the ball, kids.”
“What?”
“Look.” I spun in my seat to face them all. “What is our long-term goal?”
“Find somewhere safe.”
“Right. And how do we do that?”
“Work out this message.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Listen to it over and over until we get it.”
“So shall we get on with it? Or would you prefer to sit here whining about how difficult it is until the Cleaners find us?”
“Get on with it.”
“Right.” I turned the volume back up, but the dots and dashes washed over us. There was more groaning.
“Stop thinking about how hard it is,” I said. “You’re wasting your brain power on thinking.”
Jack sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.
The electronic rhythm surrounded us. Lola was right about the bahs and the bups: it was easier to hear it as music than try to translate it to dots and dashes. We reached the long gap at the end of the transmission and then the start signal and the SOS.
“Ready,” said Jack.
“Shh.”
The code for NZ rushed by and then: “bah, bah, bah, bup, bup.” Lola sang it and we all joined in.
“Bah bah bah bup bup!” Jack ran his fingers down the page.
“A number eight.”
I wrote “8” on the glass.
Then we got “6,” followed by “0,” “4,” “1.” Painfully slowly, having to listen through the whole message again and again, we picked out a sequence of ten numbers.
NZ8604112884
“But what does that mean?” asked Lola.
“Coordinates,” said Jack. “We did coordinates on the orienteering course. It should be written like this.” He grabbed the crayon and wrote it again. “‘NZ’ indicates a square on a map, and then the first five numbers give a westerly point, and the second five give the northerly point. It’s quite a specific location.”
We carried on listening to the message until we had deciphered the second part, which returned to letters again.
My writing spread across the windscreen: NZ/86041/12884/DONT/GO/SOUTH.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Woody and his little gang, which had dwindled to three of the younger boys, occupied the space in front of the single door to the outside, hunched beneath an invisible dome of bitterness. Every now and then, the whole group turned, a many-headed beast, and glanced our way before ducking back down to whisper their grievances. Only the foolhardy would dare to approach this little stronghold. The exclusion took me back to my own school days. At least now, though, I had a pretty good idea of why I found myself on the outside.
I watched them without looking their way, while the conversation swaggered around my own group. Hyped-up on the unexpected success of deciphering the Morse code, my kids were already celebrating, their noise engulfing the room. Of course, we had no idea where NZ 86041 12884 actually was in layman’s terms. And we didn’t know what we would find there. But we boasted confident speculations about getting a map and being out of danger by this time tomorrow.
“See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya,” said Charlie.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Woody’s finger slip inside his mouth, and, though I couldn’t hear it over our delirium, I knew he gave a soft pop while he took it all in.
“Shh.” I laid a hand on each of my kids’ shoulders to calm them down. “Others are trying to sleep.” What I was trying to convey to their immature consciences was: some of the others might not feel like celebrating quite so soon, leaving behind loved ones without knowing if they’re dead or alive. Or leaving them in a shallow grave in the middle of a field. We might be battling away, but we had long since lost the war.
“Let’s lie down to sleep now.”