6
• Silo 18 •
Walker waved his arms over his head as he attempted to explain his new theory for how the radio probably worked.
“So the sound, these transmissions, they’re like ripples in the air, you see?” He chased the invisible voices with his fingers. Above him, the third large antenna he’d built in two days hung suspended from the rafters. “These ripples run up and down the wire, up and down—” He gesticulated the length of antenna. “—which is why longer is better. It snags more of them out of the air.”
But if these ripples are everywhere, then why aren’t we catching any?
Walker bobbed his head and wagged his finger in appreciation. It was a good question. A damn good question. “We’ll catch them this time,” he said. “We’re getting close.” He adjusted the new amplifier he’d built, one much more powerful than the tiny thing in Hank’s old hip radio. “Listen,” he said.
A crackling hiss filled the room, like someone twisting fistfuls of plastic sheeting.
I don’t hear it.
“That’s because you aren’t being quiet. Listen.”
There. It was faint, but a crunch of transmitted noise emerged from the hiss.
I heard it!
Walker nodded with pride. Less from the thing he was building and more for his bright understudy. He glanced at the door, made sure it was still closed. He only spoke with Scottie when it was closed.
“What I don’t get is why I can’t make it clearer.” He scratched his chin. “Unless it’s because we’re too deep in the earth—”
We’ve always been this deep, Scottie pointed out. That sheriff we met years ago, he was always talking on his radio just fine.
Walker scratched the stubble on his cheek. His little shadow, as usual, had a good point.
“Well, there is this one little circuit board I can’t figure out. I think it’s supposed to clean up the signal. Everything seems to pass through it.” Walker spun around on his stool to face the workbench, which had become dominated by all the green boards and colorful tangles of wires needed for this most singular project. He lowered his magnifier and peered at the board in question. He imagined Scottie leaning in for a closer inspection.
What’s this sticker?
Scottie pointed to the tiny dot of a white sticker with the number “18” printed on it. Walker was the one who had taught Scottie that it’s always okay to admit when you didn’t know something. If you couldn’t do this, you would never truly know anything.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But you see how this little board slotted into the radio with ribbon cables?”
Scottie nodded.
“It’s like it was meant to be swapped out. Like maybe it burns up easy. I’m thinking this is the part that’s holding us up, like a blown fuse.”
Can we bypass it?
“Bypass it?” Walker wasn’t sure what he meant.
Go around it. In case it’s burned out. Short it.
“We might blow something else. I mean, it wouldn’t be in here if it weren’t truly needed.” Walker thought for a minute. He wanted to add that the same could be said of Scottie, of the boy’s calming voice. But then, he never was good at telling his shadow how he felt. Only what he knew.
Well, that’s what I would try—
There was a knock at the door followed by the squeal of hinges left purposefully loud. Scottie melted into the shadows beneath the workbench, his voice trailing off in the hiss of static from the speakers.
“Walk, what the hell’s going on here?”
He swiveled around on his stool, the lovely voice and harsh words soldered together as only Shirly could fuse them. She came into his workshop with a covered tray, a thin-lipped frown of disappointment on her face.
Walker lowered the volume on the static. “I’m trying to fix the—”
“No, what’s this nonsense I hear about you not eating?” She set the tray in front of him and pulled off the cover, releasing the steam off a plate of corn. “Did you eat your breakfast this morning, or did you give it to someone else?”
“That’s too much,” he said, looking down at three or four rations of food.
“Not when you’ve been giving yours away it isn’t.” She slapped a fork into his hand. “Eat. You’re about to fall out of your coveralls.”
Walker stared at the corn. He stirred the food with his fork, but his stomach was cramped beyond hunger. He felt like he’d gone long enough that he’d never be hungry again. The cramp would just tighten and tighten into a little fist and then he’d be just fine forever—
“Eat, dammit.”
He blew on a bite of the stuff, had no desire to consume it, but put some in his mouth to make Shirly happy.
“And I don’t want to hear that any of my men are hanging around your door sweet-talking you, okay? You are not to give them your rations. Got that? Take another bite.”
Walker swallowed. He had to admit, the burn of the food felt good going down. He gathered up another small bite. “I’ll be sick if I eat all this,” he said.
“And I’ll murder you if you don’t.”
He glanced over at her, expecting to see her smiling. But Shirly didn’t smile anymore. Nobody did.
“What the hell is that noise?” She turned and surveyed the workshop, hunting for the source of it.
Walker set down his fork and adjusted the volume. The knob was soldered onto a series of resistors; the knob itself was called a potentiometer. He had a sudden impulse to explain all of this, anything to keep from eating. He could explain how he had figured out the amplifier, how the potentiometer was really just an adjustable resistor, how each little twist of the dial could hone the volume to whatever he—
Walker stopped. He picked up his fork and stirred his corn. He could hear Scottie whispering from the shadows.
“That’s better,” Shirly said, referring to the reduced hiss. “That’s a worse sound than the old generator used to make. Hell, if you can turn that down, why ever have it up so loud?”
Walker took a bite. While he chewed, he set down his fork and grabbed his soldering iron from its stand. He rummaged in a small parts bin for another scrap potentiometer.
“Hold these,” he told Shirly around his food. He showed her the wires hanging off the potentiometer and lined them up with the sharp silver prods from his multimeter.
“If it means you’ll keep eating.” She pinched the wires and the prods together between her fingers and thumbs.
Walker scooped up another bite, forgetting to blow on it. The corn burned his tongue. He swallowed without chewing, the fire melting its way through his chest. Shirly told him to slow down, to take it easy. He ignored her and twisted the knob of the potentiometer. The needle on his multimeter danced, letting him know the part was good.
“Why don’t you take a break from this stuff and eat while I’m here to watch?” Shirly slid a stool away from the workbench and plopped down on it.
“Because it’s too hot,” he said, waving his hand at his mouth. He grabbed a spool of solder and touched it to the tip of the hot soldering iron, coating it with bright silver. “I need you to hold the black wire to this.” He lightly touched the iron to the tiny leg of a resistor on the board labeled “18.” Shirly leaned over the bench and squinted at the one he was indicating.
“And then you’ll finish your dinner?”
“Swear.”
She narrowed her eyes at him as if to say that she took this promise seriously, then did as he had shown her.
Her hands weren’t as steady as Scottie’s, but he lowered his magnifier and made quick work of the connection. He showed her where the red wire went and tacked that one on as well. Even if none of this worked, he could always remove it and tinker with something else.
“Now don’t let it get cold,” Shirly told him. “I know you won’t eat it if it cools, and I’m not going back to the mess hall to warm it up for you.”
Walker stared at the little board with the numbered sticker on it. He grudgingly took up the fork and scooped a sizable bite.
“How’re things out there?” he asked, blowing on the corn.
“Things are shit,” Shirly said. “Jenkins and Harper are arguing over whether or not they should kill the power to the entire silo. But then some of the guys who were there, you know, when Knox and—”
She looked away, left the sentence unfinished.
Walker nodded and chewed his food.
“Some of them say the power in IT was on to the max that morning, even though we had it shut down from here.”
“Maybe it was rerouted,” Walker said. “Or battery backups. They have those, you know.” He took another bite, but was dying to spin the potentiometer. He was pretty sure the static had changed when he’d made the second connection.
“I keep telling them it’ll do us more harm than good to screw with the silo like that. It’ll just turn the rest of them against us.”
“Yeah. Hey, can you adjust this? You know, while I eat?”
He turned the volume up on the static, needing two hands to work the loose knob as it dangled from its bright wires. Shirly seemed to shrink from the noise crackling out of his homebuilt speakers. She reached for the volume knob as if to turn it down—
“No, I want you to spin the one we just installed.”
“What the hell, Walk? Just eat your damn food already.”
He took another bite. And for all her cussing and protests, Shirly began adjusting the knob.
“Slowly,” he said around his food.
And sure enough, the static from the speakers modulated. It was as if the crunching plastic had begun to move and bounce around the room.
“What am I even doing?”
“Helping an old man—”
“—yeah, I might need you up here on this one—”
Walker dropped his fork and held out his hand for her to stop. She had gone past it though, into the static once more. Shirly seemed to intuit this. She bit her lip and wiggled the knob the other way until the voices returned.
“Sounds good. It’s quiet down here anyway. You need me to bring my kit?”
“You did it,” Shirly whispered to Walker, as if these people could hear her if she spoke too loudly. “You fixed—”
Walker held up his hand. The chatter continued.
“Negative. You can leave the kit. Deputy Roberts is already here with hers. She’s sweeping for clues as I speak—”
“What I’m doing is working while he does nothing!” a faint voice called out in the background.
Walker turned to Shirly while laughter rolled through the radio, more than one person enjoying the joke. It had been a long time since he’d heard anyone laugh. But he wasn’t laughing. Walker felt his brows furrow in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” Shirly asked. “We did it! We fixed it!” She got off her stool and turned as if to run and tell Jenkins.
“Wait!” Walker wiped his beard with his palm and jabbed his fork toward the strewn collection of radio parts. Shirly stood a pace away, looking back at him, smiling.
“Deputy Roberts?” Walker asked. “Who in all the levels is that?”