Cairn had just finished his night shift on the perimeter. As the sun began to creep above the concrete skyline, its pale light touched the jagged edges of the city, turning the soot-stained buildings into golden monoliths. He felt the weight of the last twelve hours in his lower back-a dull, persistent ache that reminded him he wasn't as young as he was in Basra. He found Rachael waiting by the makeshift gate, her clipboard tucked under her arm and a rusted rifle slung over her shoulder. She looked as tired as he felt, her eyes tracking the movement of a stray piece of plastic tumbling across the asphalt.
"All quiet?" she asked, her voice low and raspy from the morning chill.
"Just the shadows," Cairn replied, handing her the heavy industrial torch.
"Keep an eye on the north corner. The wind is picking up, and the tripwires are twitching. Don't let the noise jump you." Cairn said.
Rachael juat offered a curt nod, the closest thing to a "thank you" he'd gotten all week.
Cairn turned away, his boots heavy as he trudged toward the white Volvo he'd been using as a makeshift tent. He was halfway to the door, his mind already drifting toward a dreamless sleep, when Sam came bounding over. She was a teenager with far too much energy for an old soldier to handle at dawn.
"Cairn! You're still awake, right? Tell me you're still awake," she panted, skidding to a halt and nearly knocking into the car's fender.
Cairn stopped, his hand resting on the cold glass of the window. He looked at her through bloodshot eyes.
"Sam, I am exactly three seconds away from being a civilian in a sleeping bag. This better be life-and-death."
"It's the radio," she whispered, the bouncing energy suddenly turning into something sharper.
Cairn's hand slipped from the Volvo's door handle. The metal felt biting and real against his palm, grounding him as the haze of exhaustion tried to pull him under.
"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous register he used when a perimeter was breached.
"I thought you said there wasn't anything. Just white noise" Cairn remarked
He remembered last week with painful clarity-the grit in his teeth as he and Zach hoisted a salvaged, skeletal satellite dish onto the roof of Foss Bank. They had spent days scavenging radio parts, stripping wires from abandoned cars and tech shops while the yellow fire watched them from above.
Cairn had done it for a whisper of hope, a desperate prayer that someone near London was still breathing. Zach, however, had done it out of a quiet, clumsy yearning for Sam, following her around like a shadow. Looking at Sam now, her eyes wide and glowing with the news, Cairn suspected that the yearning wasn't exactly one-way.
"I thought so too!" Sam said, her voice hitching.
****
As they approached Sam's makeshift radio corner, Cairn took a moment to appreciate what they had built over the last few days. Sitting against the raw concrete wall was an old computer desk Cairn had personally carried single-handedly across Jewbury, while Zach trailed behind with a swivel office chair. He remembered how absurd they must have looked to the others, two survivors hauling office furniture through a dying city and a small, weak smile traced his lips.
The desk was a sprawling monument to desperation, a mess of wires entwined like copper vines. Husks of stripped radios and gutted car stereos were strewn across the surface, chaos wrapped in a thin layer of logic. At the center sat their masterpiece. A makeshift radio flanked by two mismatched speakers. They had initially tried to tap into the overhead lighting for juice, but the power had been too temperamental, forcing them to rig together a heavy bank of salvaged car batteries that now hummed with a low, chemical scent beneath the desk. Sam flopped into the swivel chair with a heavy, muffled whump, forcing a hiss of stale air to escape the cracks in the worn leather wrap. She reached out and tapped a few commands on a keyboard that had long ago lost most of its caps, leaving only the white membrane switches exposed like tiny, plastic teeth. With a reluctant groan, the rickety transmitter flickered to life.
"So, as you know, we scanned every AM frequency and most of the FM bands and found absolutely nothing," Sam began, her eyes fixed on the jumping green needle of the signal meter.
"Yeah, I remember, Sam. All we got for our trouble was two hours of classical music on a loop," Cairn said, the memory of that haunting, repetitive violin still echoing in the back of his mind.
"Yeah, and Grant sat there humming along to it the whole time... good times," Sam muttered with a ghost of a smirk.
"Anyway, I decided to redline the power. I bypassed the standard limiters and set about trying to tap into anything-UHF, Long Wave, even old emergency bands. And that's when I found this."
"...-his is a broad-st... from the South East Emergency... coord-nation. If you can hear... message, the thirty-mile... is being held. I repeat... perimeter is stable. Refugee camps... established in the Chilterns and... North Watford. If you are... south, do not... the M25. Use the A-roads..." the speakers crackled as sam played the message.
The broadcast from the south had been a spark, but this second signal was a cold bucket of water. The voice wasn't official; it wasn't the measured, hollow tone of a government recording. It was strained, thinned out by distance and interference until it sounded like a ghost scratching at a door.
"So that was one, here's the other" sam said tapping some more keys
"Broadcast from t.....e...st this message w....repeat......2 minutes," the speaker crackled, the words fighting through a blizzard of static. "South....ound travel i.....no good the m1 corri.....or...is a grave.......ard."
The radio shrieked, a high-pitched electronic wail that made Cairn wince. Sam's fingers flew to the dials, steadying the volume as the voice returned, slower now, almost breathless.
"If.....you.......are.......e.....t then use the A1....09 we are at be.....rly hol......y p....k."
The transmission cut out entirely, replaced by the heavy, rhythmic thrum of the car batteries beneath the desk and the pips beeping on the recording. Sam clicked off the power, the silence that followed was thick.
"Beverley," Cairn whispered, his eyes fixed on the dead speakers.
"Beverley Holiday Park. That's East. Just outside of Hull." Cairn said.
"The M1 corridor is a graveyard," Sam repeated, her voice small.
She looked up at Cairn, the green light of the signal meter making her skin look sickly.
"He's saying the main artery south is gone. If they're telling people to use the A1079 and head toward the coast... things are worse than the emergency broadcast let on."