Aurora(38)

He wondered if maybe just keeping cool and staying put would give him a leg up on the knee-jerk responders. If everyone got the hell out of there in a hurry, there was no way they’d have the chance to clean out all the stores and storage depots, which meant maybe he could create Fortress Perry right here in Bethesda. Maybe he’d turn into a sort of latter-day Robert Neville, the hero of Perry’s favorite book of all time, I Am Legend, the famous last man on earth, fighting his lonely daily battle with a world full of vampires. It worked out OK for Neville, foraging and killing in the daytime, building a house full of booby traps. The book had made it sound kind of fun, actually. Well, until the ending.

But after a few days Perry had realized that, as with most things, his initial instinct had been correct. The city, no matter how empty, was still too full of people; it was undergoing a rapid and complete infrastructure collapse without electrical power, and no doubt it was only days away from an epidemic of crime and violence far worse than anything that could happen in the countryside.

The only place Perry could think to go was his parents’ house outside Iowa City. It was nine hundred miles away, at least three tanks of gas, and there was no guarantee his folks would be home when he got there. He’d lost track of their comings and goings between the house and their condo in Florida, and there was no way for him to contact them. Still, it was the best plan he had, so day three of the black-sky event for Perry meant stealing gas cans from a locked hardware store with a smashed front window, siphoning fuel from the tanks of parked cars all up and down his block, and shoving two boxes of peanut butter protein bars that had mercifully just arrived from Amazon three days earlier into a large suitcase with the rest of his clothes.

Thus equipped, he set off, pleasantly surprised by the lack of traffic on I-80 West. Right around the time he started feeling like this plan was going to work and he’d actually started looking forward to the idea of spending a year or so back home in Iowa, he remembered Norman.

Professor Levy lived alone in Aurora, Illinois. Perry flushed, feeling a burst of shame that he had completely forgotten about his mentor in this situation. An old man on his own, without power and water?

Perry glanced down at his gas gauge, saw it was still on three-quarters, and fumbled for the map on the seat beside him. Finding any physical map at all had been more of a challenge than almost anything he’d rounded up before setting out on the road, and, looking at it now while he drove, he saw that Aurora was only twenty or thirty miles off his route to Iowa. He could easily stop in and check on Norman. But, his concern now pricked, he decided he couldn’t wait that long.

He took the next off ramp, pulled over on the first hilltop he could find, and dug out the portable radio he’d shoved into one of his suitcases. Norman was the one who’d introduced him to the joys of shortwave in the first place, and he felt certain the old man would be all over the airwaves in a situation like this.

Norman had been chasing signals for sixty years, and of all his myriad hobbies and interests, it was one of the old man’s favorites. He’d talk about it with anyone who seemed remotely interested, and even those who didn’t. But a few friends and former students would show momentary interest, mostly for the nostalgia quotient, and at some dinners they’d allow themselves to be dragged into a session on the shortwaves.

“They’re not goddamn shortwaves,” Norman would chastise them. “I’m not some trucker with a CB talking about Smokey in a blanket or what have you. It’s HAM. Short and long waves. I can talk to Canberra on this thing.”

Perry unspooled the reel of long-line antenna, looping it around the luggage rack on top of the car, then gave the radio’s hand crank a couple dozen turns for power and switched it on. He keyed the microphone and called out, using the frequency on which Norman could most often be found.

“CQ, CQ, this is, uh”—he looked down at the map to see where the hell he was—“Somerset County, PA, looking for you, Aurora, Illinois, on two hundred thirteen megahertz. Come in.”

He waited but heard only static.

He tried again, and this time, halfway through his call, the radio squawked angrily, three times in a row, as with someone keying it in irritation. Norman’s voice came through, loud and mostly clear.

“You’ve got to say ‘over,’ dummy.”

Norman was there, up at dawn as usual, and sounded undiminished. Perry keyed the mic again. “Hey, Norman, it’s Perry. How you holding up?”

“Best as can be expected. How’s things out east? Over.”

“Like the early part of a zombie movie, before the brains start to fly,” Perry said. “I’m headed to the folks’ place in Iowa. Want me to stop in on you?”

No answer. Only static. Finally:

“For the love of Christ, will you please say—”

“Over! Sorry, over. Want me to stop in? Over?”

“What would you do here? Over.”

Perry thought for a good long while. “Not much, I guess. Over.”

“Thanks for thinking of me, kiddo. I’m fine. Worry about your folks. You’re a good man. Over.”

Perry thought for a long moment, then keyed the mic again. Something about Norman had always brought out his tender side, and he could feel the emotion welling in him just hearing his old professor’s tones.

“What are we gonna do, Norman?”