Page 29 of Them

Looking back, I think it was never even there.

Holding his breath without realizing it, the man inserted two AA batteries into the empty compartment. Immediately, a vacant rush of static roared to life. His hand jerked to lower the volume until the buzzing screech weakened to a conversational level. He gazed at the small radio in awe. How long had it been since he’d communed with electronics?

Next, he slowly turned the dial and began scanning the frequencies. One by one, the garbled stations spoke their fuzzy gibberish, a noise that somehow reminded the man of when he was a child and his legs would fall asleep on a long road trip.

As he turned it from 93.0 to 93.1, the static dissipated and gave way to the crystal-clear strums of… a guitar! The man’s eyes widened in shocked delight.

He recognized the song and its steady beat. It was an old tune. From a band called the Band. Maybe the Boss did it first, but the man was sure this version was from the Band.

What a funny name for a band.

What was the song called? “Atlantic City,” I think.

Atlantic City?

The man stood. Began to pace.

Atlantic City.

Could it be? A message? A code.

Come to Atlantic City, the song begged him. We’re here, it said. We’re all here. In Atlantic City he would find people and presidents and humans and Her.

As the drumbeat closed the song, the man was sure that it would loop. Certain that it would begin again with… How did the song start? Something about killing a chicken, right? Right, and the man knew he would hear the song reset and rebegin and be reborn and it would be a sign to set sail for Atlantic City because that’s where everyone’s been all this damn time—

The song ended and was replaced with a defeated voice.

“This is Roanoke Radio on 93.1,” the hollow man said, a hint of resignation in the reverb. “Bringing you the hopeful hits of humanity. We’ve got ’em all, folks. Stay safe and stay human, all you newly nocturnal. And remember, we’ve got enough solar power to keep you listening from sunset to sunrise for the next decade. So if you’re out there wanderin’, if anyone’s out there, stay tuned, stay groovin’, and stay lovin’. This is Rockin’ Roanoke Ray signing off. See you on the other side, listener.”

The man waited in silence for the next song to begin. It was not “Atlantic City.” Instead, the distant voice gave way to a chorus of guitars and drums beating hard and fast. “Refugee.” Tom Petty. It was not “Atlantic City.” The dead had not come back. When the song ended, another began. Then another. After a few more songs, the DJ’s message played again. The exact same one. It was automated. No Atlantic City. Jesus fucking Christ, it was automated.

The man stood and seized the radio. He raised it above his head, wanted to spike it into the cold, hard floor, have the plastic shatter just as quickly as the fluttery feeling inside his chest had been wrenched out, like someone yanking a feeding tube up from the bowels of his throat.

And he might have done it, were it not for the silky, smooth sound of Fleetwood Mac filling the room. The man suddenly lowered the radio and cradled it to his chest like a sleeping baby. His lost love had gifted him three or four Fleetwood Mac vinyls. They used to listen to Rumours while they showered and got dressed in the morning.

Eyes misting over, he hung his head, shuffled downstairs to the basement, and crawled into bed with the radio. His chest heaved and his heart ached and his eyes wept as the sonic relics of humanity made themselves remembered. Prince. The Mamas & the Papas. The Spinners. Bob Seger. Louis Armstrong. Chicago and Boston and America. There was even some newer stuff mixed in: Kendrick, Paramore, Beyoncé. “Rockin’ Ray” had everything, and so much more.

An hour before the sun rose, the station went silent. No static. No automated message. The music was replaced by the sounds of yawning bats and restless insects, and the man felt lonelier than ever before in his life. Her face, the face he’d once held in his hands so many times, was slipping away. The others already had. Teammates. Friends. Coaches. Teachers. Aunts and uncles. Cousins. Grams. Pop-Pop. Even Mom. They had kept him company in the bunker, their memories and kindnesses, but the man had been a coward. He’d hidden until even their silhouettes had begun to blur.

His eyelids lowered. How long had it been since he’d seen another living person?

Lying to yourself.

Would he ever see another? Would he ever find Her? He had no way of knowing if She was even still alive. The last time they’d spoken had been years ago, right before the East Coast went to hell beneath high water. A FaceTime call. She knew he was all alone, that he was scared. She thought She was safe and he wasn’t, so She told him to come find Her. Come to the Chesapeake.

The Chesapeake. A massive brackish bay once whispered to have attracted some of the largest Scorpion armies. Clips from Annapolis and Baltimore showed massive shadows rising from the harbors, goliath skulls piercing up through historic battleships that had been recommissioned and refurbished to fight the alien menace. Washington, DC, didn’t stay safe much longer after that.

That meant She was probably dead. But that was okay. Because everyone else was certainly dead. What else was the man to make of his apocalypse? He was the hero of his own story, as many an elementary school counselor’s poster had assured him. What else was he supposed to do but save the girl? He’d never learned how to be alone anyway.

Perhaps that’s why he’d forgotten so much… so that he might force himself to become someone else.

For a while, nearly a year if you can believe that, we kept the growing horde contained to the wilderness, but time was running out. Every passing month meant a new wave of beasts reaching reproductive maturity, another trailer park town obliterated. Each skirmish with the pack drew more public attention, and casualties. We should’ve hit them with everything we had while their numbers were still in the double or triple digits, but then we might as well have thrown up our hands and come clean. Confessed.

And when was the last time the United States government confessed to anything?

We called it wilderness. But maybe it wasn’t. There were too many towns like Turner’s Pass, full of working people without the sort of wealth or affluence that dictates the difference between preventable loss and necessary triage or a scandal versus a cover-up. Some of the braver predators began to creep into developed areas. There were only sightings of them at first. Then a few isolated killings. Closer to civilization than they’d ever dared, but we thought they were afraid of us. Sort of how we told our children that spiders feared us more than we did them, like any other frightening animal, because we thought they were like any other animal, spurred on by the reptilian drive to survive. Akin to any other mortal creature set upon the succession of its DNA and that was it.

But their hearts wanted more, just like ours.