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"Testing, testing — hello? Is anyone out there? Anyone at all? This is Doug Eiffel, resident radio chief and reigning Monopoly champ aboard the leaking rust-bucket also known as the Hephaestus. Can anyone out there hear me? Is there a living, breathing, unbitten human on the other end of the line? Possession of canned goods and spare boxes of ammo is a plus, but not a requirement."
The signal flickers, and Eiffel releases the mic button to adjust the dials, watching the needle oscillate back and forth like a half-broken metronome before it stabilizes. He tilts his head toward the speaker, patient, waiting, but he can't make out anything new under the sound of the static. Not that he's surprised. Not that there's ever anything to hear.
"Hello?" Eiffel says again, station switched to a new frequency, mic button depressed under his fingers. "Anybody there? Friends? Romans? Countrymen? For fuck's sake — I'd take a moderately intelligent raccoon, at this point. They've basically got hands, right? Sort of? I'm sure they could manage to work a radio." He pauses for a moment, considering. "Unless—you know—they're all dead, too."
Clicks off the mic and waits. Static. More static. Fucking of course. Eiffel rubs the bridge of his nose, takes a slow breath, and adjusts the frequency again. An indicator needle in a radio-wave haystack — except that's not quite the right metaphor, Eiffel thinks. More like he's searching for a single needle in a whole fucking field of haystacks, and no guarantees that the needle is even there at all.
"Come on, come on," Eiffel says, half under his breath as he sets the radio to a new station. "The world is too big and too fucking crowded to have gone so quiet." Then, into the mic, "Testing, testing. God, there's gotta be fucking someone still out there—"
"This again?"
Eiffel starts, his hand slipping off the button as he turns in his seat, the rusted legs of the rickety folding chair scraping against the floor with the grating sound of metal-on-metal. No longer broadcasting, a new swell of static hums from the speakers, filling the room with white noise like the sound of whitecaps cresting against the Hephaestus's hull. Steady and unbroken. The soundtrack of monotony, Eiffel had said to Hera while up on the deck one night. Or of survival, Hera had said, glancing back towards the outline of the shore behind them.
Over his shoulder, Eiffel can see Minkowski standing in the doorframe, her arms folded over a faded 49ers t-shirt that’s paintbrush-spattered with drying saltwater spray. She raises her eyebrows at him, giving Eiffel the same look she always does — equal parts skepticism and disapproval, like Eiffel's a kid and she's just caught him stuffing pennies down the garbage disposal because he wanted to know what would happen. Like he broke into a book of matches and now the room is filled with the toxic smell of melting plastic while Eiffel holds the half-burnt remains of a toy.
(Which—okay—he starts one fire after a poorly stubbed-out cigarette and now everyone acts like he's irresponsible or a wannabe arsonist or whatever. Completely undeserved. Wholly unjust. Absolutely no call for Minkowski to confiscate his lighter.)
"Evening, Captain," Eiffel says, the sudden spike of his heart rate slowing to something steadier. Beating a little less insistently in his chest, now that he knows this isn't a life-or-death situation. (Not to say Minkowski isn't capable of murder, because Eiffel had seen the way she'd looked at Hilbert after he'd finished off the last of the Folger's, and never mind that she and Hera had picked up another tin on their next supply run a few days later.) "Something you needed from me?"
"Just heading to wash up before dinner. Are you joining us?"
"Is it fish?"
"It's always fish, Eiffel."
One night at dinner, not long after Eiffel had first arrived on the Hephaestus, Hilbert had gone off on a tangent about the dangers of a strictly pescatarian diet. Citing the rising mercury levels in hauls of commercial fishing vessels like he was running through a list of baseball stats.
"Truly," Hilbert had said, his voice insistent between bites of a box-mix rice pilaf, "you should see some of the numbers. Studies done when—" he'd broken off, waving one hand absently. They'd all understood the idea of before implied in the gesture. "Well, when there was still time for such reports."
Hera had traded a look with Eiffel, and he'd hid a smile behind the rim of his glass. "Dr. Hilbert, you make it sound as if we're snapping open thermometers and sucking out the insides like Pixie Stix," she'd said. "But we can't be talking about much more than...what? Trace amounts of mercury, at most?"
Hilbert snorted. "You say that now, but steady ingestion of trace quantities can produce significant side-effects over time. Just wait until you're experiencing peripheral neuropathy, and hypotonia, and your kidneys begin to shut down. Tell me than that this is no cause for concern."
"But that's the crux of the matter, isn't it? Over time. Not to undermine your anxieties, Dr. Hilbert, but I can't imagine that mercury poisoning will prove a threat before—" she'd shared another knowing look with Eiffel, "—well, before some of the other risks that we have to contend with."
"More to the point," Minkowski had said, not looking up from where she was sifting needle-thin bones from her cut of tuna with the ease of a practiced surgeon. "Fish is what's available, so fish is what we'll have." She'd spoken with a this-conversation-is-over tone of finality, and Hilbert went back to picking through reheated pieces of freeze-dried peppers.
Later, as they'd cleaned up for the evening—clearing the cutlery into bins of soapy water and storing the leftover fish in clear plastic Tupperware—Hilbert had quietly mused on the potential dangers of ingesting fish that might have been feeding on bodies of the dead that had waded into the harbor. "We know a bite is enough to infect," he'd said into the sudden quiet, scraping tuna scales and chewed-around bones off his plate and into the trash, "but I wonder how the disease might affect such a non-hominid host. Would it die off in the fish's stomach, or would it still be transferable to humans?" Hilbert had shrugged, either not noticing the effect of his words or—more likely—not caring. "I suppose our continued states of well-being suggest that the question of diseased fish is no cause for concern. Or, perhaps, a scenario that we have yet to encounter."
Minkowski hadn't said anything in response, but Eiffel had seen the flex of her fingers tightening around the dish sponge. Afterwards, she'd started to steer the Hephaestus a few extra miles off the coast before dropping the nets. Even so, sometimes at dinner, Eiffel will look down at his food and picture half-rotted bodies sunk down to the ocean floor. Skin and bone flaking off into the water as undead hands groped around in the murky black. It takes a special effort to continue eating, after that.
"Eiffel," Minkowski says, shaking him from his thoughts. "Dinner? You coming?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'll be up in a few."
He moves to turn back to the radio, but before he does, Minkowski clears her throat, tilting her head towards the collection of spare parts and salvaged wiring that Hera had repurposed into his broadcast equipment. "For my own peace of mind, what exactly are you saying on that thing?"
"Does it matter?" Eiffel asks, shifting back to face the desk. "It's not like anyone is out there. Not anyone I've found, at least."
Minkowski makes a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat, and when Eiffel glances back at her, she's wearing an expression he can't quite parse.
"Maybe nobody's saying anything," she says, slow, "but that doesn't mean nobody is listening. Just—" her voice breaks off and she lets out a weary-sounding sigh, "—be careful, Eiffel. Don't go giving away too much information about us, or the ship's location, or the like. Even if you haven't found proof of other survivors, I can't imagine that we're the only ones. There's always the risk that we wake up one day to find someone less-than-friendly at our front door."
"I assume we're talking about a metaphoric front door, since—as far as I know—the Hephaestus doesn't have a street address or a welcome mat, or anything."
"Eiffel."
"Relax, Captain," Eiffel says, holding up his hands in surrender. "Trust me, I'm not broadcasting the plans to the Death Star across the airwaves, or spelling out a scavenger hunt with our location at the other end. I don't think I've said anything more specific about us other than my own name and the name of the Hephaestus, and I can't imagine that will provide anyone with much of a road map." He shoots Minkowski a reassuring smile. "We've got a good thing going here, and I'm not trying to rock the boat. Literally or figuratively."
"Okay," Minkowski says after a few moments, drumming her fingers against the door frame. "Okay. I believe you. Now, hurry up with whatever you still have to do and meet us upstairs for dinner."
"Aye aye," Eiffel says, raising two fingers to his temple in a salute.
—
"We need to make a supply run sometime in the next few days," Hera says, ladling herself a bowl of fish soup (though calling it soup is a little generous — more like, pieces of fish and canned vegetables in a weak-tasting broth). "Can you pass the salt, Eiffel?"
"Fuck's sake," Minkowski says, running her hands over her face like she's trying to scrub away the tired lines from under her eyes. "What are we low on?"
"What aren't we low on?" Hera glances down at the list she has sketched out on a yellow legal pad, bullet points running the length of the page. "Diesel tanks, toilet paper, batteries, Vitamin C tablets—unless you think the dead will kill us before scurvy does—"
"Scurvy?" Eiffel interrupts, eyebrows raised and spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. "Like, the pirate disease?"
"Yes, Eiffel. Like the pirate disease."
"That's still a thing? That didn't die out with, I don't know, the bubonic plague, or whatever?"
"Scurvy is caused by a Vitamin C-deficiency," Hilbert says in the same vaguely-exasperated tone that Eiffel's used to hearing. "Given that circumstances have led to the restricted availability of citrus, yes, Mr. Eiffel, scurvy is most certainly 'still a thing'."
"Most drugstores and pharmacies have been cleared out by now," Minkowski says, turning back to Hera. "What's worst-case scenario if we can't find anything?"
"Tooth decay. Anemia," Hera says, glancing over at Hilbert, who nods in confirmation. "And, eventually, death. But most people ransacked medicine counters for antibiotics and stronger prescription meds — all we need are a couple containers of Flintstones Gummies. We can check out that drugstore back in Bodega Bay."
"Yeah, okay — I remember that being a pretty quiet area. What else is on the list?"
"Any canned goods and non-perishables we can find, although food isn't as pressing—"
"Not as pressing as cigarettes. Don't forget those."
"Cigarettes, Mr. Eiffel?" Hilbert asks, his voice a little too innocent. "Should I take that to mean that Captain Minkowski has seen fit to return your lighter?"
"One! One measly fire—which, I remind you all, was promptly extinguished—"
"By me."
"Irrelevant, Hera—and now, you all act like you don't trust me!"
His fellow crewmates share sideways glances around the table. "We don't."
"Outrageous. Clearly I'm being conspired against. I ask you—human being to his fellow human beings—where is the justice?"
"Sincerest apologies, Eiffel," Minkowski says, not bothering to arrange her expression into anything remotely apologetic, "but you're restricted to nicotine patches and gum for the foreseeable future. Captain's orders."
"You know, Minkowski, if this downright authoritarian rule goes unchecked, I might have to stage a coup one of these days."
"I consider myself duly warned."
There's a half-smile on Minkowski's perpetually stern-faced mouth and, if it weren't coming at his own expense, Eiffel would be glad to see it.
—
"Testing, testing...one-two-three, testing. Any fellow survivors out there who can hear me? My name is Doug Eiffel, recovering alcoholic and former Blockbuster employee—that is, from way back when Blockbuster still existed. And that's kind of funny, isn't it? Not the working-at-Blockbuster thing, although I guess that is sort of funny, and—full disclosure—that particular story did end with my getting fired for trying to steal a copy of Butch Cassidy. But no, I meant the part about being a recovering alcoholic, because that's still true. Addiction doesn't care that the world's gone to shit; I still want to ransack the liquor aisle of a Safeway or learn how to home-brew moonshine and drink myself into oblivion. Even more now than I did before, for obvious reasons.
"Sorry, folks — I didn't mean for this broadcast to get quite so heavy. But it's not like I can walk over to the closest 6 a.m. AA meeting to talk about how I wake up wanting nothing more than a drink in my hand. And, hey, if you can't share uncomfortable personal truths over the airwaves at the end of the world, then who can you tell?"
(Minkowski and Hera left on the supply run the day before yesterday, heading to the shore in a small two-seater boat with a low-power motor fixed to the back. Hera's knife and pistol tucked into her belt, Minkowski's sawed-off slung over her shoulder. They're not due back until tomorrow evening, but Eiffel always tends to rack up extra hours in front of the radio whenever they're gone.)
—
"Hey, Doc, you need help with anything?"
Hilbert barely looks up from whatever he's working on, sparing Eiffel an unimpressed glance before turning back to his project. "Do not take this the wrong way, Mr. Eiffel, but I'm not sure that you can provide the...delicate touch that this work requires. More to the point, I am not looking for conversation, and you seem either unable or unwilling to endure silence, despite us having little in common, and having even less to say to one another."
It's silent for a few beats, absent the sound of Eiffel's words or his footsteps, and when Hilbert glances up, he sees Eiffel still hovering nearby, clearly torn between staying and going. Hilbert lets out a tired sigh and leans away from his project, setting his glasses down on the table.
"This is not the first time that Captain Minkowski and Hera have made a trip to the shore and, as long as the current state of the world persists, it will not be the last. Both are more than capable of handling themselves — a fact they have proved many times over, and, I believe, something which you have witnessed firsthand."
"But, what if—"
"What would you have us do, Eiffel?" Hilbert asks, Russian accent coming through heavier as his tone grows shorter. "The arsenal on this ship is limited, and most of it is currently in the possession of Hera and Captain Minkowski. We have no way of following them without taking the Hephaestus closer to shore, something I would hope that even you can recognize as an unjustifiable risk. If their absence causes you such anxiety—as it evidently does, given that you're currently wearing grooves in my floor with your endless pacing—then perhaps you should accompany them on their next outing. But for the time being—and, indeed, until their return—there is nothing that you can do for them. Now why don't you try to find something useful to keep yourself busy in their absence, unless you would like to tell Captain Minkowski that you spent three days twiddling your thumbs and bothering me." Hilbert picks up his glasses and gives him a level look. "Well, Mr. Eiffel?"
He knows that Hilbert is right—knows he isn't worth a damn with a gun or a knife, and that's most of the reason why Minkowski and Hera left him behind—but there's light years of space between recognizing that Hilbert has a point and accepting the truth of his words, and Eiffel's caught somewhere in the middle. He knows that Hilbert is right, but he's very fucking far from happy about it.
So, eventually, Eiffel wanders up to the deck, hands shoved deep into his pockets and jacket collar turned up against the wind chill skating off the waves. Like so much else, light pollution is a thing of the past, and the stars shine brighter than Eiffel ever expected to see when he was growing up in a mid-sized city where the clearest things in the sky were the wing lights of commercial jets. He'd never been able to pick out any constellations other than the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt, and so he and Hera had sat on the deck of the Hephaestus and made up their own, sketching new shapes in the sky in an astronomic game of connect-the-dots. Collections of white that became Half-Empty Bottle of Corona, and Something Dropped From A Very Tall Building, and A Whale, I Swear, But You Have To Squint A Little Bit. Eiffel leans back against the railing and finds the small cluster of stars that Hera had labeled Lots And Lots Of Bees.
He misses her. Minkowski, too. Hopes that whatever shitty joke he'd made before they left doesn't become the last thing he ever said to either of them.
—
"Testing, testing...hello? This is Doug Eiffel, roller-coaster aficionado and endless fan of the Temptations, reaching out to any other lucky soul that's still alive and kicking. Anybody out there? Anybody with access to a radio who wants to help me avoid another one-sided conversation? Come on, folks, don't be shy — unlike the dead, I don't bite." Eiffel pauses and lets out a half-laugh. "Usually, that is. There was this one guy, back in college, who did have a thing for that. But, uh, that was strictly sexy biting. Not, like, the let-me-tear-out-your-jugular biting of the undead variety."
"Any luck?"
Eiffel lifts his finger from the button and glances over his shoulder to see Hera leaning against the doorframe, some of her curls slipping loose from her ponytail and a smudge of grease across her forehead. She's still got a makeshift bandage wrapped around her ankle from when she twisted it on her supply run with Minkowski—the fabric a mottled shade of peach against her dark skin—but Hilbert says it's a minor injury, and nothing to worry about, and Eiffel's choosing to focus on those facts rather than think about what Hera and Minkowski were running from.
"About the same luck as usual," Eiffel says, gesturing for her to come into the room, "which is to say: none."
Hera moves out of the doorway, taking a few steps forward until she's resting her hip against the edge of the table. "How's the radio holding up? You need me to take a look at anything?"
"No, no, the radio's doing great. Trust me, it's not faulty wiring or a weak signal that's the problem — there's just no fucking people." Eiffel sighs and pushes away from the desk, running his hands over his face. "I don't know. It was always a long shot, but maybe it's time to give this up. Get back to doing something that Minkowski would deem more productive."
"That's a pretty short list, and most of it has to do with double-checking the engines and working the nets. And you're hopeless with the engines."
"I am not hopeless—"
Hera raises an eyebrow, and Eiffel lets out a laugh, conceding the argument without another word. "Yeah, okay. Fair. But what's the point of spending all this time sending out broadcasts if no one is responding to them?"
"Yet. We always knew this would be a process, Eiffel, and one that relies on luck more than anything else." She reaches out to rest a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe nothing's come of it yet, but you're not a quitter, so don't close the book on this so easily. If someone else is out there—and odds say that there has to be—you'll find them."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Eiffel says, looking up at her and shooting her a half-convinced smile. "It might just be you—Minkowski and Hilbert are pretty firmly of the opinion that this whole project is a waste of time—but I appreciate your support."
"Anytime, Eiffel. You know I'm here if you need me."
—
The first time that Eiffel hears the sound of something new under the static, he assumes he imagined it. It's brief as a flash of lightning, and significantly less distinct—no more than a faint skip below the blanket of white noise—but Eiffel's spent too many hours bent over these speakers to ignore it entirely. Wasted enough afternoons sifting through static like panning for gold in creekbed silt that he knows to recognize the glint of something shiny in the muck. His breath catches somewhere in his throat as he turns back the dial, searching for the right frequency. Doesn't notice that he's talking to himself until he hears Hera behind him, asking, "Eiffel? Is everything okay?"
"Everything might be better than okay," Eiffel says, barely glancing over his shoulder to where Hera is standing, not registering the crease of concern in her brow. The needle crawls across the scanner, and then—wait—Eiffel hears it again. Not just a skip in the static, but the fuzzy beep of another broadcast.
"Holy shit, Eiffel, was that—?"
"I think so. I mean, I can't hear it clearly, but it sounds like something, right? If I could just get the signal clearer—"
Hera steps into the room and moves to the radio, her hands dipping back behind the metal paneling to make some adjustments. Suddenly, the sound flares up louder, cutting sharp through the static like scissors through wool. A steady collection of beeping sounds punctuated throughout by beats of silence. Eiffel might not know the language, but he can damn well recognize morse code as well as anyone else.
"Do you—?" He begins to ask Hera, but she shakes her head.
"I don't, but Minkowski or Hilbert might."
She ducks out of the room without another word, leaving Eiffel alone with the radio and his heart beating loud in his ears and this unmistakeable piece of proof that, somewhere, someone else is alive. But Eiffel has become well-versed in pain and pitfalls and disappointments since the first days of the outbreak, and so he knows he should handle this situation with a suitable level of cautious skepticism. Thinks back to Minkowski's warning of less-than-savory types out in the world, waiting to snag a quick score from a weaker target.
Still, hearing the evidence that someone exists beyond the four of them, it's hard not to feel some small measure of hope.
—
"Yes, Hera, I can translate it. Am I truly the only one here who understands morse code?"
"Sorry that I didn't spend my childhood in Soviet Russia where happy playtime is spent memorizing outdated modes of communication."
"Mhm," Hilbert says, only half-listening as he transcribes the audio pattern to paper. "Fair enough, Eiffel. And I'm sure that the sizable collection of baseball cards you amassed in your youth has proved to be a worthwhile investment. Who needs this—what did you call it?—outdated mode of communication when you can instead regale us with Baby Ruth's home-run record. Very useful."
"Babe Ruth—"
"Isn't important right now, Eiffel," Minkowski interjects, stepping forward to look over Hilbert's shoulder. "What does the message say?"
"It seems to be a looped recording, and a relatively short one, too. Just one word and a collection of numbers, though I'm not sure of their significance."
"Well, what does it say?"
"O-U-T-P-O-S-T-3-5-9. Just that, playing on a loop."
"Outpost 359…" Eiffel says, reading what Hilbert has spelled out across the paper. "An outpost? That must mean more survivors, right? Hell, there could be a whole camp out there, wherever the recording is coming from."
"Slow down, Eiffel," Minkowski says, glancing over at him. "We don't know that."
"Come on, Captain. You can hear that message, same as me. Someone set up that recording, someone wants to be found."
"Recording being the key word. Sure, someone set this up at some point, but that's no guarantee that they're still alive — whoever they were. Or maybe it's a red herring, or a trap. Point being, we just don't know enough."
"So we'll answer them! Send out our own broadcast, figure out what's going on—"
"Absolutely not."
"Captain—"
"Eiffel." The steel in Minkowski's voice is enough to stop Eiffel cold, his mouth half-open with the start of a frustrated response. "Listen to me very carefully: you will not broadcast on this frequency, and you will not reach out to the source of the recording. You can continue to monitor this station—in fact, I encourage you to do so—but until we have more pieces of concrete information, we are going to leave this alone. Is that understood?"
He doesn't respond right away, and Minkowski's tone grows sharper. "Eiffel. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Captain," Eiffel says after a beat, quiet.
"Good — then I think we've all wasted enough time on this. Hera and Dr. Hilbert, please resume whatever you were doing before this interruption. Eiffel, I need your help up on deck." She turns and walks to the door, waiting next to the frame as Hilbert and Hera slowly file out of the room. After a beat, Eiffel turns off the radio and rises from his chair to join her.
"For the record, Captain," he says, following Minkowski into the hall, "I think this is a mistake. This is the kind of opportunity we've been searching for, and I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot by not following up with it. Who knows when we'll find another chance like this?"
"I hear you, Eiffel," Minkowski says, some of the edge in her words sanded away. Sounding less like a drill sergeant and more like someone who hasn't gotten a full night's sleep in the past two weeks (which, knowing Minkowski, is probably true). "And I appreciate the work that you've put in with the radio, but this isn't your call to make. If something changes in the message, we can revisit the subject, but otherwise, I'd rather play it safe." She must see the unconvinced look on his face, because she holds out a hand to stop him.
"We have too much that we could lose, Eiffel. Our supplies, the ship, each other — I can't take that risk." Minkowski blinks away for a moment, and Eiffel wonders what she lived through in the days after the outbreak, before he'd joined the crew of the Hephaestus. She's wearing the same look he recognizes from the faces of other survivors—the same one he'd seen on himself, reflected back in half-broken storefront windows or the dusty rear window of a Subaru—and he wonders who she's remembering. Her parents? Her partner? Her kid? But Minkowski doesn't say anything else, and Eiffel pretends he doesn't see the glint of water in the corners of her eyes, and they head up to the deck in silence.
—
After his talk with Minkowski, Eiffel broadcasts less often. Doesn't feel the same drive to go skimming through stations and fishing through the static when he's already found something out in the radio-wave ether. Never mind that he doesn't know what's on the other end. Never mind that Minkowski's orders keep him from saying anything in return. Sometimes he taps his finger against the mic button, but never with enough weight to open up the broadcast. No, instead he settles for listening to the metronomic beat of his fingernail against the plastic, off-tempo against the coded beeping rhythm. Eventually, he learns to recognize the particular pattern of dots and dashes that spell out each letter and number in the message—O-U-T-P-O-S-T-3-5-9—and he doesn't even notice when he starts to tap out the pattern like a nervous tic. Fingers drumming morse code against his thigh, a ballpoint pen tapping against the tabletop.
O-U-T-P-O-S-T-3-5-9.
Maybe someday he'll find out what it means.