Chapter Text
Emily hears the warbling of a tuning radio as she approaches the wall. A familiar barrage of indistinguishable static, the sound would’ve made her heart ache with nostalgia even if they weren’t in the midst of an apocalypse. She finds its owner perched on the wall, fidgeting with the dials and antenna.
Not wanting to scare her, Emily clears her throat softly before speaking. “Hi.”
Beca still jumps, whirling so fast she almost slips off the wall and down the cliff below. It’s been weeks since they’d arrived at the military camp, but their scavenging days had left them anxious and paranoid. And sleepless, Emily notes, wincing at the dark circles under Beca’s wide eyes.
She relaxes when she sees Emily, though, and loosens her grip on the screwdriver. “Hi.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I didn’t hear you.”
Emily joins her on the stone wall, swinging her legs over to dangle over the edge. This part of the camp border isn’t as heavily guarded, the cliff too steep for the Infected to climb. It’s a quiet spot they’d found and revealed to no one else, a secret getaway for when things got too loud or hectic back in tent city.
Emily watches Beca tinker with the radio for a bit before she speaks. “You weren’t at dinner. I got worried.”
Beca scrunches her eyebrows and looks up at the darkening sky. “Sorry, I lost track of time.” Her tone is sincerely apologetic but lacking in the franticness that used to follow a separation, no matter how brief, back in the world of the Infected. Gone are the days when someone’s prolonged absence equated to their surefire death.
“A guy was trading a bunch of stuff out of his tent, and I saw this thing,” she explains, poking around here and there with the screwdriver. “Traded my jacket for it.”
“Beca,” Emily chides.
“What? It’s summer now, I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, but what about when winter comes? Do you know how cold it gets up here?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Emily hums, still not happy but pacified by the pronoun Beca uses. “Seems like a useless trade for him. He couldn’t possibly fit into one of your jackets.”
Beca’s quiet for a long while, popping open the back cover and toying with the wiring before she responds. “It was for his daughter,” she says quietly. She shifts closer to Emily so their arms brush against each other. “Sorry I missed dinner. I wanted to get this working again before I showed you.”
She screws the cover back on and fidgets with the dials again. The sound becomes marginally clearer, the twisting of the dials actually changing the stations this time.
“The broadcast is on —”
“I’m not looking for that,” Beca says, squinting at the numbers through the dusty screen. “Parker was telling me about this group of guys living out of Willis Tower, broadcasting shit like book readings and live covers and whatever music they could get their hands on.”
Her fingers freeze as she picks up on something through the static. Emily strains her ears to no avail, but Beca’s face splits into a wide smile, the first real one Emily’s seen in a while. “Here,” she whispers excitedly, raising the volume.
It’s a little bit clearer now, the lilt of a melody unmistakeable through the white noise. The easy strumming of a guitar. Tinny sounds of chimes, maybe a synth. There’s too much static to really make out the words, but it’s a slow and steady cadence, soothing and dreamy.
Emily realizes with a jolt that this is the first time they’d listened to recorded music since they all left the Bella house a million years ago. Plenty of people around the camp sang songs and played tunes on salvaged instruments, but with no way to charge phones or mp3 players, studio-recorded music was basically obsolete.
“Wow,” Emily breathes, her statement reflected on Beca’s elated expression. “You saved it.”
She doesn’t know why she chose that word when it’s just a radio and radios are fixed, not saved. But she can’t unsay it, can’t do anything about the way Beca’s smile fades, can’t stop either of them from reliving the agonizing moments when they lost their friends. Emily holds her breath as the song continues to play softly between them, persistently calm despite the landmine she’d triggered.
She risks a glance at Beca’s face. Her eyes are clear. Sad, but clear.
“Yeah,” she finally says, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. “I guess I did.”