Radio Life

by Derek B. Miller

Genres: Dystopian; Apocalyptic

Synopsis

Radio Life: a gripping adventure and a riveting political thriller: The Commonwealth, a post-apocalyptic civilisation on the rise, is locked in a clash of ideas with the Keepers . . . a fight which threatens to destroy the world . . . again.

When Lilly was first Chief Engineer at The Commonwealth, nearly fifty years ago, the Central Archive wasn't yet the greatest repository of knowledge in the known world, protected by scribes copying every piece of found material - books, maps, even scraps of paper - and disseminating them by Archive Runners to hidden off-site locations for safe keeping. Back then, there was no Order of Silence to create and maintain secret routes deep into the sand-covered towers of the Old World or into the northern forests beyond Sea Glass Lake. Back then, the world was still quiet, because Lilly hadn't yet found the Harrington Box.

But times change. Recently, the Keepers have started gathering to the east of Yellow Ridge - thousands upon thousands of them - and every one of them determined to burn the Central Archives to the ground, no matter the cost, possessed by an irrational fear that bringing back the ancient knowledge will destroy the world all over again. To prevent that, they will do anything.

Fourteen days ago the Keepers chased sixteen-year-old Archive Runner Elimisha into a forbidden Old World Tower and brought the entire thing down on her. Instead of being killed, though, she slipped into an ancient unmapped bomb shelter where she has discovered a cache of food and fresh water, a two-way radio like the one Lilly's been working on for years . . . and something else. Something that calls itself 'the internet' . . .

Release date: January 21, 2021

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 496

Sample

TRACOLLO

Two riders trace the ridge of the sand sea, miles from the Commonwealth and the protecting walls of the Stadium. They are unhurried. It is the oscuridad, when the sun falls below the horizon and the line separating the land from heaven vanishes. The dry season has begun and the temperature drops with the sun. Later, crystals of ice will form into fields of broken glass at night, their edges cutting the bitter Chinook winds.

Night comes. The riders and their mounts are silhouetted: blackened against a sky that is alive with colour. They cover their faces with scarves as the winds pick up and the shimmering green streaks of the night appear above the remaining line of day. No one living remembers darkness to the nights here. Black skies of white stars are only known by stories and songs.

To their right, below and far into the Empty Quarter, a sand pillar forms in the wind. And another. They dance together, and the riders stop to look. The fine golden grains capture the night: greens and violets and blues that reach upwards as if to offer a gift to the gods. Beyond the shimmering dance, far off and familiar, six Gone World towers rise, all straight lines and crisp angles. From here, their surfaces blot out the stars; they are conspicuous by what they hide.

The horses are relaxed, experienced. They know this route and have not been ridden hard today. The habits of nightfall are familiar: they will be fed soon and afterwards, silence will envelope them. Stillness is bred into their line.

The shorter of the two riders takes the lead when the sand pillars settle and the moment has passed. She turns them off the road and towards a depression where they will hide them for the night. The horses descend slowly, stepping cautiously. They are laden, but the burden is fair and balanced for speed. The woman’s horse carries more because she weighs less. On the side of her mount is a long rifle with scope and bipod. On his, a long lance with small levers built into the grip and a short carbine. In his boot there is a knife.

It is flat at the bottom of the ravine where the woman halts to look back. She cannot see the Gone World or the High Road from here, which means neither can see her. Away to the south is a long stretch of land, but there are no roads there and few reasons for travellers to cross it. She clicks her tongue once and the man scans the horizon. In agreement, he nods.

Together they dismount. The man ties his horse to a dried-out bush and scratches the animal behind the ear. From the back of the woman’s horse he removes a canvas sack from which he pulls out a black triangular object made of a matte fabric that absorbs light and reflects none. Releasing a small catch at one corner, he flicks the triangle forward and – with a cough – a dome appears that is large enough for two adults to rest in.

The woman ties her horse beside his before unstrapping her rifle and a small backpack and disappearing into the tent. The man takes one last look at the undulating green lights of the night sky. Away from the fires of the Stadium, their colours are more vibrant and pleasing. A moment later he follows her inside.

The woman has already set up a small stove no larger than a palm that creates heat but no light, and is warming spiced beans and stalks of green onion with slices of carrot. She cuts two modest portions of dried beef and places them over the plant-food to soften. The two riders sit cross-legged over the stove warming their hands. The fabric of the tent allows them to see out, though it mutes the colours. The food, the tent and their bodies quickly warm. She turns down the heat, which will linger.

The man uses his boot knife to divide and distribute the portions onto two small steel plates. He hands her the better share, for she has not been eating enough lately. She pushes it back but he ignores her and eats his own portion.

They share a litre of water and drink it all.

Soon, he sleeps, while she leaves the tent and keeps watch outside. There is little to see but the sky – there are few animals this far from the wadi running beneath The Crossing, and those that scurry through the Gone World sleep at night too. Only big-eyed birds and flying mice hunt in the dark.

There was a time, when the woman was young, when the bandit trade was heavy. Now the Big Road is secured by the Dragoons and the Commonwealth controls outwards from the Flats beyond the AIRBUS to the edge of The Crossing. But tonight they both feel an unease in the air and so they take greater precautions, because tonight is unique: the man’s lance is full with all six flags. It is the first time a Raider had returned with this much bounty in almost twenty years.

 

The deep night arrives while she is on guard. The horses have stopped stirring and the moon has sunk below the ridge that shields them from the road, creating a thin line of pearl-white along the edge of the dunes under the autumnal sky.

Into the quiet, but heard clearly by the woman, there is a sharp but distant explosion. Experienced and careful, she edges up the ridge to bring the Gone World towers into view. A light – maybe a fire? – burns through a glittering window. Two more small explosions follow: she sees them before they reach her ears.

The horses stir.

After a pause there is a low, heavy rumble that grows.

She brings the rifle into position, but does not look through the scope; instead, she looks over it for the wider view. She digs her right hand into the dirt, looking for a hard surface that might carry the vibrations. There is a heavy rock and she feels how it shakes as though from the Earth’s core. The sound is so low and deep it is more like a feeling: a heartache or nostalgia. It is nothing she has heard before but the longer it lasts, the more confident she becomes of her supposition.

She knows what it is.

When she is certain it is over and she has stopped counting the length of the rumble, she returns to the dome where he is already awake and sitting.

The man cannot see his wife’s expression but he understands her body movements and the nuance of her breath. They have almost thirty years together, and one daughter. They are the most decorated Raiders of the Commonwealth. Much passes unspoken between them.

‘What was it?’ he asks; his voice barely a sigh.

‘A Tracollo.’

The man shifts onto his elbow. He rubs his eyes and allows himself an understanding smile: he slept. She did not. Their days have been very long. The desert can provide dreams either way.

‘It must have been something else,’ he says gently.

She allows him a moment to invent what else it could have been. She is patient and watches him fail as he tests each possible explanation against his wife’s experience and intelligence.

When they both sense his failure and his smile vanishes, she speaks again. ‘It made the ground shake – even at this distance. I counted thirty-five seconds. I think a whole tower went down.’

The man sits, his legs crossed. ‘The last Tracollo was Lilly’s and that was fifty-four years ago. The chances of one actually falling after all this time are . . .’

‘The same as they were then,’ she says. ‘No one knows why that one fell,’ she adds, adjusting her rifle, ‘but this time, it was helped. There were three smaller detonations before the collapse.’

The woman places her hand on the earth. The vibrations in the rock and sand are gone but it makes her feel closer to the proof. ‘I think someone knocked it down.’

He considers the implications. ‘You think someone else has figured out how to make explosives?’ he asks. His grogginess shaken off, having forced himself back into the moment, he is alert now.

‘It would change the balance,’ she admits. ‘Unless they found some. Which would be better, though still not good.’

‘What time is it?’ he asks.

‘The moon is down.’ The woman dons her wool cap again and twists the scarf around her face and neck. She opens the door to the dome and the tent fills with cold.

‘I’ll be glad to get back home,’ the man says before she is gone.

‘We may need to stay,’ she replies. She grips her rifle and steps out.

 

The horses are awake now. She places a hand on her own mount’s muzzle to calm him as she passes to climb the ridge.

At the top, as the Gone World comes into view, she opens the bipod, switches on her scope and resumes her prone firing position. The wind is low but constant and moving towards her. The scope measures it at 4.2 knots. She switches on the night vision and magnifies.

Tower three – the one people used to call Aladdin – is gone. In its place is a massive cone of debris that blots out the colours in the sky behind it.

She crawls forward a careful metre, which places her slightly higher on the ridge, giving her a better sight-line to the land where the towers emerge.

The towers are to their northeast. On her right, in the direction of The Crossing, fires are being lit. They are green through her scope, their centres burning white. Shadows are already on the move as the valley comes alive and she feels the energy of choices being made. Though her hand is steady, the images are out of range and so is the meaning of their movements.

She can only guess.

‘Roamers,’ she concludes flatly, knowing her voice will carry to her husband and no further. ‘Too far away to see who they are. We might know them, we might not.’

Behind her she feels his hand gently squeeze her ankle. She turns.

His meaning is clear: he is asking her to consider the wisdom of her action. He will trust her judgement. But they are partners, and it is his job to force the question.

She does not crawl back down the hill and instead watches the fires approach the Gone World.

‘The plume is enormous,’ she says, describing what she sees. ‘It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before. I can see four teams on their way over but my view is flat. I can only see left and right. Everything is too dark.’ She pauses before adding, ‘It’s so dangerous these days with that tribe encamped on the Ridge.’

They are called the Keepers.

He does not know what they are keeping.

‘Henry,’ he says, ‘come back. There’s nothing we can do now.’

‘They’ll be pulling finds from the Trove, Graham. The last time there was a Tracollo, Lilly came back with the Harrington Box and changed everything. We need to know what’s coming out of the depths.’

‘We’re carrying Full Flags, Henrietta – precisely because of the Harrington Box. We have no idea what value this already has. We can’t risk what we have for the unknown.’

Henry tips her head towards the missing tower. ‘That’s the largest unknown we’ve ever seen.’

Graham nods. This is true.

They are talking too much, they know it, but the attention of the world is fixed elsewhere. Chatter in the night is now expected. The world adapts.

And this needs to be discussed.

Graham appeals to Henry’s sense of history: ‘When Lilly and Saavni and General Winters were kids, things were tougher and the Stadium unruly. We have systems now.’

‘They didn’t have a military force building up on Yellow Ridge back then either.’

He runs a hand over his face and does not answer her. His thin riding scarf is slack around his neck. After a moment, he nods again. This is also true.

Two Runners have gone missing since the Keepers arrived two moons ago. It is rumoured they were killed, but there are no bodies and no way to Attest. But the concern is mounting.

Henry waits for his answer. She knows what he knows; neither claims wisdom over the other. She does, however, tend to be the more convincing.

‘Fine. We wait for now,’ Graham says, a small concession. ‘We’ll visit the Tracollo in the morning, then The Crossing. Now, though, we wait,’ he insists. ‘And it’s your turn to sleep.’

Henry watches the Roamers approach the plume of debris and imagines the shinies and Knowledge they will soon be pulling from the hidden depths of the Gone World.

It will be very hard to sleep.

BEAUTIFUL

Earlier that night and before the collapse, across the valley and on the flats above Yellow Ridge, a tent community is resting, cold under the green streaks of night. However vivid and inspiring, still the colours have turned grey for their leader since the Sickness arrived and his wife fell ill.

Don’t sleep beside her, the sages advised. You will become ill too, in the way that rot spreads through touching fruit.

No, he said. It doesn’t work like that. And what would it matter if it did? The warmth of our bodies together is what life is for. Why forego what is good in the world only to have less of it for longer?

Yes, they agreed. That is why you are our leader.

This was not why. He knew he had no wisdom, only conviction: one born from the momentum of an earlier decision that he cannot question because doing so would be a great undoing. But he does not correct them. Correcting them would turn their minds most unnaturally – the way that night birds turn their heads to look back. People are not meant to look back this way.

Their desert encampment has more than a hundred tents, grouped by extended family. There is room for many more, and many more are coming. They are close to a cliff wall facing the Empty Quarter where water is most scarce but they have a well and purify what they draw using the sun’s light in plastic bottles.

They can see The Crossing to their west; the Gone World is beyond, though everyone knows it lies beneath them too. There is a cliff and a drop to their west before the rolling sands begin. It is close, but not so close that the children risk falling. It is not far enough away, though, to sooth the fears of the mothers.

‘You don’t have children,’ they say to him. ‘You don’t understand.’

No, he agrees. Not any more.

 

He has been awake beside his wife for hours. He often wakes this way now, his soul torn between wanting to watch her sleep and his body needing sleep itself. Being torn disrupts his peace and prevents him from existing fully in the moment, as is the way of their people. The Chinook winds warm what should be the icy desert floor, keeping the night dew on the sand from freezing. It arrives at his tent as a rippling breeze over the roof and threatens the sealed walls, turning the shaking home into a frightening song. Still, it is the permanent sound of change and there is a warmth – a certainty – to be gleaned in recognising how permanence and change are part of the same truth. His people do not see a contradiction in this but instead a poetry.

 

The Chinook. The wind carried its own name after the world was destroyed and whispered it into the ears of the people it found. How else would such an ancient word survive with no lips remaining to speak it?

 

Awake in the dark beside her, the Leader traces his wife’s sleeping face with his fingers. He is gentle enough not to wake her. Later, he rests his hand on her chest and feels it rise and fall with each breath and the magic of living: the human heat that is warm but never burns. There on their bed he listens to her stir and like a child he plays the game of matching his own breathing with hers so he might feel what she feels. They are no match, though. He is so much larger, stronger, a model of health, with lungs that could hold a storm. His breath is too deep, too slow. The balance is forced: it cannot last, because all unnatural things are buried eventually. As the synchronicity is lost, the feeling of union passes and this stirs an emotion from a part of himself beyond his control.

In this way and that quickly – a grain of sand on a night wind – he is whisked away from serenity.

 

He knows this genie that is disrupting him; this curse. They call him Time. Time the Titan who is the enemy of Now. They battle, these two, in the legends of his tribe, a poetic battle that explains much to children and informs the talk of the people. Time’s face, they explain, is never the same. He never stops moving. Wanting. Needing. Feeding. He circles as he hunts.

Now, Time’s nemesis, does not move, but crouches on the earth, always present, always ready, prepared to be any and all things as circumstance demands. And the more Time prepares his attack, the more he circles his prey and clangs his armour and threatens and taunts, the calmer Now becomes. Now is steadfast in the only truth we can know for certain: I am here and here I am.

Poor Time, the lesser of the two Titans. Time cannot exist in a single moment. Time can never be in one place. There is no rest for Time and so he is restless. Agitated, he lashes out where he can.

Tonight, Time is pressing on the Leader’s mind, instilling an instant and complete understanding that the happiness he feels and the love he has for his wife is going to end. Because life, Time says, is not the wind. It is not permanent. ‘It is mine,’ he says.

Soon his wife’s warmth will end and her breathing will stop. Knowing this splits him in two – here with her and also there after the end. It is in that glance back at himself from that other place that he becomes unmoored, because one part of himself leaves the here and now and becomes planted in the future. It is beyond painful because he knows that every moment they have left is precious. Most precious. This fills his chest with a terrible pressure that builds behind his eyes that distracts him and robs him of what is most dear – their final moments.

 

He is two men now, one looking back to the instruct the other:

 

Take it all in before it is too late, he tells himself. Give all this a name. Place everything here in your mind. The texture of her skin. The curve where her nose meets her cheek, the exact shape of her eyebrow, because it will soon be gone like the billions of Ancients who are now dust and died in the Gone World at the height of a permanence they thought was theirs, only to be rent from his earth in a flash and their future obliterated. Will you choose to forget love?

You know you won’t. Because you remember her too.

Veronique.

 

The Rise. The land filling up and covering everything. Only the tops of the highest towers are left poking through. All those people who once breathed this same air – did Time not talk to them too?

Take it in, the voice says to him.

 

His wife stirs and he is back. He rolls her onto him so nothing is wasted. His beard becomes one with her hair. She inhales, and the pull freezes his chest. She exhales, and it burns. He cups her cheek in his palm where it was made to fit by Destiny. Her right hand finds his belly and rests there, fingers open. If only he could pour his own life into hers so they could share it evenly, divide it between them as rainwater drawn from a cistern.

‘I don’t want to go yet,’ she whispers to him.

He did not realise she was awake.

‘I don’t want you to go at all,’ he answers her.

‘What if we’re wrong? What if there is a cure but we’ve been headstrong by ignoring it? The Prophet arrived fifty years ago in the east and spoke of a world beneath the world. What if there are answers there we’ve ignored? What if there was a cure . . . before?’

‘Your death saves us all,’ he says by rote.

‘How?’ she asks, though she knows the answer. She likes his voice. She will listen to him saying anything.

‘Trying to make the world better is what killed the Ancients. We accept the world as it is so that it will not die again, appreciate what we have so we don’t lose more.’

He feels the crease of her smile on his breast.

‘That’s what we tell everyone,’ she says.

‘Because it’s right,’ he answers.

She does not reply but instead, she runs her hand around his chest, down his belly, running her fingernails along his soft penis.

‘You’re still beautiful,’ she says. This may be her answer. It may not.

‘I would take your place,’ he says.

A puff of air through his chest hair. Her last laugh.

‘Our brave leader.’

‘I fear life without you more than death. Taking your place would be the coward’s way, and I would take it.’

‘There is no future,’ she whispers, repeating their marriage vows. ‘There is no past. Our words vanish as we say them. There is only now, and it is now we have each other, until that moment when we do not.’

Now it is his turn to smile.

‘That is what we tell everyone,’ he says.

 

He scratches her bare back until her breathing slows. It is laboured and heavy. The Sickness is a rapid and fading death. A few days. A week. They say it comes from deep beneath the towers of the Gone World where the bodies remain, the bones piled up. The Roamers and Explorers and bandits who would venture downwards either add to their number or bring it out fresh.

No one knows for sure.

Their blanket is made of sheep’s wool, separate squares sewed together, given by a neighbouring clan. Each square is a picture or shape from everyday life. It is a worthy gift.

He folds the ragged edge so it does not disturb his wife’s neck.

Twenty years of marriage. They are not meant to count them but they do.

For a time he looks at the ceiling of the tent and tries to feel, with every part of his body, the experience of her being there with him. It is a lie, he knows; this pretence of there being no past. And yet it works. Collective forgetting is possible because memory lives in talk, and talk lasts only as long as the wind. It is the personal forgetting that is harder, because that is written for ever on the soul. Silence erases one, but sometimes that only sharpens the other.

This life, this love, has left its mark on him, deeper than any wound, and what is theirs will become his alone once she is gone and he dons the white robe and red sash for his time of mourning. He will be expected to step forward into a new day and wordlessly carry the entirety of his wife’s life inside him: her memories, her words, her face, her body, her ideas. Alone. Who else will know? Who else will remember?

There are others – more comforted spirits – who work to forget. They heal by unclenching their fists and allowing the sand to run through their fingers. But he is not such a man. Though he pretends, his faith in the teachings is not sure enough.

 

And so he tries to remember everything he can: is her breast warmer than her arm or are they the same? This is the heat of her.

When her head is below his chin and her leg curls over him, where does her bent knee touch his leg? This is the size of her.

When she relaxes her sleeping hand on his shoulder, how far apart are her fingers? Because this is the touch of her.

He feels the flutters of her eyelids on his chest. They blink, and blink again, faster now. He saw this before with their daughter. He breathes very deeply. He is not sure whether it is for both of them or simply out of fear.

‘I can’t see,’ she says.

‘I’m here.’

‘Don’t look,’ she says. ‘Don’t look. I don’t want you to remember this.’

Her eyes will be pale: a film of pearl across them that separates the world from her. Their daughter flailed when this happened. Five years old; she could not understand it. If she couldn’t see her parents, she didn’t believe they were there. Sound was not enough. Touch was not enough.

It is the light. We need the light.

Veronique was her name.

That was ten years ago.

She is here with them right now. His family is together. He knows this because he can smell her hair.

‘Picture her,’ he says to his wife. ‘It is all you need to see now.’

‘It is not our way.’

‘Do it.’

Together they lie there, listening to the tent singing to them. She begins, slowly at first, and then faster and harder, to bang her head against his stomach as though she is trying to work her way into him so that he can absorb everything that she is and merge their lives together completely.

He accepts the pain until the line of her dignity is crossed. He clenches her head between his palms and stops her. But he does not look down.

‘Don’t let those people destroy the world again,’ she pleads. ‘They are going to make the same mistakes. You promised me when Veronique died – you promised that her death would save us all. Promise me now that you will protect what we still have, because it is too beautiful to lose. This life – it is all so beautiful.’

This is why he brought his people here. This was when their journey began; when their daughter died and they heard soon after a story about a people following the ways of the Ancients: a people committed to relearning all that was lost, all that led from peace to war, from life to death. That is when he knew what they had to do, what they needed to keep.

Her hand reaches up to find his face. She presses her palm against it, her fingertips closing his eyes so that, for a moment, all three of them can be as one.

‘Too beautiful,’ she says.

There is a deep tremor through the ground.

‘It has already begun,’ he promises. ‘We are not strong enough yet to take their fortress and stop the madness, but we will be and soon. Tonight we committed – we announced ourselves. It was for you.’

With this, as much a gift as a curse, they fall asleep. Their remaining time together is both perfect and wasted.

 

He emerges in the morning naked and bathed in the orange light of dawn. A woman wraps a white robe around his shoulders and ties a red sash around his waist.

Barefoot, he walks the full distance through the camp to the edge of the cliff and seats himself on a rock. A silent crowd gathers around him and they join him facing east.

The painted greens of the Aurora lights have retreated and vanished behind the majesty of the dawn, each colour more vibrant than the spice at the southern markets or the blood that lingers on the butchers’ blades.

His Deputy, expressionless, takes his hand in his own and washes it with water from an ancient bottle made of real glass. The water is cold and for a moment he resents it: the wet seems to be washing his wife’s scent and touch from him – but this is the purpose. The cold is to shock him back to the world around, to stimulate an awareness of what is still here, including himself.

He takes the bottle from the Deputy’s hand and drinks heavily. He is parched.

Together, the men and women and children of the encampment sit around him and watch the sun rise and the new day begin.

It is, as his wife said, beautiful.

THE HARD ROOM

Elimisha, daughter-of-Cara, wakes on a cold, polished floor in what might be morning. The act of drawing breath means she survived the chase, the explosions and even the collapse. It is too soon to even wonder how.

This cave smells of fine chalk and unwashed hair. Dust, older than memory, has settled on her brown skin the way ash from the night fires at the stadium falls on the arms and curly hair of her younger brother, to his endless delight.

She wrote his name on his forearm, and he looked up at his older sister – Elimisha! A Runner! – and walked away, proud and staring.

The written word: on their own flesh!

The floor tiles feel good against her cheek but are no distraction from the pain in her leg and hip, which does not throb from a single spot like a puncture wound but pulses. It feels like her heart is beating from her leg.

She reaches down. The blood is tacky and cool around her hip. This is better than wet and hot. There is no haemorrhage. She is not dying. Not yet, anyway. But she is damaged.

To calm her heart and slow the blood she tries to remember how, if not exactly why.

 

She had been slinking her way across the rooftops last night, moving through shadows, beneath downed girders and along troughs in the ruins to stay out of sight and ensure her Route remained secret. Thoughts running through her mind repeated: I am an Archive Runner. I am the youngest Runner in twenty years. I am sixteen years old and proving what is possible.

I am going to get this right.

True to Protocol, her black leather jacket had been zipped to the neck, her gloves fastened tightly, her sling-bag cinched over her left shoulder. She had already made her Knowledge drop at an Archive called Prydain and was on her way back via the Orange Route when she saw one of the tribesmen.

The Orange Route is a high run across the rooftops of the urbanscape. Her return was to be a night journey during a half-moon and she set out after a small meal of soft bread, dried meat and a full litre of water. Her mother had given her an apple too.

An apple: a loud, crunchy, shiny apple. If there was one thing she couldn’t eat on an urban run it was an apple.

Mothers.

The Archive Chief had ordered her to drink the entire litre and watched her as she did. Now, lying on the floor, Elimisha understands the rule – in fact, she wishes she’d had even more to drink. She is thirsty.

 

Last night, the blues in the sky were deeper than she had seen in months, the fiery tips of purple more pronounced than she remembered. She would have stopped and taken in the beauty if she’d been allowed.

The Ghost Talkers like to read the sky as though it’s a tome with stories of its own to tell. No one believes them, but everyone likes the tales. Strange that people whose minds are tilted off the True have the most amazing stories.

The view from the tops of the remaining buildings in the Gone World is the best. Much better than at home, where the fires that burn in the Stadium every night always block out the stars, hiding their light – other than that one spot behind the Stadium where the underground waters fal