Page 111 of One Adult, Please

"The result is she just lit up an entire zone. Every zombie within earshot is going to converge on Mythic Frontier."

"Better there than here."

Joel finishes the final bolt, the last rotation, the dish locked into position, aligned, calibrated, done.

"Let's move," I say. "Get the comms online while we've got the window."

We drop through the hatch.

The operations center is small. Government-bland. Drop ceiling tiles and fluorescent fixtures that are running on generator power, giving everything that gray-green tint that makes everyone look slightly dead, which isn't great when you live in a world where slightly dead is a real category.

The comms room is at the end of the left hallway and Grace is in it.

She's standing in front of a control panel that looks like it was designed by someone who believed in buttons with a commitment to covering every available surface.

She's eating a powdered donut. There's sugar on her chin, on her hoodie, on the control panel, on several of the buttons she pressed. A crime scene in confectioner's sugar.

"Before you say anything," she says, turning to face us, donut in one hand, the other hand raised in the universal gesture of a person who knows they did a thing and wants to explain the thing before the consequences, "it worked."

"You pressed all the buttons," Joel says.

"I pressed a neighborhood of buttons. And the neighborhood happened to be the adventure part because the buttons are organized by zone and the adventure part was the closest zone to my hand. I'm not going to apologize for my arm length. They're the arms I have, and they reach where they reach."

"Grace," I say.

She looks at me.

"Eight out of ten," I say.

She blinks. "Eight? That was at least a nine. I redirected the entire zombie population of the big middle using amusement park infrastructure. That's innovation. That's tactical creativity. That's..."

"You pressed every button with your palm."

"Targeted palm deployment."

"Eight point five."

"Nine."

"Eight point seven. Final offer."

"Eight point seven," she says. "But the decimals are trending upward."

Joel is at the comms console. He's already moved past the button situation. The comms console is older equipment, pre-digital, built like something that expects to survive the end of the world. Which it technically has. He flips switches. Adjusts dials. The console hums, then buzzes, then makes a sound like clearing its throat.

“Shortwave antenna's receiving,” Joel says. “Signal's weak. Boosting. Satellite terminal is still acquiring.”

There's a crackle. Then static. The universal sound of the space between people who want to find each other and the technology that might let them.

"If this works," Grace says, and her voice is different now, "I can call my mom."

Nobody says anything for a second. The second is full of all the things none of us have said about what we left out there, who we left, what's waiting on the other end of a signal if there's anyone left to receive it.

Joel turns a dial. The static shifts. Patterns emerge, like shapes in clouds, almost-sounds that could be voices or could be nothing.

"Broadcasting on emergency frequency," Joel says. "Wide band. If anyone's listening within fifty miles, they'll hear this."

He picks up the handset, looks at Grace, and holds it out to her.