Maybe is, Michael thought. Holly was right: Mom’s weak. But not just weak. Yeah, Bub. She’s also good.
Patrick stood up, placing his hands on the edge of the basket, and looked out. Holly shifted again and cough-snorted in her sleep. It was kind of ridiculously cute.
Patrick whispered, “Girlfriend, now?”
Michael blushed a little. Nodded.
“Wow,” Patrick said, pretending to be amazed. “I have a girlfriend.”
“Bub, jeesh!”
Patrick shrugged with one shoulder. Laughed a little. I think he’s going to be okay. I can’t believe it, but I think he really is. The Game was fake . . . but this was real. He really got past The End.
The first pale, fragile yellow of dawn was touching the mountains and the valleys. A water tower loomed through the fog, drifting before being vanished. Silos, delicate roads, a toy-size tractor in the white. Look at the world. Wonder: What is this place? It seemed like a new earth, scarless, their sphere to shape. And even if Michael had learned enough to know the lie in that, he couldn’t help but find it beautiful.
And he wasn’t scared. Liar, his mind whispered. Well . . . okay. Okay, he was scared, but just then he had a feeling he’d never quite had before: like the fear didn’t encompass him. Like he was other things, too.
“Michael?” whispered Patrick.
“Yeah?”
“Low-five.”
Michael tried to slap his hand. Patrick pulled away. “Too slow,” Patrick said.
Michael laughed. “Yeah, I get that a lo—”
But he stopped when they both heard the sound. A hissy sort of sound, and his first thought was that the hot-air burner was running low on gas.
But the sound had shaken Holly awake: it was that loud. And when it happened again, she didn’t look up toward the burner. Her eyes slid down to the canvas bag. To the long, rectangular shape inside it. Shaped almost like an old phone.
Holly whispered, “What the?”
Patrick said, “Did that just—?”
The man on the radio, cutting off the white noise that had sent Michael off to sleep, said: “—broadcast zone—”
Michael, Holly, Patrick: gawping.
It was Patrick who lunged for the handheld walkie-talkie. He pounced down so hard, it was almost funny: the balloon basket swung a few feet underneath them.
“—zone, please respond—” said the radio. The voice coming through the waffle-fencing on the speaker sounded crinkly, far-off, a tin-can sound.
Patrick pushed down the red SEND button on the side of the walkie, with some effort. “Y’hello, baby?!” he shouted into it.
“Patrick!” Holly called, her voice shaky with tension. Patrick smiled up at her and, despite the suspense of the silence that followed, he looked pleased at making her laugh.
“Bub, here, let me.” Michael took the walkie from Patrick’s hands. Oh my God. Holy freaking crap. Is that a person? Is it really?
No. No, you don’t know. It might just be a recording. Don’t, Michael: don’t get your hopes up.
But: why not? some other part of him said, his hands shaking. Seriously: why not?
And he was bringing the walkie up to his mouth—there was a brief burst of static and feedback—when a man, on the crackling speaker, sounding shocked, replied, “Hello?”
Michael’s finger eased up from the worn, red rectangle SEND button.
The moment hung in the air between them all. The sun peaked over behind a mountain; Michael squinted, feeling dazed. The voice of a stranger, snatched from the air and sounding from this thing in his palm . . . it was like magic.
“Repeat: Is anyone there? Come in.”
Holly put her arm around Michael’s shoulder and squeezed a couple times.
“Repeat: Sir, are you there?” said the man on the radio. “Over.”
Michael, gulping, stared at the walkie. . . .
And pushed down SEND.
“Y-yeah.” His voice felt fragile, like glass. “Here. Uh, over.”
He had barely let up the button when the walkie exploded, “Son of a GUN!”
Michael pictured a young guy falling back in his chair, hands flying to his headphones with the amazement of a man who has just heard a miracle. “Whelp, you—wow!” said Radio Man, as Holly laughed in wonder. “Hell-oh! Hey! Pal! It is good to hear a voice out there in radio land! How the hell are you?”
Still nervous, Michael smiled a little. “Compared to what?”
He heard Radio Man guffaw: “Do I hear that? I sure do!” Muttering in the background of the other end of the line. Michael pictured other people gathered around Radio Man’s machine. He . . . he imagined soldiers.
“Ah, sir,” the walkie-talkie said: a more official, man-in-charge tone. “How many are in your party, sir? Over.”