Radio Shock Waves

       Sam’s eyes glued to her as if in a trance. He more or less was, if he were being honest with himself. Walking from his apartment to check the communal P. O. Box stand, he had just sighted an angel of a woman. Brown eyes so dark they were almost black behind thick-rimmed glasses and a plain white t-shirt that hugged the body flatteringly. Her flowing black hair was sloppily put up so that rivulets were picked up and flew in the wind. She wore a pair of black yoga pants. It was the hip sway that entranced him. A ballad could have been sung about how her hips moved when walking.

             He had hyped himself up. After checking the box, he was going to talk to her. No more self-doubt and anger at himself for letting a beautiful woman walk by. Except-

             Except for the doubt quickly rushed in and overflowed like a pot of boiling water that has gone unattended. The doubt came in. Well, I don’t want to see rude he spoke in his head. What would I even say to her? ‘Hey, I know I’m approaching you randomly like a creep, do you want to give me your number?’ It was hopeless. He was hopeless. Besides, who wanted to date someone whose spare time was taken up with reading and operating a ham radio?

             Reading, some people did but operating some piece of communication that was outdated even when it came back? No one would think that it was cool.

             Sam had been a radioman in the Navy for four years, talking to patrols and other ships off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula- even though he had been out for almost three years, he still enjoyed working the nobs and redirecting the radio waves to talk to people all over the country. Every now and then, he could pick up military frequencies or talk to truckers hauling supplies from one coast to the next. No girl would want to hear all about seeing how far you could reach out to in the world or listening in on Air Force jets practice maneuvers over the woods. It was nerdy as hell.

             Still angered and somewhat dazed, he entered his apartment and threw himself onto a chair sitting in front of the desk he kept his radio on. The thing was a dinosaur. A piece of 1970s technology that Sam had spent months rewiring, replacing components specially ordered from cheap websites and failing shops covered in a layer of dust, and reading manuals to learn the trade of amateur radio.

             He flicked the switch as lights flicked on and a dull static sound arose. Sam liked this sound- it reminded him of the ‘50s. Well, not that he had been around at that time, 1959 had ended almost fifty years prior to his birth, but the kid had been a total fan of the music, style, and media of the time.

             Out the window, Sam saw the same girl that had occupied his mind earlier. She was taking her dog for a walk as the sun began to set, giving the sky a beachy look of rust orange fading into dark blue and eventually black. The girl looked scenic against this sky. He attempted to avert his attention back to the radio before feeling like too much of a creep.

             Music would help. A rockabilly band from modern times. Other people like him who liked cheap creature features, wore creepers on their feet and pomaded their hair into neat pompadours or elephant trunks. The music did help, he envisioned himself driving through the desert in a beaten pickup from sixty years ago, cigarette pack sitting in a folded sleeve of a t-shirt and hair on point with a cute girl wearing an old-fashioned sundress and hair styled by rollers. Yeah, that would look, he thought.

             Sam shook his head. He was getting distracted. Back to the radio. Most of the channels were static. He did pick up one signal and talked to a guy from Omaha for a while. The guy was a former Air Force aircraft mechanic from the Vietnam era. He was trying to listen in on military frequencies.

             A while later, he spoke briefly to a trucker who was heading from Columbus to Albuquerque. The trucker was hoping to find some female companionship for the night once he got to his destination. Sam wished him luck and raised a whiskey glass to him, though the trucker would have no way of knowing. Apart from that, it was dead silence. Feeling lonely and disappointed at the lack of activity tonight, Sam flipped a cigarette out of his pack, grabbed a lighter, and walked out to his front patio.

             The night was oddly quiet. It was Friday night- that’s why. Tonight would have been a good night to go out. The air was cool but not too cold. Enough for his leather jacket or just a short-sleeve shirt. Too bad he didn’t have anyone to invite him out or to invite out himself. With no parents, Sam had been raised by his grandparents that had both passed during his four-year tenure working for Uncle Sam. The only friends he had were old military buddies scattered around the country. Apart from that, it was just the occasional conversation with a barfly at the dive bars he went to around town or familiar faces from venues for punk rock shows. He did have a best friend, but she was now living on the side of a mountain in a small township nine hours and two states away.

Underneath the stillness, there was a certain unease, like something bad was going to happen. Just as he was putting his cigarette out and flicking the filter into the small ashtray, a formation of F-15’s from the nearby base flew by. It was hard to tell in the dark, but they looked fully armed. Maybe they were just doing night flights over the range?

             He heard the message coming from the radio as soon as he walked in. The ham radio had been left on to a random channel and he had picked up what sounded like a military call. “I repeat, Mother Goose, this is callsign Sundaze, we have confirmed sighting of…” static came in. Whomever Sundaze was had flown out of range.

             Odd, Sam thought. His experience from the Navy had had little to do with aviation- that was the air wing’s job. Sam had mostly coordinated with resupply ships out at sea or communications with Marines on the battlefield who would enter a strike zone after bombardment from the Destroyer he was on. What little experience he did have with pilots, he knew they never talked like that except when overseas in a warzone. Maybe Air Force is just different, his mind told him. He flipped channels for someone to actually talk to.

             “Is anyone on this frequency?” a new voice asked aggressively. He sounded panicked.

             “Yes,” Sam replied- the force behind the voice had taken him off-guard.

             “Listen!” the voice said, “I need you to trust me. I have been trying to reach as many people on different frequencies as I can. I picked up some Air Force talk about an hour ago. Something bad is happening.”

             “I heard Air Force also from the base close by, sounded like they were about to engage in some target,” Sam added back. Usually, he would have flipped stations away from this nut, but the jets that flew overhead and the transmission he had received ten minutes earlier had changed something.

             “Yes, there seems to be an attack that is about to happen,” the man said, he sounded a little less panicked now- more relieved if anything to finally have someone believe him. “There are reports of nuclear missiles and high-altitude planes around the coasts. They could be meaning nuclear strike. You said you live close to an Air Force base, which one?”

             Sam told him. It was just a testing site for bored pilots to get their monthly flight hours in, but there were rumors around town that some top-secret stuff did go on. Every military base had some level of mystique around it, though.

             “Get as far as you can from it,” the stranger said, “Any large city and military installation will be a target. Do you have anywhere out in the country you can go? Family, friends, a hunting cabin, anything?”

             “No, not really,” Sam answered honestly, “I have a friend about nine hours away who lives on a mountain, but-“

             The voice interrupted, “Get off your radio, pack what you can, and go there. The attack could come at any moment.” With that, the voice died away and only static was left as the stranger went on to warn the next person.

             Sam felt panicked. His stomach was sick. He needed to act. An hour ago, he would have written off this man as a lunatic or a troll, but this was the third strike that let him know that that bad feeling he had had was real. It was good that he bought things in bulk, a habit his grandparents had passed down to him.

              Sam opened the first two bags he could find, a sports duffle and his military-issued sea bag. He loaded clothes, shaving cream, toothpaste, razor blades, a few water bottles, batteries, canned chicken with crackers, dehydrated instant noodles, and any other necessity he could grab. He took the full and heavy bags out and tossed them into the back of his little truck that was almost as old as him. The tank was almost full, having been refilled just two days ago. About to start the vehicle, he swore and ran back to his apartment. He grabbed a stack of books he had been going through, his carton of cigarettes (seven packs remaining, not counting the half a pack in his pocket), a tin of coffee, and a six-pack of cheap beer that was in his fridge. He threw the beer and coffee between his duffle bags and the rest onto the floorboard on the passenger side of his truck. He started the engine.

             “Shit!” he yelled, pulled the truck up to his apartment, and ran back out. He unplugged his radio equipment and carried it out to the passenger seat, then ran back in. He had a semi-automatic 9 millimeter and three boxes of ammo. He threw the ammo into the bed of the truck and stuffed the pistol into the back of his pants. There was also the AR-10 he kept in a locked box, there were about five full boxes of ammo of that, he threw them in the back with the other stuff, thought for a moment, and decided to slide the rifle in its case in the small space between the seats and the wall of the truck. In the back of his closet, sitting where it had been for the last thirty-three months was his light green camouflaged Navy uniform with the black polished boots sitting right beneath it. If the attack did happen and militias were formed in the small towns for protection, a military uniform may help.

             He shifted the truck’s gear into drive and headed for the highway. Apart from driving, there was one last thing to do. He called his friend, he knew she would be awake at ten at night.

             “Hello?” she opened with.

             “Hey, it’s me,” Sam said.

             “Sam, is everything alright?”

             “Listen, Kay, I need you to trust me. I picked up a radio signal from some Air Force jets and got the message that something bad is about to happen. I’m driving out to your place. I’ll be there in about nine hours,” Kay was going to think he had lost his mind.

             “What?”

             Sam took a breath. He knew what he sounded like, “I will be there in about nine hours, attack may be happening. Is there any stores you can go to at this hour?”

             “Sam, what are you talking about? Did you find some weirdo on that radio that’s tracking you down? Why do you even still mess with that thing anyway?”

             “Kay, I just need you to trust me here. If there are any stores open this late around you, clean their shelves of toiletries and food- if it’s canned, buy it. I’ll reimburse you when I get there. Do you have any weapons? Guns, hatchets, machetes?”

             “I have an old shotgun and some hunting rifles that Billy hasn’t come to pick up yet.” Billy was Kay’s ex-husband. He had moved down to Florida about a month ago.

             “Do you have bullets and shells for them?”

             “Yes,” Kay answered annoyed, “Dumbass acted like he was stocking for the apocalypse.”

             “Well, he may just have done exactly that.”

             “This better not be a fucking joke… well, actually I hope it is. There’s a twenty-four-hour general store about five miles from here. I’ll put some pants on and go.”

             “Thank you, Kay.”

             “Oh, one more thing!”

             “Yes?”

             “Please be careful, Sam. Even if this is a joke.”

             Sam hung up and looked at his cellphone. The battery was almost half dead. Fuck! He had forgotten to grab his phone charger. Oh well, Kay would have an extra when he got there. He was glad to be driving this late, the roads were empty. They’re about to be a lot more empty, Sam thought with a sickening feeling.

             The good news was that between here and Kay’s house, the highways were all pretty rural, passing fields, farms, forests, and the occasional small town.

             About three hours into the drive, he tried the truck’s radio for any news. The only stations playing were small televangelists screaming about the rapture and asking the audience if they knew if they would go to heaven or hell. In his rearview mirror, Sam saw something that blew his mind. From the ground, a massive hatch opened, revealing a behemoth of a missile that blasted into space, heading for a town or military base of the enemy.

             The first bombs started to hit American cities ten minutes before Sam arrived at Kay’s house. The town Sam had lived in was wiped away from the bomb that hit the Air Force base. His hobby or using outdated technology to communicate had saved him for the time being and was about to become the best form of communication once the cell lines died.