Chapter 124

“Kieli,” called Harvey’s voice through the music. I get to have the radio’s music and Harvey’s voice with me at the end of the world. I’m so lucky. I can die happy now… “Kieli. Hey.” When she felt Harvey shaking her shoulder, Kieli opened her eyes. She hadn’t noticed her lids starting to droop. Harvey was on his feet, looking around them. “Radio waves…the Corporal’s picking up radio waves…” Surprised, Kieli flipped the hem of her skirt up and dragged the radio out from under the petticoat she’d covered it with. It was more than half static and it came in fits and starts, but yes—that was definitely the sound of stringed instruments coming from its speaker. “Where from…?” She squinted along the rock ledge with its trolley track. All she could see were the tall rock walls closing in the darkness on either side of them. “Can you stand?” “Yeah.” Harvey took her by the arm, and she hung the radio back around her neck and wrestled her stiff limbs into submission. They joined hands and started making their way along the rock ledge again, following the music. The path’s slope had been gentle for a good long time now, but it grew steadily steeper as they walked. They took it one step at a time, working their legs for all they were worth. Eventually they came to the end of the track. The crude lift there, which Kieli assumed had once carried fossil fuel up to the surface, was broken. But there was a series of protrusions in the rock leading upward, and it looked as if they could probably manage to climb with them. Harvey felt his way up by touch, climbing one foothold at a time and then lending his hand to Kieli to pull her up after him. They mustered all their remaining strength to make their way toward the top. Slowly but surely, the barely there music from the radio’s warped speaker started to come through firm and clear. The tops of the sheer cliffs finally came into view. Pale sand-colored light filtered down from the narrow scrap of sky between the rock walls. When Kieli scrambled up to the last foothold and squirmed onto the surface, Harvey pulled her to her feet. Her shoes touched soil. “Whoa…” Kieli could see her breath leaving her mouth before it disappeared right away into the clear, cold air. The two of them stood still right there, not letting go of each other, and gazed wordlessly at the scenery spread out before them. Beneath the lightly clouded far-northern sky, black soil stretched on and on as far as the eye could see. Crystal sparkles dotted it here and there where the frozen ground reflected back the sun’s soft rays. It was a view beautiful enough to make her want to cry and spectacular enough to almost make her dizzy. “I never knew there were wilds like this on top of the mountain range…” Kieli murmured, so moved it came out half-tearful. “Harvey, can you see it…?” she asked the man next to her hesitantly. Harvey’s eyes stayed fixed on the scene in front of them. He sucked in a deep breath, seeming to feel the vast tundra’s air more than he saw it, and then smiled on the exhale. “Yeah. I can tell what it’s like…” The radio was picking up the signal loud and clear now. When Kieli looked around her, shielding her eyes from the glare of the ice with her free hand, she made out what looked like a tall steel tower on the horizon far ahead of them. She jogged a few steps toward it and stood on her tiptoes, squinting. Is that…a mobile radio station? Maybe it was from the same era as the one they’d come across in that northwestern canyon, because they looked a lot alike. The big mobile building with its tall steel towers was approaching them from across the tundra. “Harvey, we’re saved!” Kieli waved gleefully at the radio station. It kept coming closer, its wheels clattering loudly against the tundra. She waited excitedly, but it passed right by a little in front of where she and Harvey stood. “Ah—” Maybe they didn’t notice us…? Kieli froze on the spot with her hand still hanging in the air midwave. The radio station’s steel towers grew smaller again in the distance as it left the two of them behind, awfully tiny here in the middle of the vast tundra. The signal the radio was picking up steadily faded. “I was so sure they’d help us…” Kieli slumped with disappointment, letting her hand fall back to her side. “Kieli,” Harvey murmured, tugging on her sleeve. “The sound. It’s coming back.” Kieli looked back up. The radio’s signal gradually picked up again. She could see the steel towers that had passed them by coming in close once again. They waited there, and before long the mobile radio station skimming along the tundra with its big wheels stacked on top of each other came to a stop a little ways away from them. A rectangular hatch in the side wall opened up, and a figure came out of the darkness through it. Kieli waited, gulping unconsciously. “Are you stranded?” It was a deep male voice, with a touch of a pre-War accent that reminded her of the Corporal’s. A middle-aged man in tattered winter clothes had appeared from the hatch. “Who is it? Who is it?” called an innocent, higher-pitched voice, and then a little boy popped his head out from behind the man. He had a winter hat on. “Wow! It’s people from the world Below!” he cried excitedly, his eyes shining. And that was how Kieli and Harvey met the tribe that lived in the far-north tundra and broadcast music on their guerrilla radio frequency. The world hadn’t ended yet. Beyond the world’s last terminal stretched a whole new, wide—wide enough to make you sigh, or make you cry—world they’d never known. The journey wasn’t quite over yet.