Apocalypse Plus One: My Snarky Sidekick novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Courier Nine
On the second night of the rain, Hank turned on the crank radio at nine, and Jude flinched.
It was a small movement. He caught himself at once and reached for his tea.
"Is that the same voice?" Maisy asked from the stairs.
"Different one," Hank said. "Roll call. They read the names of everybody they've let in."
He turned it down, and he and Maisy went to bed.
I stayed at the kitchen table.
The rain drummed on the tin, and the plastic breathed against the windows.
"You do that every night," I said. "When the radio comes on."
"Do what?"
"Go somewhere."
Jude put the mug down.
"Annabel, I said soon. I'd like it to be now."
"Then say it."
"The man who held the outer door. In your last life. You told me about him in the hospital."
"I never saw his face."
"I know."
I looked at him, and I looked at the scar through his eyebrow.
My mouth had gone dry.
"Jude."
"Sixty-eight days I drove food to that Dome, and every night at nine I called in on the shelter frequency." His voice was perfectly steady. "My call sign was Courier Nine."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Courier Nine," I said.
"A woman at the night desk always answered. If I ran late, she said, 'Courier Nine, I'm still here.'"
The words left my mouth before I decided to say them.
"Courier Nine, I'm still here."
He put his hand over his eyes.
I had said it hundreds of times into a microphone, tired, with my feet on a crate. He had been a voice made of gravel and static, and I had thought he was fifty.
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