Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

the government transmissions right away?
    Ken, Ben, and I fiddled with the radio for a few more hours that night. We found several other stations broadcasting. Most were in other languages: two that might have been Spanish, one that sounded vaguely Germanic, and another that Ken said was Russian. One station broadcast nothing but a woman reading numbers, which struck me as highly bizarre.
    I talked to a guy for a while who called his station “Radio Free City.” But when it became clear that we couldn’t help him with food or “taking the fight to the fascist FEMA pigs,” he lost interest and signed off.
    I would have liked some news. I knew in Worthington they were monitoring their radios and posting anything they heard on the town’s bulletin board. We tuned the radio to AM for a while but didn’t pick up anything useful, so we shut down the transceiver to save the batteries and went to bed.
    The next day, we trimmed the antenna to twelve feet, eleven inches on each side, which Ken said would help optimize reception on the seventeen-meter band. It didn’t make sense to me—why wouldn’t a longer antenna be better than a short one? But when Ben and I had messed around with the radio on our own, we’d reached no one, so we took Ken’s word for it.
    About the middle of the afternoon, the seventeen-meter band changed. Suddenly there were dozens of transmissions. Most of them were high-pitched static—I thought maybe someone was sending in code, but Ken said it was probably just data.
    After skipping through five or six machine transmissions, Ken happened upon a person talking. “. . . bales of chain-link fencing, 850 pounds of coiled 8-gauge wire, 410 16-foot posts . . .”
    When the guy took a short break from reading his list, Ken broke in. “KJØB.”
    The radio hissed. “QLR.”
    “That means he’s busy,” Ken explained. “QRA,” he said into the mic.
    “QLR.”
    “Rude bastard. I asked him for his call sign, and he basically told me to buzz off.”
    I took the mic from Ken and mashed the switch. “We have an emergency.”
    “I repeat, QLR. This block of frequencies is reserved for interagency coordination. Clear the frequency.”
    “Interagency—like, the government? That’s great, I need to speak to someone high up in FEMA.”
    “Under the Federal Emergency Recovery and Restoration of Order Act, I am authorized to confiscate your radio and place you in summary detention if you do not clear this frequency immediately. QLR.”
    I shot a worried look at Ken. He shook his head. “They’d need a sophisticated triangulation setup to even find you.”
    “This is life and death,” I said into the mic. “We’re in a refugee camp. The DWBs are kidnapping people. The guards know, but they aren’t doing anything—they’re getting paid off by the DWBs. We need help.”
    “What sector?”
    “Sector? We’re in the refugee camp in Maquoketa, Iowa.”
    “Hold.” I heard papers rustling for a moment. “Call 18,160 kilohertz in one hour. I’ll notify the coordinator for your sector. QLR.”
    “Thank you,” I said, but he was already reading another list.
    We shut off the radio to save the batteries. Ben went to find Dad and tell him about our success. I started counting off an hour, one boring Mississippi at a time.
    Dad joined us just as I hit 3,600 Mississippi. I turned on the radio and double-checked the frequency selector dial—it was still set to 18,160, where Ken had left it. I picked up the mic and offered it to Dad.
    “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll just listen in.”
    I mashed the push-to-talk switch under my sweaty palm. “Alex at Camp Maquoketa, calling the sector coordinator.”
    “Say ‘CQ, CQ from KJØB,’” Ken said. “It’s proper radio etiquette.”
    I was tempted to say “Thank You, Miss Manners.” I mean, who cares about radio etiquette when people are getting killed? But it was easier just to do it his way. “CQ, CQ from KJØB.” Nothing but static answered my call. I repeated it, over and over, at about one-minute intervals for what seemed like an hour. Had they forgotten? Or worse, was the guy I’d talked to just trying to get me off the frequency by lying about connecting me with the sector coordinator? Dad drummed his fingers on his knee and shifted his weight incessantly.
    Finally someone responded. “KJØB here is N7ØVF. This is George Mason with the CBO’s FERROA Oversight Committee.”
    “What’s the CBO?” I said.
    “Congressional