Sneak (Swipe Series)

asked.
    “Money?”
    “Nuclear weapons?”
    “No, no!” Papa said. “Simpler than that. Think—what was our biggest advantage, back on Slog Row?”
    “The Fulmart?”
    “Canned food?”
    “ Community! ” Papa said. “The Marked have community . Boil everything else down, and that’s what you’re left with. That’s what they have right now that we don’t.
    “And it’s no small thing,” Papa said. “To be able to talk with one another, to stick together, to share ideas, to plan . . .” Papa Hayes walked toward the trees now, placing his hand on one of the trunks. “DOME’s driving us apart. They’re spreading us thin. Just look at you: you used to be inseparable, and now all you do is fight.”
    The Dust looked around at one another sheepishly.
    “We’re helpless without organization,” Mama added. “But that’s exactly what makes our work here on this farm important.” She pointed to the branches in front of them.
    “Trees?” Tyler asked. “You . . . you want to start a new society in the trees?” He began to laugh until Jo punched him on the arm.
    “Look closer, Tyler. What’s in these trees?”
    The Dust looked more closely.
    “Sap?” Eddie guessed.
    “A birds’ nest.” Tyler pointed upwards.
    “Wire,” Jo said, squinting up at the branches. “They’re strung up with wire.”
    “That’s right!” Papa told her. “Antennas. The fact is, kids, this ain’t really a farm anymore. It’s a radio station.”
    “A what ?”
    “A Markless radio station! Shortwave. With our equipment, we can broadcast all over the globe. They’ve been doing it in the countryside for years . . . but ours was the first in the New Chicago area.”
    Dane, the one musician of the group, was visibly excited. The rest of the Dust just stared.
    “Shortwave?”
    “Radio?”
    Somehow the idea of it didn’t immediately light their imaginations on fire.
    Papa Hayes laughed deeply. “I’m showing my age, aren’t I?” He clapped Blake on the back. “I know, I know, not exactly cuttingedge. But, kids—that’s the whole point. You don’t need tablets to hear a radio broadcast. You don’t need fancy computers or the Internet at all. No power, even! Just a foxhole radio made from junk you can find on the ground. Wire for the antenna and the tuning coil, a clothespin, a rusty razor blade . . . that’s all it would take for you to hear our broadcast anywhere from here to the other end of the city. Get a little fancier, maybe upgrade to a crystal radio or a vintage radio, like the kinds they used to sell in the pre-Unity days, and with the power supply we have on this farm, you’d be able to hear our station halfway across the country.”
    The Dust looked up at the tree.
    “So we can communicate,” Blake said. “Even with no money, no shelter, no tech. We can still organize.”
    Papa Hayes nodded. “You kids didn’t need to worry about this stuff back on Slog Row. But trust me. It’s worth worrying about now. And with all their fancy equipment and satellites, shortwave is the last place in the radio spectrum DOME would think to listen.”
    “Can I have my own radio program?” Dane asked, thinking back to his glory days as lead singer of the Boxing Gloves. “Please?”
    Papa laughed, and for a moment, it even looked like he might have been considering it.
    “Finish your chores,” Mama said. “Then we’ll see.”
    6
    Another lonely day had passed at Spokie Middle. The final bell had rung, and Erin sat alone on the floor against the wall of the Arctic Wing, watching students file past under the slow, pastel ribbon dance of the aurora borealis. Behind them, simulated icebergs crashed and fell into the sea. Erin studied each splash, imagining the glacier water spraying out of the screens and into the hall, imagining each student drenched and sopping wet and freezing with it, stranded in the real Arctic as lonely and miserable as Erin was now.
    “Oh dear. We mustn’t be sitting in the hallways, please, Erin,”
    Ms. Carrol said.
    Ms. Carrol was the school secretary at Spokie Middle. Erin hated her as much as everyone else in this stupid town, but she stood up all the same.
    “Sorry, Ms. Carrol.” She waved, and left school for the day.
    Three times on the walk home, clusters of Spokie Middle students accosted Erin, pressing her for updates on Dane and Logan.
    “Have you heard anything?” they asked.
    “I heard it was your fault Dane got kidnapped.”
    “I heard you’ve been