7/26 3:44pm

Haven’t heard a working radio for weeks.

It’s amazing how much the noise you never think about becomes ingrained into your life. After the first days of chaos were over, I couldn’t get over how quiet it was. Sitting, holed up, starving, scared to so much as peek out a window, that constant quiet really got to me. No cell phones, no radios, no iPods, no traffic. The give and take of constant noise- constant activity- was gone. Wind blowing through the trees is as loud as it gets around here anymore. Except, of course, for the hollow breaths of the undead.

The low crackle and static of an AM radio, then, was understandably not what I expected when I woke up. I guess, honestly, I should have expected it. What God fearing survivalist nutjob would ever leave the house without a working solar powered survival AM-FM-Distress Band Civil Alert Radio? Some shmuck like me, yes, but not the old man.

He explained that, what with all the crap weather we’d been having, solar powered is as good as unpowered most days. “Only get two or three minutes of uptime on it. Not caught a signal yet. Still, better than nothing,” Dave told me, as he slowly dialed up and down the AM tuner.

It came as a shock even to him when the squelching and scratching resolved itself, for a few blessed seconds, into a distinguishable voice. Dave lost it the moment he realized it was there, and scrambled to find it again. He pinned the dial back and forth, between 1800 and 1805, slower and slower, trying to pick up the thread. No luck.

The rest of the day was spent in a gloom by both of us. Situated in a deep valley surrounded by mountains on every side means that radio signals have an exceptionally difficult time getting to Muldraugh. It gets better on the north end of the valley, which leads to the widest pass out, and to Baker, closest habitation to us.

The old man and I spent the rest of the day in a gloom, turning over and over again what it all means. By this afternoon, we had come to the same conclusion.

We need to know what’s going on in the outside world. Last either of us heard, the valley had been blockaded. Shoot on sight is an accurate description of military-resident relations, and the north pass is surely one of the areas where that order has been carried out more than once. Regardless, we need to go up there.

And we’re heading out. Now.