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In and out they came: in with elk quarters, laid across the countertop, then butchered, then out again into the refrigerator of open air beneath the grove. Blake gave Abe over to Lars to help with the radio and antennas while he and Sano did the butchering and Jason and Umezawa managed the fire and the cooking. James Thurgerson was relegated to supply maintenance, that is, inventorying fuel and water, and basic cleaning and straightening. The division of labor made for quite a scene of industry.

“Here, hold this,” Lars said, handing Abe the long, narrow, j-shaped aluminum pole. “This is called a j-pole antenna.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Okay, great. This one is omnidirectional. With this one we’re just trying to hear anything at all.” Lars plopped down beside Abe, checked the connections of the homemade coax cable, sighed, and turned on the transceiver radio. It bleeped and blooped through a few startup diagnostics, then sat silent, staring at them with a darkened screen.

“Oh, that’s not good,” said Abe.

“No, that’s normal.”

Sano and Blake lugged a big piece of meat attached to a skinny hoof into the bower. Blake said, “I don’t see how we’re going to do this without getting blood everywhere. We’ll worry about that later.”

Sano giggled prettily. Blake handed her a knife and showed her where to cut. “Let me get my hand up in all the muscle, to separate it all out.” Sano’s face narrowed in concentration as she applied the knife to the flesh. “Yes, that’s right, and I’ll just move this here, and…voila!”

He held up a chunk of elk muscle. Sano’s eyes grew wide.

Lars elbowed Abe. “Pay attention by us,” he said. “This transceiver can receive two signals simultaneously. I mean, one will suppress the other, if both are active, but we can see that two are going at the same time, if that should happen. Which I doubt. The point being that we can halve the work here, but you have to help me with your eyes and ears.” He fiddled with the menu and programming. “I’ve set it to scan one range of frequencies above where this antenna is tuned and the range of frequencies below. Ready?”

Abe nodded. Lars closed the menu and they watched the numbers advance through the respective ranges. There was no indication of anything at all. The radio remained dark and silent.

“Well,” said Lars, after the scan function had cycled through a few times with nary a hiccup of static, “we’re going to have to go outside.” They rose from the couch to prepare for the cold outdoors.

“Look at that!” said Blake triumphantly, holding aloft a very round looking piece of meat. “A ball roast! Perfectly cut, Sano! Absolutely perfect!” Sano blushed very prettily. She looked at the meat Blake was hoisting, then at his face, which was exuberant, a countenance of joy and hopefulness.

Jason and Umezawa were skimming the top of the boiling ashes. “Careful,” said Jason. “Lye is caustic.”

“Not that caustic,” said Umezawa. “Besides, I’ll just lay hands on myself.”

Jason paused, cocking his head to one side with a smirk. “Fair enough,” he said. “So noted.”

“It’s kind of like that Simpsons episode where death was injured and laid up so no one could die,” Umezawa said.

“Classic Simpsons or late?”

“What’s classic Simpsons?” Umezawa asked.

“He’s talking about a Family Guy episode,” Blake shouted from across the room. “Classic. Before they got cancelled that one time.”

“What happened?” said Jason.

“Oh, everyone became friends,” said Umezawa. “Laughing and dancing together until Death’s ankle healed. I can never tell the difference between Simpsons and Family Guy. They both look the same to me.”

“Ume,” Jason said, “I feel like genuine superpowers and poorly-written old animated TV sitcoms are not the same thing. Can we not tempt fate?”

“Fate?” laughed Lars. “What newfangled philosophy is this? Fate?”

“It’s just a figure of speech,” sniffed Jason. “I meant, of course, luck.”

“Hm,” said Lars, distracted by his radio scanner. He and Abe exited the bower and emerged into the frigid mountain air.

“Hey, Abe,” said Lars, watching the little dot-matrix display screen on his radio.

“Yeah, Lars?”

“How many days do you figure we’ve been out here?”

“Less than a week, I think. More than three days.”

“We should really figure it out, don’t you think? Things like that are important.”

“Why? What does it matter? The sun comes up over there…” Abe tried to find east, but discovered with a little skip in his heart that he didn’t know which way was east.

“Over where?” Lars laughed without looking up. “Keep holding that antenna upwards, but don’t put any pressure on those electrical connections at the radio and antenna feeds.”

Which way is east, Stoic? And what day is it, after all? Abe felt as though he were floating away. Unmoored, see?

“I don’t know!” Abe said, distressed.

“I know how you feel!” said Lars. “Let me tell you something: I got religion real bad last night. It’s funny how you hold out until the darkness sweeps over you, and then you realize you don’t know!” He laughed. “Them religious people I worked for; every day was the same: church at ten o’clock in the morning, then again at 10 o’clock in the evening. The bell would ring, and the students would scatter like they hated the light, heading for the bottom of the fridge, if you see what I mean. Well, every day was the same, and I never did know the difference between Friday and Wednesday or what order the days came, but then came Saturday, and everything just dropped dead, you see. Dead. Nothing was open, and the kids were stumbling around like there was no sun or moon or electricity. Then came Sunday morning, and the lid was off: the place was crawling with people, and they were all headed one direction: to the chapel—and there was bells and chanting and smokes and every sort of activity, and then after an hour or so of that—bang!

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Brunch.”

“What?”

“It was a pattern, don’t you see? And it regulated them. We’re going to come unregulated, and the wheels will fall off, and we’ll be after each other, and then we’ll be easy pickings.”

Abe stared at Lars. Lars’s eyebrows were arched.

“I ain’t kidding.”

“Huh,” said Abe.

“Still nothing,” said Lars, putting his eyes back on the screen. “Let’s move…south, I think. The sun is on the south, and they want to be able to see. I figure they’ll have some heat sensors and heartbeat detectors and things of that sort. I need some time not being beaten by a tree to start remembering what I know about the grand global conspiracy, and what tech they can pack into a mountain.”

“We’re like a needle in a haystack,” said Abe.

“I do believe you’re right!” said Lars. “At least for now. They’ll get us zeroed eventually, and then we’ll know what the game is. Jim-Bob, our bionic boy-man, is a lot of money they have to recover. He says self-destruct button, but I say self-sleep button. They’ll knock him out and whisk him away. It’s us they gotta kill, you know. They shot on sight, remember?”

They were walking the path to the wreckage site, but when the path turned upwards in elevation, toward where the wreckage site was, they left it and bore straight, keeping a careful eye all around them, moving quite slowly, about ten yards at a time. Each time they paused, they let the transceiver radio scanner run through its two programmed frequency ranges.

“You cold?” said Lars.

“No,” said Abe. Nice. Okay, now you’re a stoic, lying about physical discomfort to achieve a specific goal. We’ll count this one as a one on your stoic scorecard. One plus zero is still one, no matter how many zeroes you’ve accumulated! You’re in positive territory now, and Sano loves positivity!

They reached a point due south according to Lars’s compass, took partial cover amidst a small thicket of bushes struggling against a group of small boulders, mostly to shelter from the wind, and sat down to watch the radio display screen. The sun moved a long way along its arc. Lars yawned. Abe yawned and rested his head on Lars’s shoulder. After another long while, they heard the slightest bit of static and a quiet “kerchunk” sound. Lars fumbled to get his mittened hands around the radio and dropped it.

“Dammit,” said Lars. “Did you see what frequency that was?”

“No!”

“Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.” He picked up the radio and watched it cycle through the frequencies again. He had his thumb on one of the buttons below the display screen. Suddenly, the screen lit up and paused on a particular frequency: 160.125. A faint gurgling sound amidst a fair amount of noise made itself known to their ears, and then that “kerchunk” sound again. Lars had pushed his appointed button, and the scan function had ceased, locking the radio to that frequency. Abe’s heart was in his throat.

“Hold the antenna up a touch,” said Lars. Abe obeyed. “FBI guys,” Lars added. “Well, that’s the FBI frequency, anyway.”

“Wow,” whispered Abe, eyes wide.

The display screen lit up again. Lars turned the volume up so they could hear the gurgling. It sounded like a gasoline-powered car engine whose natural sound was flattened and truncated. It “kerchunked” into silence again. “Yes!” said Lars.

“Is that good?”

“Sounds like a modem, don’t it?”

“What’s a modem?”

Lars looked at Abe. “Wow,” he said. “I’m old. Just frickin’ old. High speed internet is older than you. Do you know, Abe, I used to call the bank with a rotary dial telephone so that a machine could tell me the time and temperature?”

“Like in old movies?”

Lars sighed. “Yes. Like in old movies. Anyway, these are our guys.”

“But that wasn’t a person!”

“Oh, yes it was,” said Lars. “They’re using an encoder so no one without the key can listen in on what they’re doing. It sounds like garbled nonsense, but it's a real person pushing the button to talk to another real person. The signal we’re getting is weak because we’re so far away. Either that or my antenna is crap. Let’s move down the mountain a ways. Uh, first things first: let’s get ourselves oriented. See any landmarks?”

“Like what?”

“Tall trees,” said Lars. Then he smiled, “Unique buildings. Airplane crash sites.”

Abe laughed.

“Man,” said Lars. “Everything out here looks the same: spruce, birch, aspen, and shrubs against the occasional boulder covered with blown snow. Oh well, whatever. Let’s just risk it. We gotta find these guys.”

They identified a grove of trees about a hundred yards straight down the mountain, made a pact not to get lost, and descended with great caution, moving about ten yards at a time to listen carefully to the gurgling. Indeed, the signal grew stronger. Abe’s heart returned to his throat.

“Okay,” said Lars when they reached the edge of the grove. “Let’s stay up above the trees here. The signal is plenty strong enough now. Gimme the antenna.” Abe handed the j-pole to him, which Lars immediately set about disconnecting. “Hold the coax, okay?” He fished the Yagi antenna out of his pack, wrestling with the three aluminum cross-pieces. “Let’s see, now, which of these two is longer? The longer one is the reflector and goes to the rear.”

Abe held the radio while Lars made some last adjustments to the antenna, caressing its crosspieces, cooing to them to stay straight and parallel to each other, as if he were casting a spell. He tightened the coax connections with his mittened hand and delivered it into Abe’s custody. “Point the beam straight down the mountain and slowly sweep it back and forth about ninety degrees. No, check that. Point the beam right over the top of the trees and sweep it back and forth real slow, and we’ll listen to the signal. You know, cover the south quadrant, literally.”

Abe did as Lars instructed, fighting against shivering and his heartbeat, keeping the antenna pointed just above the top of the trees, which was essentially horizontal to their position on the steep slope of the mountain.

Far to his left, the signal came in quite strong, then died absolutely directly in front of him. As he swept to his right, the signal came in again. Far to his right, the signal became quite strong again.

“Nicely done, Abe,” said Lars, patting him on the back. “We got ‘em right where we want ‘em!” He rose. “I’m freezing. Let’s get our asses back to base.” He handed Abe a thermos.

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“Did you pack your whole house into that bug-out bag?” Abe said. “You have everything.”

Lars chuckled. “It’s amazing what you can fit into a single suitcase when you want to show off your survivalist chops at a convention.” Abe took a sip of some warm chaga tea and a little essence of spruce. It was refreshing, and his steps lightened moving up the slope.

“What,” he said between breaths. “You mean like a Comic-Con?”

“Exactly,” said Lars, grinning broadly. “The losers at ‘Survivo-Con’ rival the losers at Comic-Con.”

“Hey,” said Abe. “That’s not very nice…”

“Aw, shucks,” said Lars. “I didn’t mean it in a mean way; I just meant, for all the chest-thumping and SHTFing, it’s just a bunch of fellas looking for validation when it’s all said and done. It’s the same dress-up fantasy and fun. I was looking forward to it all. But, yeah, all my SHTF stuff, well, ain’t you glad I’m a big ol’ SHTF dweeb?”

“Ask me again after we’re rescued.”

Lars pushed Abe against his shoulder, making him stumble a bit. “Don’t fall, now, you hear?” Lars teased.

The sun was dropping in the west, as it usually does, which Abe noted, and the shadows transmuted the slope into a terrain unlike the one they descended. Abe’s heart rose into his throat yet again. Lars sensed it.

“Never mind that,” said Lars. “You gotta trust your instinct, and just know that you’re gonna tend to walk in a circle. What we want to do is hit that path to the airplane, then hang a left to go north toward the bower.”

Abe breathed easier.

“Yeah, but…” said Lars, “…uh…what if we’re already heading north and we miss the bower to lower elevation?”

Abe inhaled sharply.

“Ha ha ha!” Lars laughed. “Come on, Abe. Elevation: let’s just gain elevation, okay?”

In due course, they did, indeed, stumble across the natural path around the mountain, a little to the west of the place where they departed south down the mountain.

“Not bad,” said Lars. “I’m not too bad at orienteering after all!”

Presently they arrived at the bower. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, surrounding the entire mountain with a lovely pink glow. Lars put his arm around Abe’s shoulders, and the two of them endured one last moment of shivering together, there in the frigid air beneath a mountain peak, where peace had been hammered out of terror and despair, the coldness and darkness held at bay for a few moments of joy in the pastels of a wild and unfettered landscape. They ducked in out of the darkening blue into the greening of the bower.

“And I say it started after season eleven!” Jason was shouting.

“Listen, punk,” Blake retorted. “Season five was the last of classic Simpsons. Conan O’Brien departed the writing staff and went off to do his own show after Letterman left NBC.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Jason. “Besides, who’s Conan O’Brien?”

“Who’s Conan O’Brien?” fumed Blake, his hands occupied by a sinew on the remainder of an elk cow’s lower leg. “Who’s Conan O’Brien?!? He’s only the guy who introduced Norm MacDonald to the world!”

“Who?” said Jason.

James Thurgerson was laughing.

“Oh, I like Norm,” said Sano, her blue eyes glistening in the firelight. “He was funny.”

“Isn’t he dead?” spat Jason.

“He still lives in my heart,” said Blake.

“Aw…” said Sano. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and her forearms were covered in an elk cow’s blood.

Pots, cups, and makeshift pots and cups littered the floor around the hearth, some filled with goo, others filled with…goo of a different sort.

“Now you listen to me,” huffed Jason. “I don’t care what you olds say: season eleven was the last of the classic Simpsons seasons.”

Blake shook his head, and looked up from his work to see Lars. “Kids these days, Lars,” he said. “They just don’t listen to the wisdom of their fathers.” James Thurgerson was still unable to speak from laughing so hard.

Lars unwrapped his arm from around Abe. “We got ears on our adversaries,” he said. “We got ‘em!”

Everyone stood still, except for Sano, who made a swift cut, releasing the sinew from the leg.

“What? Really?” Blake said.

“Two parties, at least,” said Lars. “South, where the sun hits the mountain.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s hard to say how far apart they are, but I reckon a few miles, but on the same latitude-slash-altitude. I think they’re running a net to find us. We could not ascertain whether they were coming, going, or standing still.”

“Damn, Lars,” said Blake. “I always had faith in you, but damn! That’s pretty good.”

“Simple triangulation,” said Lars. “Elementary, my dear Blake.”

“SHERLOCK HOLMES!” Umezawa shouted, to the absolute delight of everyone in the bower.

“Could you make out what they were saying?” Blake asked, after everyone managed to stop laughing. Umezawa was beaming with some measure of pride.

“Nope,” said Lars. “They were speaking Chinese.”

Blake’s eyes grew wide. “I knew it!”

Lars laughed.

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