Survivor's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Survivor pulls rusted cans from a collapsed shelf, checking each one by weight. Most are empty. Some leak brown powder that might have been food once. He sets the light ones aside and pockets two that still slosh. The store has been picked through before, but not carefully. He shifts a panel of sheet metal and finds a box underneath, its corners soft with rust. Inside are more cans and something else. A radio, wedged between tins of vegetables that split open long ago. He lifts it out. The casing is cracked along one side, the color faded to nothing recognizable. The antenna is bent but still attached. He turns it over in his hands, checking for batteries that might be useful elsewhere. A guitar chord cuts through the silence. He drops the radio. It hits the ground and the music gets louder, a full band now, drums and bass and a voice singing words he can't make out. The sound is thin and broken by static, but it's there. He picks the radio back up. His thumb finds a dial and turns it. The station doesn't change. He tries the other knob. Nothing. The music keeps playing, the same song, like it's been playing the whole time he's been alive and longer. He sits against the wreckage and listens. Hope used to hum something like this while they walked. Not this song, but something with the same rhythm. She'd tap it out on a wooden flute she carried, her fingers moving even when she was too tired to make sound. Survivor holds the radio in both hands and doesn't move. The song ends. Another one starts. He realizes he's forgotten what he came here for. Then he remembers the monuments, Mover's site half a day's walk from here, and the carving he hasn't started. He stands and clips the radio to his belt. It keeps playing.