Oriole presses herself against the radio tower's outer wall, waiting for the mutant to pass. The thing circles again, slow and heavy, its shadow sweeping across the sand. She counts her breaths and watches the door ten feet away. If she can get inside, she can carve something into the walls while she waits. Leave proof she was here. That's what matters — not the thing hunting outside, but what she leaves behind. The mutant comes into view around the latticed rust of the tower. Its cracked grey hide looks like dried earth, but it moves like water, each step rolling through its massive body. Dust streams from its mouth in a steady plume. The thing doesn't seem to see her yet, but it's close enough that she can hear the scrape of its claws on buried metal. She needs to move now or not at all. Oriole sprints for the door. The metal screeches when she yanks it open, and behind her the mutant's head snaps toward the sound. She throws herself inside and slams the door shut. The lock is rusted through, useless. Through a crack in the door frame, she watches the creature's bulk shift direction, moving toward the small building at the tower's base. It stops ten yards out and lowers its head, nostrils flaring. Inside, the broadcasting room is smaller than the bunker's kitchen, which means it's perfect. Oriole backs away from the door and pulls her knife from her belt. The walls are concrete, better than plaster. While the mutant circles outside, huffing at the threshold, she finds a clear patch of wall and starts to carve. First her name. Then the date, if she can remember it. Then the number three hundred, because they all deserve to be counted. The blade bites deep and the dust falls white, and when the creature finally loses interest an hour later, she's already covered half the wall with names she refuses to forget.

The mutant doesn't leave. Oriole watches it through the gap in the door frame, that massive body settling into a slow circuit around the building. Three times in the first hour. Four in the second. She carves while she waits, but the names blur together after a while, and her hand starts to cramp. The creature has nowhere else to be, apparently. Neither does she. But sitting still has never been her strong suit, and the broadcasting equipment along the back wall catches her eye. Dusty and old, sure. But the bunker taught her how things like this work. If she can get it running, she might be able to do something with it. Leave her voice somewhere it can't be erased. The mutant can wait outside all it wants. She's got work to do. The transmitter box is heavier than it looks. Oriole drags it away from the wall, checking the cables that snake behind it. Most are frayed, but a few look intact. She finds a power source in the corner, a generator that coughs twice before turning over. The lights flicker on overhead, dim and yellow. The box hums when she flips the first switch, then the second. A dial glows green. She lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. On the shelf beside the equipment, a rack of old albums leans at an angle, cases cracked and faded. She pulls one free and slides the disc into the player. Music was something they had in the bunker, played through crackling speakers during meals. If this works, someone might hear it. Might know people were here once, making noise. The first track starts with static, then a guitar. Oriole adjusts the frequency dial until the sound clears. She cranks the volume up and watches the meters jump. Outside, the mutant stops mid-step. Its head swivels toward the building, nostrils flaring. The music spills out through cracks in the walls, through the broken window high up near the ceiling. The creature moves closer, then stops again. It doesn't attack. It just stands there, listening. Oriole keeps her hand on the dial, her heart pounding. The song builds, drums and bass filling the small room, and she realizes she's smiling. This is louder than any name carved into concrete. This is proof that fills the air, that travels farther than she ever could on foot. The mutant shifts its weight but doesn't circle anymore. It stays put, ears twitching. When the song ends, Oriole doesn't turn the equipment off. She queues up another album, then another. The mutant settles onto the sand outside, massive and still, like it's waiting for the next track. She doesn't know if it understands music or just finds it strange, but it doesn't matter. What matters is this: anyone passing through this empty stretch of desert will hear something human. They'll know someone was here, choosing songs, turning dials, refusing to be silent. The broadcast might reach for miles or just a few feet. Either way, she's not just carving her existence into walls anymore. She's sending it out into the world, and the world is going to listen whether it wants to or not. When dawn comes and the mutant finally moves on, Oriole will still be here, playing every album on that rack until the generator runs dry.

By the third hour, Oriole has run out of albums worth playing. She switches to talk radio mode and realizes she can say anything she wants. No one's listening anyway. She leans into the microphone and starts with a knock-knock joke her bunkmate used to tell. The silence that follows is so complete she can hear sand shifting against the tower's rusted frame outside. She tries another joke. Then a terrible pun about dirt that got groans back in the bunker kitchen. Nothing. The emptiness swallows every word, and she feels the weight of it settle in her chest like concrete dust. But silence has never been her style, and neither has quitting. She uncaps the bottle of nail polish she found earlier on a shelf, bright red and somehow still liquid after all this time. The chemical smell fills the room as she paints her nails between broadcasts, one hand holding the microphone while the other dries. She starts narrating what she's doing. Describes the color. Makes up a fake commercial for it. Switches to weather reports for a world with no one left to warn about sandstorms. She does celebrity impressions no one will recognize, reads ingredient lists off old food packaging like poetry, delivers plot summaries of movies she half-remembers. Her voice fills the room and spills out through cracks in the walls, past the mutant still sitting outside, out into the desert where the tower stands like a rust-covered beacon broadcasting absolutely nothing important to absolutely no one. The mutant shifts position when she starts singing off-key, but it doesn't leave. She takes that as encouragement. She talks about the bunker, about the kitchen where everyone complained about her questions but saved her the good portions anyway. She names people. Describes their faces. Tells their stupid jokes and their worst habits and the songs they hummed while doing dishes. The carved names on the concrete wall behind her are permanent, but this is different. This is their voices moving through air, traveling as far as the signal will carry. Someone passing through might hear a fragment. A word. A laugh. Proof that these people were loud and messy and real. When dawn light finally cracks through the high window, Oriole's voice is raw and her nails are dry and glossy red. The mutant outside stands and stretches, then lumbers away across the sand. She watches it go and realizes she's been talking for six straight hours. Her throat aches. Her hand cramps from holding the microphone. But she's not done. She queues up another album, leans back into the microphone, and keeps going. The world might be dead, but she's going to make it listen to every single thing she has to say. No footnotes. No asterisks. Just her voice, refusing to disappear into silence.