Page 34 of Trigger Discipline

CHAPTER 11

ZOOMIES

“What hath God wrought.”

As far as firsts go, it was a pretty epic sentence. If you knew nothing else about Samuel Morse, you should know that he had a flair for the dramatic, apparently. Blake didn’t really know, but no one who didn’t love to make a good entrance—the kind with a cape fluttering behind and heels clacking on a marble tile as the room fell into an awed hush—used those words as a test sentence.

On March 24th, 1844, Samuel Morse and a handful of other guys no one really gives a shit about changed the world. In a day when the world is at your fingertips, it might not seem so impressive. A single sentence transmitted along an electrical wire from Baltimore to Washington in a series of dots and dashes, but it was. It was huge.

The telegraph changed the world. Blake often wondered—usually while he couldn’t sleep—if Mr. Morse and company knew what they were doing. The legacy they were leaving behind. Names that would not only live on in infamy but spark the fire for generations to come. Bigger, better, more accessible inventions rolled in off the invention of the telegraph.

If he had known, would he have picked a different sentence?

It was all useless speculation, inane wonderings from Blake’s overtired brain. Crouched in the small office, the only window blocked off by a tacked up garbage bag, he squatted beside Judd and Tommy and helped assemble their quite literally made from garbage telegraph.

Judd had steady hands like a surgeon or a man used to pointing a gun at a target. He didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t seem to mind taking Blake and Tommy’s suggestions. His fingers would pause, eyes never wavering, his attention fully on them until his hands would start moving again, slow and steady. Honestly, it was unnerving for the loudmouth to be so silent.

The idea was to attach the strip of metal to the block, just above the nail. Blake made the nail electromagnetic by coiling the wire he ripped from the insulation around the nail and attaching it to the batteries he’d ripped out of Judd’s useless radio. The idea, if it worked, was to tap the strip of metal against the nail, which would serve as their transmitter, and use Morse code to talk to Gabriel’s boss.

There were several issues with this plan—the first being if they could get the damn thing to work. Telegraphs worked by breaking and closing an electrical connection. They had no idea what the aliens had done. If radios didn’t work, there stood a chance that their telegraph might not either. Blake hoped it was so low-tech that the aliens wouldn’t even consider something so basic, but he was really just talking out of his ass.

A second, and more pressing issue, is a receiver. Gabriel was confident that his boss, Irving or whatever his name was, would have a receiver. The man was apparently quite anal about believing in every contingency.

Blake had been debating which of the two was more likely to derail their entire operation when he fell asleep.

With no way of telling time, he had no idea how long he’d been asleep. When he woke, it was slowly, like kicking up from the bottom of a pool. The closer he got to the surface, the more he seemed to panic. Finally, he managed to tip over the edge of wakefulness.

His neck hurt. Groaning, he tried to shift without moving too much of his body, but he couldn’t. When his eyes finally cracked open, it took him a moment to figure out just what he was looking at. Tommy was hunched over, watching Judd with rapt attention.

If he concentrated, he could almost hear thetip-taps. Every couple of seconds in a steady but not uniform pattern.

His eyes flew open and he sat up.

Judd was hardly jostled as he continued tapping on the machine. He stared, open mouthed, at the metal strip Judd’s finger was resting on. He didn’t look up at Blake, but his lips mouthed along with the taps.

Sitting on his knees, Blake couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face. “It works?”

Judd shrugged one shoulder and Tommy grinned tiredly.

They wouldn’t know. Not really. They had no way of receiving information back. They could only pray that some kind of receiver intercepted the message, and then Irving could get to it. Hardly scientific, but it was their only shot.

The station around them was quiet. Stealing a glance at the watch on Judd’s non-dominant hand, he saw it was well after eight pm.

We did it.

It was hardly a win, but it wasn’t a loss. Blake would take it.

Blake sidled in closer, dropping his head on Tommy’s thin shoulder so he could count the dots and dashes. A message sent over and over again. In a lot of ways, it was like a message in a bottle, tossed into the ocean with the faintesthope that one day, someone, somehow, would be able to retrieve it.

They stayed like that for a long time. How long, Blake didn’t know. They only stopped when Gabriel came to get them and tell them they should rest. No one protested.

The only sign of dawn was the faded orange glow peeking in from between the blinds. Not enough to see, it really only illuminated the dust motes dancing in the beams. Skittish things that floated on unseen currents. There was no breeze, and the room was stifling and still. Sweat pricked at the back of his neck and under his arms, but he didn’t move.

By unspoken agreement, they all decided to sleep in the living room. There was a dorm with perfectly good beds, but they were littered with the possessions of the firefighters on shift. The ones who left the station and never returned. Blake told Tommy they probably helped people evacuate, and they were sitting in some refugee center now. But he didn’t believe it. He knew those guys. They would never leave. Not when fires raged, and people needed saving.

So they ignored the twin beds in various stages of being made. Their pillows tossed onto the mattresses, and their clothes sticking out of duffel bags. That room was closed. A silent memorial.

The men were sprawled out across the living room. Tommy and he were squashed together on the couch, heads on either arm and legs side by side. Judd had his head pillowed on crossed arms, Phin was using his backpack as a pillow, and Gabriel was leaning up against the wood-paneled wall. He had been the last to sleep. Insisting he take a double watch.