• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“If all this stuff is busted,” Wright asked, “how do you know what’s going on in the world?”

The teen looked away. Wright transferred his gaze to the girl. Very little in his life had touched him the way her brief gaze now did before she returned her attention to the ground. That was when it struck him that they didn’t answer his question because they could not. They had no idea what was happening anywhere except in the immediate vicinity of their little observatory camp. They were well and truly alone.

He was the adult. It was incumbent on him to comfort them, he knew. To bolster their confidence. To reassure them now that he, a grown-up, was here, he would look after them and that everything was going to be all right. Instead of that, when he picked up the radio again he said what was actually on his mind.

“Girl. Phone. Get me a phone. Bring it here.”

Marcus Wright had never been a believer in fairy tales. At least, not the ones with happy endings.

The teen hesitated, then turned and gestured at the girl. She indicated her understanding, rose, and trotted off. Maybe the gesture was some kind of private code they had devised between them. Maybe it was gang slang for this piece of hell. Wright didn’t care. All that mattered was that they had both reacted positively.

In addition to not believing in fairy tales, Wright had never been one to waste time. He had no intention of waiting for the hoped-for phone. In the girl’s absence he started probing the guts of the radio. His fingers were tough and strong, but they were also capable of more delicate work. In their time they had done plenty of damage—sometimes to inanimate objects, sometimes to those who protested, too often to those who had simply had the bad luck to find themselves on the wrong side of one of his all too frequent bad moods. They could also fix things.

“What’s her name?” He struggled with the uncooperative device, but carefully. What he wanted to do was expose the radio’s guts without damaging any of the internal components that might still be intact and functional.

He saw Reese looking on as he manipulated the radio’s components.

“I call her Star. When I found her, she didn’t know her real name. She was all alone under the stars. I’d ask her, and she’d just turn off.” He shrugged. “She loved that hat of hers so much, I just....” His voice trailed away for a moment. “Maybe Star is her real name. I dunno. I just know that she responds to it. What else am I supposed to call her?”

Wright’s fingers slowed as he took a moment to once more regard the surrounding wasteland in which he now inexplicably found himself.

“How do you do it? How do you wake up every day to—this?”

Reese took a moment to consider the question—no doubt because he had never actually contemplated it before.

“Just know it’s important that I do.” His voice was devoid of ego or bravado, his expression even. “Beats the alternative.”

In his largely misbegotten life Wright had associated with men and women who considered themselves tough, even dangerous. None surpassed the resoluteness or conviction he sensed in this slim teen. It stood in stark contrast to his own youth.

He was still working with the radio’s insides when Star returned. The phone she offered him could have been newer and in better condition, but he was glad to have it nonetheless. Lining up his thoughts, he found that he was glad of something to do. Something to focus on besides his unrelievedly depressing environs and the unexplained process that had dumped him here.

“Thanks, Star. I could use another hand. Think you can help me out a little?”

She looked at Reese, who nodded approvingly. Eyes wide and attentive, she turned back to him.

“Here, hold this.” Wright handed her the back panel of the radio that, thanks to careful work, he had managed to remove in one piece. As he probed deeper into the electronic guts, he took no notice of the little girl’s increasingly worshipful stare.

“Where is everyone?” he murmured as he carefully removed the ends of several cords and