Fingers drumming lightly on the battered console. The transmitter lights flickered, then steadied. A low hum filled the room, a heartbeat of energy in an otherwise dead town.

It was working.

For now.

He thumbed the mic button, took a slow breath, and spoke.

“If you’re out there… if you’re listening… my name doesn’t matter. I’m not here to save the world. I’m just here to make sure the static doesn’t win.”

He let the silence stretch for a moment before continuing.

“I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. Went to Memorial High School. Back before all this… before the sky turned wrong and the streets started burning… I was just another awkward kid obsessed with the radio. When I was twelve, I found a station by accident — 101.5 WIBA-FM. Classic rock. Old-school DJs who talked too much between songs, who made the music feel like it meant something.”

“That radio dial never left my side after that. It became an obsession. When I was sixteen, my parents told me about this crazy community station downtown — WORT. Volunteer-run, almost entirely. I started spending my weekends there, sweeping floors, cataloging records, fixing broken headphone jacks… anything they asked. Just to be close to it.”

“First real mentor I ever had was a guy named Norm Stockwell — the operations coordinator back then. Kind, gruff, and always in motion. He taught me that radio wasn’t about being perfect. It was about being present. About holding space for everyone — even if nobody else was willing to.”

Cronauer shifted in his chair, staring out the broken window where only darkness waited.

“I had two sisters. Sarah Elizabeth and Rebecca Elizabeth. Good people. Rebecca passed in her twenties — medical complications they said, but really it was just bad luck, the kind that doesn’t care how good your heart is. Sarah… she’s a nurse now. Somewhere outside Madison. Big family. Four kids. A dog. Two cats. The kind of life you hope someone gets to keep.”

He paused, voice catching slightly.

“We haven’t spoken in years. She never forgave me for enlisting. We weren’t raised to be a military family. But after high school, after Rebecca died… it just felt like there was nothing left to hold onto. So me and my two best friends, Rick and Josh — a couple of young IT geeks with big dreams and bigger fears — we joined the Marines. Not to be heroes. Not even to be soldiers. Just… to feel like we belonged somewhere.”

The old Civic keychain rattled against the table as Cronauer’s hand trembled slightly.

“The world started falling apart long before the bombs dropped. You could feel it if you paid attention. The cracks in the conversations. The fear behind every ‘everything’s fine.’ Nobody wanted to say it out loud. That’s what radio is good for. Saying the things nobody else will.”

He leaned back, letting the mic hang open, transmitting nothing but the sound of his own breathing.

After a moment, he pushed forward again.

“After the collapse, after the skies lit up and the grids died… I made my way back toward Madison. Didn’t know what I was expecting to find. Madison was always 77 square miles surrounded by reality, they used to joke. When I walked into the city, it wasn’t bliss. It was a graveyard.”

“Fires burned through the neighborhoods. The Echo Tap was gone — just rubble and smoke. But somehow, WORT… WORT was still standing. The concrete box that refused to die. The windows were boarded up, and a generator growled out back. Someone was still trying to make it work.”

Cronauer smiled grimly, the memory bitter but proud.

“I still had my key. From when I was sixteen. I didn’t even think it would work — but it did. The door creaked open, and there he was. Norm. Older, greyer, soldering a busted board by the glow of a single work light. Everyone else had run or burned or quit. But not Norm. Not the stubborn heart of community radio.”

He let out a slow breath, the memory playing out sharper now.

After the long walk through burning streets, after the miracle of the key still working, Cronauer stepped into the station and found Norm Stockwell.

The two men stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then Norm simply nodded, as if he had been waiting for this.

He set down his soldering iron, stood up slowly, and motioned toward the control room. They sat together in the dim light, the air thick with dust and memory, and talked about the end of the world.

Norm told him about the fall of Madison — how the city splintered when the grids collapsed, how the 300 volunteers that once made WORT a living thing had scattered like leaves in a storm. Some fled. Some fought. Some simply disappeared.

Norm himself had been working downtown, publishing a magazine, trying to keep independent journalism alive when the bombs hit. When the printing presses died and the roads clogged with desperation, he knew instinctively where he had to go.

Back to the voice.

Back to the transmitter.

Back to WORT.

Radio could survive where print couldn’t. It didn’t need paper. It didn’t need internet. It just needed stubbornness, power — and a voice willing to keep speaking into the dark.

Cronauer offered to stay. To help rebuild the station. To bring WORT fully back online.

Norm smiled, tired but grateful.

But he shook his head.

“If you stay here,” he said, voice low, “we draw attention. The city’s not safe anymore. And Madison’s a beacon — too big, too visible.”

He leaned back in his chair, studying Cronauer with old eyes that had seen more collapses than anyone should.

“There’s another station. Out west. Viroqua. You helped us get them up years ago, remember? When you were doing IT runs and volunteering with us. You know the place. Small town. Good people. They’ll need a signal. Someone to remind them they’re not dead yet.”

Norm tapped the battered table between them once, solid and final.

“You’re not gonna save Madison. None of us are. But you might save something out there.”

Before Cronauer left, Norm pressed a heavy, battered pack into his hands.

“You’re gonna need more than stubbornness to make it out there,” he said quietly.

Inside, Cronauer found a ham radio, tuned and ready. Norm reminded him that back when they helped Viroqua launch their little LPFM station, they had added a ham antenna to the tower — a long-forgotten backup system, installed on a whim, now a lifeline. There was even a repeater still boxed up at the Viroqua station, waiting for someone to install it. If he could get it running, he might be able to punch a signal further than anyone thought possible.

Norm also handed over a paper map — because GPS was mostly a memory now, satellites flickering on and off like dying bulbs — and a battered two-way radio already keyed to a private repeater frequency Norm had quietly installed behind WORT’s studio-to-transmitter link.

“If you get that Viroqua tower running… call me. If we’re both still breathing.”

It wasn’t much. But it was a thread.

And in the world as it stood now, a thread was hope.

The final surprise came wrapped in an old blanket: a .308 rifle, worn but well-maintained.

Cronauer raised an eyebrow.

Norm just shrugged.

“Some things you don’t put on the air.”

He explained how looters had destroyed his old house on Winnebago Street during the first blackouts. WORT, with its heavy security doors and concrete walls, had become his shelter — the last safe bastion of a city tearing itself apart. It wasn’t about politics anymore. It was about survival.

Cronauer slung the rifle over his shoulder, packed the radio gear carefully, and shook Norm’s hand — a real handshake, not the limp, sterile kind the world had gotten used to.

“Good luck, kid,” Norm said.

“You too, old man.”

And with that, Cronauer stepped back into the broken world.

Heading west.

Toward Viroqua.

Toward the ghost of a transmitter waiting for a voice.

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