Somewhere south of the river, there is a last bastion of humanity that stands alone among the shimmering desert heat and radiation. Weathered saguaros and crushed barrel cactus dot the otherwise barren wasteland, stalwart troops standing fast against the wind howling down the hollows of the ridged peaks that outline The Devil’s Backbone. The sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky in washed-out watercolors tinged with the ever-present sickly yellow. A plume of smoke rises from a lone campfire, a silhouette hunched before it. Embers spark and pop, floating up and up until they are indistinguishable from the stars. Come morning, the figure will be long gone, any trace of them swept away in the sand.

⧫⧫⧫

“The sun rises once more on this here beautiful town, and I invite y'all to step outside and bask in its warmth today. Just not for too long though! This is your friendly reminder that the ozone layer is still repairing itself and that SPF and Prussian Blue are being rationed and will only be distributed in extreme cases where chance of survival is above 74%. Stay safe, and enjoy the outdoors responsibly! Of course, don't forget that curfew - the Guard will not hesitate to enforce it. Better to get your business done and find yourself safe in bed rather than roughed up in the hoosegow, as I always say.
“Now for the news. The Farmer says this year’s crop harvest is looking promising, so save some room on your dinner plates for some fresh veggies. With our current yield estimate, everyone should be gettin’ a kernel of corn each by the weekend.
“As for the weather, expect some radiation storms to be rollin’ in over the next coupla days. Be sure to check your roofs for any leaks and patch up any holes you can see the sunshine through. We don’t want another repeat of last summer’s incident, now do we, folks? Now then, here’s a little tune to get your day started!”
The click of a switch, the turn of a dial, then the whirring of cassette reels fills the room as The Operator moves their mic away then kicks back, resting their heels on the edge of their desk and stretching for a moment. The tinny, warped crackling swells to fit the confines of the cramped space, the downbeats accented by the tuneless whistling and puttering about of The Operator as they attempt, in vain, to organize their desk for the hundredth time this week. It seems there are always relics of the Old World waiting to be found somewhere out there. Some are even bartered, albeit rarely, by the traveling merchant caravans that are still willing to brave the desert wasteland - and risk facing off with the Ghostriders. Should they succumb to the elements, naturally or otherwise, well, sending a scavenger out to retrieve anything left behind before it’s ruined by the dust and sand is a small price to pay for a priceless historical artifact. Plus, if they die close enough to the gates, the Guard will retrieve their corpse for a much smaller fee than the initial payout, bringing it as close to a net-zero as you can really get.
The Operator shuffles around papers, sheafs of charred office documents and personal diaries with suspect-looking stains taking positions of equal importance within the archival process. New entries go into the Unfiled Cabinet, while the hodgepodge assortments already taking up residence in the Unfiled Cabinet get shuffled over into the Sorta-Filed Cabinet with a bit more care and thought put into them, usually after-hours with the camaraderie of a late night tipple. The Capital F Filing Cabinet is quite a bit emptier than its counterparts, though The Operator hopes to change that soon, even if “soon” keeps getting shoved further down the line.
A burst of static rumbles across the airwaves, disrupting the music for a fleeting second. This is not an unusual occurrence, especially when the radiation storms roll through, so it doesn’t quite tear The Operator’s attention away from their nigh impossible task at hand.
Until the voice begins.
The solemn, monotone voice rings out high and clear over the debris of ill-maintained radio signals. It sounds like an older woman’s voice, complete with a clipped Transatlantic accent. It has an air of falsehood to it, as if the speaker is emulating the long-bygone era of the silver screen.
“Eight, three, four, two, zero. Eight, three, four, two, zero.” The Operator stops in their tracks, a loosely stapled college essay complete with red markings in the margins fluttering to the creaking floor beneath them. Long, warbling tones follow the voice, punctuating the supposed end of an inconclusive statement. The room is silent, save for the faint underlying grain of the broadcast and The Operator’s ragged breathing. A series of short clicks and beeps sound off, then the voice begins again.
“Six, seven, one, one, three.” The Operator rushes back to their chair, careening into the desk and smashing their thigh against a drawer handle. Papers, cassettes, floppy disks, binder clips, and other detritus come cascading off of the rickety desk as The Operator searches frantically for a legal pad or spare scrap of paper. They paw through pencils worked down to nubs to find something to write with and begin copying down the numbers, line for line.
“Nine, two, two, two, nine.”
“Five, zero, one, five, four.”
“Two, one, eight, three, seven.”
The first sequence of number callouts repeats itself once more, “Eight, three, four, two, zero,” then the transmission cuts off just as abruptly as it began, the music filling the airwaves once more.

⧫⧫⧫

Smoke plumes from a hand-rolled cigarette, more preserved spices and dried scrub brush than bona fide tobacco, and swirls in the cool night breeze. Ashes and burned-down stumps lay askew and forgotten in a crystal ashtray spiderwebbed with hairline fractures. The Operator's hands are wringing through their greasy hair, ruffling the overgrown shorn sides into disarray. A warped vinyl spins lazily in the corner, morphing what was once a jaunty fiddle tune into a warbling lament. Pages upon pages of lined paper lay in a disorderly pile on the desk. A chalkboard is tucked against the far wall, years of chalk dust outlining a grave rubbing of equations and hypotheses etched onto it. The same array of numbers is repeated on the board in different orders and sequences, logical assortments devolving into half-hearted scribbles partnered with illegible notes and connecting lines.
The Operator is nearly asleep, their weary arms barely holding up their drooping head as they pore over the initial note once more, seeking answers in the shapes of the numbers written before them. They begin to nod off slightly when a voice rouses them from sleep.
“Juliet.”
They ignore it at first, nestling their head into the crook of their elbows and mumbling slightly, then their head snaps up. Immediately they focus their bleary vision on the broadcast console. No music is playing, not while the city sleeps. No, this is The Operator’s own project: their real reason behind the station’s operations. A long range satellite antenna that broadcasts out into the big, blue sky, a message of desolation transmitted in toneless morse code, its melancholia only apparent in its decoded words. PLEASE HELP US. WE HAVE DESTROYED OURSELVES. The repetitive beeping grates on The Operator’s nerves as they man the station overnight, and the volume is turned down to minimum for this reason, though they refuse to fully mute it in order to ensure the message is still transmitting until the morning broadcast. They turn the volume knob slowly, hearing the steady beeping crescendo, the secret heartbeat of the radio station. The voice they just heard was loud and clear, without any of the prior distortion of the radiowaves.
The voice repeats itself.
“Juliet.” Same volume. No distortion.
The Operator rises out of their battered chair with trembling legs and paces to the media console. With shaking hands, they lift the tone arm from the spinning record and place it in its cradle. They strain their ears, listening while switching off the turntable entirely.
“Juliet. Uniform. November. Oscar.”
The Operator pauses in the center of the room, the only movement that of the dust motes swirling in the dim light of a banker’s lamp, its green glass shade frosted over with years’ worth of dust and grime buildup.
“Eight. Juliet. Three. Uniform. Four. November. Two. Oscar. Zero.” The woman’s statement drones on for longer this time with less pauses, and it finally clicks for The Operator. There is no static, no change in volume.
The message is coming from within their head.
This is the response they’ve been waiting for.
They rush back to the broadcast console and shut off the morse code, switching the channels back to the local wavelength and firing up the carbon microphone.
Their voice is frantic and wavering as they speak. “Kind folks of the homestead! Anyone out there who is listening, I have some big news for y’all. This is a…this is a public service announcement, this is an emergency broadcast! I can say with certainty that I just received communication from the stars, and whoever it is, I think they’re comin’ for us! You hear that? We’re saved!” They laugh in disbelief, tears flowing down their face.
Sounds of bustling chaos churn outside, a chorus of people whooping and glass breaking. My folk are reveling. We are saved.
They absentmindedly wipe their face, swept up in a rush of giddy euphoria. The tears keep running; their fingers come away bloody. Their last laugh catches in their throat as they see the rust-colored liquid staining the tips of their fingers, filling the troughs of their weathered palms. A similar trickling feeling creeps down their neck, rolling down rapidly from their ears. They mistake the feeling at first for goosebumps, their body’s physiological response from the sheer joy coursing through them. Their face-splitting grin slowly falters, chunks of skin peeling and crumbling from a pair of weathered lips.
“What in-” A spluttering cough, tinged with phlegm and dark arterial blood sprays out of their mouth, spattering over the documents on the desk in a wide, graceful arc. To an onlooker, the detailed notes on the transmission appear as if a discerning eye has taken a red pen to them, striking out sections, disproving all working theories.
Another rattling cough rumbles The Operator’s chest, and they double over, crumpling to the floor and knocking things over as they attempt to right themselves. The banker’s lamp wobbles, then tips over and shatters on the floor, a stained glass motif of the Old World’s departure with a creeping pool of red daylight shining through.
The reel-to-reel starts up on a timer for the morning broadcast, a gentle guitar melody and keening voice shrouding The Operator’s body in a mournful send-off as the radiation finishes devouring them from the inside. The music plays on, but the voice of the desert is silent.

⧫⧫⧫

Outside, in the blazing morning sun, a dust storm kicks up, swallowing the town whole. Heavy hoofbeats thunder from every direction, beating out the town’s dirge. Wooden structures crumple like paper, ramshackle scrap metal buildings shred and collapse. Gunshots ring out and the Ghostriders feast, sucking the marrow out of what’s left of humanity. It is over as quickly as it began, and the Ghostriders take their leave, riding off to seek their next quarry.
The town stands, empty, barren as the desert it rose from. A stormfront of acid rain rolls in, burning away the carnage left behind.