While I searched for materials, I also kept an eye out for unused canvas. Unfortunately, tent materials were at a premium-all the canvas in camp appeared to be in use. I wasn’t sure how I could manage to steal an occupied tent. Maybe Ben would have an idea.
We didn’t find a forty-foot length of wire, of course. We had to splice it together from dozens of scraps, joining each chunk with its neighbor with the tightest twist we could manage. One of the prefects found a family using chunks of a tailor’s cloth measuring tape as improvised belts-an invaluable find since Ken wanted the wire measured precisely. He did a bunch of calculations in the snow outside, muttering something about 468 megahertz to himself. When he finished, he told us to make each of the two legs of the antenna sixteen feet, ten inches long. With all the splices, Ken said he’d be shocked if it worked. The co-ax cable was even harder to splice than the copper without connectors or tape.
We used six-foot lengths of copper pipe as grounds, driving them into the earth by pounding on them with heavy rocks. The ends of the soft copper pipes belled out, and we couldn’t get them driven more than a few feet into the frozen ground. It was as good as the rest of the hap-hazard setup, I guessed.
Raising a thirty-four-foot antenna thirty feet off the ground proved to be impossible. We simply didn’t have any poles long enough. Plus, an antenna that tall would be visible from the guard shack-a risk we couldn’t take. Instead we strung the antenna across the tops of the tallest tents. Ken wanted it thirty feet high-he got about eight.
By evening, we were ready to try it. Ken, Ben, and I crowded into the tent while Dad and some prefects kept watch outside. Ken slowly turned the dial on the transceiver, listening to static and squeals with the silent intensity of a priest at prayer.
He’d been at it fifteen or twenty minutes when something occurred to me. “Why don’t you call out? Maybe someone’s listening but not transmitting.”
“Transmitting takes more than twenty times the juice as listening. We’ve only got the two batteries, right? Which do you want? Four hours of transmitting, or eighty of listening?”
“Oh.” That made sense.
More than an hour passed before Ken gave up scanning. “I really can’t tell if this is working without an antenna tuner or an SWR meter. Maybe the antenna is too long. Go trim an inch off each side. That’ll change its harmonics, maybe even help.”
Cutting the copper wire without proper tools was a pain. I had to get the end of the antenna down off a tent, lay the wire against a brick, score it with a knife, and then bend it back and forth until it broke. Ben came along to help, holding the shake light for me. Still, it seemed like it took a long time.
Ken spent another hour scanning channels, then sent me back out to trim the antenna again. Almost immediately upon my return, we heard a voice.
“Peace with the Lord, for the hour of judgment is upon you.”
A huge grin cracked Ken’s face wide open. “Damn, can’t believe this spitwad setup actually works.” He picked up the mic. “CQ, CQ this is station KJOB, Maquoketa.”
“Welcome to our newest listeners!” the voice crackled back. “Sit back, relax, and hear the words of the Lord. Please keep the frequency clear of transmissions out of courtesy to our other listeners.”
Ken started to lift the mic back to his mouth, but Ben took it from him and laid it on top of the radio. The voice continued, “Welcome, listeners, to our 127th broadcast of the Hour of Judgment, the radio program with all the answers you need for surviving purgatory, so you, too, can be called up to sit by His side when Jesus returns. I’m your host, Pastor Manny, coming to you from Crooked Lake, Florida. Our opening reading for today’s show is from the Book of Matthew, chapter 24, verses 21 and 22: ‘For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now-and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.’”
“This guy’s a lid,” Ken said. “He hasn’t even given his call sign.”
I had no idea what he meant by a lid, but it didn’t seem important. I picked up the mic.
“He said to keep the channel clear,” Ben said.
“Whatever.” I mashed down the push-to-talk switch on the mic and said, “Come in Pastor Manny, come in.”
Pastor Manny kept right on reading from Matthew.
“He can’t hear you when he’s transmitting,” Ken said.
“Oh.” That presented a bit of a problem. Pastor Manny barely paused to take a breath, let alone long enough to let me talk. We listened to him talk about Matthew’s end-of-times predictions for ten minutes or more. Then Pastor Manny announced a reading from Revelations, and our speakers filled with static. Maybe he was hunting for the right verse.
I pushed in the switch again. “Pastor Manny, come in, Pastor Manny.”
“You’re acting like a lid, too,” Ken said. I ignored him.
The static ceased “Another new listener? How wonderful. Please keep the channel clear out of consideration for our listeners.”
“This is urgent. I need to contact someone in the government. Maybe FEMA.”
“Put not your trust in princes.’”
“This is urgent. People are disappearing.”
“Son, I asked you nicely to keep the frequency clear.”
“Do you even have any other listeners? Why aren’t they transmitting?”
“Of course I do. They’re far more courteous than you.”
“How do you know? That anyone else is listening if they never talk?”
“I prayed on it, of course. Ah, here’s the next reading, Revelations, chapter thirteen.”
He read breathlessly for another ten minutes. He was an excellent reader-hollering and whispering, changing his voice to suit the words. I might have been impressed if I weren’t so pissed off.
The next time he stopped, I broke in immediately. “Please, Pastor Manny, do you have any idea how we could get in touch with FEMA? Preferably someone high up?”
“‘The worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things come in and choke the Word, making it unfruitful.’”
I slammed my free hand down on the tent floor. “I’m going to transmit right over your program unless you try to help me. People will hear a babble of both our voices and tune out.” I wasn’t sure it would really work that way, but when I looked at Ken, he was both nodding and glaring at me, so I figured my guess was right.
“You would dare thwart the will of the Lord?”
“I would and I will if you don’t help us.”
“Blasphemer!”
“Whatever. You want me off your frequency, I want some help.”
The radio crackled with static for a moment. When Pastor Manny came back on, his voice was quieter, resigned. “Florida is in the green zone-it’s one of the less-affected areas. There isn’t much FEMA presence. The Florida National Guard is handling security here. I probably couldn’t find anyone from FEMA even if I were inclined to abandon my calling to look. But the seventeen-meter band is usually full of transmissions in the late afternoon. Most of the signals are coded, but sometimes there’s a clear transmission-I think some relief units are reporting in to Washington that way.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
“Now will you keep my frequency clear?”
“Sure. Sorry,” I said, although I felt anything but. Would it have killed him to tell me about the government transmissions right away?
Ken, Ben, and I fiddled with the radio for a few more hours that night. We found several other stations broadcasting. Most were in other languages: two that might have been Spanish, one that sounded vaguely Germanic, and another that Ken said was Russian. One station broadcast nothing but a woman reading numbers, which struck me as highly bizarre.