The crowd gasps. There’s a hum as people start whispering. Someone moves through the crowd and slips beside me. It’s Zeke. I can tell the instant I look into his eyes that he’s thinking the same thing as me—that this could be the catalyst that turns the tide, that makes the majority of people realize that we have a duty to go out and look for survivors. Because here, at last, is the definitive proof that they exist.

The Commander tries to quiet the crowd down with his arms. “It is a recorded message,” he explains. “We can’t establish how long ago it was made. It could even have been from before the war.”

I catch Zeke’s eye.

“What did the message say?” someone cries.

“The frequency wasn’t clear,” the Commander replies. “And at times the message cuts out. But we will play it for you.”

He nods to one of the guards, who goes over to the radio that’s been hooked up to the loudspeakers, and flips a switch. Immediately, the crowd groans and covers their ears as a high-pitched squeak blasts out of the speakers. The guard quickly adjusts the volume to cancel out the horrible noise. Now the sound of crackling fills the square. It’s intermittently punctuated by silence from where the transmission cuts out. Everyone listens intently.

“This is -- of the -- battalion. Our base -- Texas. -- survivors. -- -- -- more.”

My heart clenches. That’s all there is. A garbled message about battalions, Texas, and survivors. But two things strike me more than anything else. The first is that this message has come from another military compound. The second is the last word: more. Because I can’t help thinking it wasn’t “more,” but “Moore.” The voice is too distorted to work out if it belongs to my dad. And though there’s no way of making out the words that filled the silence before it was spoken, the person could easily have said, “there are many more,” but he also had time to fit in, “This is Laurence Moore.”

The message repeats again. I strain to hear the words, to recognize the voice, to fully understand what is being said and by whom. But it’s no use. The volume of the crowd has notched up another level, there’s too much interference, and the silences cut out the most important words. All I know for sure is that somewhere in Texas there’s a military faction that survived long enough to send out a message about survivors and, though it would be a huge coincidence, there’s a small chance that it could be from my dad.

“Have we been able to message them back?” a woman shouts.

“Do we have any idea who sent it?” another cries.

“That’s not the point,” someone else shouts. “The point is that there are other camps! We’re not the only one.”