Dear Reader

I wrote something new this week, and you're getting it before anyone else does — before it's tucked into my reader library, before it shows up anywhere public. Just you, right now.

It's a short story set in the Silence Saga world. A girl alone in a ruined diner. A radio that shouldn't still be working. A voice that sounds exactly like the father she's been waiting for.

I won't say more than that. Just read it.

The Radio in the Ash

Every night, just before the sky goes black, I turn on the radio.

Twenty-three days have passed without a single broadcast coming through, and I still sit behind the ruined counter of the diner and listen because the alternative is worse.

The windows shattered in the first week, and I covered them with tablecloths and strips of cardboard, but the ash finds its way in regardless. It settles on the booths and the floor and the overturned stools, and by morning, even the plates behind the counter wear a thin grey film. Outside, the highway has disappeared beneath it entirely.

I twist the dial and static crackles through the small speaker, and I close my eyes and let myself say it anyway.

“Come on. Just one person.”

The radio hisses back at me.

Then a man’s voice cuts through, soft and broken by distance.

“Lena?”

I come up off the stool so fast it tips.

“Lena, are you there?”

“Dad?”

My father left thirty-one days ago to look for food and promised he’d be back before dark. I watched the road until the sun came up the next morning and every morning after that, and I’ve stopped letting myself count how many mornings that makes.

“It’s me,” he says.

I grip the radio with both hands like it might try to leave.

“Where are you?”

“There’s a town north of here. Survivors are gathering there.”

His voice trails out, and I strike the side of the radio with my palm to bring it back.

“Dad?”

“Listen carefully. You need to leave the diner.”

“I waited for you.” The words come out before I can stop them. “You said you were coming back.”

“I tried.”

He answers so evenly that it takes me a second to notice he hasn’t taken a breath between the words, not once, and I tell myself it’s only the signal.

“Where are you?” I ask again.

“North. Follow the highway to the burned service station and take the road beside it.”

I look toward the windows, toward the shapes I know are waiting past the cardboard once the light goes. I’ve heard them out there most nights since the third week, footsteps that don’t hurry and scratching along the outer wall that never seems to look for a way in.

Once, someone stood at the door and asked to be let inside for six straight hours, the same three words over and over, and I got as far as touching the latch before I caught myself.

“Leave now,” he says.

“It’s almost dark.”

“Leave now, Lizzie.”

The radio screeches, and I pull it against my chest.

“Tell me something,” I say. “Something only you would know.”

The static thickens, and for a moment I think I’ve lost him. Then his voice comes back.

“Your mother used to sing to you during storms. You always made her start over before she got to the end.”

That’s true. That’s exactly true, and something in my chest finally lets go.

“I’m coming,” I tell him.

I pack fast, two cans of beans, a bottle of water, my father’s hunting knife, and I wrap a scarf around my mouth before I pull on my coat. The radio keeps talking behind me the whole time, north, Lizzie, they’re waiting, and I’m reaching for my backpack under the counter when something rolls across the floor and taps against a stool leg.

Two batteries.

The radio sits on the counter above them, its compartment open.

The speaker crackles anyway.

“Lizzie?”

I back away from the counter with the knife still in my hand.

“Lizzie, are you there?”

The voice is louder now, layered, like several throats are shaping the same words a half-second apart, and I keep backing toward the kitchen while they call my name.

Outside, something brushes the cardboard over the window.

Then another shape crosses in front of the door.

Then another.

The voices climb over one another, and for one breath the diner holds so still that I can hear the ash sliding off the roof.

“A girl is coming,” they say. “Her name is Mara.”

I raise the knife.

“What do you want with her?” I ask.

The static cuts out.

“We need her to follow the signal.”

The front door jerks against its lock.

If you want to know who Mara is and why the signal wants her, that's where the Silence Saga begins.

Follow the Signal into The Silence Saga:

Happy reading, Christopher