Frequency

With the racing of her heart, her eyes opened wide. She put her hand to her chest to slow her breathing. Then her hand reached down, mostly out of instinct, to touch the fingertips of her partner. She swallowed aggressively, as if she could actually choke the fear she felt and grabbed the canteen next to her. She shuffled to her feet.

The body in the bed began to speak to her, “Ella, are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she responded with a smile, forced and cold, but she was trying. She looked into the deep, tired eyes of her only companion in this world. “Sari, is it almost over now?”

But Ella knew Sari wouldn’t answer because she couldn’t lie. She watched as Sari touched the heart shaped necklace lying against her clavicle so briefly that it almost seemed not to happen at all. They prepared their packs in silence and in darkness. They filled their canteens with the last of the bottled water they had found in the days before, put on their head gear, and readied themselves to go outside.

The sun was just beginning to crest over the horizon. Ella followed every step Sari took. She thought it crazy to leave the only home they’d known in recent years, a bunker built by someone who didn’t make it to see the world they prepared for. But she believed in Sari, and Sari believed she knew where they were going. They were finding a friend Sari had lost in the beginning.

As they walked, the sun was shining, and the air smelled like Spring. Ella thought, if only she could hear right now, it would almost be like the world they’d known years before. Hours and miles went by without incident, and as far as Ella could tell, without a glance from Sari. And then there was movement. Sari grabbed Ella and pulled her behind an abandoned car, as broken as the city around them.

After a moment of hesitation, a doe ambled out from behind a dumpster. The sight made Ella gasp. She began to move her body toward this gentle creature without a thought in her mind. Sari put her hand out to signal her to stop, and she was snapped back to reality. The doe’s head shot upwards, and she was gone. From beyond the path she tore, a man was running with a grocery cart. He stopped and threw his hands in the air, clearly disappointed in his inability to grasp what he probably saw as several meals. The women watched as two men slightly less disheveled than the first ran toward the cart. A gun was drawn from within the vest of one of these men. And the owner of the cart was dead.

They waited. With no movement and barely a breath between them, they waited until they were sure they were out of the sight of two men who now owned one cart. But then it was time to move. They walked until it began to get dark, and then they kept walking. Then Sari finally looked at Ella. For a moment, Ella was excited to be seen, and then Sari nodded toward the group of buildings she’d been expecting. Sari led Ella toward a single window above a door. She grabbed her flashlight and made a pattern in the window. A shadowed figure came to the door and waved them inside.

Sari held onto this shadowed figure tightly, showing how missed this person must have been. “A recording studio? Really, Ben?”

“With some slight modifications, it was the one place I was sure I wouldn’t hear anything,” Ben explained. Sari introduced Ella, and Ella sat quietly while the old friends caught each other up on where they’d journeyed and what they’d faced. Watching them, Ella thought it looked like when people used to sit in cafes and have a chat. That was, until the conversation got serious.

Sari’s eyes widened and she took a deep breath. “’Ben, I can stop the frequency.”

“That’s impossible,” he said. “In the last three years, no one has figured out where it’s coming from, if it’s even a singular location. For all we know, this could be coming from space.”

“There’s a tower right outside the city, people have been talking about this place since it started. If I can stop the frequency, I can stop the death, I can stop us from killing each other,” Sari spoke desperately.

“How many of us are even left? What’s the point in trying?” Ben sighed.

Sari looked at Ben, and Ella looked at Sari. Ella watched as a single tear rolled down Sari’s face, “The point is to save lives. I have to try. For Kayla and Max.”

Ben looked away as if he knew the next words he spoke were going to slice Sari, “It won’t bring them back.”

Sari stormed out of the room. Ella looked to Ben, “Who are Max and Kayla?”

Ben replied, “She never told you about them?” Ella’s answer was a sullen headshake. “When the news reports first started saying that the frequency drove people to kill one another, Sari was away with her husband and daughter in the countryside. When it started, it was quieter there, and I don’t think she really believed a sound could bring you to murder someone. She insisted on going home, even though Max thought they should stay put. They were driving back through the city when a car, someone affected by the frequency, slammed right into them. When she woke up, her family was dead. All she has left of them is that necklace with their pictures inside. But I guess that’s more than what most of us have left.”

They sat in silence as Ella came to the realization that Sari, the person she loved most, couldn’t tell her this. It was a thought Ella carried through the night as she and Sari held each other in a makeshift bed in a recording studio in a strip mall in a decimated world.

With the sunrise came the continuation of a journey. Sari asked Ben to join them, but she knew that he would stay.

Even half a day into their walk, Ella couldn’t stop staring at Sari. All her thoughts and questions boiled down to one. Why couldn’t Sari tell her? But all her thoughts stopped once she felt a blow to her waste.

She turned to see a woman whose deranged eyes locked with her own. This stranger readied her weapon, a crowbar, to strike again, but Sari intervened. The crowbar fell to the ground as Sari tried to wrestle the stranger who now had her pinned. Ella grabbed the crowbar and distributed one exact blow to the stranger’s skull. As the woman’s body crumbled to the ground, Ella, crowbar in hand, watched Sari’s expression melt from shock to horror. Ella felt lucky nothing could be said, because she knew in that moment if it weren’t for this mission, Sari would never speak to her again.

They soldiered on, knowing things were different now.

As Ella and Sari approached the top of a hill, Sari fell to her knees. Ella ran after her, ready for the worst. When she reached the top, she looked out to see a radio tower in the distant below. She looked at Sari to see tears flowing from her eyes. This was what she was searching for. Sari picked herself up and signaled to Ella to keep moving. They began their descent.

Once they travelled down the hill, they could see a building painted brown like the surrounding ground. Getting closer and closer to the culmination of their expedition, the women felt a strange sensation. Sari started grabbing her ears. The frequency was getting stronger, strong enough to permeate through the noise cancelling headgear they donned. Within a few feet of the building, Ella could see Sari was saying something to her, but all she could hear was this piercing noise. Ella could see that ahead; Sari was reaching toward a door. Sari pulled, and after the door closed behind them, they found themselves inside a nearly empty room. Sari partially removed her headgear to test the area, and she found the space was filled with silence.

“What is this place?” Ella asked as she was removing her own gear.

“I don’t know,” Sari was surveying the room and moved toward a set of stairs that led to an upper deck. She looked down to Ella, “There’s some type of control board up here.” And after a pause, “Oh my god. This button, I think it’s the one that stops the frequency!”

“Push it,” Ella said. She watched as Sari disappeared on the deck again, until she heard Sari say, “It’s done.” Ella ran to the door and opened it wide. For the first time in three years, she heard a bird singing. Sari looked down from the deck straight into Ella’s eyes and said, “It’s over.” They bellowed with laughter out of relief. Ella thought it was nice to hear Sari laugh.

“That was easy,” Sari exclaimed in disbelief.

Suddenly a new sound came, loud and ringing. Ella looked at Sari and watched as her hand grasped her chest. Sari fell. Ella ran to the deck and pulled Sari’s head into her lap as the light began to leave her eyes. Ella watched the blood trickle down Sari’s wrist to the heart shaped locket that she held tighter than she ever did Ella.

Ella stood to see a broad figure by a second door. The figure raised the gun again. The door opened.

“Now, that’s not how we treat guests,” a man entered the room, and the figure lowered his weapon.

Ella’s shock and fear held on her face. The man, handsome and impressive, walked toward her and offered his arm, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Who are you?” Ella’s fear was subsiding as the shock took hold.

“Just a man who helped to plan for a better world. Follow me, I’ll show you.”

Ella didn’t understand why her body seized toward the hand extended to her, but she decided to follow this man. He brought her through the door, to an elevator she stepped into without pause. In their descent, she watched through the glass door to see they were passing hundreds of people on dozens of floors. As they came to their destination, she asked, “What’s happening?”

The man offered a warm smile, “What you see here are the people that will rebuild the world. They have the power and resources to create something new in their image. See, this planet was ready for a reset. Humanity was headed for extinction thanks to overpopulation and pollution, something needed to be done.”

A processing pause followed from Ella, “Are you saying you started the frequency?”

“Not personally. The planners, they built shelters with radio towers all over the world. The sound is everywhere.”

“You killed people?” Ella’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“Actually, people killed people. The frequency was never real. We played a sound and told people it would drive them to murder, and society just ran with it. No one has ever even tried to stop the frequency before today, or at least they hadn’t gotten that far, because people were doing what people do best- killing one another.”

“Why didn’t you kill me?” She was louder now.

“I’ve never killed anyone. Have you?”

She responded with silence. The man led Ella to a room at the bottom of the structure where she could see all the floors above. She thought of how many people there must be inside this shelter. “What happens now?”

“I figure you have a choice. You can stay here with us, or you can go back out there.”

Ella thought. She thought about everyone she’d known who didn’t make it, she thought about Sari.

“Well, if you can’t beat them, join them.”