A Safe Distance from You

How it begins

Helen recognized her own voice before she recognized the words.

It came through channel sixteen at seventeen minutes past midnight, thin with interference and quite unmistakably terrified.

"The lower stairs are gone. We can't reach the road."

Her hand stopped above the kettle switch.

The control room was empty apart from a moth battering itself against the desk lamp. Outside, rain ran sideways across the windows. Helen had spent six years convincing herself that all storms eventually became ordinary weather if you sat through enough of them.

The radio disagreed.

She pressed record, although the system was supposed to do that automatically. Then she noted the channel, the time and the signal strength. Training was useful. It gave her fingers something to do while the rest of her remembered cold water.

"Station calling, identify your position."

Nothing answered.

The door opened behind her. Adam stood on the mat holding the replacement battery she had asked the night courier to deliver. Of all the people in the county, the courier service had sent her husband. Technically her husband. The forms were still in a drawer.

"You said the road would close," he said.

"Listen."

She played the recording.

He put the battery down without taking his eyes off the speaker. She watched him hear the voice he had once spent three hours trying to find in the dark.

"Where did you get that?"

"Live channel. One minute ago."

"That's impossible."

"It's a recording. Someone's transmitting it."

Adam leaned over the console. He no longer wore his wedding ring, but the pale band remained. Helen hated that she noticed. She hated more that she had already moved her chair to make room for him.

At the end of the transmission, three short tones sounded beneath the static.

Adam asked her to play them again.

"What?" she said.

He looked toward the black outline of the headland.

"That relay was disconnected before you made the original call."

On the wall display, three village warning lights turned amber together.