Isolation

I2-10N

"Alright!"

SLAM!!

All my stuff was packed into that van we stole the other day, desk, chairs, food, computer, everything I owned. I'm surprised it fit. Carter, Alice and Ann came along and now one half of that house was practically empty. "All right, there all loaded up, and I reckon' you don't need anythin' else from there, Ryan?" Carter put his hand on the handle to the driver's seat, his usual confident smile on his face as I approached from behind the van, looking at him.

"Yeah, I'm pretty certain this is all I need." I responded to the man who did most of the heavy lifting, he chuckled then got into the drivers seat and I turned to look at Alice. "It was a pain in the ass to get here, but, this is actually a pretty nice place." She said with a gentle nod of her head, I couldn't help but feel a bit flustered at that, cracking a crooked smile. "O-Oh, well. Thank you." I still wasn't really used to talking to very many people so I of course came off as awkward, Alice didn't seem to mind it though.

Once we were all seated in the van we buckled in, and the engine came to life, the low hum of the engine was really all we could hear, since it was the only thing making noise as we drove down the empty roads. "We'll get'cher room all furnished up an' I'll get Jessica to start on Lunch." Carter said while he handled the steering wheel rather professionally. "What do you think she'll cook today, Ann?" Alice asked, gently grabbing the edge of the passenger seat, leaning forward and looking at her, she looked out the window for a second then back at Alice. "Well, I can't hope for much, but I do hope she makes something using the tuna cans in the cupboard, we seem to have a lot of those."

"Tuna..? I've never had it, is it any good?" Alice proceeded with the questions, she nodded and smiled. "Yeah, it's pretty alright, I used to make tuna sandwiches all the time with John. Just add a little mayo to the tuna and mix it up, then put it between bread and there you go, a yummy tuna sandwich." She explained, this got Alice's stomach growling. "Oh, I'm sorry if it's off topic but..I found something in my room last night." This seemed to catch the attention of everyone present, even Carter looked back at me through the rear-view mirror. All I did was nod gently. "Yeah, I found a little black radio thing, walkie-talkie I think. There was a voice on the other side."

Just then the van suddenly came to a halt, Carter looked back at me with wide eyes. "A voice?! Who was it? Do you know?" He asked frantically, as if he was holding onto hope or something, I shook my head in response and sighed. "No..I couldn't even talk to her, but..it sounded young. And.." I stopped briefly to think and collect thoughts. "...I think, it might've just been the static from the radio, but...the voice, it sounded almost metallic. Like, like this girl was.."

"...Wasn't real."

~ ~ ~

We stopped for a moment to think, all four of us were outside the van and sitting on a park bench. "...What do you think this could mean? Is there a girl out here in the city or..?" I shook my head and then grabbed my bag, plopping it onto the ground and unzipping the bag open, pulling the walkie-talkie out and staring at it. "I think so..That might be the most likely theory right now, but.." I put a finger to my cheek, scratching it gently. "The voice she had makes me thing otherwise." I finished, clicking the button and trying to speak into it again, but as it was before, there was no response, just static. Ann grabbed the radio from me and opened the backside up, configuring with it for a while and then closed it. "..This is weird, John always has a bunch of electronics like these in our house, but..this isn't a model we have."

"You keep bringing up John, who is this guy anyway?"

"John was incredibly invested in electronics, science and making things. It was what he did, he would get together with a couple buddies of his and just..experiment stuff, I think anyway. He always brought back something each time he went out. Sometimes it would be radios like this one, or little tubes of liquid, stuff I never really understood. Until I began to fiddle with the stuff myself, I learned a lot about it. I figured, maybe this was just another model of radio but, this is a new model, I've never seen this one before."

I2-10N

That was the code it had on the bottom of the radio. That's probably how she managed to figure out that this wasn't a model they carried.

"PPPZZHHHPPHSHZH...Hello?"

Just then a voice suddenly came through. Ann grabbed it immediately and tried to frantically speak into it.

"Calm down missus." It responded.

It actually responded.