The Rökkr Cycle: Star-Crossed

“It’s 5:36 PM and this is Rune Vass attempting to make contact with anyone in the immediate area of Imellom. Last broadcast was yesterday at around 5:45. No contact has been made.” Rune let go of the button on the radio and sighed out of exasperation before depressing the button again, “Please, respond if you can hear me. I can be contacted on CB channel 9, twenty-four hours a day; you just have to yell loud enough. I’m at the public library in Imellom on Wednesdays pretty much all day. But I’m armed. Gotta be safe.”

Rune let go of the button again and got up from the desk where she had been sitting for hours. She needed to stretch her legs and get something to drink; she had lost track of time. Even though she knew the time when she made the call, it was only then that it hit her—she had been making radio calls for over eight hours. It was becoming an obsession of sorts, but what else did she have to do? There were no recreational activities, no cable TV, no open restaurants, grocery stores, clothing shops…nothing. Everything was closed because there was no one left in town but Rune herself. For all she knew, there was no one anywhere. She still hadn’t made contact with somebody. It had been over six months and she still hadn’t found another living soul within a ten mile radius—and she was afraid to travel any further.

It had been six months, give or take a week and a few days, since she noticed that the whole town had evacuated itself without informing her. Rune had gotten up one morning in May, went through her usual routine, and was off to work. She noticed that there were no other cars on the road, no people on the sidewalks, and not a sound from anything other than a few ravens kraa-ing. When she finally got to the bookstore for her shift, it was still locked, seemingly, from the night before when she had closed. Rune had been permanently second shift since the beginning of the year, so she knew that she hadn’t accidentally slept through her shift, but no one had bothered to call her and let her know that they couldn’t come in and she’d have to be the one to open the store instead. But she did it anyway, just like she had done hundreds of times before, and waited for the customers to pour in. Rune cleaned up the store while she waited, still never hearing from her colleague, but didn’t bother to call them because she had it handled. She continued to work her shift, but not one single person came into the store. The more she sat and waited, the more she noticed that things were off. She could see the streets of downtown from her spot behind the register, but not one person walked by. Not one car made its appearance on the road. Not one phone call came through from anyone, least of all her colleague. It was as if everyone was still in bed, but it was now late in the afternoon and that just wasn’t plausible. Rune figured that she was wasting the rest of her day, and clearly no one was coming in, so she went through her closing routine a few hours early and left off for home.

She would come to find out within a few days of her first strange trek into town, that everyone was gone, but not a trace of them could be found. After surveying the outside of businesses and finding that some of them were unlocked, she made the decision to investigate inside, finding not a single person, but eerie scenes of flat top burners still sizzling inside restaurants (Terrifyingly dangerous, she thought), purses and outer garments left in booths, cars still parked in front of the one and only pub they had, the inside left just like it would have looked had everyone gotten up at once and left, but never came back. The local police station had locked cells where people had clearly been, but not a body was to be seen. Computers were still on and up with half-completed tasks and unanswered emergency calls; all buttons on the phone lit red as if there had been some dire crisis that was never tended to. Even the local movie theatre, which had once been a theatre for live shows, had its doors unlocked, popcorn machines whirring, and a movie playing on the one screen in a continuous loop with the appropriate breaks in between as if the theatre was still open and all the seats were filled for the showing.

Rune spent several weeks trying to wrap her head around what was happening, or had happened, before she ventured out of town and to the next one several miles over, but she never went further than that. She found no one there, almost a mirror image to her own town, and had this sudden feeling of dread wash over her. She refused to go any further out from this town as the next was hours out and she wanted to conserve what gas she had left for the time being.

Eventually, Rune realized that no one was coming back. They hadn’t all packed their things and made a mass exodus from the town; they had just simply vanished from thin air. She had a moment of spiritual crisis at first, thinking that the biblical rapture had come and she was the only naughty heathen in her area that had been left behind to suffer. Rune went through stages of denial, panic, and acceptance in regards to what had happened, but logically she knew that there had to be at least one other person out there and in no way was she the only one.

That’s when she found the radio equipment.

She had been broadcasting religiously for months now, but there had been no payout. Nothing. No response from anyone. Maybe she was really all alone…

Rune waited a few days till her next broadcast. She was becoming discouraged and felt like the futile attempts were only going to anger her more if she didn’t give herself a break. She passed the desk with the radio receiver and all its components at least a dozen times that day while she did other things and finally gave in around late afternoon. She situated herself in front of the microphone, clicked on the light, and started her broadcast.

“Rune again... almost 6 PM. If there was actually anyone listening, you know where I’ll be. Tomorrow is Wednesday, but I don’t feel like going out unless I know someone will be there. But you won’t. Because there aren’t any of you left. No one is home. No one, but me. I’ll leave the radio on in a sad attempt at holding on to just a glimmer of hope, but I’m really just holding my breath. If you can hear me, good night.” Rune let go of the button and didn’t linger at the desk.

Instead, she went to the bathroom and freshened up before she made herself a cup of tea and sat down on her couch in front of the television. There was no cable broadcasting anymore, no people to run it, no electricity either, but she had her generator and was able to watch television, as long as she had movies to watch on it. She had made daily trips to the local video and department store on the hunt for good movies to build up her collection and keep her entertained. She did the same with the bookstore and the local library, stocking up on anything and everything that would make her feel like people still existed. She hadn’t gone through everything, but there was a few she had watched so many times that made her feel like she wasn’t living alone in an underground bunker next door to the house she had grown up in.

Rune popped in disc one of her favorite British sitcom and set to sipping her tea. She probably should have made herself something to eat, but she just wasn’t hungry. Food was boring. Life was boring. She was fighting her own mental demons as of late and it was becoming increasingly difficult to fend it off; she just wanted to be done with it all.

“Aw, Liza. Aren’t you just a tart! What did Robert say?” The actress on the television hollered as “Liza” responded and the laugh track startled Rune from an unintentional nap.

“Ah, good old Liza.” Rune chuckled to herself, getting comfortable on the sofa. She had taken to sleeping there, not bothering to get herself in bed at all.

She checked the clock on the wall and noted that it was barely eight and she had maybe only been asleep an hour. Did she want to go to bed this early? Did it really matter? Time was meaningless at this point. She could sleep whenever she damn well wanted to.

Rune was just starting to nod off again when there was a crackle from her radio. She thought that she had maybe imagined it in her half-awake stupor, so she ignored it and tried to nod back off.

“Liza! How cheeky. I can’t believe that Robert reacted that way. I’m one jealous bird.” The actress on the television went on with her life as Rune closed her eyes.

“Hello?”

Rune heard a voice that stood out from Liza and her scene companion, a voice that she had never heard in that part of the show, a show she had seen more times than she could count. But she was in that weird state between sleep and wakefulness; it could have just been her mind playing tricks on her. Either that or her illness was rearing its ugly head at the most inopportune time.

“Rune? Hello?”

There was the voice again, but this time it had said her name.

Rune sat straight up on the sofa, her eyes snapping immediately to her CB radio. Had a voice come from there? Was this even real, or was she just dreaming?

“Rune. RUNE!” The voice hollered loudly from the radio, “Dunno if you’re asleep, but you said to yell.”

Rune blinked a few times, rubbed her eyes, and stood up. Her mouth slightly agape, she loped over to the desk, her whole body shaking as she sat down and gripped the mic with both hands. She had this sudden swathe of deep fear, fear that she was imagining all of this and when she responded to the disembodied voice, she would never hear it again.

“Hello? This is Rune. Who am I speaking with?” She finally spoke, curling up in her chair in anticipation.

Rune gave it a minute. There was dead air. No response.

She could feel a lump in her throat forming and tears welling in her eyes at the silence that met her. She took a deep breath to calm herself and set the microphone back on the desk, dangerously close to devolving into tears.

“R—Rrr,” The radio crackled.

Rune grabbed the microphone again and stared at the receiver, willing it to say something else.

“Ronan. Damn this thing, Ronan. My name’s Ronan.”

There it was. A response. A response from an actual voice and one that she didn’t think she had ever heard before.

“Is this actually happening?” Rune asked herself, unaware of her finger on the button.

“You know, I was just asking meself the same thing. I been trying to get my hands on one of these radios for weeks and then I had to figure out how it worked and the whole channel thing, but here we are.” Ronan replied.

Rune stared blankly at the radio. That was a whole sentence, clear as day, from a stranger that must have heard her broadcast. She didn’t know what to say at first, but finally found the words.

“How—how did you hear my broadcast if you didn’t have a receiver?” Rune finally asked, curiously. That feeling of doubt started to creep into her mind, that doubt that came along with her mental illness. Was this real?

“You know, that’s what’s weird. I was stealing a truck, I guess you could call it stealing, and when it cut on, their CB radio was going. I happened to catch you broadcasting from there, but before I had a chance to take it all in and respond, the battery died. It was bad, the battery, and I spent a while trying to find another one to match, but I had no idea how to take it out of the rig and where the hell you find a battery like that? Made myself at home in the cab while I hunted, Eventually, I came across another radio in a store a few towns over while out picking, brought it back, and put it together. Took me a few days to get the courage to use it, though.” Ronan responded.

The story was convoluted and almost implausible, but stranger things had happened…

Rune sighed, a smile creeping across her face as she responded, “But I’m glad you did.”

“Yeah, me too. I don’t really know what to say, though. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to that wasn’t meself in over six months.” Ronan’s voice was much clearer now than it had been when it first came through.

Rune sat there for a moment with her hand over her mouth, not really sure what to say herself. She had gotten her wish, someone else was alive out there, but now that she had them, she was drawing a blank at even casual conversation.

“Rune?”

“I’m here.” She finally spoke, trying to find the right words to use, “Same. I was really starting to think that no one was left. Where are you located, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Ah, Vanaheim. It was formerly something else, but the tourists won over the little fishing town and here we are. I dunno what it was called because that was before I got here and, for some reason, I never bothered to ask me bandmates.” Ronan spoke back, casual in his tone.

“You were in a band?” Rune asked curiously, possibly seeing an in to a comfortable conversation.

“Yeah, nothing fancy. We had a little cult following thanks to our lead singer. He was from here and our drummer and bassist were from—somewhere that I can’t remember. But they found me over the interwebs, I joined the band, and moved here myself. Sigur was somewhat of a celebrity around town as it was, so it was an easy transition. We were all living together when they just disappeared into thin air. I went to bed one night, they were all blackout drunk, woke up and there was no one. And I mean no one…anywhere.” Ronan had a twinge of sadness in his voice that Rune recognized; it was loneliness.

“I went to work like I always did. Was up for half the day before I went in. Worked almost my whole shift before I decided that things were just way too weird and then I went home. I hoped that if I went to bed and woke up that everything would be fine, that maybe I was dreaming—but that wasn’t the case. I was just utterly and completely alone.” Rune hadn’t meant for her last words to come out sounding so pitiful, but she was a little rusty on the human interaction front.

“And you’re in Imellom? I’ve actually been there a few times; we had friends that lived in town.” Ronan didn’t even seem to notice her self-pitying comment and went on.

“Oh, so you know how to get here?” Rune suddenly felt that lump in her chest that signaled her anxiety. What if Ronan wasn’t a good person? What if the only other person left alive besides herself was actually some psychopath? She couldn’t tell him where she lived and she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to meet up with him at her spot in front of the library.

“I could probably remember, but there are also signs to easily follow out here. Are—are you wanting to meet up or something?” Ronan asked a loaded question that Rune wasn’t ready for.

“Uh, I—I—maybe at some point. I know I wanted to make contact, but I don’t know if I’m ready to meet up in person. Actually, I’m—I’m not ready.” Rune was quick to nip that idea in the bud.

“No, I get it. Really, I do. We don’t have to meet up at all if you don’t want; we can just be radio friends.” Rune could hear the smile in Ronan’s voice.

Maybe he wasn’t a psychopath…but she wasn’t going to chance it.

“How about we just take it one day at a time? See how things develop organically. I know it sounds weird, but I’m not the greatest at making friends and I like to be alone, but I also don’t want to be the only one that’s—alone. You know?” Rune rattled off, regretting rambling so much.

There was dead air on Ronan’s side before his voice responded, “I know. I took silence and solitude for granted when I had the ability to just be while the world went on without me, but now that I have it, I don’t think I like it. There’s no one to play music for, no one to chat with about my day, not a single person to talk about movies with. Nothin’.”

“You like movies?” Rune’s ears perked at the word.

“Oh, yeah. Besides music, movies are my escape. I like books too, but you can’t put a book on in the background when you sleep; movie makes it feel like someone else is there with you.” Ronan’s tone sounded almost embarrassed.

“Oh, I do the same thing. The TV is constantly going unless I leave the house, then I take my phone with me for music. I don’t like silence; it—bothers me.” Rune felt oddly comfortable with the stranger, but she tried not to get too carried away.

“So, we both like movies and music, books too, I’m assuming; that’s good. Common ground is good. Ehm, what are you watching now? And how?” Ronan was trying so hard to keep Rune’s attention from his end. He had heard the distress in her voice with the initial broadcast he had intercepted, and he knew that sound all too well. She was teetering on the edge of a very dangerous cliff, one that he had stood on before.

“Oh,” Rune tittered, “Uh, it’s kinda dumb. My gran was originally from England and there was this show from the 70’s that she loved called Ina and Liza. Well, I fell in love with it too and managed to find the seasons that I didn’t have between our little department store and the rental store. I’m honestly surprised I even found the complete set. And I’m able to do all of this because of this lovely generator that I have.” Rune felt a little silly because of her love for that show, but if she was going to make friends, she might as well be transparent.

“You know Ina and Liza? It’s a guilty pleasure of mine. My adoptive parents got me hooked on it and I’ve actually been huntin’ for the last series. Not that I can watch it or anything—I’ve got a generator, but it’s real small and I ran out of petrol a long time ago.” Ronan returned with a laugh that quickly quieted towards the end of his statement.

“Too bad we don’t have a way to video chat; I’d let you watch it with me.” Rune was trying to keep herself from sounding too nice, too desperate, in case things went sideways eventually, but she couldn’t help herself.

Ronan laughed, “Hell, you could just turn the volume up and that would be enough for me. I’ve seen that show so many times I can just play it in my head.”

Rune laughed along with him for the moment before the laughter eventually died down and she replied, “I don’t think I would have lasted this long without it.”

The two sat in silence along the airways again. They both had more to say, but neither knew where to begin. Only six months without another living being and the two had almost forgotten how to relate.

“Hey, Rune, it’s getting late. I think I may sign off here and get some sleep.” Ronan finally broke the silence with an unfortunate sentence.

Rune hadn’t noticed that hours had actually gone by and it was indeed late. She had no right to protest, so she just had to give in.

“I didn’t even realize what time it was. I should probably get some sleep too.” She replied.

Silence again.

Had he already signed off before she even had a chance to speak?

“Sleep well, Rune. I’ll talk to you later.” Ronan’s voice came through crisply.

Rune closed her eyes, savoring the words. She knew he wouldn’t call back. At least that’s what her illness was telling her. Ronan wasn’t going to talk to her later. Something had put him off for him to abruptly decide to end the call…

“You too, Ronan. Talk to you later.” Rune quickly cut off the radio.

She was going to go to bed and forget that this ever happened because dwelling on the likely possibility that she would never hear from Ronan again and would have to start all over trying to discover if anyone else existed, would just weigh on her till there was no possibility of sleep.