Dex opened the utility cupboard and found Evelyn’s Panasonic radio. The batteries weren’t fresh, but they might still hold a charge. He put the radio on the kitchen table, pulled its antenna to full length, and switched it on.

There was a crackle of static where WQBX used to be. So the batteries were good, Dex thought, but there was no broadcast coming out of Coby, some fifty miles west, where the relay tower was. The nearest actual radio station was in Port Auburn, and neither Dex nor Evelyn cared for its round-the-clock country-and-western music. But it would do, he thought, and he turned the dial clockwise.

Nothing.

Evelyn said, “There must be something wrong with it.”

Maybe. It seemed unlikely to Dex, but what other explanation made sense? Ten years ago he might have guessed there’d been some kind of nuclear war, the doomsday scenario everybody used to dread, that it had wiped out everything beyond the horizon. But that possibility was slim. Even if some Russian had pushed some antiquated red button, it wouldn’t have destroyed the entire civilized world. Surely it wouldn’t have wiped out Port Auburn or even closed down the radio station there.

An explosion at the Two Rivers plant and a radio with a dead transistor. He wanted to make a logical connection between the two, but could not.

He was still turning the dial when Howard Poole came into the kitchen. Howard was wearing a white T-shirt, Saturday jeans with a rip starting at the left knee, and an expression of sleepy bewilderment. “Must have missed breakfast,” he said.

“Nope. Cold cereal,” Evelyn said briskly, “and we haven’t really started yet. The power’s off, you may have noticed.”

“Trouble at the defense plant,” Dex put in.

Howard’s attention perked up instantly. “What kind of trouble?”

“Some kind of explosion during the night, from what I could see upstairs. There’s smoke coming off it now. The town’s pretty much still asleep. And I can’t find anything on the radio.”