Breaker Whiskey

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

“June 10th, 1972. The crop is looking better this year than ever. I believe I have this whole gardening process down pat now. I think I may need to expand my icebox this winter, as it’s looking like I’ll have too many vegetables to eat on my own. Between the produce I’ll be able to freeze and the game I expect to hunt this summer, I should be even better prepared for winter than I was last year. 

It is incredible how much there is to hunt now. It feels as if the deer are walking right up to my doorstep, offering themselves up to be eaten. There is no one else to scare them away. 

Once again, I find myself contemplating leaving North Dakota and seeking out other survivors. The radio has continued to yield no results. Neither have the regular trips I make to Bismarck. Nothing around me has changed except for the seasons and the unencumbered growth of the land beginning to overtake the roads. 

But I am no longer a young woman, and I feel that age in my bones more and more every day. What if I were to set out only to have an accident on the road, or run into bad weather or, worse, some danger that lurks out there that I can’t yet imagine? What if I find no trouble, but also no way to survive either? I’m afraid to leave my home for too long. It would only make sense to travel in the warmer months, and I can’t neglect my garden for too long. But then I look over the abundance I have and think that it is terribly selfish of me to have all of this to myself. Too many vegetables to eat and people out there who may have empty stomachs. 

I’ve decided, at least, to get the old signal fire going again. It was a right pain in the hiney to keep up those first few months, but now that every other part of my life is turning like a well-oiled wheel, I don’t think it will be too much of a burden to keep up. Perhaps this time someone will see it.”

[click, static]

So that’s how she was surviving—planting and hunting. She writes about some looting as well—that’s what she calls it, but I don’t think it’s looting if there’s no one to commit a crime against—but that’s mostly for supplies and equipment. So…just like us, it seems. It turns out she doesn’t just know how to do all this stuff because off her job, but also because of her father and her husband. It sounds like she and her husband both grew up living off the land. I found an old photo of what I think is Leann’s childhood home, and it looks like a one-room cabin. I doubt it had running water, let alone electricity. This house that she was living in probably felt like more luxury than she needed. I know what that feels like. 

And she was trying to contact people. I doubt a regular shortwave radio from North Dakota could have reached Pennsylvania, but then again my morse code friends seemed to have figured something out. If I had just put my foot down, insisted that we get a radio going…

There’s no point in wondering “what if”. But I still hate that she was out here, trying to reach out, while we were holed up in that stupid fucking house, blocking out the world. 

[click, static]

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I—I found her diary. And it…well, it feels wrong, it is wrong to read it, but I’ve done a lot of wrong things to survive, and this feels like just another for the pile.

She didn’t write in it very often, at least not after 1969. There are some entries before the incident, just mundane life stuff that I didn’t do much more than skim. It isn’t relevant and I don’t want to violate her privacy more than I have to. 

So it’s best to focus on the entries from ’68 on. At first, it seems like she didn’t notice that something was wrong—it seems like her life was pretty isolated to begin with, spending most of her job outside, on her own, living alone and talking on the phone every two weeks with her daughters. 

Her husband—he’s been dead for a few years it looks like. Or, god, nearly a decade now, I guess. A few years when this whole thing started. His name—

(a dark laugh) You won’t believe this, but his name was Harry. Boy, was that a shock to the system when I read the words “Since Harry passed”. I felt like I was going to faint for a moment before I remembered where I was and what I was reading. I had to take a break for a while after that.  

I’ve had to take breaks a few times. Just reading about someone else’s life is…

I’ve flipped through the journal, and the last entry looks like it’s from a few months ago, with only a few entries each year the last few years. I guess that makes sense. I know I would have very little to write about if I had kept a journal the last five or so years. That first year, sure, but since then…well, not much happens. 

I guess that isn’t true for the last six months. A lot has happened, even if it doesn’t feel like it—I’m barely closer to finding anyone or understanding anything than I was when I started, but compared to the small, monotonous existence of Pennsylvania, my head spins when I think about everything I’ve done since I left. 

I have been keeping a journal of sorts, I guess, in these broadcasts.  I don’t even know who I’m talking to anymore, but you’re getting almost every thought, any substantial event that takes place. If that’s not a journal, what is?

But just like all these transmissions I’m making, I don’t expect Leann’s journal to hold many answers. If she’d known any more than what I did, surely she would’ve figured something out, would’ve left this place, would’ve—would’ve lived.  

Then again, maybe she knew exactly what happened and decided she was better off alone. I’ll just have to read and find out. 

[click, static]

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static] [a cacophony of beeps] [click]

Okay, okay, I get it, just stop. 

[click, static, beeps]

(sighing) This isn’t—this isn’t helpful. Maybe you can’t hear what I’m hearing, but two messages are coming in at once and as a result, I can’t hear a goddamn thing. A fox yapping and a bird chirping at the same time and I’m the fool trying to make sense of both of them. 

If you truly care for me to understand what you’re trying to tell me, then you can figure something else out, something that’s not…this. Meanwhile, I’m going to be doing my own goddamn investigating. 

I’m going to figure out how Leann lived. Surviving on your own, especially all the way up here, out here, and especially at her age…its no easy feat. Maybe she really was just proficient in survival because of her job, maybe that was enough, or maybe she wasn’t totally alone the whole time. Maybe the husband in the photos…maybe he was with her and died years ago. Maybe her daughters are still out there and have been gone from home for one reason or another. Maybe she had people to help her, people to rely on, people to…goddamn pass the time with. 

If she did, I’m going to find them. Even they are—even if they did eventually…

It matters that she’s dead. Of course it matters. I really, really wish that she wasn’t. But, dead or alive, she’s here. And that’s what matters. She’s existed in this strange after-world, right alongside Harry and I, without any of us realizing it. And as far as I can tell, the three of us have nothing in common beyond being women who are decently self-sufficient. Leann was born here, in North Dakota, and doesn’t seem to have traveled more than a few hundred miles from this general area her entire life. I don’t have an exhaustive list of every place that Harry has ever visited, but I’m pretty sure she’s never been out this way. So none of us crossed paths. 

Harry and I were criminals, and Leann worked for the government…but for the Bureau of Land Management. That’s hardly—I mean, it’s not the FBI, it isn’t like our paths would’ve crossed once Harry and I got arrested. And maybe it’s not important that we would’ve crossed paths or not, maybe it’s…maybe it’s some kind of weird gene we all share or something, something intrinsic in each of us that’s caused us to survive when everyone else…

What, evaporated? Leann’s body is the first that I’ve seen. If we were all immune to something, we’d see everybody who wasn’t. 

I have…I have no theories. After the thing with the tornado siren, I started to think again that maybe…maybe it’s not that everyone else is gone, maybe it’s that we’re somewhere else. That maybe that dark feeling I have sometimes about this being purgatory or hell is right. It’s what I deserve, and for years I didn’t understand what Harry would’ve done to earn the same punishment but then she—

[click, static]

I don’t know what Leann could have possibly done to land herself here.  And if it is some sort of cosmic punishment, well…where the fuck is everyone else? There are things that I’ve done that I’m not proud of, that I carry a hell of a lot of guilt and shame about actually, but I know there are worse people than me. Is this a perfectly calibrated hell for people who have done something bad but not that bad? Maybe Leann was a shitty mom, or was stealing money from her job, or…who knows. But if she had done something like that, then her and Harry being in the same place…sure, I can see that. 

But I don’t belong with them. What I did was so much worse, objectively.  I know that. I don’t pretend like it was right or noble or anything like that. Necessary, maybe,  or at least I thought so at the time—

[click, static]

I just don’t get it. I don’t understand how we’re connected. And maybe I’m looking for a connection where I’ll never find one, maybe it’s just weird fucking coincidence but that doesn’t feel…right. If only three of us made it past 1968, there must be a reason. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I…I’ve thought about staying here longer. About starting to sleep in the house to see if I can see any ghosts. Because why not right? I’ve seen plenty of things by this point that would suggest that as a possibility. Maybe the ghost in Estes’ Park was the ghost of someone who’s body was in one of the hotel rooms—it’s not like I checked every single one. Maybe if I hung around, I’d see Leann too. 

But what would be the point? She wouldn’t know what the hell was going on, and I don’t think I could talk to her. It would just be another person out of my reach. And sure, maybe I would confirm for good that ghosts are real, but what would that tell me, really? Other than reemphasizing what I already know, which is that I’m way in over my head. It wouldn’t help me, to know that. And I’m…I think I’ve learned enough this week. I’m not sure I want to know more. 

I know the important things. That I don’t know shit and that I’m alone. 

[click, static]

[a cacophony of beeps]

-. --- - / .- .-.. --- -. . / .-.. . .- -. -. / .-. .- -. -.. --- -- / -... ..- - / -.-. --- -. -. . -.-. - . -..

.... . .- -.. / . .- ... -

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

(on the verge of tears, softly) 

Harry? Harry can you hear me?

[click, static]

Please, Harry, I need—if you can hear this, just please get on the radio and talk to me. I don’t care what you say, I just need—

[click, static]

What are we going to do, Harry? What are we going to become if we stay like this? I have all the time in the world to seek answers but that just means I have all the time in the world to never find them. Life is so long, this woman—she lived to be sixty in this world and we—

[click, static]

I can’t keep doing this. Another two, three decades like this? Only to die one day, never to be found, decaying in the open air while the rest of the world continues not to move around us. 

I think I’m going insane. We would joke about that, you and I, do you remember?  We’d have our “sanity days” where we’d do something that reminded us that we were real, and that time was marching forward, even if it didn’t feel like it. We’d tell each other a story the other had never heard, or run around outside like kids, or see who could eat one of your scones the fastest. Small stuff, dumb stuff.   [click, static]

Do you think Leann had anything like that? She must have been so lonely. 

[click, static]

We’re responsible for that Harry. You and me. We could’ve helped this woman not be lonely but instead we stayed in that stupid house and—

[click, static]

Please. Please just get on your radio and tell me I’m real. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Leann Smith. That was the woman’s name. I, um…I don’t know what the ethics are of nosing through someone’s home when they’re lying dead in the other room, but no one’s here to tell me not to. And I wanted to—I guess I wanted to know something about her. I wanted to know if there was some…connection, I guess. 

Because that would…it would lend some kind of sense to all of this, right? Harry and I both being alive still—that makes sense. We were together when whatever happened happened and we were intentionally hiding from the world at the time. If something, you know, swept through civilization, we were isolated from it. 

Mrs. Smith, here, well she was isolated too, I guess. She lived all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere, by herself. At least I think she lived by herself. I found a stack of old mail that I guess she must have kept this whole time for…sentimental reasons? I get that, I think I would’ve done the same if I’d be living at my own address. And the mail was only ever addressed to her. If someone else lived here, there’s no evidence of them, and a woman who kept mail from six years ago would’ve almost certainly kept traces of whoever she lived with. 

But there are—well, there are photos. Photos of her with a man—her husband maybe—and then, eventually, with kids. The most recent photo, based on her age in it—she’s got her arms around two women in their…late twenties I’d guess? Younger than me. Or, at least, younger than I am now, though I guess probably not the year this photo was taken. 

Leann herself is—was—sixty-one. I found her driver’s license and her work badge. She worked for the Bureau of Land Management. Probably how she survived this long on her own, she must have picked up some useful skills in that job. 

She had an interesting job, a husband at some point, and two daughters, if I’m interpreting all the photos correctly. Granddaughters I think, or something like it, based off a letter she got, a woman writing about her beautiful daughter Grace, turning one soon, would Leann come visit? She lived a full life—fuller than mine in a lot of respects. Sure, I’ve had excitement and variety but never…

She really does look peaceful now. I thought—well, I thought about burying her, giving her a proper rest, but…I don’t want to move her. Not when she seems to be resting just fine already. I wish I knew anything about what she believed in, I would’ve liked to…I don’t know, pray or say words or sing, no matter how tone deaf. Something to show that she’s—that someone was here, someone knows she’s gone. Someone will remember her. 

I thought maybe I might find a will with the funeral arrangements she’d wanted but all her safe had was a gun, which…that was a bit surprising, um, and what looks like an old engagement ring, and a stack of cash. None of which is particularly useful to me now. 

At least I got to break a lock more intricate than one on the front door of a house. It wasn't a very good safe, but it kept me occupied for nearly a minute. That’s something. 

I— I’m not really sure what I’m going on about. I feel…I feel very far away from my body right now. Like I’ve been watching someone else walk casually through the house and open cabinets and rifle through papers. Like that can’t possibly be me, because surely I’m somewhere having a breakdown over the last few days. 

(a slightly manic laugh) But nope! It’s me, I’m the one who has suddenly gotten very comfortable occupying the same space as a dead body. Isn’t it amazing how quickly human beings can adapt to something? I feel like that’s all I’ve done the last six years—actually, I feel like that’s all I’ve done my whole life—adapt, adapt, adapt. The great adapter, that’s me. 

Why wouldn’t I adapt to this new reality that other people did survive but that I don’t get to talk to them? It’s just another piece of information. And information is neutral, easy to digest. And all I’ve done today is gather more and more information and while none of it has proven to be particularly useful…well, I have it now. And that’s something, right? It’s got to be something. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

You didn’t know? I’m assuming you’re not saying you didn’t know they’d be here, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything else noteworthy at these coordinates. You sent me there to find them, that’s the only thing that makes sense. 

So, in that case, are you saying that you didn’t know they’d be dead? 

I guess…I guess I can believe that. I’m not sure I do, because I don’t believe anything you say to me, but I could believe that. After all, I haven’t had any direct contact with Harry in six months—though I guess she tried to reach out to me a few months after I last saw her in person. But for all I know, I could drive back to Pennsylvania right now and find that she’s—   [click, static]

No, I can’t think like that. I can’t—maybe I should go back. Just to…check. 

[click, static]

She said I would never make it a year. That I’d be back once I’d gotten sick of driving, once the loneliness had driven me sufficiently insane. That that would happen even faster if I didn’t find something to take care of. 

[click, static]

I can’t go back. Not just because she—

I need to sort all o this shit out. I’m not listening to any fucking cryptic morse code messages anymore, but you need to tell me what the hell you’re playing at with this. What you were hoping to accomplish by having me meet this person. 

And you need to tell me if there’s anyone else. You give me more coordinates and I’ll listen to those. But that’s it. Unless you do a hell of a good job explaining this whole situation that you’ve dropped me in. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

[TRANSCRIPT]

[content warning: reference to vomiting, dead bodies]

[click, static]

“Call me Fox”. That’s all you have to say for yourself? After what you just—

[click, static]

I’m not going to call you anything. I don’t know what—or who—

Do you know Birdie? You must, right? Birdie and Fox, both communicating only through morse code…who the hell are you people? What did you do to that—

[click, static]

(a dark laugh) Well, now I know. Now I know that there are other people in the world. Or, were. There have been, this whole time. If I had to guess, I’d say that that woman had been dead for…a few months maybe? If I had just—

[click, static]

Why would you do this? Why would you send me to find a stranger’s corpse? 

[click, static] 

I…I slept in my car last night. Which isn’t exactly new for me, but it felt different, knowing that I was parked outside a perfectly good house with a perfectly good guest room—I’ve slept in plenty of strangers’ homes, in plenty of guest rooms and master bedrooms and children’s rooms and all of them—all of them—have been empty. 

For the past six months—hell, for the past six years, I have dreamt about finding a house that isn’t empty. I’ve imagined what it would be like, not just to sleep in a guest room, but to be someone’s guest. 

I cannot be a guest in that house. You can’t be guest when the host is lying in their own bed, eyes shut like they’re—

[click, static]

I got sick. In the house, yesterday, about fifteen minutes before I tried to contact you. I, um, I threw up right on their bedroom carpet. I—I cleaned it up eventually. I don’t know, it felt like the right thing to do, like, polite, you know even if the whole house already smelled like—

[click, static] 

I’ve seen a dead body before. It isn't that. I watched both my parents die, I saw a really terrible motorcycle accident on the highway once. But those were…for lack of a better term, they were, um, fresh. Which is its own kind of horror, but what’s in there, what’s in that house, the decay of it. The…the loneliness. 

[click, static]

I don’t want to be found like that. I don’t want to find Harry like that. But if we both—I mean, is there anyone left to do the finding? There—I still can’t get over the fact that someone was here. Not a person from six years ago with a body that somehow stuck around, but someone who has been here, who died, it seems, peacefully in their sleep sometime in the last year. I don’t know anything about what happens to a body after it dies, but I know that the body inside that house has not been lying there for six years. 

Why? Why did you do this? Do you have any idea just how cruel it is? To show me that someone was here all along, and that I’m too late?

[click, static]

[beeps]

didn't know

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Who—

[click, static]

Who are you? I’m not asking anymore, who—

[click, static]

I don’t know what—what the fuck you’re playing at but…

It’s not you. What—who I f—

[click, static]

It can’t be you. You can’t have transmitted something to me just last week, not when—

[click, static]

But you knew. You knew what I would find. Why—how—

[click, static]

Why would you send me here? 

[click, static]

Who are you?

[click, static]

[beeps]

-.-. .- .-.. .-.. / -- . / ..-. --- -..-

Call me Fox

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey. As a patron, you will also receive each week's episodes as one longer episode every Monday.

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[TRANSCRIPT] I swear to god, I really am going to lose it. Really, really lose it. 

There’s nothing here. Not only are you not here, but there’s literally…nothing. It’s an open field. 

I’ve double, triple, quadruple-checked the coordinates and I’m pretty positive I have it right, so…

I mean, I guess it’s a general area. I’m not particularly used to reading longitude and latitude, so I’m only…ninety-five percent certain I have the right idea about how wide of an area it is. So it’s not like my search is over but…

The whole area is flat and empty. As I’ve discovered, a lot of America is flat and empty. What am I looking for? If it’s signs of human life, I haven’t found it. 

I guess…thinking about how Harry and I have lived…it’s pretty rural, pretty empty and hard to find. Which was the point. So maybe you were thinking the same thing. Maybe you’ve got a farm somewhere. Living off the land, far away from any civilization…and I just can’t see it yet, it’s just past the horizon. But I’ll check every house, every barn, every broken down car I see. Once I see any of those things. 

If—if you are hearing this, just…step outside and start shouting. Wave a flag, flash a light into the sky, anything. I’m pretty sure I can hear and see for miles out here. 

And I’m so close. I can taste it, we’re so close. 

[click, static]

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