It was about a week ago when they first heard his broadcast. They'd made their way from Western Pennsylvania slowly into Central PA, and planned to move south from there. The main issue was radiation poisoning sucked. It was a major buzzkill. Given that their respawn ability always put them back "home", (AKA their literal house), getting it and dying from it really put a damper on their progress.
Getting it in mild forms and just being sick for days on end was worse, though. It just really was not pleasant. And it slowed their progress. Double fucking whammy.
They already know they can't go too far east-- even if the don't know for sure they can readily assume NYC is gone, Philly is gone, Harrisburg? Probably pretty fucking gone. Which meant they hard to make a strategic dip south at some given point to avoid solely biking through the coast. That was sure to be its own shitshow.
They had their radio. They had a list their dad had written down of people who he talked with regularly. They had water. Hell, they still even had food, which was a bonus. It all rattled around in their backpack as they peddled through the mountains. They wanted to get out of PA before winter. That much they knew. If they were stuck biking here come... Maybe even October, they didn't see it being a positive experience. The wanted to head west because every winter was worse than the last, and the last three, the last three since the world fucking ended had been pretty goddamn bad.
Was it any better out west? Hopefully. Sass could hope. There wasn't much else to do now besides that.
So, they'd heard his broadcast a week ago. As they biked further, it got stronger. Then, they came to a crossroads. They felt like they couldn't go any further east. They were around State College, a little more north but otherwise in the area. They could go South now, or continue East a little more and see what happened.
There was one other option.
As they settled down for the night, an unseasonably chilly night for mid-May, they set up their radio. As per usual it's tuned to the man they think must be their father's friend, as it has been all day, all week since they first heard another voice on it. But this time they don't just listen. They touch a few dials, turn a few knobs, and a few moments later, Sass's voice is coming out of their radio...
Sass speaks in monotone, as if there isn't anything at all interesting to be said about speaking to someone for the first time in months. As if this is a particularly dull conversation about the local weather that hasn't changed in days. There is no excitement, no inflection to their voice at all. They say, "ground control to major tom."
God, they really couldn't resist a joke. They haven't got to tell a joke to anyone in ages.
