Chapter 12 – Into the Grid
(Revised – Blue Ridge Route)
The decision was made just after dawn.
They would send a small team west—following the high ridges of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a route once known for its scenic views and peaceful travel. Now it offered something else: a spine through the mountains that was too high, too old, and too analog for the Beast to easily trace.
Ezra gathered them around a smoothed-out canvas map he’d laid on the floor of the signal shack. Black thread traced the parkway’s twists and turns, bending like a river across the ridgelines.
“If pirate signals are reaching us,” he said, tapping the thread, “they’re either coming in through repeater ghosts along this stretch… or they’re bouncing from towers farther west.”
Leah studied the path. “The Blue Ridge was lined with old CCC towers and analog radio posts. There’s a chance at least one still works.”
Thomas squinted. “And if we find it?”
Ezra didn’t smile. “Then we ask it to remember.”
They chose their group: Leah, Naomi, and Thomas. Small, fast, and familiar with the glyph language. Clara gave Naomi a parting gift—five folded papers sealed with wax glyphs: fire, water, breath, light, and return.
“These are seed markers,” she said. “They’re not currency—but they mean something to people who haven’t forgotten the land.”
Naomi nodded and tucked them inside her vest pocket. “If we find someone… we’ll know how to greet them.”
Ezra handed them a wrapped metal tube—etched with Watchtower symbols and insulated with copper mesh.
“Analog burst recorder,” he said. “It only works once. But if you find a pirate transmitter, you can use this to capture its full sequence.”
Thomas added it to his pack.
As dusk settled, the group departed—moving south at first to intersect the Parkway entrance, then turning west along the ridgeline.
Even in ruin, the Blue Ridge Parkway was beautiful.
Cracked asphalt gave way to moss and root. The long curves hugged the mountainsides, opening to mist-filled valleys and skeletal barns. Stone mile-markers rose like forgotten tombstones, some still etched with elevation and distance.
They walked in silence, surrounded by wind and memory.
Naomi was the first to spot a glyph carved into a rock face just off the shoulder:
🌀🌿⬅️
“Cycle, growth, turn back,” she whispered.
“Maybe a warning,” Leah said.
“Maybe a door,” Naomi added.
They pressed forward.
Midway through their second day, they stopped at an overlook near Humpback Gap. Leah scanned the valley below with an old brass spyglass.
“There,” she pointed. “That ridge. That’s where the Parkway intersects the old emergency radio grid.”
Thomas checked the map. “There was a repeater at Raven’s Roost. Maybe still is.”
They adjusted their course, aiming to reach it before nightfall.
As they approached, the woods grew denser, and the sound of insects gave way to something else—faint static.
A whisper. A pulse. Then silence.
Naomi placed her hand against a twisted wire antenna sticking out of a toppled shack near the overlook. “It’s trying to remember,” she said.
Leah unpacked the analog burst recorder. “Let’s help it.”
Back at the Roanoke node, Ezra monitored the Star’s transmission, tapping out short glyph phrases on the Morse key.
🌕 ✋(Full Light. Pause.)
The transmission echoed outward—but so did something else.
Static.
White, pulsing, artificial static. It flooded low frequencies and scattered pirate codes across the region.
The Beast had begun jamming.
But the high ridges of the Blue Ridge Parkway still carried one advantage: elevation.
Above the static, the wind remembered.
And so did the road.
American Prophet 