After that, Zula took the device from him and hit on the idea of trying some of the other channels. The device was capable of using twenty-two of them. John had left it set on channel 11, which was the one that the Forthrast family was in the habit of using. Zula hit the Down button and indexed this all the way to 1, pausing on each channel for a few moments to listen for traffic. Then she worked her way back up to 11 and attempted to hail Elizabeth a few more times, with no results. Then up to 12. Nothing. Then she moved up to 13. A barrage of noise came out of the thing’s tiny speaker, and she had to turn the volume down. Several people were trying to transmit on the same channel all at once, and all of them were shouting.