Hope's Ruin

1 | The Big Gulp

"The sky," came a call from below. "I can see the sky!"

Trickles of amber light sloshed from side to side. They reflected off the ocean swell and illuminated the cave walls. Voices cheered. Others wailed. The light grew, spread, and bathed the cavern entrance in a swell of gold.

Pepper took a deep breath and looked at her brother. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen Fisk this clearly.

Candles ran out long ago. Short-lived camp fires were reserved for the cruellest, winter months. Pepper reached out and touched his skin. Smooth as ever. Dark as night.

His cheeks were shallow.

Eyes tired.

Fisk looked older than she remembered. Sadder, too. There were pictures in her satchel of their father. Fisk looked just like him. Impossibly so.

"Get off me!" he said irritably, brushing her hand aside.

"Sorry," Pepper said. "It's just—"

"There's sand!" came the voice from below again. "The sun...and so many clouds!"

Pepper stared down the cave shaft.

Faces looked up, surprised, astonished.

"We're saved! We're all saved!"

But she couldn't help but think of all the people they'd lost.

Pepper and Fisk lived in a luxurious Penthouse apartment that overlooked Ashewood City and the mighty Crystal Tower at the centre. Surrounded by the latest tech and toys and games, Pepper fondly remembered her brother pouring through books and maps and charts. Pepper had taken their first television to pieces and reassembled it when she was eleven, getting a nasty jolt of latent electricity in the copper yoke coils for her trouble. Her father often joked that that single incident was the reason her hair became so unfathomably wild and curly. Pepper told him it was far more likely to be genetics.

She climbed down the slippery cave shaft and joined half a dozen others standing around a large, natural pool. Bubbles rose in the centre. The liquid gurgled and rippled as it drained away into the earth. One man knelt beside a crescent shaped opening that swiftly grew. "Look," he said, beckoning to Pepper.

She dropped beside him and swivelled her head through the gap.

Beyond was the world.

Yellow and brown and glistening with moisture.

It was not how she remembered it.

There were no green fields.

No swaying trees.

No blue in the sky.

Fisk shouldered her aside and angled himself for a better look.

"It's gone," he said, dismissively. "All of it."

"No," Pepper said. "It's changed, that's all. The world has been reborn."

Fisk laughed darkly. "You believe that?"

"I do."

"Then you're a fool," he snorted.

Pepper yanked him to his feet and marched him away from the others. "What's wrong with you?" she said, pressing his back to the wet rock. "I get it. Months—perhaps years—stuck here in the dark can change a person. I know I'm not the same as I was when we got to Silver Hollow. And I'll never be able to go back. I can deal with your sulky attitude, but right now you're being impossible."

Fisk pushed her away. "I can do what I like," he said. "I may be your little brother but you cannot tell me who to be, what to say, how to...feel."

"I didn't mean to—"

"Pep. Just...stop." His eyes found the cave opening again. "Stop."

"I'm sorry," she tried. "I'm just trying to look out for you. For both of us."

"No one asked you to parent me," he said. "I can look after myself."

Pepper had saved his skin more than once at Stormhaven Preparatory School. Some of the kids forfeited their entire lunch break every day just to track Fisk down and call him names, steal his food, and push him around. She never understood what drove bullies. Were they jealous, threatened, or just plain mean? And these were the kids with incredibly wealthy parents: actors, politicians, titans of business; parents with more cars than a showroom, more power than the national grid, and holiday homes on six continents. Some of the wonder went out of his eyes during those days. Pepper wondered if it would ever return.

Fisk was in the water. His head bobbed below the surface as he shot down the short tunnel that led to the outside world. Pepper hoisted her satchel onto a high crevice and dove after him. The water was cold and murky. Particles of moss and dirt scurried by. Pepper heaved herself forward. Her muscles strained under the exertion as she traversed the tunnel. With her lungs burning, her breath almost spent, Pepper emerged beneath acres of sky.

Fisk was already standing on a rocky outcrop, his clothes plastered to his skinny frame. He didn't look back or offer to help his sister out of the water. Instead, he stood and stared at the sun. Slowly, Pepper joined him. Her body was frail from months of malnutrition, but the sight of a thousand brilliant spears of sunlight raking between a monstrous sky of thick angry clouds, gave her a boost of strength.

"Where do you think we are?" she asked.

Fisk was scanning the endless, barren horizon.

"North," he said finally. "A long way north."

The Savage Storm had risen so suddenly. The world was completely unprepared. Pepper had glued herself to the television as reports of biblical tsunami's ravaged edges of all civilisation. Pepper and Fisk had been home alone when the tides came to Ashewood City, sweeping cars and vendors and innocent pedestrians down Lincoln Boulevard as if they were pieces of Lego. In their high-rise, Pepper stood with her face pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was impossible to tell which were raindrops and which were tears.

"What do we do?" said the man who had first glimpsed the sky. He was helping several others out of the water and onto the slippery rock.

"I don't know," Pepper said. "I don't see anything."

"I can't be sure," Fisk told them, "but I think these are the Greygorm Mountains. Geographically, we could be anywhere from a hundred to three hundred miles from Ashewood City. Similar distances to Locke Pines in the west and Eagle Croft in the east."

"Leaving would be madness," the man said, and others agreed. "Silver Hollow is our home. The caves sheltered us, saved us. We're protected here. Safe. We have water and—"

"We're trapped here," Pepper countered. "Silver Hollow is a tomb. Only a fraction of us have survived."

"She's right," said Fisk, still looking across the desolate earth. "And everyone that failed to get here is definitely dead. I can see scores of bodies from here."

Pepper turned to him. "Others must have survived."

"How?" the man said. "The land is drowned and ruined. Nothing will grow for years, if ever. I'll admit, there could be others out there. But why risk our lives when Silver Hollow can protect us?"

Pepper turned to the growing numbers that had climbed out of the water. There were almost two dozen souls left now. A fraction of the hundreds that had once huddled together in the gloom when raging water filled the cave entrance and flooded any hope of escape.

"We're leaving," Pepper said. "I won't deny that Silver Hollow is the reason we're still breathing. But we lost so much in the dark. So many friends slipped from us into the shadows." She looked at the sun and the marauding clouds that rose towards it like a vast inverted stairway of dark grey stone. The shimmering orb's warmth felt fragile against her skin, as if the faintest touch could erase it from existence. "It's time for a new home. A home beneath an open sky. One far from here. Far from the dark and the tears and the hunger."

Fisk's face softened. "I love you, Pep," he said, squeezing her hand.

She nodded and looked at the worried faces before her.

"So," she said, pushing back her shoulders. "Who's coming?"