Hope's Ruin

9 | Hope's Rejects

Pepper followed the blackbird through the night. Time and again she'd thought he'd lost his way, convinced she was being led in circles. As the tormenting sun broke cover, a distant spark twinkled off a collection of slow moving figures.

The reanimate caravan.

"Yes," Pepper squealed, unable to control her relief. "You did it, Raven. You saved us. You—"

Pepper craned her neck, desperate to catch a glimpse of the little bird, but there was nothing. Just a sky of angry clouds whose thunder rumbled as if to mark the dawn.

The quad bike mounted a sand dune and fizzed down the other side.

Pepper's head span. "He was real, right?" she said.

<< bird >>

"I didn't...make him up, did I? Plenty of people have seen odd things out here in The Great Wastes. Hallucinations and mirages conjured by thirst and hunger." The quad bike hopped and leaped over shallow dunes. "I mean, he could talk. That's...not normal."

<< impossible >>

"Right, right." Pepper wriggled her fingers on the steering bar. "The sooner we get to the caravan the better. The Great Wastes are clearly having a negative effect on me."

Twenty minutes later Pepper approached the shuffling reanimates. Even from a distance their number looked depleted. Where six dozen had set out from Hope's Ruin, only eighteen remained. What had happened to the others? Thirst? Hunger? They had need of neither.

Alderson walked at the head of the column. He leant against a staff constructed of mismatched metal to hold himself up against the desert storms. Upon seeing the quad bike, he turned and raised the staff horizontally above his head. On one end he'd strapped a curved blade. The other, a grisly human skull.

The caravan stopped.

Pepper angled the quad bike into a satisfying skid.

Alderson stood motionless. "I thought we'd come to an agreement, young lady."

Pepper shook her head. "Well, I changed my mind."

"I see."

<< stubborn >>

"Oi. Who's side are you on?"

Pepper trudged towards the crash test dummy. Alderson had wrapped a length of coarse material around his body, yet Pepper could see his joints and axles were crusted with sand and dirt. Even his smooth, hard-wearing resin skin was beginning to show signs of wear.

"You do not own The Great Wastes," she told him.

"Then be on your way," he replied, pointing his staff towards the horizon. "The Great Wastes are all yours. We do not covet ownership of these lands."

Pepper grumbled. "What I mean is—"

"We know what you mean and, as head of this caravan, I cannot allow—"

Several reanimates muttered among themselves.

"What is it?" Alderson snapped. They beckoned him closer, but he shook his head. "Whatever you need to say can be said in front of—"

<< pepper >>

The reanimates flicked glances at one another. Finally, a mannequin stepped forward. She was dressed in khaki fatigues, a glimmering blonde wig, black war paint, and a raspberry beret.

"Well?" Alderson said. "What is it, Lavigne?"

"She found us," Lavigne said. "She tracked us. Out here in The Great Wastes. How is that possible?"