Hope's Ruin

18 | Soaring

Raven and the vultures sat silently as Erin told them the tale of Pepper's arrival at Coldharbour Farm, Flake 99, the dark spirit in the doll's heads, Twelve's disappearance, and the decision to follow the quad bike tracks into The Great Wastes.

"I wondered—hoped—for a time that Twelve was back and had gone out into the desert on some heroic mission to find and destroy the last traces of Number Eight," Erin said. Her eyes scanned the moonlit dust beneath their feet. "But now, with the graves plundered and the dark spirits all washed away, I'm struggling to hold onto hope."

"Wait a minute," Pepper said. "You're really entertaining this notion that Number Twelve has...erm...recruited an Army of the Undead?"

"No," she said, and Pepper took a soothing breath. "I believe the dark spirit you released has."

Pepper's heart beat was up again. "Sorry? What?"

"What other explanation is there?"

"All the logical ones," Pepper said. Despite all she'd seen and all she knew—reanimates and dark spirits and flying scarecrows and talking birds—the thought of a horde of decomposing human remains stalking across The Great Wastes in league with a scarecrow riding a quad bike battled every fibre of rationale that remained in her mind.

"Look around you," Marshall said.

"The world is utterly illogical," Erin added.

"Twelve is...not really Twelve anymore?" Pepper asked.

"Twelve will always be Twelve!" Erin snapped.

The girl looked lost, broken.

Pepper's body tightened. Her teeth ached. She took a long breath and tried to unwind.

This was all too much.

Impossible.

Some wild madness.

Raven fluttered between Pepper's shoulders. "Belief is a fragile thing," he whispered into her ear. "Horrors that hang before your eyes are quickly dismissed as falsehood and fallacy. Rationalised out of existence. Especially here in The Great Wastes. Mirage and miracle are one and the same. Coherence and madness, a hare's whisker apart. You must be strong. For yourself. For Erin and Marshall. For the horrors of this world will soon come calling. And when they do, to resist them, fight them, you must become a true believer."

Pepper's eyes widened.

"Don't worry," Erin sniffed. "He's always super dramatic."

"Dramatic! Me? I'm a realist. Speaker of dark and brutal truths. Nothing more." Raven flapped in circles and clicked his beak. "And I presume that you intend to follow the scarecrow despite all I've told you and the danger that will follow."

Erin nodded, grim and determined. "Of course."

"I think Pluto is trashed," Pepper said, looking down the dangerous incline. "We cannot continue on foot."

"Well, then it's unfathomably convenient that Raven, Una, and the vultures are here."

Pepper looked lost.

Erin's eyes found the turbulent, storm ravaged sky.

* * *

From this dizzying height, Pepper was astounded at the curvature of the earth and the wondrous, sprawling terrain below. Fisk would have loved this. It was like viewing the greatest map of all time. In three dimensions. With the ghastly aroma of Horatio Bonedark in her nostrils. And the fear of terminal velocity looming beneath her helpless feet.