Hope's Ruin

2 | Angaarspear 4

"Yeah," Fisk said casually. "That'll be it."

"Suggestions?"

"Take it back where you found it," he said, dismissively. "There's enough reanimates in Hope's Ruin already."

Pepper grunted. "You off to The Spear?" she asked, picking up a small flash light and shining it into the robot's wiry innards.

"Obviously," Fisk said. "Levi needs me in the engine room."

"Engine room?" Pepper said, her eyes lighting up.

"We're close to—"

"Close to what?"

"Doesn't matter," Fisk replied off-handily.

"But there's an engine room? I should be—"

"Look, it's work. I'm busy. And I'm late."

Fisk gathered his bag, strapped his sand-goggles to his head, and stomped past his sister.

"Hey," she said, grabbing his sleeve. "You're okay, right?"

"Sure. Peachy. See you tonight."

Fisk swept a canvas flap aside and disappeared into the dust and chaos beyond.

Pepper returned to Flake. "Something's up with him," she told the robot. "I don't like it one bit."

Flake stared back. His monitor blank and cold.

Pepper worked on the robot all morning. Her mind continually drifted to thoughts of her water ration and just how much longer she'd have to wait. As the midday sun loomed high above her canvas tent, and shifting shadows from a million turbulent clouds pooled around the base of her stool, the airhorns blazed. Pepper tossed her screwdriver onto the workbench and scurried out into the heat.

People were emerging from wigwams, hand-made homes of wood and metal, broken down vans and lorries and industrial storage crates. Paths of flattened sand weaved between each strange domicile, making haphazard roads and lanes that quickly filled with humans and reanimates alike.

Beneath the terrible sun, Pepper joined the queue. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead despite standing stock-still behind Jasper Fudge and Millicent Braithwaite—a married couple that had found Pepper and Fisk wandering through The Great Wastes and brought them to Hope's Ruin.

Jasper turned and smiled.

Pepper wiped her brow. "Hotter than Hell," she said.

"Baking," Jasper replied.

"Scorchio," added Millicent, pretending to faint.

Discussing the weather took up a great deal of her time waiting in line. Pepper wondered if people were interested in anything else, but when your entire existence hangs in the balance of the elements, people tend to get a little obsessed.

"Clouds are looking fuller than ever," Jasper said, frowning.

"Nooten reckons a second Savage Storm is on the way," Millicent added. "He's calling it The Dreaded Downpour."

"Nooten's an idiot," Jasper told his wife.

"What's your theory?" Pepper asked.

Millicent's eyes spanned the strange sky. Black clouds rumbled with thunder, rolled over one another, sizzling with streaks of electricity. Columns of light materialised and vanished like the tails of falling stars. Heat swelled, trapped beneath earth and clouds, dry and desperate.

"Something else," she said, an echo of fear in her voice. "Something...different. New."

Pepper nodded, but her mind was not on the sun. It was on Flake 99, back in the cool shadows of her tent.

She'd considered his backstory a thousand times. Where he was made, by who, and why? And how had he come to be discarded in the middle of The Great Wastes? She hoped that reconnecting all his leads and wires, and getting him working again, would give her the answers. But it had been over six months now. Would she ever get him working?

In the world before The Savage Storm, the idea of reanimates would have seemed impossible. It was impossible. Statues and mannequins and crash test dummies, all coming to life: walking and talking and living as if it were the most normal thing in the entire universe.

Hope's Ruin was no stranger to reanimates.

Hundreds of them existed throughout the township.

Flake 99 hadn't reanimated. Whatever it was that gave life to the others had simply skipped or abandoned the robot. Pepper couldn't understand it. He had a head and a body and legs and one arm. He was the perfect candidate.

The queue for basic rations snaked through the streets of Hope's Ruin, inching closer and closer to a large construction at the centre that dominated the township. Rising out of the sand was an enormous oil drilling platform, twenty or more stories high. The words Angaarspear 4 were detailed in faded white lettering on its mighty legs. Stairways and iron bannisters zigzagged up and up, twisted and broken.

The Spear was the reason Hope's Ruin existed in the first place. A beacon that could be seen for miles across The Great Wastes. Stories circled the township about how The Spear had been a sanctuary during The Savage Storm—a floating drilling rig buoyed on the rising tides—inhabited by hundreds of families.

But now it was the home to one.

Governor Levi Sawyer.

Its dominating height was a fantastic look-out point for invading parties. Its inaccessibility—save for a reconditioned lift that rose at the Governor's command—made it an almost impregnable citadel.

Also, it was chock full of water.

Pepper stepped beneath the cooling shadow of The Spear. Her dust-caked blue boiler cotton suit—that she trimmed at the shoulders and knees—clung to her skin.

A shallow table sat between her and a creature dispensing water from a distribution hose nestle in its crusted, blackened fingers. The creature's entire body was wrapped in bands of cloth—like an Egyptian Mummy—that had probably been white at some point, now stained with dirt and sand.

This was the Doctor.

At least, that was what everybody called it.

Pepper had no idea why.

She'd never seen it give medical advice or provide CPR or even change a plaster.

The Doctor's face was hidden behind a contoured metal mask that had two engineered slits for eyes and a cross-hatched purge valve for a mouth.

The Doctor never spoke, never reacted to anything, just dished out food and water rations before retreating into The Spear. It could have been human or a reanimate.

Or something else entirely.

Pepper squinted, trying to see what lurked behind the machine-engined eye slits, but there was nothing but shadows. She took her rations from the table and returned to the Millennium Kestrel.

And Flake 99.