Hope's Ruin

7 | Exodus

"My name's Pepper," she said, stretching out a nervous hand. "And you are?"

The crash test dummy angled his head curiously. "Alderson," he replied.

"It's great to meet you," she tried. "Who else? What's your name—?"

"You're human," rang a voice.

"Leave us be."

"You belong here."

"With the rest of your...kind."

"But I don't belong here," she told them. "I never have. Not really. But where else is there? It was just me and my brother and—"

"Where's your brother now?" said Alderson. "Not going with you?"

"No. He's...He didn't—"

"It was him, wasn't it? The one on the platform. The turncoat. The liar."

The reanimates turned their backs on Pepper and marched towards the gate.

"No, please," she begged. "He's been brainwashed by the Governor and the Doctor. They have him working in The Spear, doing...well, I don't know what. He wouldn't say. But this isn't who he is. He's good, and kind, and smart."

"He's filled with hate," Alderson said. "And now, because of him, we're outcasts. Doomed to wander the Nomad Road. Lost. Forgotten."

The main gate to Hope's Ruin shuddered as guards clambered out of their deckchairs and dragged the activation chains. The huge gates parted. Pepper shielded her eyes from the whip of sand and grit that billowed in from The Great Wastes and cocooned her entire body.

The reanimates moved slowly into the desert storm.

"Wait," she called. "Let me come with you."

Alderon turned and glared. "Why?"

"I do not need to be a reanimate to be upset by the treatment of your kind."

"We do not need your sympathy."

"You do not have it," Pepper said. "How about friendship instead?"

"A friendship that will wither and perish beneath the sun," Alderson said, his plastic fingers resting against Pepper's shoulder. "Thank you, but this is not your fight. Not today. Find your brother. Reason with him. Change takes time. Acceptance even longer."

"But—?"

"Goodbye, Pepper," Alderson said. "Perhaps our paths will cross again, under better circumstances."

"I would like that."

He nodded grimly, and was gone.

* * *

Pepper slouched on the quad bike's scalding leather seat. Indecision circled through her again. She picked at a thread of loose cotton on the bike seat. Should she head out alone into The Great Wastes? Abandon her home and her brother and the life she'd built here?

Yes. Of course she should.

Otherwise what was she? An enabler? An accessory to hate?

"Pep."

She looked up.

Fisk.

"Why?"

He moved towards her, shaking his head. "You don't understand."

"What's there to understand? You hate reanimates. You hate them because of what they are, who they are. I cannot tolerate that. I cannot be part—"

"Pep. Stop. Just stop." He wiped a fresh sheen of sweat from her forehead, then slipped his hand inside his waistcoat and retrieved a smooth, metal cylinder. "Take it," he said, thrusting it into Pepper's hand. "Water. As promised. For the journey."

"How did you—? Why did you—?"

"There is much I cannot say," he told her. "Much you wouldn't understand."

"Is this about what the Governor has you doing—?"

"Pep, please."

"Tell me."

"Telling you endangers you. It's not safe here. I'm trying to change that."

"Let me help."

"No. I lost Mom and Pop. Harrison and Gem in the Hollows. Ricco and Vern, too." He looked broken, lost. "If you stay, you won't survive."

"Fisk," she whispered. "That's madness."

"No," he told her, wrapping his arms around his sister and pulling her close. "That's just it, Pepper. Madness is coming."