Hope's Ruin

10 | Dark Plains

The quad bike mounted a colossal dune. Sand rippled like ocean waves towards the horizon. The last evidence of Hope's Rejects flickered in the moonlight, then vanished.

Pepper hoped they'd be okay.

Hoped they'd make it.

Hope is an illusion, echoed Lavigne's savage words.

Pepper opened Fisk's map and drew a line with her eyes from her estimated location to an approximation of Coldharbour. Did she have enough fuel or battery power to make it? Turning the bike south—her compass skills still in their infancy—Pepper double checked Flake 99's straps, then stamped on the accelerator.

They tore across the sand and dust, rising and falling like a wheel-shod jet-ski on choppy, crystalline swell. Night felt more comfortable. The stars, a pleasant companion beyond the tumbling, spiteful clouds. The bike ran better at this temperature, humming merrily to itself like a contented cat.

For hours and hours they drove. Pepper's eyes flicked between the stars and her compass and the shadowed horizon. Flake 99 bounced silently on her back, rarely adding to the conversation. Instead, Pepper muttered to herself, monologuing like a monologue champion, recounting stories of childhood to fend off the terror and worry in her heart.

Pepper checked the gauges as the morning light sliced the edge of the world. Twenty-three percent battery. Half a tank of fuel. She sent a prayer to whatever gods remained, crossed her fingers, and threw sand over her shoulder. Just to be sure.

The dunes eased, flattening into a yellow-grey tideless beach. Pepper and Flake 99 arrowed across the sand, heading ever southward. At noon, they made camp and slept through the worst of the day's sun, then continued on their way.

The sand began to thin.

Rock and earth broke the surface.

The desert ebbed like a retreating tide.

The Great Wastes were finally—finally—behind them.

Battery power was red-lining, so she switched to the fuel in order to preserve enough power for an emergency restart. Gasoline churned and gurgled beneath her, the engine gunning them through the dark.

Ahead, three shapes appeared on the horizon. Faint at first, like triangles of the deepest black sliced through the night, gateways into a hellscape beyond all imagining. The shapes morphed into rigid mounds, colossal constructions reaching for the stars above.

"Look," she said, more to herself than Flake 99. "Buildings? Towers? Factories?"

<< ashewood city >>

"No. It cannot be."

<< error >>

"I hope not. If that's Ashewood City, we're miles off course."

The little quad bike surged forward.

"Holy heck!"

What sprouted before them wasn't Ashewood City or the remnant of some human made construction, dwelling, or manufacturing plant.

Instead, three unusual hills rose out of the vast flat plain. Huge and imposing, each looked like the crooked fingertip of some subterranean God desperately clawing its way to freedom. Upon the sides of each hill, stationed in skewed rows like a horde of broken teeth, were thousands upon thousand of gravestones.

But most chilling of all, sat atop each of the three hills, silhouetted by pale moonlight, was an enormous scaffold, complete with hangman's arm and noose.