Pepper's tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Dry was an understatement. With the next water rations still hours away she'd have to soldier on. She was sat beneath a khaki canvas tent. Two metal poles held the tent aloft and stretched the material across Pepper's work space to the roof of a weather-damaged Airstream trailer.
She'd named it The Millennium Kestrel.
Fisk wasn't keen.
The Kestrel's flattened tyres were buried in the sand, making it more a static caravan than the recreational vehicle it had been design as. Either way, it had become home after they'd abandoned the underground outpost of Silver Hollow more than a year ago and struck out into The Great Waste.
Water here was scarce. She'd always known it would be. She thought about Silver Hollow most days, wondering if she'd made a huge mistake leaving the shelter and the abundant water supply for fresh air and freedom.
No one had come with her. No one other than Fisk.
Sucking on a stone—a strange cure for thirst that she'd seen in a movie years ago—Pepper considered a peculiar-looking creature slumped before her. She'd found him out in The Great Wastes, lying face down in the dust and sand. Against Fisk's protestations, she'd taken her hybrid quad bike—that she'd Frankenstein'd together out of scavenged parts—and carted him back to The Kestrel.
Essentially, he was a robot. But little more than a collection of broken tech, bolted together in no discernible way. His limbs were fashioned from parts of an old drum kit. Cymbal stands and tom-tom holders had been welded together with industrial hinges for ankles and knees. His torso was a doorless beer fridge with beverage company logos plastered to all sides. Inside sat a collection of electronic devices including an iPod, a sound-bank module, an Atari games console, and a ZX Spectrum keypad, all linked together with brightly coloured wires.
He only had one arm.
Pepper presumed the other had been ripped off somewhere in The Great Wastes. Perhaps taken by the vicious tides, scavenged by circling birds, or stolen by nomads. The one that remained was made of the same welded metal but, bolted to the end, was a green plastic hand shaped to hold soda cans. The logo for SolarCola and the strap line—The Delicious Delicacy That's Out Of This World!—were emblazoned on the side.
The robot's head was an Apple Mackintosh from the early 90s—square, boxy, beige—complete with a 3.25in drive and cracked, dusty screen. Wires and cables ran from the robot's torso to its head and back down again. None of it worked. At least, nothing that Pepper had been able to understand.
She'd seen pictures of all this tech before The Savage Storm and The Big Gulp.
Before the world had changed.
Twice.
Stuck to both sides of the robot's head, positioned where its ears should be, were two stickers. One pink, the other green. Both had a white number nine printed on them.
Ninety-nine.
Flake 99.
Fisk appeared in the doorway to The Kestrel. Hair a lopsided mess. Eyes groggy with sleep. "What time is it?"
Pepper checked her bare wrist. "Two hairs past a freckle."
Fisk groaned. "Dad jokes? Really? Don't you ever get tired of yourself?"
Pepper stared at her brother and blinked slowly.
"I guess not," Fisk said, trudging down the short flight of steps to the hot, sandy earth. "Still working on C-3PO?"
"He's not called—"
"I know, I know. Flake. How's Flake looking?"
"Still nothing. I've routed power from the hybrid battery in his backpack and on to the motherboard, display, and audio outputs, but still nothing. Perhaps there's just too much sand in his joints."
"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.