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.
She'd often heard that the darkest moment of the night is right before the dawn.
Pepper universally disagreed.
"What in the nine rings of—?"
<< afraid >>
"What is this place?"
<< unknown >>
She let the quad bike idle on a chalky ridge and fetched the map.
"If I'm right—and that's a big if," she began, biting the lid off a marker pen, "—then the desert ended about here, making us about—" She drew a hangman on the map. "—here." Pepper took in her surroundings. "Where did this place come from? It's like something from an ancient pirate tale." She studied the map some more. "Coldharbour must be a hundred or so miles south," she decided. "Perhaps more. Fisk's map is good, but it isn't exactly accurate." She smiled, gripping the paper keenly. "But better than nothing. Thanks, little bro!"
<< danger >>
"No. I'm fine. It's just—"
<< immediate danger >>
"It's fine, Flake. Nothing to worry your circuits about."
But a sorrowful wail stopped Pepper's positivity in its tracks. It rose from somewhere deep inside the triangle of dark hills, cutting through the air like a scimitar.
Her skin prickled. Blood froze.
<< afraid >>
"Okay," she admitted. "Bit scared now."
The quad bike was alive in moments. The tyres bit into the rocky ground. Pepper and Flake bounced on the undulating earth, taking an extra-wide arc to circumnavigate the forsaken plain. But, no matter how far Pepper steered away from the haunted hills, they seemed to come closer. It was almost as if they were calling to her, pulling her in like a Siren's song.
Another wail tore the air.
And another.
Screams followed.
Tortured, pitiful screams.
Pepper's juvenile fright quickly descended into x-rated terror. Skeins of twisted black smoke poured from the centre of the hills and spiralled towards them.
Walkers fuelled by dark spirits. By demons. By the unknown.
"This is a dream," she muttered, fighting the words in her head. "A nightmare. Tell me this is all some new hallucination."
<< confused >>
"Thanks."
<< afraid >>
"Snap."
<< faster >>
"We're maxed out!" Pepper bleated. "And why are we still moving towards the hills?"
<< centrifugal force >>
"Is that a serious suggestion?"
Her fingers tightened knuckle-white on the steering bar. Her arms ached. Teeth rattled. But still they moved closer. Wicked laughs and malicious cackles ravaged the air. Voluminous columns of dark vapour tore past. They circled overhead, ran beside her, twisted and knotted around one another in front and behind the quad bike.
"What fresh Hell is this?"
<< death >>
And then a voice boomed from the shadows.
A voice layered with the timbres of a thousand souls.
WELCOME
"Who's there?"
US
"Who's us?"
The smoking columns coalesced into a giant dome, cocooning Pepper and Flake. She felt as though she'd been frozen in place, but the ground tore by beneath. Then, from within the shifting black walls, hundreds of gruesome faces emerged, and pushed towards her.
"Now I am dreaming," Pepper decided.
HELP US
"Just ignore them Pep," she muttered. "Nothing but your darkest subconscious fears brought on by hunger and anxiety."
WE ARE LOST
"The blackbird was just the tip of the iceberg!"
LET US IN
The words triggered something in Pepper's mind. Perhaps the terrifying faces really were here. Perhaps this was happening. For real. Did these faces belong to lost souls wandering the desert looking for someone or something to reanimate? Perhaps they were dark spirits and demons like the Governor had said.
Each face was distorted and vile. Black smoke choked through their eye sockets and curled over their lips.
<< faster >>
Pepper quickly turned her eyes to the uneven ground as it hurtled by.
What kind of souls were these? Alderson, and every reanimate she'd known in Hope's Ruin, was kind and content. Even Lavigne—despite her understandable anger—held some form of compassion.
<< afraid >>
LET US IN
"In?" Pepper said. "In...side?"
UNTETHERED . . . OUTCAST . . . LOST
<< danger >>
AFRAID . . . ABANDONED . . . ALONE
"You don't look afraid to me," Pepper bit.
Courage fizzed in her fingertips despite the fear gnawing at her bones.
The quad bike rattled and spluttered beneath her.
The black dome tightened. The air became thick. Vile laughter and wicked words crackled like static against her skin. Pepper hunkered low on the seat. Her exhausted body quivered.
LET US IN
The words came again and again.
Urgent and forceful.
Every trace of kindness and frailty stripped away.
Crooked fingers reached out and brushed Pepper's back, arms, cheek. She shook them away, steering erratically, and stuffed one hand into the saddlebag on the side of the quad bike. Her fingers brushed against odds and ends of dead tech, wiring, and circuitry. Nothing. She turned the bike again, vaulted off an elevated crag and landed heavily on the crumbling terrain. Hands swooshed by, voices uttering salacious words into her ears. Pepper rooted around in the other saddlebag. Here she found more of her fledgling inventions.
Distribution Magnet.
Ambient Sound Disruptor.
And—oh, saints above, yes—her Positronic Electroshock Fluctuator.
Pepper ripped the super-charged taser from the bag, spun the quad bike and lurched, eyes shut, directly into the wall of shadows. She swept the fluctuator through the air—as quad bike and shadow dome connected—firing electroshock pulses in all directions.
The dome crackled, fizzed, swallowed her whole.
Violent, petrified thoughts brushed against her. Villainous hands clawed her trembling body. Thoughts and memories came in machine-gun spurts. Sad thoughts of miserable times. With one hand clung to the rubber handlebars, the other propelled bursts of electricity into the night, lighting up the terrifying faces with crackling blue-white forks. She revved the engine once more and—just like her beloved Millennium Falcon escaping the clutches of the Death Star—smashed through the crippling shadows and out the other side.
A gasp of dismay wailed into the night.
Pepper risked a quick look.
The world dripped with crystal white stars.
Any trace of the shadows had gone.
The three hills were almost hidden in the distant dark.
<< alive >>
Pepper nodded, shaken, then fired the quad bike onwards.
* * *
Pepper and Flake 99 rose over mossy hillocks and rumbled through jagged stone valleys. Despite the intense sun, these lands were damp and boggy. Somehow, here in the distant south, traces of The Savage Storm still existed.
<< close >>
"I think so," Pepper replied. "Another hour maybe. If we're on track."
<< shadows >>
"Long gone," she told him. "I hope."
<< souls >>
"Maybe," Pepper replied, her mind still denying what her eyes had seen.
<< flake >>
"For you? Not a chance."
<< sad >>
"You deserve better than something dark and twisted."
<< how >>
Pepper angled her head over her shoulder. "I'll get you a soul one day. If we find some good ones. Some happy ones. Smart souls filled with wonder and creativity and the biggest sense of adventure that could ever be imagined."
<< promise >>
"I promise."
The quad bike zipped to the top of an embankment. Pepper had to jam on the brake and haul to vehicle hard left to avoid plummeting over the other side. Below, a vast tundra of sun baked rocks and stubborn marsh stretched towards an enormous hill, capped by a handful of weather-beaten buildings.
They traced the edge of the chasm, slowly descending down perilous paths. Pepper used tracks and pathways worn into the hillside to rise up the other side. A silver moon hung low, lighting the way. Pepper's shoulders ached. She'd never let it bother her until now. Until she was so close that the toil of travel and driving them across The Great Wastes was all but done. Their journey at its end.
The hill levelled onto a round plateau. Here, the remains of wooden watchtowers and barbed wire fences bordered the property. A cavernous barn sat to the left, its huge doors open. A patched-up greenhouse leant against a homely farmhouse. And, in the distance, loitered a row of stables, the stalls cloaked in shadow.
Pepper shut off the quad bike and went to examine two crosses planted at the edge of the farm, looking out across the world. A figure wearing a Dungeons & Dragons t-shirt, baggy jeans, a life-preserver, and a Coldharbour High School Redkites Cap hung from one.
The other was much more bizarre. This creature appeared to have no feet, possibly no legs at all. A grisly head and torso were all that remained. Above a midnight black dress and red pirate jacket, hung the haunting skull of some unfortunate beast.
Pepper felt like both figures were looking directly at her, but neither moved.
Click-click.
"Freeze."
Did the owner of this voice have a gun?
"What are you doing here?"
Slowly, Pepper turned.
Before her stood a girl about fifteen years old.
Her face was cast like a waxing moon.
A handgun swayed gently in her grip.
"Ernest Underwood," Pepper said. "Is he here?"
The girl's eyes flicked towards the greenhouse, towards a collection of shadowed items at its base. "No," she said quietly.
"I've...erm...brought his robot back," Pepper said, thumbing towards Flake 99, still cable-tied to the back of the quad bike.
The girl turned her head. Her eyes widened.
"Will Ernest be back soon?"
"Ernest Underwood didn't make her."
"Her?"
"Number Nine."
"Sorry, what now—?"
"Ernest Underwood was my Pa," she said, lowering the gun. "I made Number Nine." A smile crept onto the girl's lips. "And she's no robot. She's a scarecrow!"