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“There is a town in Arizona, a few miles east of the Colorado River, that is always on fire. The old gods, it seems, dislike fire like all of Mother Nature’s creations, and they avoid it. Which makes it the perfect place for humans to build a small empire. And so it is where the Highwaymen have their base. Hell is a place on earth, and it’s a town built around an oil rig in the desert. The rig broke during the Rise, and the built-up gas caught fire as it escaped the crevices in the ground. It burns still. That, combined with the three man-made flare stacks over the oil rig, ensured that the name stuck. Welcome to Hell, Arizona.”

Extract from The Wastelands Gazette by Francesca James, 2055.

When the sun rises in the morning, my hatred has been simmering all night. But they do say revenge is a dish best served cold, so I’ll bide my time. My wounds are healing, and my power is coming back slowly. Soon, the mere precautions Jude has taken to stay safe from me won’t be enough.

And he knows it if the look we share over breakfast is any guess. It’s only a matter of time before one of us kills the other. He better ensure that we find a hacker to hack into the Firefly quickly so he can put a bullet in my head because his time is running out.

Before leaving the rooftop, he holds me at gunpoint to tie me to the chair in the cockpit. He’s not taking any chances anymore. The way I killed his dear brother Malcolm reminded him that I’m far from the tamed monster he wants me to be.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” says Fyfe. “I have noticed that your movements are restricted. Do you require assistance?”

Jude snorts and answers before I do. “No, Dumdumb. He’s fine. It’s a kink we have.”

He offers me a heated look over his shoulder, and a wink. I glare at him with all my might.

“My data informs me that kinks belong to the register of human intimacy, and that I am not programmed to understand or interfere,” the AI says. “I wish you an enjoyable kink, Mr. President.”

I groan. “You’ve got to be kidding me…”

Jude bursts out laughing. A real laugh this time. The kind of laugh I had yet to hear from him. It takes me by surprise as it echoes in the cockpit.

To my dismay, I forget for a heartbeat why, exactly, I want this man dead.

We fly over the Colorado River for a few hours to reach Hell. We land on a small mountaintop to wait for nightfall. The dark smoke from the town’s eternal fires can be seen on the horizon. I’ve never come to Hell, but I’ve heard the tales. At some point, I even considered attacking and claiming ownership of the place where the old gods never wander. But I hate fire as much as they do.

“It’s strange,” Jude announces after half an hour of surveying the wastelands with military-grade binoculars he found in the Firefly. “The desert should be crawling with trucks and buggies going in and out of Hell. This place is supposed to be worse than a hornet’s nest.”

Then his brother might have told the truth, and something happened to the Highwaymen’s leaders.

“Where is this hacker of yours?” I ask.

Jude sighs. “In a barrack in the center of Hell. She’s one of the Highwaymen’s highly valuable prisoners.”

“I didn’t know they took prisoners. They usually leave dead bodies behind.”

“They do if they serve a purpose. Marika does. She hacks into vehicles for them.”

“Which means we’re going in tonight,” I say.

“You bet.”

I sigh. One of those days, he’ll really get us killed.

Night gives meaning to Hell’s name. Flames escape the ground from the crevices as we fly above the ramshackle town, and it really does look like the gates to hell have been opened.

“Aren’t they afraid it might explode under their feet?” I ask.

Jude shrugs from his pilot’s seat. “It’s been burning for more than twenty years now. At this point, they just all hope it’ll last for twenty more.”

He has been strangely quiet and tense since we took off from the mountaintop.

“You lived here before,” I say. “With your family.”

“With my jailers, you mean. Yeah, I spent my teenage years here. After I tried to escape on the road a few times, they left me here to rot.”

“But you still escaped, eventually.”

“Yes. Five years ago, I stole a buggy, and that time they didn’t catch me. I reached Gears and Giggles, and they hid me for a time. Then they got me in touch with their son, and I lived on the Traveling Market for a while.”

“You got out. And yet, here we are.”

Jude finally deigns to look at me. “They won’t catch me this time, either. Don’t worry, you’re still stuck with me until Marika hacks into the Firefly.”

“One could hope…” I say.

“It’s too quiet,” he says, watching the town below.

Townmight be too big a word to describe what looks more like a massive camp. Only two or three real buildings stand at the center of Hell. The oil refinery, I’m guessing. They’re surrounded by chimneys, large pipes, and tanks. The three flare stacks burn like giant candles farther away in the wastelands, over a metal tower. The oil rig. The rest is an ocean of mobile homes, caravans, tents, and all kinds of vehicles. The only ground left uncovered is around the burning crevices.

“Doesn’t it catch fire?” I ask, dumbfounded.

“Oh, all the time. A few rows catch fire, and some cars explode. They find it funny.”

I shake my head in disbelief.

But Jude is right. The place is too quiet. There is no one walking down the messy lanes. There is no light except for the fires of Hell.

We land on the roof of one of the buildings. No one sounds the alarm. By now, we have both realized that Hell has turned into a ghost town.

Jude gestures for me to follow him, and we climb down the stairs leading to the inside of the building. We walk through room after room, which used to be where the controls for the refinery were. Most have been turned into living quarters since. Jude leads me to what he calls the Great Hall.

“My parents picture themselves as great rulers of the wastelands,” Jude explains when he sees my expression. “I swear they should have called it the throne room.”

But the Great Hall is empty too. And it’s a mess. Most of the tables have been upturned, and there is old blood crusted on the floor. A lot of blood. A small battle happened here.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s back,” says a female voice.

Jude tenses, and we both turn. A woman walks out of the shadows on a crutch. She has long ginger hair falling on one side, and a burned scalp on the other. Her right leg is turned at a weird angle under her long skirt.

The resemblance to Jude is undeniable. One of his siblings, then. She doesn’t look older than thirty-five, and even with all the scars, she’s pretty.

“Audrey,” Jude says. “What happened here? Where is everyone?” His hand tightens around his gun.

“Why do you care, lil’ bro?” she says.

“We’ve met Malcolm. He told us that mom and dad are dead.”

Audrey smiles grimly. “Malcolm, heh? How is the fucker?”

“Dead,” I say. “I killed him.”

She sighs. “Well, I guess it’s been a long time coming. And who the fuck are you?”

“Mom and Dad?” Jude snaps with no patience for her short-spanned attention.

Audrey gestures to the end of the hall with her free hand. “She strung their bodies up there.” We both turn. There are two ropes hanging from the ceiling. “I couldn’t move for days.” She gestures at her mangled leg. “So they were left to rot. I only took them down with some help a few weeks ago. I threw their bodies down into the fires. They would have liked that.”

Jude seems to be processing for a moment, then finally says, “Who?”

“The mutant bitch from the east.”

It’s my turn to stand still. My own brothers and sisters have always been a pain in the ass to cross paths with. We’re all as territorial as the old gods we got parts of our DNA from. The few encounters I had over the years ended in bloodshed. The last one plunged two swords into my chest.

“She came alone,” Audrey continues, “and she wanted what we had. An army. Mom and Dad refused. You know how they were.”

“I know,” says Jude. There is a shadow on his face now.

“She killed them and strung them up for all to see. I tried to fight to the bitter end, and she threw me over the hall like a rag doll. She killed Jo. But you know the others. They respect strength. So, as soon as Mom and Dad were dead, they rallied to the bitch. They’re her commanders now. I’m the only one who stayed.”

“Why?” asks Jude.

“My leg…” she explains. “And this is my home. This was our family’s empire.”

“You were always Mom and Dad’s most faithful dog,” Jude says.

“And you were always an ungrateful little weasel,” she retorts. “But I suppose it served you, in the end. You weren’t here to see us fall.”

Jude stays quiet for a moment, then asks, “Where did they go? The others?”

“North. To the Hoover Dam. That’s where she built her base.”

“And Marika?”

“Your little friend had to follow. Louis and Arnold took her.”

Jude swears. Then he says, “Do you have food?”

Audrey limps to a bench and sits. “We’re a few dozen, scattered in Hell. The ones that survived the fight were too wounded to follow. Or didn’t want to. We make do.”

“You should leave this place. Build a new life while you still can.”

Audrey laughs bitterly. “What for? This is my life. I’m not like you, lil’ bro. I don’t run away as soon as it gets difficult. I’ll rebuild our parents’ empire, one brick at a time, if needed. Now fuck off; you’re not welcome here anymore.”

“Very well,” Jude says. “You can stay and burn in Hell for all I care.” And he walks away.

For a moment, I forget that he’s not holding me at gunpoint, and yet I still follow him back to the Firefly. The stairs are still hard for me to climb. My muscles are sore, and my wounds have barely started to heal. Even though I heal much faster than normal humans. The chain around my feet drags on the floor.

Jude sits on the edge of the roof and watches Hell for a while. His entire body is outlined by the eternal fires burning below. His shoulders droop. I could push him. One movement would be all it takes to send him over. He would die instantly on impact. But what would be the fun in that?

I sit a few feet away from him.

“I thought you hated them,” I say.

Jude sighs. “I did. They were fucking monsters. But I was still their son, and they loved me in their twisted way. One day, they would beat me senseless; the next, they would go to war to get me back from a pedophile who kidnapped me on the road. I don’t think anyone would ever love me as much as they did. And yet, some part of me is still glad they died. They were some of the worst people you’d find in the wastelands.”

“Then stop crying,” I say.

Jude turns toward me, his cheeks wet with tears. But his face is impassive as he points the gun at me. How wrong of me to think he wasn’t holding me at gunpoint, even on our way up. He always has it close to hand.

“I’m not crying,” he says quietly. “It’s raining.”

I laugh. It rains less than once a year in the wastelands.

“Did it hurt when you killed your father?” he asks me.

I shake my head, and yet I say, “Yes.”

“Why did you do it?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We have all the time in the world, don’t we?” he says, gesturing with his gun.

The fires of Hell burn at our feet, warming the air to an almost uncomfortable heat, even at night.

“My father was like yours—twisted,” I say. “But unlike yours, he didn’t love me. He saw me as his legacy. At the end of mankind, as he had known it, I was to be his only way to reach immortality. With his genes in someone powerful, he felt like he was leaving behind his mark on the world. He was a cruel and ruthless soldier. A true survivor, at all costs.”

“And you killed him to be free of him?”

I shake my head. “No. My father was cruel to the rest of the world, but he tolerated me well enough. He kept me alive for years and taught me everything I knew. I couldn’t fathom a world where he wasn’t with me. What would I do without him? But then, when I was fifteen, he left for a week to hunt down some men who had stolen our food. He loved the chase. And he saw me as a hindrance. And while he was gone, I met a woman.”

Jude’s eyebrows climb to his hairline. “A woman?”

Even to this day, more than ten years later, I remember her golden hair in the wind. The little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes when she laughed at her own jokes.

“Yes. But not in the way you think. Aurora was close to forty. She was a scientist who had worked on the Revival Project. When she saw me, she recognized that I’m a mutant. But she…” I swallow. I can’t believe I still can’t talk about it without shaking. I’m a fucking grown man now. “The first thing she said was, ‘Where have you been all this time?’ And ‘Are you okay?’” I laugh. “But when I threatened to kill her if she didn’t leave me alone, she said, ‘Oh, fuck off, young man. I have a son like you. You don’t scare me.’” I had been shocked to learn that there was someone out there like me who had survived. Some kind of brother. “She told me about the lab where she lived and the mutant she had raised. When the Revival Project was abandoned, they refused to leave the kid behind. So, they stayed. They became a family. The scientists who created me tried to kill me. I was burning with jealousy for that kid who had it all. But then she offered to take me in. I could meet my brother and his family…”

“And then?” asks Jude after I kept quiet for a while.

I have no fucking clue why I’m telling him all this. Even Helios never learned of it back in the days. I didn’t want him to know that I had failed to save my first friend in the wastelands.

“We spent a few days together. We became friends. She was out looking for books, of all things. I helped her. Her son’s birthday was coming up. He was turning twelve. Then Sergeant Kang came back. And as soon as he understood who Aurora was and what she offered, he killed her in cold blood. I was too slow to stop it.”

My father was a hard man to predict, even for me. He listened to what Aurora and I had to say, then without warning, he pulled out his gun and shot her in the head.

“And you killed him,” says Jude.

I nod. “Back then, I couldn’t control my electricity. And at that moment, I wanted him dead. I had no shovel, and the ground was too hard. I had to leave them in the desert.”

Jude nods grimly. “That’s why we burn the bodies.”

We both watch the eternal fires of Hell burn below us.