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“Fun fact: 98% of all participants die on step 3.”
Sheila swore and threw the Silver City promotion leaflet on the floor. She stepped on it with her military boot as she dashed to the exit. Five seconds which the door was sliding up seemed like forever. Sheila flew to her armored motorbike, shoved her purple hair under the helmet, and pulled away with a roar.
Her eyes were still wet. Sheila wanted to think the bright rays of the white sky were the reason, but her heart knew better. The traces of her brother’s motorbike were fresh in the Great Wasteland dust, so clear a newborn could follow them, even in this carper of yellowish hills. Sheila knew all benchmarks many miles around: deteriorated cars, ruined houses, insectoids’ nests, but she had rarely traveled to Silver City and was not sure she could make her way safely.
Safety was not a feature of Wasteland.
Sheila squinted at the horizon and saw a pack of wolfrats galloping to her. She swore and tried to get more speed out of her old vehicle. Damn Dylan! He had taken the faster one to escape, to make his stupid dream real. Sheila had been flushing giant slugs out of mushroom plantations to buy a new bike, and her younger brother carjacked the result of this dreary labor to get to his death.
Wolfrats kept gaining on Sheila. Driving with one hand, she pulled the lever of the shabby machine gun. It clicked open just in time: ten beasts with neon eyes and formidable fangs had leaped in an attack. A deafening burst of gun-fire made two of them fly high into the air. The corpses had not even reached the ground when their mates latched on the bloody flesh. Sheila had not slowed down. Maneuring, she had lost the trace and now was circling in desperate attempts to find it. Finally, she gave up and turned back, the wheels of her bike squealed raising the wall of dust.
When she was back on her trail, it was too late. Sheila knew that but still was flying forward, clenching her jaws so tight they hurt. The sight of an immense shimmering balloon far ahead made her speed up. Her ancient bike shivered but she was merciless. The force shield around Silver City was trembling which meant it was ready to let more suicides in.
Chalky-white houses behind the opal wall looked intact and pretty, so weird among miles of destruction. In other time, Sheila would gaze at the post-nuclear miracle, but now she was too busy locating her younger brother, her bike left in the transparent shadow of the city wall, and her visor up.
“Dylan!” she noticed his peculiar orange mane and hand-me-down armor. Dammit, he was too far ahead, at the very beginning of the future participants’ line. Old and young, farmers and hunters, servants and tradespeople, they all gathered at the gap in the opal wall. Sheila gave them no attention as she scampered to her brother.
“Sheila?” his sunburn face did not show a trace of surprise. “You’re late. I’ve already signed up.”
“Idiot!” she gripped his arm. “They die there, you psycho! You don’t have a chance to pass the test. Please, come home.”
He shook her hand and turned away.
“Two percent is a decent chance. It’s better than twenty more years in this forsaken place. Take care, sis.”
It was the last time Sheila saw her brother. She had never found out if he had made it to the City or not.
She would rather he hadn’t.
