The dust of Cinder Town, usually lazy and sun-bleached, was stirred into a frantic, purposeful haze that very afternoon. The promise, the glorious, almost sacrilegious promise uttered by Lord Harry Potter Michael – water enough to bathe– had acted upon the settlement like a lightning strike on dry tinder. A current of raw, desperate energy crackled through the air, infecting his inner circle with a fervor that bordered on religious mania.
His commands, issued from the relative shade of the tavern's doorway, sent ripples of activity through the parched community. John the Minotaur, his bovine snort echoing with authority, immediately began drilling the newly formed militia—a ragtag collection of gaunt, but fiercely determined men—on the patch of cracked earth beyond the bus-barricaded gate. The clatter of their sharpened rebar spears against makeshift shields was a purposeful, martial sound. The memory of Andrew's tank and Jaunysmoke's attack was fresh; the single well was a jewel that had already attracted thieves. More wells would be a king's ransom, requiring an army to guard. The logic was as brutal and simple as the landscape itself .
Meanwhile, with a guttural roar that spoke of grease and grudging competence, Michael's Wuling Sunshine van—its shattered windshield now a gaping maw covered by a tacked-on sheet of cloudy plastic—lurched into motion. Old Gimpy was at the wheel, two guards clinging to the sides, embarking on their sacred mission: to resurrect the Sherman tank. That dormant metal beast, anointed with the precious, golden lubricants from the Vault, was to be their secret weapon, their final argument .
Lynda and Faye, meanwhile, became unlikely foremen. They moved through the throng of listless townsfolk who gathered in the central square, their voices, usually reserved for cajoling customers or whispering secrets, now ringing with unaccustomed authority. The offer Michael had devised—two meals and a full liter of water per day's labor—was, as Old Gimpy had vehemently insisted, not just fair; it was staggeringly generous. The notion of adding bottle caps to the mix was dismissed as ludicrous extravagance. In the economy of thirst, clean water was the only currency that truly mattered. The Honey and Maiden tavern was shuttered, its usual clientele of dusty, defeated men now transformed into a hopeful, jostling crowd of potential laborers. Michael felt a petty thrill seeing it closed. The pittance of caps it brought in was meaningless; he was playing for far higher stakes now .
As for the Great Lord Harry Potter Michael himself, he embarked on his own survey, Zach a looming, silent shadow at his heels. The task of choosing where to dig felt momentous, a divination. He had no dowsing rod, no geological training. His method was one of crude, desperate observation. He paced the perimeter of the settlement, his boots kicking up puffs of pale dust, his eyes scanning the dead ground. It was near the southwestern wall, where a single, monstrous saguaro cactus reared up like a gnarled, accusatory finger against the sky, that he stopped. The thing was a monstrosity, its skin leathery and ridged, studded with spikes the length of a man's forearm that glistened with a sinister, sticky residue. But it lived. In this blasted hardpan, it lived. That had to mean something. Its roots, he reasoned, must be drinking from something deeper than the occasional, poisonous dew. "Here," he announced, pointing a decisive finger at the base of the thorny giant. "We start here ."
The decision was barely made when a disturbance broke his concentration. One of the younger serving girls, a deer-hybrid with wide, liquid-brown eyes and short, velvety nubs for antlers, came sprinting towards him, her breath coming in panicked gasps. "My Lord! Come quickly! It's... it's a riot! At the tavern! They're blocking the door! Jaunysmoke sent me!" Her words tumbled out, painting a picture of imminent insurrection.
A cold, sharp anger, cleaner and more focused than any he'd felt before, flashed through Michael. So this is how it is?he thought, his mind racing. The moment I offer a carrot, they come for the whole cart. Andrew ruled with a fist of iron, and they were meek as lambs. I offer them water, and they think me weak?His hand instinctively went to the empty holster on his hip. "You," he snapped at the deer-girl. "Find John. Tell him to bring the guards. Now." He turned to the Ogre, whose single eye had narrowed to a dangerous slit. "Zach. There's about to be a... disagreement. When it starts, I want you to make an example. No holding back. And when it's done... the Spicy Strips. A whole box. Yours ."
The journey to the tavern was a short, furious march. Michael envisioned a scene of chaos, a mob brandishing tools as weapons, the windows of his precious stronghold being smashed. He prepared himself to be ruthless, to be the warlord the situation apparently demanded.
The reality that greeted him was profoundly different, and for a moment, it left him utterly disoriented.
There was a crowd, yes. Dozens of men, women, even older children, a sea of anxious, sunken faces turned towards him. But they were not brandishing weapons. They were on their knees. As he approached, a low, collective murmur rose from them, not of threat, but of supplication. "Please, Lord...", "A chance, Master...", "I can dig, I'm strong..." They were not a mob; they were job applicants.
John arrived a moment later, his bulk shoving through the crowd, his expression shifting from battle-ready fury to bewildered comprehension. He leaned close to Michael, his voice a low rumble. "They're not rebelling, my Lord. They're begging. Word of the work... and the water... it's like nothing they've ever heard. They're afraid you won't take them all."
The anger drained from Michael, replaced by a surge of something else—a staggering, humbling sense of power, laced with profound pity. He looked out over the sea of upturned, desperate faces. These were not ingrates; they were starving people offered a single crust of bread. He cleared his throat, forcing his voice into a tone of magnanimous command. "Enough! Get up! All of you! If you can hold a shovel and you're not crippled, you have a job! The work is hard, but the water is real!"
The sound that followed was not a cheer of victory, but a deep, collective exhalation of relief, a sob of gratitude from a hundred throats. In that moment, Michael felt like a king. A god. It was a terrifying, intoxicating feeling. He had unleashed a force he only dimly understood .
He had no idea just how big a force.
The following dawn, before the sun had fully scalded the earth, Cinder Town was already a hive of industry. The first order of business was the giant cactus. Its poisonous spines made it a lethal obstacle. Under the direction of a man who seemed to know about such things, a team carefully sawed at its base. With a great, groaning creak, the towering plant crashed to the ground. Even in death, it was valuable; Lynda and her team quickly moved in, hacking the fleshy parts into manageable chunks. "The pulp," John explained, "stretched with grain, can fill a belly. Too much, and the radiation sickness comes. But on an empty stomach, a man doesn't complain about the taste ."
With the workforce now numbering in the dozens, Michael's ambition swelled. One well became four, one at each corner of the settlement, a grand, symmetrical plan to secure his domain. The strongest men took turns in the pits, their picks and shovels biting into the unyielding ground. The clangof metal on rock became the settlement's new heartbeat. Weaker men, and boys not yet grown, formed human chains, hauling the spoil away in sacks made of woven, tough desert grass. Watching the growing mounds of earth and rock, a new idea, grand and foolish, sparked in Michael's mind: a bigger wall. A proper rampart, built from the waste of their salvation.
The progress was astonishing, a testament to the raw, brute-force physics of massed labor. By the end of the first day, the southwestern pit, his chosen spot, was eighteen meters deep. The second day saw it plunge past thirty meters. The work slowed as they hit a stratum of stubborn, sedimentary rock, requiring crowbars and sweating, bloody effort. Still, no dampness, not even a hint of cooler air from the depths. Michael maintained an outward calm, but he saw the flicker of doubt in John's eyes, the whispered conversations that stopped when he approached. The cost in food and water was immense, a visible drain on their carefully hoarded supplies.
Then, on the third day, as the depth passed forty meters, a shout echoed up from the darkness. A shovel had struck not rock, but a layer of clay that was cool and slightly pliable. Not water, but the memory of water. The promise of it. A ragged cheer went up, passed from pit to pit. Michael, peering down into the gloom, allowed himself a long, slow breath of relief. He had staked his credibility, his entire authority, on this gamble. The sight of that dark, damp earth was a vindication more potent than any bottle cap.
That night, exhausted but triumphant, Michael collapsed onto his bed in the tavern's upper room. The sounds of the settlement were different now—not the silence of despair, but the quiet hum of exhaustion from hard, hopeful work. He was on the edge of sleep when a soft, hesitant knock came at his door. For a wild, sleep-addled moment, a different hope stirred—a vision of Faye or Lynda paying a nocturnal visit. He opened the door to a different reality altogether.
It was Old Gimpy, his face etched with deeper lines than usual, illuminated by the guttering candle in his hand. He didn't meet Michael's eye. "My Lord," the old man said, his voice gravelly with fatigue and worry. "The work... the men... they eat like... well, like men who've been starving. The food stores... they're nearly gone ."