A voice, loud and brimming with furious authority, shattered the heavy cloak of Derrick's sleep.
"Hit it! Smash it! For the love of—you're doing it backwards, you blithering idiot! Put your back into it, you great lump! I'll throttle you myself!"
Derrick jolted awake, every sense instantly alert. The words, tumbling over each other in a vibrant stream of inventive profanity, painted an immediate and familiar picture in his mind: some fool with light fingers had been caught in Cinder Town and was now receiving a thorough, and likely well-deserved, beating at the behest of an outraged master. A fierce, uncharitable joy spiked in his chest. One less competitor for the coveted positions.
Scrambling from his shallow scrape, he peered towards the source of the commotion in the dawn's pale grey light. The scene that met his eyes was not what he had imagined, yet it was, in its own way, far more astonishing.
At the edge of the settlement, near the ever-expanding earthworks, a great, hulking machine coughed black smoke from its exhaust. It was a loader, its yellow paint startlingly bright against the dull earth. Before it, a massive steel bucket chewed into the ground. The operator, a man whose face was pale with concentration and terror, was guiding the beast with all the grace of a newborn giraffe. The bucket would lurch forward, scrape pathetically at the soil, and often come up half-empty or miss its mark entirely.
And there, standing perilously close to the machine's grinding treads, was the source of the magnificent shouting. A man in a stark white shirt and black trousers, his dark hair neatly combed. He looked clean, impossibly so, and his clothes were unsullied by the pervasive dust of the Barrens. This, Derrick knew with absolute certainty, could only be him. The Master. Harry Potter Michael. Only a man of such legendary, almost mythical standing would dare to dress with such flagrant disregard for the environment, and only he would have the sheer audacity to stand so close to the roaring machine, berating its pilot with the vigor of a drill sergeant.
His voice, rich and robust with health, cut through the diesel growl with ease. "Not like that! You're scooping air, you great pillock! Angle the bucket! Angle it!Imagine it's a spoon and the dirt is the last bit of stew in the pot! Are you even listening to me?"
Derrick watched, transfixed. The master's anger was secondary. The true revelation was the machine itself. Finding ancient, rusting hulks of pre-Collapse machinery in the ruins was not unheard of. But finding one that worked was rare. Finding one that worked andfor which you had the seemingly endless fuel to run it? That was not just wealth; it was a statement of power so profound it bordered on arrogance. Cinder Town's resources, it seemed, ran far deeper than the sweet-water wells. The conviction that had taken root in Derrick the previous night hardened into unshakable resolve. He wouldkneel before this man. He, Derrick Morgan, was destined to serve here.
About half an hour after the sun had fully cleared the horizon, Derrick found himself standing in a ragged line with about thirty other scavengers. They were a motley, dangerous-looking crew, assembled in a patch of cleared ground outside the town walls under the watchful eye—and the business end of a rifle—of a Town Guard. Every man's eyes, including Derrick's, held the same calculating, predatory glint. They sized each other up, hands resting on an assortment of welded-together firearms, sharpened rebar, and homemade blades. The air crackled with a tension that promised violence. Only the fear of displeasing the master kept them from tearing into each other right then and there.
The guard overseeing them was a tall, dark-skinned man whose very appearance was an act of provocation. His crisp, clean T-shirt, vividly patterned shorts, and what looked like rubber sandals were a level of casual opulence that made Derrick's fingers twitch with the urge to simply take them. The man's nonchalant confidence suggested he knew exactly the effect he had, and that the rifle in his hands was more than just for show.
Their attention was drawn by the arrival of a small procession. An old, wiry white man with a face like a wrinkled apple and, notably, only one ear, stumped forward. Two guards flanked him. A murmur rippled through the line. Many recognized Old Gimpy, the former barkeep. But the hunched, servile figure from the 'Honey and Beauty' was gone, replaced by a man who carried himself with a newfound, puffed-up authority.
Old Gimpy stopped before them, thumbs hooked into his belt, and surveyed the line with a disdainful sniff. "I know why you're here," he began, his voice a reedy rasp that nonetheless carried. "You've heard of the Master's generosity. You've smelled the food, seen the lights, dreamed of the water. You think you can just walk in and become one of us? Let me tell you, it's not so easy. The Master needs men who can fight. Men who can kill. Not every mangy stray that whines at the gate gets to be one of his hounds."
He paused, letting his words sink in, clearly savoring the power he wielded over the hardened scavengers who listened in submissive silence. The old man's chest swelled with importance.
"And you should know what you're signing up for," he continued, his tone turning grim. "In about half a month, the Master leads an expedition. Into the Detroit city ruins. We need to retrieve something from there."
A frozen silence descended upon the group, as if the very breath had been stolen from their lungs. Then, a low, collective hiss of utter dread. They were scavengers. Their entire lives were spent picking through the skeletal remains of the old world. They all knew, in vivid, horrifying detail, what 'Detroit city ruins' meant. It wasn't just another crumbling town. It was the epicenter. A place where the very stones wept radiation, where the shadows themselves were said to be alive with twisted, hyper-aggressive variants of the Infected. It was a byword for a death so certain it was almost a geological feature.
The bravado and competitive fire drained from the men like water from a shattered cask. One by one, faces grey with terror, they began to slip away from the line. The promise of a future was meaningless if that future was a corpse melting into irradiated sludge. The risk was not just death; it was a transformation into something unspeakable.
When the exodus finished, only a dozen men remained in the line. Derrick, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, was one of them. The choice was insane. He knew it. But the alternative—a slow, dusty, thirsty, and meaningless end in the Barrens—was, to him, a far more terrifying prospect.
Old Gimpy looked at the remaining dozen. The disdain melted from his face, replaced by a strange, almost paternal approval. He smiled, a crooked, gap-toothed thing. "Well then. Welcome, you brave, foolish sods. Welcome to Sweetwater Ditch."
The new name hung in the air. It was Derrick who found his voice first, confusion overriding his fear. "Old Gimpy, sir? This is Cinder Town. What's this 'Sweetwater Ditch'?"
The old man puffed up again, delighted to explain. "Name's been changed. The Master's decree. 'Sweetwater,'" he said, gesturing grandly towards the settlement, "for the wells. The sweetest, deepest water in all the Barrens flows here." He then turned and pointed a gnarled finger at the formidable defensive trench that now completely encircled the town walls, filled to the brim with clear, reflected sky. "And 'Ditch'… well, look at it! A proper moat, that is. Keeps the riff-raff out." He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Then, his smile widening, he delivered his gift, his voice taking on a theatrical, generous tone. "Now, to celebrate your… commitment… you may drink. Drink your fill from the ditch. From this moment, its waters are yours to use."
For a long moment, the men just stared. Then, as one, they broke ranks and stumbled to the edge of the water-filled trench. Derrick was among them. He didn't bother cupping his hands. He fell to his knees, plunged his entire head into the shocking, cool clarity, and drank. He drank like a man who had crossed a desert, which, in every way that mattered, he had. He gulped the sweet, clean liquid until his stomach ached and protested, until he thought he might burst.
Finally, he rolled onto his back on the packed earth, his belly distended, water dripping from his hair and beard. He stared up at the wide, indifferent sky, a profound, almost dizzying sense of well-being flooding through him. In that moment, bloated on clean water and clinging to a sliver of suicidal hope, Derrick Morgan had never felt so rich, or so utterly damned.