The Burners, and How Sheila Went Proper Cooked

From the Journal of Little Copper Nick, aged 14 seasons.

Entry: The Burners, and How Sheila Went Proper Cooked.

Right. So Pop, he always said the world went sideways after the Great Slow Burn 'cause the sky got too smart for its own good. Started rearranging things, like you'd shuffle a deck of cards, but with whole waterholes and mountains. We all just called it the Raskoll Effect. Made no bloody sense to us, but things just... shifted. You'd see old road signs flickering, leading you to nowhere, or automated gates that'd suddenly clang shut on you. It was like the old roads themselves were still alive, but utterly mad.

Before all that, there was Sheila. Not 'Saint Sheila,' not 'Mad Sheila,' just Sheila. She ran the big water point south of the Dust Bowl, a proper oasis, it was. Traded water for fuel, for scrap, for whatever poor bugger had something left to offer. She kept a fair go, too. Her mob was fed, they had a roof over their heads, mostly. A real backbone, that Sheila. Hard, but fair.

Then, one scorcher of a day, the ground started to grumble, not a normal tremor, but a deep, churning groan. The water in Sheila's spring, it just... vanished. Poof. Gone. Like someone pulled a plug. That was the Raskoll Effect at work, doing its incomprehensible 'thing.' Just a big, unseen hand moving the pieces around.

Sheila, she watched her people die. Watched 'em scatter, desperate for a drop. She stood there, in the baking sun, screaming at nothing. Her eyes, they went proper cooked, like embers in a dead fire. That's when she went mad, truly mad. She started jabbering about how the world wasn't just busted, it was trying to kill us. How the Raskoll Effect wasn't just random, but some kind of great, blind force that wanted to cleanse everything with fire. "Only fire can set things straight!" she'd yell, like a banshee in the wind. "Burn it all down! Only through ash comes truth!"

I saw her myself, one time, after she’d started gathering her cult. She was in an old knackered factory, fire roaring out the windows. She looked like a shadow dancing in the flames. And then, she found one of those old Raskoll terminals, buzzing like a pissed-off mozzie. She just stared at it, and the screen, it flashed. Not just the usual gibberish, but glimpses of weird, impossible things. Giant glowing plants. Floating cities. And then... a quick flash of the water shifting, the ground changing. The very thing that took her spring.

She came out of there, not Mad Sheila anymore, but Saint Sheila. She had a look in her eye, like she’d stared into the belly of the beast and liked what she saw. She started preaching about how the Raskoll Effect was the spirit of destruction itself, telling her to finish what it started. To burn it all down, make way for whatever new, strange thing was coming next. To her, it was a god of pure chaos and cleansing.

Now her mob, the Burners, or the Cult of the Scorched Earth as they call themselves, they're everywhere. Driving their beat-up rigs, packed to the gills with explosives. They don't just race; they turn every smash-up into a bloody sermon. Their rigs, see, they're rigged to blow when they wreck. Not just a bit of smoke, but a proper, glorious bang that takes out anything nearby. They reckon it's an offering, a way to help the Raskoll Effect cleanse the world.

Pop says they're nuts, that they're just adding to the mess. But sometimes, when one of their rigs goes up like a roman candle, and the shockwave rattles your teeth, you almost feel it. Like the world's having a spasm, clearing its throat. And for a second, just a second, you wonder if old Saint Sheila isn't so mad after all. You wonder if the Raskoll Effect really is just trying to burn everything clean.

Me? I just keep my distance. And always, always get out of the way when you see a Burner rig heading for a pile-up. Unless you want to be part of their next "sermon," that is.