Chapter Text
The storm is rolling in over the dessert, rumbling with a low threat before he notices it. Max frowns to himself and blinks once, twice, just to make sure his sleep deprived eyes aren’t playing tricks on him. But no, it’s flickering low over the horizon and stretching from the east and blocking out the early dawn light. Moving fast over the vast waste by the looks of it. Which means it’ll probably catch up to him out here in the open, with no protection but his car.
Max sighs and rubs a hand over his eyes in an attempt to get them to focus. He can’t yet tell if it’s a monster windstorm capable of blowing his car away or just something that will get sand in every conceivable crack and cranny. Neither prospect is appealing, but if he wants to survive, or at least incur the least inconvenience, he needs to move out of this open stretch of desert and find some kind of shelter. Which means he needs to keep driving.
Stifling a yawn, Max revs his engine and drives towards the distant hill range. He’s at an angle to the incoming storm, but there’s a good chance he can beat it. Just so long as he can keep driving, which at this moment is not a given.
Some niggling part of him knows it’s not a good idea to drive through the whole night, stopping only when sheer exhaustion compels him to sleep. It’s dangerous, and he never wakes up after those all-nighters feeling anything resembling well rested. But sometimes it’s the only way he can sleep. The only way he can get his own mind quiet enough to let him drift off. As shitty as the bone deep weariness can be, as stupid as driving in that condition is, even that can be worth the few hours of blessed unconsciousness that follows.
Of course, there is the risk of running up against some situation that requires the full use of his faculties when he doesn’t have them. Such as right now, when really all he wants to do is close his eyes against the morning sun that’s finally arrived, but he can’t stop driving. He needs to keep going, keep his eyes open until he reaches safety.
Or at least shelter. There is no safety in this fallen world. Max doesn’t believe it’s possible for him to truly feel safe anymore. Not even out in the open desert, away from all human contact. After his run in with the Citadel war party and capture, even that solace had been taken away from him. He’d held out hope that maybe he could get back to a previous sense of security when he set out and found himself away from others, alone with only his own thoughts. So far, no such luck.
He gives his head a shake and tries to refocus on his destination ahead of him. There’s a definite uptick in the wind and the sky is getting darker, despite the fact that the sun is actually rising. The storm’s moving fast, so all he can do is ignore the dull pounding in his head and the small knot of worry that’s starting to form in his gut and keep driving.
Even over his roaring engine he can hear another ominous rumble of thunder, louder and closer now. The wind is also picking up, and he knows if he wasn’t driving he’d be able hear the quiet hiss of loose sand hitting his car. He can still see his destination so it’s not too bad. Not yet.
Focusing on the hill range, willing them closer to him, Max suddenly realizes what they are, where he is. He shakes his head after the surprise passes through him. This is another reason why you shouldn’t drive through the night while half dead with exhaustion. He’s not lost, Max knows this waste too well to get lost. But he wouldn’t have figured he’d driven this far, covered this much territory.
But there’s no denying these particular hills. They’re the range roughly two days south of the Citadel, the ones out of which he was chased and caught those many days ago. He doesn’t shudder, doesn’t flinch at the memory. There’s no physical reaction as Max purses his lips and stares, daring the craggy hills to burst out with trucks full of war boys, pour forth an avalanche of violence and pain.
They don’t of course. The hills are silent as he approaches them, offering up nothing but shelter from an impending storm. And since this storm has shaping up to be one from which he’ll need all the shelter he can get, Max merely speeds up, letting his car bump too quickly over the first rough rolls of earth.
After a few moments of hurried navigating deeper into the hills he finds a good spot in a shallow valley to wait out the worst of it. He has a few moments to spare before the storm fully hits, so amidst the constant rumble of thunder he gets out of and grabs a tarp from the trunk of the car. Quickly, ignoring the biting, swirling sand, Max secures it over his back window that’s blown out, hoping to keep most of the storm on the outside of his car.
Then he’s back in, closing his door and stuffing rags into the window cracks where they no longer close all the way. It’s only a few more seconds until the wind picks up sharply, turning to a ragged wail as it surges through the canyon. He feels his car sway in the stream of sand that’s all around now, and Max has just enough time to wonder if he closed the trunk all the way when there’s a bright flash of lightning, followed immediately by a crack of thunder so jagged he can almost feel it.
It’s here now, and he’s stuck until it passes. After a few moments of tension he decides the storm won’t get any worse, and that the sand filtering in through the remaining cracks will be the worst of it. Slumping forward to rest his head in the steering wheel, Max lets out exhale, feeling the full force of the exhaustion he’s ignored for the past ten minutes hit him. That and the headache, which now pounds dully behind his eyes.
What he needs to do is sleep, let the bone deep exhaustion pull him down into dreamless oblivion. But his head hurts a bit too much for that right now, so he’ll need to ride it out before he can rest. Or at least sleep, whether rest comes with it or not.
Feeling his car sway in the wind Max lifts his head, trying to see that the storm isn’t getting worse. But after blinking a few times at his windshield he realizes he can’t. Not that there’s much to see through the windshield anyway, the little canyon he’s tucked into is hidden behind a swirl of brown sand. But his vision has blurred he can tell, even as he shakily tries to lift his hand and bring it into focus. He can’t, and concentrating only makes his head pound harder.
Tired, that’s what it is, his eyes are too tired and he needs to sleep. He can feel his pulse throbbing through his forehead, or thinks he does. Maybe it’s not his pulse. Or maybe it’s not his forehead. Maybe… maybe… shit, he can’t think, can’t process.
His head is still hurting, but somehow from further away. He can’t get back to it somehow, even when he opens his eyes (did he close them?) all he can see is a shimmering light, gently fading and growing brighter, swirling in his vision. He would focus on it if he could, but now he can’t focus on anything. Everything is hazing over, the light growing dimmer, the pain even farther away, and Max can feel himself fading, into…
It’s a slow fade out and another slow fade back into consciousness sometime later. How much later he couldn’t say, although not so long that the wind has stopped howling. Or is that all in his head, the hollow moaning sound just pain trying to leak its way out of his skull that’s most definitely been drilled open? It’s louder now, which means the storm has picked up steam. He should probably open his eyes and check.
But Max can’t care about that right now. Can’t care that he’s slumped over and has his head on the sand covered passenger seat. Can’t care enough to wonder if sand got in his water or guzz tanks. Nothing matters, nothing exists beyond the thrumming agony in his head and the sudden full body ache that leaves him moaning in pain just from breathing. It’s like he’s been hit by a car or ran for miles and miles the way all his muscles scream with fatigue.
Again he doesn’t know how much time passes, although anything shorter than eternity seems unlikely. All he can do is lie there, waiting for the hot pain behind his eyes to dull and for his limbs to regain some of their strength. Eventually he pulls himself upright back into the driver’s seat and almost blacks out again from the wave of dizziness that passes over him. He feels nauseous and can only close his eyes against it, waiting for his gut to settle.
All he can do is wait, for the storm to pass, for his head to clear. He doesn’t know for how long. Sometimes it only takes a few hours to go back to feeling normal, sometimes a few days. The… blackouts? spells? He doesn’t really know what to call them, they come and go with no rhyme or reason that he can determine. Someday one will come at the wrong time he knows. Someday he won’t be alone, and his lowered defenses will cost him his life. Someday, just surviving won’t be enough.
~~~~~
It’s another few hours before the storm passes completely, leaving a midmorning sun shining down cheerily from a clear blue sky. The bright glare wakes Max as it glints against his windshield and into his face where he’s reclining back in the driver’s seat. Blinking against the bright intrusion he groans and think about rolling over, away from the sunlight.
But instead he (slowly) gets up to look for any damage. There’s a fine layer of sand on top of every surface in the car, including him, but otherwise everything looks to be fine. Which is fortunate, because Max is going to go back to sleep for the next few hours, and not having to worry about any damage or repairs will hopefully make that easier.
He looks around the canyon he’s driven into and tries to reorient himself. He’s only a few days from the Citadel and it will take a couple of days for him to drive around if he’s going to avoid being scouted out. Assuming they still have scouts. There isn’t anyway to know unless he gets near enough to spot one or be spotted.
He’s heard at a few trading posts the overthrow of the old Citadel order was successful, that a new council has been set up there and water is more freely flowing to the region. Which is good. Honestly it would have been a blow to hear that all that danger and sacrifice on Fury Road had been for nothing. He doesn’t know if Furiosa or any of the wives are actually running things now, but imagines they have to be involved in some way.
Thinking about them, and being so close he wonders… It would be such a risk going back there, even getting close. What if the rumors aren’t true and everyone isn’t welcomed? Or what if escaped bloodbags are the exception? He has nothing to gain really. The Citadel holds nothing for him. Nothing except…
Except maybe seeing for himself would be nice. It’s a rare thing in the wasteland to hear a story of justice prevailing. And if the stories are half true it has indeed prevailed. To just see it, to know it’s real. He can’t say it’ll make what happened to him worth it, but it will make it not in vain. And sometimes, out here in the harshness of a fallen world, just knowing your pain isn’t completely meaningless is all you can ask for.