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Her bones are scattered across the desert.
Crushed and twisted, mingled with the wreckage of the other fallen. But he still knows her. He crouches at her side, lays a hand against her flank.
Max closes his eyes. The screams are closer today. Everything he has ends up scattered across the desert.
Her metal burns. He removes his hand.
"Was it yours?"
He jerks back, falls. Code 1. Requesting backup. He's lost time, and now he's surrounded. Bikes, mostly. A truck barely cobbled together. Dark figures, a dozen, two. Rifles, handguns. Harpoon. Flame-thrower. He scrambles back to his feet. Goose is dead. They're all probably dead, now. He has no backup.
Save us, Max. The accusing dead have stopped screaming, but now he can hear what they're saying. Save us. Max. Max.
"Max?"
He flinches, but he remembers. His name wasn't taken, he gave it. Stupid. But this girl isn't dead, doesn't need saving. She's not blaming him for anything.
"Calm down," she says. "Calm down. It's me. Toast?"
He recognizes her now. Not a girl. She has her own gun now, her own ammo. Wearing real clothes, must be a relief. Her white scarf is wrapped around her head. Pretty. It protects her from the sun. She still glows like a beacon, though now it's a choice for everyone to see.
"Toast," he says. "The Knowing."
"There we go," she says.
He looks at the others now. They're well-armed, but it's a salvage crew. Here to pick up the bones.
"She's not mine," he says, and, "I had to rebuild her."
Toast rolls her eyes. "Then it is yours."
"Not anymore," says Max.
Toast mutters something under her breath.
"Build it again," she says.
Max looks down at the chassis. Broken. Mangled. But with the heat shimmering off her, he can almost see her whole. Newborn, the pride of the MFP.
The last of the V8 Interceptors. Meanness set to music. The bitch is born to run.
He blinks, and she's broken again. Those were words of hope. Hope is dangerous.
But... he needs a car.
"All right," he says. "All right."
~*~*~*~
The salvage crew is hauling everything back to the safety of the Citadel.
It's not a place for Max.
Toast doesn't look surprised. "There's a sentry post," she says. "Furiosa says it has a garage."
The two sentries scramble out when they see them coming: a war boy and a large woman.
"Tribune Toast," she says. "The east is clear today. One flare to the south."
"Black?" asks Toast.
"Red," says the woman. Toast nods.
"Yesterday we saw scouts from the Bullet Farm," says the war boy. "But they turned back."
"Yes," says Toast. "We got your message." The war boy beams. "This is Max. Furiosa says to send for anything he needs."
"I don't need anything," says Max.
"You don't have to listen to him to let us know," says Toast to the woman.
~*~*~*~
"They called me Mater," says the woman. "This is Mig."
"Hello, hello," says Mig. He shoulders his oxygen canister and climbs up to the observation dock to watch. The sentry post is at the foot of a high plateau, nearly invisible among the scree that surrounds it. It's dark and cool inside.
When Mig’s off-duty, he helps clean and bandage his wounds. After her shift, the woman they called Mater helps him sort through the remains. She looks soft but she's strong, can lift more than him with his wounded hand. There's a constant stream of chatter as she works, but he doesn't mind after he gets used to it. Unlike Mig, she doesn't expect him to respond.
He learns she had been a breeder when she was younger, then a milking mother. Now she's a sentry.
"I always wanted to see what was out there," she says. "Now I do." She writes down the parts laying in neat rows on the floor. "I think I'll call myself Watcher."
Max grunts. Watcher nods, satisfied, and tells him about Imperator Furiosa's first raid, the one that earned her the right to a war rig.
~*~*~*~
Watcher orders too many replacements he didn't really need and sends the first mechanic away. The second is an old woman with tattoos on her face. She doesn't talk. Her silence helps dampen the screams away while he's working.
Mig's helping him paint when Watcher calls down about visitors from the Citadel. Max wonders why; Furiosa's too sharp to have lost control already, so there shouldn't be any danger. But by the time Toast comes him with a sledge of supplies, he's prepared himself enough to talk to her.
"What's all this?" he asks.
"Jerky, dried fruit," says Toast. "Gallons of water and guzzline. Heard you were about ready to leave."
He grunts. She sits down on the edge of a crate. Mig salutes her, accidentally gets paint all over his forehead.
She laughs. Max startles; he’s never heard her laugh before. "You're not on a raid yet," she says to Mig.
"No, Tribune," he says, and submits as she scrubs it off with her sleeve. Then he flees up to the observation deck with Watcher.
The paint is a flat grey. It should be a little cooler, maybe. It won't betray him in the sun's glare or in pools of shadow, where black is too dark. Max finishes the detailing around the back bumper. He doesn't know why: it's far more likely that one or the other of them will be wrecked long before corrosion has a chance to set in.
"You're just like Angharad," says Toast. "She never asked for help." She falls silent.
Max stares at his hands. Unwillingly, he remembers Jessie when she was carrying Sprog. She would have hung off the side of a rig, too. They all ended up in the same place without him.
Angharad didn't ask him to save her. He wishes the rest of the dead wouldn't.
"She would have laughed," says Toast. "To know that we'd come back and take the Citadel for all of us."
Max thinks about this, and nods.
"She'd know what to do, when they all... look at us," says Toast. "Like we have all the answers. Like we're a new—" Her lip curls. "—Joe." She looks at him, now. "Is that why you're leaving?"
"I don't like people looking at me," he agrees. They don't see what he is, bones scattered across the desert. They think he's a hero.
But he doesn't think they'd be wrong, looking at Furiosa. And Toast won't put up with worship, he can tell. He remembers her sharp looks on the war rig. She wants loyalty. It will be lonely until she gets it, but she'll narrow her eyes and count her ammo and do what needs to be done. Toast can rebuild herself.
"I'm supposed to tell you you're welcome to stay, but I know you won't," she says.
Max grunts.
"You're welcome to come back, too," says Toast. She doesn't add But I know you won't, even though they're both thinking it, and its absence wriggles into his mind and settles there quietly.
He stands up. So does Toast.
"You should get a dog," he says.
"A big ugly mutt, so people stay away," Toast replies. "I'll name it after you." She reaches out, deliberately, and taps his shoulder twice. Then she nods to his car.
"Well, she looks good, anyway," she says.
Max nods too. She does.
~*~*~*~
He's ready to go in the grey light before dawn, but climbs up to the observation platform when Watcher calls his name.
"Before you go," she says. "Look."
He puts his eye to her telescope and sees the Citadel. They're letting out more water; they do it three times a day now, and Watcher told him Furiosa had the pump crews looking for ways to distribute to anyone at any time. In the meantime, they set aside rations for those who have need.
He sees Furiosa now. Favoring her side a little, but standing strong. She's talking to one of the water supplicants. They all are, Capable and Cheedo and the Dag and Toast. They keep talking even once the water shuts off and the people begin to trickle away. Then the sun rises, and with it the platform. They all raise their hands in farewell.
His own hand twitches; his fingers ache.
It's not hope, exactly, but something else quiet in the clamor his mind. Like a soft echo of certainty, or justice. Things dead and gone, still casting shadows. Still strong enough to pull your rig out of the mire.
There's a winch on the front of his car, now. He and the mechanic reinforced the undercarriage so she wouldn't tear herself apart just trying to get free.
He pulls back from the telescope. Mig mumbles a sleepy farewell from his corner. "The south road is clear," says Watcher, and returns his nod.
He climbs in his car. Last of the V8s. It's familiar, and all the more unfamiliar for it: a patched and battered profile based on necessity and his own uncertain memories.
Save us, Max. Save us.
"If all the parts are different," asks Watcher, "Is it still the same car?"
Toast snorts. "It's whatever you say it is," she says. "You keep fixing it, until it's what it's meant to be."
Max drives.