Chapter Text
The Ghosts didn’t leave him when he left the Citadel. They had never left, simply clung with their voices and their watching eyes and their pain. Throughout the chase away from the Immortan’s armada through to the return-journey back, however, they had at least quieted to a dull murmur. Tried to keep out of his way unless he really needed them (his hand still throbbed from when the spike had gone through it, but he knew the pain was better than the alternative. The silence his body still told him to avoid.)
He escaped into the west on a stolen motorcycle, the crowd of Wretched still roaring their approval behind him as the water poured from on high. To them he had only been a shadow in their collective peripheral vision, the man who raised their savior up from the depths of the dead Immortan’s car and helped her find her feet. They only had eyes for her, and rightfully so.
Three hours driving and Max adjusted to the arrival of a new ghost—the Keeper road behind him on the motorcycle as if she belonged there, smiling a toothy grin that he caught every time he glanced behind him to gauge how far he’d traveled.
“Just keep driving, son. You know what you’re going to find.”
He didn’t, but the calmness with which she spoke was a welcome change from the screeched warnings and pleas of his other ghosts, the ones who he couldn’t save. The Keeper had never been one for screaming in life either. Her death had been quiet, almost beatific. She rode behind him with that same enigmatic strength.
“Reliable, that’s what she saw and that’s who you are.”
He hummed in response, a soft sound ripped away by the roar of the wind. His name was Max, but he had been called many things. Road Warrior, Raggedy Man, Fool. Mad. Reliable was an adjective he had never allowed himself to embody, not when he had promised himself to remain undetached. Reliability meant constancy, involvement—and involvement meant loss, and its subsequent pain. His ghosts were proof of that.
But the Keeper was right. Furiosa’s word for him—reliable. He had become involved, against his better judgment.
So he drove, the long expanse of flat, dead Earth stretched out before him, an endless arc of sky holding him in its cupped palm. This was where he was meant to be, chasing the horizon line as it shifted away from him, his ghosts cleansed for precious moments in the roar of his engine and quick pulsing beat of his heart.
By nightfall Max had exorcised a good four hundred miles behind himself at least. He had gone parallel the direction of the mountains, where the crush of the War Rig buried an army of the dead. He knew it would take him a full day to reach that same pass, but nothing awaited him there but the rotting flesh of a boy with bright blue eyes and scarred lips, his dead brothers scattered beside him on their final journey to Valhalla.
No, Max could not return that way. He needed to find a path for himself elsewhere. Away from the dead.
The Keeper chuckled behind him. “Oh boy-o.”
Max grunted as he slowed down to stop beside a small outcropping of rocks. As soon as the engine was off, Max was treated to the absolute silence of the Waste. He had not been so absolutely alone for months, not since he had first been captured and strung up as a blood bag in the Organic Mechanic’s lair. There had always been others around him, mostly using him or ignoring him, but always there, rushing to and fro like rats scurrying through the dank darkness. The past few days had been different, still crowded, but instead with the wives and the Vuvalini and Furiosa. He released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, blood pounding through the veins of his forehead.
The voices in his mind changed this pounding into a chant, the same words chanted by the hundreds of refugees whose hands had reached upwards toward the sky beneath the mesas. “FURIOSA FURIOSA FURIOSA…”
“Help us Max!” Glory’s eyes filled his vision, wide and terrified for a moment before the headlights mowed her down. Max flinched backwards, falling to the ground beside his bike. He panted, overwhelmed.
“What is it with you, huh? What are you looking for?” It was a man’s voice now. A blond ghost with broad features, tired eyes and a bleeding pain in his side watched him from the shadows of the rock. Max ignored him as he stalked past the dead man to wedge himself between the rock and the sand, as protected as he could make himself in the desolate night. Papagallo didn’t stop talking as Max burrowed himself deeper. “You're a scavenger. You're a maggot.”
Max shook his head to clear it. It had been years since this ghost, this man who had tried to save his people and died in the trying of it. This ghost who had believed in the dignity of the human race despite all evidence to the contrary. Keeper clapped her hands delightedly from her perch atop Max’s parked bike. “I like this one.”
Max closed his eyes. The ghost wouldn’t stop talking, though the words grew fainter as Max’s tired body slipped from consciousness.
“You're living off the corpse of the old world. Tell me your story, Max. C'mon. Tell me your story. What burned you out, huh? Kill one man too many? See too many people die? Lose some family? ...Tell me your story.”
When Max woke abruptly five hours later, it was with Jessie’s name on his lips and Furiosa pounding through his veins. He took a few minutes in the half darkness of the clear and star-filled night to sense the insects creeping over and past him beneath the rock. He plucked some and ate swiftly, grit clinging to his teeth as he chewed. A swig of his water pouch and he was back on the bike, pounding the dirt westward. Further away from the Citadel, away from the living.
“What are you looking for?”
He found it sooner than he expected, his bike stopped by a scream from Glory, a blare of imagined headlights. After a moment of gasping and shaking the visions from his eyes, however, Max realized that the scream had not been that of one of his ghosts. He turned his head to see, a half mile in the distance, the husk of a white tree silhouetted in the moonlight. A shadow figure let out another, wrenching cry from beneath the pale branches. Max shivered, and he knew he was imagining the breath of the Keeper in his ear as she leaned close over his shoulder. “Have you seen my plant seeds? I think I’ve lost ‘em.”
He grunted a negative as he turned his bike to move slowly in the direction of the tree. It was an irrelevancy he didn’t need as he moved toward what very well may be a trap. Every instinct in his body was telling him to go back the way he was going, just keep driving. But his ghosts urged him forward with soft taps against his mind.
By the time he reached the tree, the shape had become distinguishable as not one but two—a woman, age uncertain beneath her hood, crouched over in the dirt with a small child, no older than two, tucked into her arms. They were against the trunk of the tree, its skeletal form curved over them like a shield. The child was crying softly, tears glistening like distant stars on her face. The mother’s wail had become a series of whimpers, eyes wide and terrified orbs trained on Max as he approached, bike left standing in the dirt a few paces behind him.
Max swallowed, insufficient words tasting dead on his tongue. “Who.” He gestured to the two. They were dressed in scraps of cloth and what could only be human leather. He could tell their skin was dark, and his internal map of the landscape placed them as members of the tribe of Rock Runners who he and Furiosa had barreled their way through in the mountains just a few days before. They must live in the caves there—what they were doing miles away from the shelter of the mountains was beyond Max.
The woman gasped, sound harsh on the air. She clutched the child close to herself, “She’s perfect. In every way.” The child’s smooth face stared silently out at him. “I’ve heard how she could live. The place with water.” The woman licked her lips in memory of the very word.
Reluctantly, Max pulled his water canteen off his jacket. Carefully, so very carefully, he placed the precious container a few feet from the woman’s feet, near where the closest branch almost touched the ground.
The woman, who must be the girl’s mother, reached weakly for the water. “Love, please.” The toddler, too thin for her age, small lips quivering, crawled towards the canteen and snatched it up with tiny hands. She never looked away from Max, who was aware of his own menace. He was a strange man in the dark, after all. He stood still, letting her see as much of him as she could.
The mother guzzled at the water, drinking too quick till she was coughing, hacking and spewing dark matter from her lungs. Liquid dribbled from the corners of her lips onto her clothes. Max could smell the bile in the air, but didn’t comment. Instead, he said the only words that he could think of, “The Citadel.” He had thought he could escape it, but it seemed to have followed him into the Waste.
She nodded. “The warlord who looked for wives years ago—he saw me and my lumps…” In the dim light, the woman pulled back some of her hood to reveal misshapen flesh starting at her neck and descending down towards her shoulders, probably lower. “He wanted ‘em perfect. And now I have Love, and she’s perfect in every way. She could be chosen, like I wasn’t.” The woman coughed again, a full body spasm. When it was done, she met Max’s eyes. “She could live good.”
Max didn’t know what he had done to earn this woman’s openness. People didn’t do this in the Waste—trust others with their stories, their hopes and dreams. Certainly not to road scum like Max. “You’re a maggot…” Pappagallo whispered. Max couldn’t look directly at the child, whose starving innocence was enough to remind him of Glory, the child’s voice screaming in his mind again as headlights flashed behind his eye lids.
He shook himself free as a single thought burst clear across his mind. The mother was dying. This was the only reason she was speaking, using up precious breaths to explain herself to Max, to make him understand. There was desperation in her eyes, and something even more dangerous: hope.
“You know where it is.” It wasn’t a question. “You know where the warlord is, the one with the water.” Max shrugged, looking away. He knew where the Immortan was, sure—body torn apart beneath the great stone skull that had been his sigil, bones passed between the Wretched like a prize. He remembered the way that Furiosa had leaned into his support, body trembling but strong as she stared upwards from the hood of Joe’s car. Max had felt her strength and understood that his job was done, his reliability no longer needed. Not when these women were pulling themselves upwards, toward a brighter future.
Max was not a creature for building. He was meant for running. But he stayed utterly still as he watched the mother wheezing on the ground, eyes losing their brightness with each breath. The woman didn’t try to speak anymore, and the silence was louder than anything Max had ever heard. The child had finished drinking, and her small hands closed the cap over the canteen like she understood how precious each drop was in the dusty remnants of this world. She had become older by necessity. Cautious.
He knelt down, arms spread and hands empty. “She your ma?” The girl nodded and leaned her whole body closer into the older woman’s embrace, though the mother’s arm had gone weak and slack around her. Max hummed, more to himself than to the girl. It was a sound one would use to calm an animal, soft and slightly sad. The girl gulped back a sob. “It’s her time,” Max murmured.
The Keeper whispered in Max’s ear, “The Earth’s too sour for some seeds. Spits ‘em back out, even the good ones.” Max rocked back on his knees until he was sitting on the ground, an unusually prone position when the winds of the Waste were howling so close to their mountains. He wondered if the mother had told her husband she was leaving, had told her clan she was taking such precious cargo away from their grasp to be given so freely to someone like Immortan Joe, and some hope for water and life. The strange things some people cling to for hope, for love. It was dangerous. Would they be chasing this dying woman and her daughter like Immortan Joe had chased his wives? Max’s instincts bristled, his ghosts’ fingers scratching the edge of his mind.
He bowed his head as he listened to the woman’s desperate breaths grow slower, more sporadic. The child became quieter too, stifling her sniffles on her mother’s sleeve. “I’ll take her to the Citadel.” He said it to the ground, but loud enough so they both could hear. “I’ll take her to where it’s Green.”
For a long while after the mother’s final, peaceful breath escaped into the night air, the child remained buried in her side. It took him an hour of silence and patience to convince the child he truly was no threat. Max remained as still as he could, shifting only to scratch away another of the Keeper’s whispers from his ears. The imagined roar of the child’s clan speeding after them in the night kept him wary, even as the child settled into a troubled sleep beside her mother’s corpse.
When she awoke once more, she did so with wide eyes trained immediately on Max. She seemed surprised to see he was still there, and he had not taken his canteen away from her, or approached her mother’s body with any ill intent.
“Love.” Max tasted the word between his teeth. “That your name?”
The girl tilted her head at him, and he took it as assent.
“We need to get moving, Love. The sun will be up soon.”
Love clutched her mother’s raggedy cloak in her small fists, a silent challenge.
“We’ll cover her with branches, but we need to move soon.” He pointed back the way he had come, back towards the citadel, where the name Furiosa beat something dangerous through his veins. He patted the ground beside himself and hummed a soft tune. Glory was in his mind, laughing out the words as if in surprise: “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, Counting all the monkeys he can see… Stop, Kookaburra, Stop, Kookaburra… That's no monkey, that's me.”
The child’s head cocked further, moonlike eyes a beacon as the first pink rays of sunrise lengthened in the horizon. Finally, she stood on short legs, grasping the canteen as she did so. A few, hesitant steps later and she was out from beneath the white tree’s branches, but still just out of Max’s reach. She placed the canteen at her feet and stared at him, once teary eyes now dry. Her pupils were green, and their intensity reminded him of another whose eyes had met his and spoke of a Green Place—and redemption. Eyes he had thought to have left behind.
Max stood, moving slowly so as not to startle but also because his very joints ached after the long hour of forced stillness. Gently he approached the mother, ducking under the branches to kneel beside her. Love watched as he placed two rough fingers over her eyelids and closed them one last time. She watched as he carefully, oh so carefully, searched her for anything of value in the folds of her clothes. All he turned up was an empty leather that must have once held water and a small, sharpened stone. He tucked the stone into one of his pockets, a final memento of a mother’s wild last hope. She must have been truly desperate to have wandered into the Wasteland with so little, her most precious child in tow. This kind of recklessness was beyond his understanding.
“We're still human beings, with dignity.” Papagallo murmured. Max took the mother’s hood and pulled it over her face before tearing some strips off the main part of her cloak. The child behind him whimpered only once, as he stood to wrench some of the branches off the tree. He crossed them over the mother’s body, a small shield against the elements.
When he turned back to Love, she was close enough to hand him his canteen. He attached it to a strap on his belt. The child then reached out her arms, a dangerous expression of need on her face. After only a moment of hesitation, he opened his own and lifted the small creature into his embrace. It had been so long since he had felt this once familiar weight, so long. His vision blurred for a moment, Glory’s ghost eyes seared into his mind.
“Come with me.”
The ride back toward the Citadel was slower than his ride away from it. Max needed to drive more cautiously with Love strapped to his chest by only a few strips of the mother’s cloak and a tight, child’s grip on his jacket. If he wanted to make up time without speed he would need to drive closer to the mountains, but Max knew better than to risk the Rock Riders and their wrath too much.
It was two hours before he was stopped by a wetness seeping through his thin cotton shirt. Love was crying, a snotty open-mouthed cry that needed to be tended to immediately. The Keeper clicked her tongue as he pulled them both off the bike. Max sat cross-legged with the child tucked into his chest in the scant shadows provided by the vehicle. The Sun was still rising in the East, a blinding light that he had had to squint his eyes into as he rode toward it and the Citadel.
“More than one wetness here,” The Keeper observed, and Max noticed with some surprise the dripping liquid between the child’s legs. Love ducked her head, sobbing at the discomfort. It had been so long since Max had been near young ones, he had forgotten how small their bladders were. Love flinched backwards when he made a movement with his hands, and his heart ached with sad understanding of the child’s fear. The world was a needlessly cruel place for one so young.
“Shh shh, it’s okay.” He wiped gently between the child’s legs with the edges of his own shirt, not caring that he was going to smell like piss for the foreseeable future. “Even the strongest leak sometimes.” He rocked her into his arms and rubbed soothing circles into her back till Love’s wracking sobs turned into even breathing. He looked down at the girl’s head, wiry dark hair tickling his nose. He hummed the Kookaburra song once more, lips pressed to the top of her head, till he sensed that she was asleep. Glory hummed happily along, cross-legged in the sand a few feet away.
Standing up and retying the straps that had held Love in place in his arms, Max remounted the bike and continued their journey into the sunrise.
Max sensed the danger before he saw it, the vibrations of the earth betraying the plumes of dust that kicked up from the bottom of the mountains. There were about three bikes, mere scouts. Not a war party, like he feared. They must have seen his bike going barely thirty miles an hour and thought him an easy target for fuel and other resources. If they found out what precious cargo he carried, both he and Love would be in even graver danger. As it was, Max figured he had seen them early enough to outrun them.
What he didn’t see was the trip line buried in the dirt, which caught his tires just as he was beginning to accelerate away from the scouts. There was a roaring in his ears as he pushed himself backwards from the falling bike, cushioning Love with his body as his head snapped back hard against the rocky ground. He could hear Papagallo shouting and Glory’s screams mixed with Love’s frightened wails as his vision went cloudy and black for a few long moments. He lay there, panting and aching, as the roars of the three scouts approached in the near distance.
“No time to waste lying here, sonny.” The Keeper observed. Max groaned and opened his eyes to see Love looking wide eyed into them, whole body sprawled atop his chest. He touched her hair gently, as if to reassure her, before tucking her body back into his as he rolled to a crouching position. He shook the ghosts from his vision as he looked around wildly for his bike, which had skidded a few yards away. Standing, with Love’s arms wrapped around his neck, Max limped as quickly as he could toward the bike. He had a sawed off shotgun stored there—two shots loaded, ready to fire. A knife in his left boot and another at his belt, and with a glance at the bike he knew immediately it was not going to leap into action any time soon, not without time for repairs. Once he propped the bike up to its kickstand, he loosened the straps around Love and lowered her gently to the ground behind the bike’s meager shelter.
“Stay still, and stay quiet.” He murmured to Love, whose large green eyes remained tear-free as she watched him turn toward the approaching bikers, her face peering between the wheel and the seat. Max watched the Rock Riders, their gaudy headwear billowing like ruffled feathers around their masked faces. This wasn’t a mere scouting mission; these were hunters collecting from their trap.
How had he let himself get so close to the mountains? He must have been distracted, the pounding urgency of Furiosa’s name knocking a headache on the inside of his skull.
“Love.” Max didn’t turn around to look at the child, sure that the quiet girl would have her entire attention on him regardless. She was smart; the world didn’t have time for lack of focus. “No matter what happens to me, head that way, “ He pointed towards the citadel, “There is a mother there. Tell her Max sent you.”
“Max,” the girl murmured, her voice quiet and full of gravel. Max stiffened in surprise, though he didn’t look around. It was the first word the child had said since he had found her beneath the tree.
“That’s right. Max.” My name is Max. That’s my name. He remembered the green of the child’s eyes, could feel them trained on the back of his head. Hope is a mistake, he wanted to say. If you can’t fix what’s broken…
Glory sang softly in the distance.
The three bikes were fanning out as they approached, clearly going to circle them. Max kept the gun tucked close to his side, out of sight, till he was sure they were close enough. Then, in one fluid motion, he raised the barrel and took aim, taking out the tires of the left-most one, the rider of which landed with a sickening crunch on his heavily loaded head. Max immediately repositioned and aimed for the chest of the one coming straight toward them. The two remaining riders slowed, and Max raised his voice to be heard over their revving engines. “Any closer and you’re dead men.”
The central one, whose headdress was the most elaborate and coated in a rusty brown color like dried blood, laughed. “You’ve got one shot left in that and two of us. Its worse than death for the ones we capture, specially if there’s too much trouble.”
“You’re here because you want something. I have water and some food to bargain—take it and I’ll be on my way.” Max said, voice even and authoritative. Blood Head tilted his head back and laughed, a harsh and mocking sound. The rider beside him, a smaller man with Bug Eyes, squinted and chuckled along.
“You’ve got something else hidden behind that bike, or I’m not half-life.” Blood Head said, gesturing toward Max’s bike with a gauntleted hand. “And I reckon its precious, by the tilt of your stand.”
If Max’s hand had not shook at the last moment as he pulled the trigger, Glory’s scream ringing in his ear, there’s no doubt he would have struck Blood Head right in the heart. Instead, he grazed the man’s shoulder. There was a pause, as if for breath, and then with a howl the two motorheads roared directly at Max. Max rolled out of the way as Blood Head narrowly missed hitting him head on with the bike. The two circled around again, now coming from behind Max’s bike, and he could tell they had seen Love by the way Big Eyes let out a delighted shriek.
“Max!” Love yelled, terrified, and he clambered to his feet to grab her as she ran from her former shelter.
“Precious cargo indeed!” Blood Head shouted, roaring back towards them. Max held firm as the biker skidded to a stop mere feet away, and Love wailed louder, face tucked under Max’s chin. “Such a precious morsel seems plentiful trade for your life and freedom.”
He didn’t deign an answer, simply hugged the child close to him once, hard, before placing her down on the ground behind his knees. She clutched at his leg, and he stood once more to stare Blood Head down.
He had slipped the knife from his boot into his right hand, and the hilt formed a comfortable weight in his palm. Big Eyes dismounted as well to come from Max’s other side, splitting his attention. “Oy!” Big Eyes shouted in surprise, “It’s the Leader’s spawn!”
“Well fuck,” The Keeper groused behind Max’s ear. “These ones have to die.”
Blood Head stepped towards Max again, “Think you can steal away our clans breeders, then, d’ya? Sick mongrel fuck like yourself?” Max saw the dart shooter a second before it fired from Big Eyes’s wrist, a long sharp stick flying past his face as he wheeled back. Off balance now, with Love clutching his right leg, Blood Head had time to bound, like a wolf, straight at Max. Max shoved Love to the side before he hit, and the two men fell backwards in a tangle of violent limbs. Max had his knife out and the strength of desperation, but it didn’t matter so much when Big Eyes had time to run up and kick Max in the head. The pounding of Furiosa’s name through his veins burst like the water from the Citadel, and for a moment he could just see white light and pain before he was brought back by another kick, this time to the stomach. His hand had dropped the knife and his fingers scrabbled for it in the dirt while trying to shield his head from another of the blows now raining down on his body from the two Rock Riders. There was a crack and a sharp pain blossomed in his chest from where one of their heavy boots had met a rib, forcing a hoarse cry from his lips.
“MAX!” He jerked upwards to see Glory—no, Love—standing red faced and terrified only a few feet away. The men looked toward her in surprise, having almost forgotten the child in their shared pleasure for inflicting pain. Max took the second’s pause to clutch his knife and stab upwards, piercing Big Eyes in the upper thigh, near his groin. The man howled and went down like a tree. Max rolled away and to his feet, panting, his ribs in agony with each breath, but still in a battle stance. Blood Head snorted angrily like a bull at the new development, grabbing a sharp mace that had swung forgotten from his belt. He was big, at least a head taller than Max, and he was mad.
Blood Head stepped over his fallen partner as he approached, swinging his weapon. “The Leader will reward me for this treasure, he will give me the guzzoline and the water and the glory, and when this one’s grown some years I’ll be the first to taste that sour cunt.”
“Kill the bastard,” Keeper snarled. Max nodded, and without a single word barreled forward with feral speed. Caught by surprise at the suddenness of it all, Blood Head had no time to swing very hard with his weapon before Max was upon him, knife embedded in the man’s chest and fists raining vengeful blows upon the rider’s face as they crash backwards into the earth. The mace, which was a small sharp ball of iron no larger than Love’s fist, had smashed into his left shoulder at half speed—but enough so that when he rolled off the dead man he felt the agonizing tear of it as the lodged spikes came loose from his flesh. Breathing hard, and with a last glance to where Big Eyes lay groaning and bleeding out into the sand, Max pulled himself a safe distance away, entire body throbbing. It had been a short, brutal fight, but they were okay. Love ran toward him, instinctively burying her face once more into his chest and forcing a groan of agony as he tried to gently pry her away from his bruising flesh.
One broken rib, a black eye already swelling shut, and a bleeding shoulder with a possible fractured bone by the way it hurt to even move his left arm—didn’t seem like a good state to be in if any other Rock Riders decided to venture away from the mountains, especially if this Leader was still looking for his prized daughter. Max took only a few moments to load up the Blood Head’s bike with all the guzzoline and resources he could scavenge before mounting and riding away, Love once more strapped to his chest despite the agony of her weight.
They didn’t have much time, all of his ghosts were whispering the same thing to him—Get away, get away! They encouraged him to ride as hard and as fast as he could, so he did. Love closed her eyes and instead of crying for fear as they sped faster than she had ever traveled down the endless plains, she chanted Max’s name over and over again like a mantra breathed into his neck. The soft way she said his name tickled his ear as they tore through the Wasteland’s dead air. His whole body ached with the burden of what he carried, yet he felt lighter than he had in years.
“Plant the seeds, watch ‘em grow.” Keeper shouted triumphantly from the back of the bike as the tip of the Citadel’s tallest mesa came into view. The sun was sinking into red behind them. Furiosa and her Green place lay ahead.