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In a way he regretted it, letting them find him out there, a bullet in his abdomen, bleeding out into the sand. He was going to die anyways, but now he’s going to die looking at the rusty metal ceiling of a bunker instead of the sky. He closed his eyes, trying to envision the stars one last time but his brain was clouded red in pain.
The sound of voices provoked him to turn his head. There were plenty of other sick and injured people in this camp doomed to share the same fate as him. The nurses buzzed around from patient to patient, though the one digging the bullet from his lower abdomen stayed right where she was. He was panting, the pain and blood loss making him sweat, he let his head roll to the side again so he could watch the nurses mull around. As a nurse walked past his line of vision a kid, no older than five, appeared standing in the middle of it all.
Max stared at the kid while the kid stared right back, arms rigidly at his side, eyes black like oil and hair to match. Suddenly a searing pain caused Max to break eye contact as he jerked up and a cry escaped him. He could hear the nurse yelling and there were blurs of shapes and his vision went white for a moment before he briefly returned to himself. His breathing was ragged when he turned his head again and blinked dully at the kid, now looming over him. The kid watched him with compassionless eyes. Why wasn't anybody telling him to move? Why wasn't anybody acknowledgeing him at all? Max could only stare at the childs obsidian eyes…they reminded him of the night sky, a cooling confort to condradict his searing pain.
The kid lifted his hand and ever so slowly reached for Max’s face. Max coule only watch the hand for what seemed like eternity, the closer it got the more rotted his fingertips looked. The kid’s boney hand was almost touching the skin of his cheek when they froze, unnaturally still. The boys head snapped to the side and he recoiled his hand to bolt away in a blur. The kid bumped into an old lady that was being escorted in, then continued bolting around the corner. The old lady collapsed silently, the person escorting her tried to break her fall but the collapse was apparently unexpected. Max watched as another nurse went to help, then as both nurses trying to revive the old lady until his vision finally went black.
When he woke hours later, a nurse was checking his bandages. She glanced at his face before returning to his wound.
“Almost lost you for a minute. You’re a lucky man.” She said, her tired eyes inspecting his wound. He was too drained to respond or inquire about the kid so he hummed and drifted off to sleep again.
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The next time he encounters this…entity, he’s in a similar situation as the first time, a bullet in his shoulder and nowhere to go. This time they are in the shape of an old lady, weathered skin and a toothless smile. She hummed softly while inspecting the dried up shrubs around him. He could tell it was the same thing as the boy though, those black eyes were what gave it away. Empty and infinite, he felt drawn to them.
“Who are you?” He croaked out, his back against warm stone. The woman stopped and looked at him with blank eyes then returned to looking at the dead plants. Eventually he drifted off to the sound of her humming and woke up some time later and spotted a fire. He dragged himself to the camp and survived.
The second time he asked he got a response. A few years after the first encounter, he developed a fever. He was shivering and sweating, a cough rattling his lungs, curled on his side, and using his jacket as a blanket. His throat was raw from the coughing, his chest hurt and his coughing fits left him dizzy from lack of oxygen. After a particularly nasty one he spotted her. That time she was in the shape of a young woman, with long black hair and olive skin and her trademark black eyes. She appeared to be playing with his bags, going through the little trifles he tended to collect.
“Who are you?” He barely rasped out. She looked at him, her black eyes wide and she blinked, her head cocked slightly. Then her face broke into a toothy smile but she turned her head coyly so he couldn't see.
“They give me lots of names.” She said so softly he barely heard her, then she turned back to him, her eyes still smiling. “Do you want to know my favorite?”
Max stared back, mouth slightly open, unable to respond, his raspy breathing filling the silence but she understood. She settled on her side down next to him, barely leaving any space between them.
“I personally like ‘The Widow Maker’ the best, but I like Yama and Cancer too. Hemorrhage, Bullet, Gun, Radiation, Aneurysm. Some call me the ‘Peace Maker’, but they’re just using me when they call me that.” She said as she slowly swept her hand around his head, her finger tips not quite skimming his hair. “But you can call me Death.”
He had stared at her, unable to talk, the fever having overcome him some time ago. He thought he might have passed out already and that it was all in his head, but her cold breath had made him cough. She smiled fondly at him then continued.
“Some call me Fate. I suppose that sounds nicer than Death, but they're just synonyms. It doesn’t matter if you have a happy or sad ending, or if you love or are loved. You all come to me in the end.” She said, trailing her index finger down the side of his face, her fingertip just above his skin.
“Do you hate me for that?” She whispered. He fell into another coughing fit and when he opened his eyes again she was gone.
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He doesn’t see Death for a long time, not until he’s taken as a blood bag. A month or two in they accidentally forget about him and leave him hanging for too long and nearly bleed him to death. He’s just about to pass out when he see’s Death in the form of a war pup that died just the day before. The pup had gotten his arm caught in a machine and was bled out by the time they got him to the Blood Shed, the Organic Mechanic failing to save him in time.
Max’s eyes drifted shut and he thought finally but then hands where on him and he distantly heard a voice yelling to cut him down and it was all black for a while until he cracked open his eyes to find he was lying on a flat surface, someone poking and prodding at him. His head rolled to the side and was unsurprised to find Death only a few inches from him. The pup had their arms folded on the same flat surface Max was laid on, resting their cheek on their forearm. Max stared pleadingly through the muzzle at Death but the pup looked blankly at him, showing no intention of moving.
The pup watched Max’s face as they hooked him up to another blood bag, and someone grabbed his muzzle and jerked his head up and tried to force him to drink something. Max sputtered and choked but was too weak to fight them and when he looked back Death was gone. A tear ran down the side of his face before he closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.
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Death gave no warning, not like his ghosts, so he only saw her when he was already wounded and should already be dead. Half a year after he survived the Fury Road, he ended up in another unfortunate situation that left him carless, supply-less, and most unfortunately, waterless. The human body can’t go very long without water, and that already short time frame is even smaller in the desert, the dry air and the beating sun sucking the moister right out of him. By the time he collapsed, even his eyes are dry and he forced himself not to blink to prevent his dry eyelids from scratching his corneas.
She appeared as a little girl that time, not Glory but about the same age. She was dark skinned with little braids with beads on the ends. She sat cross legged a few feet away from his head, not quite facing him,. She hummed while playing with the sand, picking up a hand full then letting it fall through her little hands back to the earth, like in an hour glass.
“You know, I’ve never had a friend before.” She said after a few minutes of silence, him just watching her. She possessed the tiny voice a child, innocent and sweet. She smiled, still not facing him but he can see the skin bunch on her cheeks. “I usually only get to meet people once you know?” She said, still smiling at her joke then turned to glance at him. There were some gaps in her smile, missing baby teeth that would never get to grow in. Then she went back to playing with the sand, he could see her smile fade.
“But not you.” She said, her sweet voice suddenly turned cool. “Everything I touch dies. Every man, woman and child and anything in between. But not you... you're untouchable.”
There was something disturbing about hearing such heavy words from a child's tiny, sweet voice. She continued playing in the sand while Max stared wordlessly at her, his cracked lips bleeding and parted, his dry throat unable to form any words. But then she continued.
“They hate me, you know. They think I cause the suffering in this world, but I just end it.” She said and went quiet again. "Everything ends." Was the last thing Max heard before he began to drift into darkness and when he woke up two days later he discovered a passing caravan had picked him up just in time before he got to succumb to dehydration.
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He spent months wandering, fighting, surviving. He had a few close calls but apparently not close enough to warrant a visit from Death or Fate or The Widow Maker or whatever it was that she wanted him to call her. He eventually started returning to the Citadel, to Furiosa and the girls. He drifted in and out, each time he left he found he missed them more than the last time he left. He brought them gifts, and would watch the girls faces light up and would feel a warmth stir in his heart that had been long dead.
He kept up the routine for years, until he barely left the Citadel at all except for the occasional mission. And it was one of those missions that lead to his hypothetical death, if he could die. He had been in the canyons, long since abandoned by the Rock Raiders, scouting around. He had been in a cave, high above the canyon when he made the discovery that those caves were not, in fact, abandoned. He was running for his life when he plummeted out an opening, down the side of the rocky slope. He fell and rolled, cracking his head open on a rock and his world went black.
When he came to, he had no idea how much time later, perhaps a couple hours or a couple days, he was laying at the bottom of the canyon. He felt like his head was spit open, and when he tried to move he found that his ankle was twisted and was highly suspicious his ribs were cracked too. He tasted blood on his lips and he winced when he looked up at the sky, the sun unbearably bright.
Out of the corner of his eye he spotted her and groaned. That time she was in the shape of Angharad, though she wasn’t pregnant. Like the last time, she sat a few feet away from him, not quite facing him, though she was drawing pictures in the sand this time.
“You a ghost?” He asked, barely able to mumble out his question. She huffed a laugh.
“Of course not. I’m Death.”
“Angharad…all of them. They’re all ghosts.” He mumbled, head lolling, trying to get the sun out of his eyes.
"They're not ghosts Max," she said smiling. "They're hallucinations. They're all in your head."
"Like you?" He mumbled. Her smile dropped abruptly and in a flash she was inches from his head, crouched next to him.
"No, I'm not. I'm real. I'm as real as this sand," she hissed, grabbing a fist full of sand that poured through her fingers. “I'm as real as the sky, I'm as real as the rocks that cracked your head open." She spat angrily. "I'm the realest thing in the whole world and don't you forget that."
He stared her, his eyes twitching to stay open. She seemed to compose herself and sat up. He stared for a while longer before slowly clearing his throat. She glanced at him then worried with the hem of her skirt.
"Sorry. It's not your fault that I can't do my job." She said softly after a minute. He laid in silence, taking each wheezing breath at a time. "Men have spent their whole lives searching for immortality, only to find me. They think it's a gift." She suddenly leaned back over him, her finger tips hovered over his skin as she skimmed down his jaw. "But you Max, you poor, poor thing, know it's not." She said, her black eyes filled with pity. "I'm sure someday this aversion to me will run out though, and I promise to be there when it does." She said coldly before leaning down so her lips hovered over his forehead and he closed his eyes, waiting for the kiss of Death. When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.
Eventually he was found by a search party and brought back to heal. He spent years in the Citadel, and watched as everyone else aged, as Furiosa grew gray then white, the Sister’s once smooth skin wrinkled and rough. And he…he stayed the same. Furiosa noticed it but it was Toast who mentioned it first.
"You're not getting older, are you?" She asked him. He couldn't answer, couldn't acknowledge it, because if he did, then it suddenly became true, and he didn't want that.
When Furiosa was truly old, he took her out into the Wasteland for one last adventure. They drove for days, he wanted to show her an oasis he had found long ago. But she died on the 10th day, quietly, and peacefully in her sleep. It infuriated him, that wasn't the right death for her. She should have gone out in action, surrounded by flames and the roar of engines...
Max dug a grave, and eased in, cradling her body like he did when he pulled her off the side of the Gigahorse so many years ago. He sobbed, running his hand over her short white hair and pulled his revolver out and pointed it at his temple. He squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the trigger…and it jammed. He cried out in frustration and climbed out of the grave and hurled it in the dirt.
“WHERE ARE YOU!” He bellowed. “You’ve taken everything but you won’t take me!” He yelled to the sky. He fell to his knees, sobs shaking his chest. “Jesse, Sprog, her,” He pointed to the grave behind him. “I want this over with! I want to go home!” He yelled hoarsely but there was no reply, just the deafening silence of the Wasteland. He held his head in his hands, and cried for a while until he could no longer. Then he was still, drained of grief and emotion and just stared at the sand. For others, their lives were like hour glasses, trickling away grain by grain, until the last one fell. But Max’s was different, he was the desert, vast and unrelenting. Untouchable. His breathing was calm as he stood up and started walking, abandoning all that was behind him, and let the desert consume him.