Author's Note: Awesome movie, can't wait for the next one.
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Glory to the Desperate
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"Glory to the Desperate,
And to those who've fallen down,
For they will find their merit,
Just when they're about to drown."
The Wasteland is not for the weak, but strength doesn't have to be evil. Capable comes to this revelation in bits and pieces, in flashes of touch and gesture. The memory of Nux's clumsy kiss on her cheek, Splendid's ethereal ghost on the rig, and the whispered gift of Max's name to a dying woman.
Joe's strength is not the strength of the women who now rule his towering citadel. Furiosa governs with ruthless fairness, and it is this fairness that the masses below the citadel subject themselves to willingly. She does not suffer fools, but she does not dignify suffering with greatness. Thus Furiosa becomes the Dreadful Queen, and the Wives become her Shield Maidens, things no longer.
They keep the Norse theme Joe had going- some things are harder to change than others.
The women are not things, Capable knows, and the desperate are not useless. And since none of them are things, they are people, and people are important- all people, even the dead. They would not be here without the sacrifices of the dead.
Capable repeats this all to herself as two days after the Wives' victory, she steals a car. Well, pursuit vehicle, as the two War Boys clamoring up into the back call it. They don't get off when she tells them that she's doing something stupid. Their response is loud in the silence, their answer in the slight creaking noise of bone white grips tightening on their bang spears.
She may be dragging them down with her in this seriously dumb plan of hers, but she's glad of their company. Capable is no Furiosa. She doesn't kid herself that her plan is probably going to fail, but things don't value the dead, and she's not going to leave Splendid and Nux and the Vuvalini to rot in unmarked sand.
Her plan is stupid, but it's the right thing to do. Even if it is a little mad.
The sun on the sand is blinding, even through the protection of her khol war paint, goggles, and heavy scarf. She's tried to mark herself up, make herself appear like just another wasteland wretch. Her red hair has been braided into dreds with greasy rags from the mech bay, and her face obscured with the War Boys' black paint in sharp slashes across her eyes and cheeks. She even blackened her teeth with ink. Anything to keep her from looking like a girl, like a Wasteland War Lord's prize broodmare. She sets out, feeling not at all ready, but unable to go back. Fortunately it's not hard to follow the Fury Road- it's well marked by carnage and destruction. Capable hopes that the road battle with Joe and his allies was enough to burn out any potential dangers that may lie in wait.
She's right, and she's wrong.
The fight between Furiosa and Joe upset the balance of the territories, but it practically built a flashing neon 'supplies for the taking' sign to scavengers. She should have expected the trail of bodies and destroyed vehicles to be a smorgasbord to the Wasteland's underbelly denizens.
Capable finds the crushed bodies of the Valkyrie and one of the Vuvalini lying half buried in the dirt. The push bar on one of the vehicles had sheared the skin off of the Valkyrie's head and caved in the back of her skull, but the body of the Vuvalini underneath her was relatively unharmed, save for the unmistakable fact that she was dead, and they are both covered in a shifting carpet of hungry black flies.
Capable makes the War Boys keep watch while she struggles with the bodies alone. It's a good thing too, because when she wraps the second body in burlap and begins to drag it back to the bed of the car, one of the guards lets out a loud whoop.
Looking up, she is just in time to see a small dune buggy crest the top of the hill and come barreling at them: one of the scavengers probably thought she'd found something of value that they missed. The concept of retrieving a body for burial would be alien to them.
Bullets pepper the sand in a line up to the side of their armored car, pinging uselessly off the side. One of her War Boys shouts with glee and lobs one of his bang spears. Say whatever you like about Immortan Joe: his people were all well trained, and the War Boy's aim is deadly. The dune buggy explodes, raining shrapnel and bits of flame across the sand.
It also sends up a tower of black smoke that an idiot couldn't fail to miss.
Capable glances back to the Citadel, now the barest smudge of a mirage on the brilliant horizon. There would be no help coming in time, if there was any help on the way at all. There probably wasn't, Capable figured. Furiosa didn't deal with idiots and the Citadel was hard won ground. She wouldn't risk losing it by leaving.
"We gotta go," she shouts, panting, stowing the second body and flinging herself into the driver's seat. The War Boys scrambled back over the shifting sand from where they'd been looting the smoking dune buggy. One wore a belt of explosives around his waist like wreath of deadly fruit and the other toted a sniper rifle with a barrel almost as he was- the strap of it a black slash across his scrawny chalk white chest.
When they are aboard, she floors the gas, spitting dirt and sand out behind her. Her car eats up the miles, retracing the Fury Road.
Unease begins to bloom in her when she realizes that while she sees many of Joe's destroyed vehicles, she doesn't see any bodies. Her knuckles tighten on the wheel. It's been two days, not long enough for the carrion birds to strip the bodies. There should be something at least.
Capable parks at the top of a dune overlooking the rocky canyon where Nux met his end. She cranks open the sunroof and pops out in front of her War Boys, one of whom hands her his binoculars. The other sights through the sniper rifle's scope, the long barrel resting on the roof of the car.
"What do you guys think?" she asks. It looks perfectly safe to her, but then again, war is not her trade.
"S' quiet," the one with the scope says, oddly hoarse.
"Lik'a grave," the other agrees, unable to squelch a little manic giggle.
A shiver runs up her spine, but she quashes it mercilessly. This is not a place to be frozen by fear.
"What are your names?" she asks instead, handing back the binoculars. They're both much older than the War Boys she's used to seeing- probably why they hadn't been part of Joe's War Party.
The War Boy with teeth filed to points and ruined stub of flesh for a left ear takes the binoculars. He merely grins at her, displaying all of his sharp teeth.
The other, slightly shorter, with pink lines of scaring forming an elaborate road map on his back that Capable can't read and a rattle in his lungs jabs himself in the chest with his thumb. "M' Dodge. Me mate is Zip. He don't talk much, got is' throat cut a ways back."
"I see," Capable says, and now she notices the wicked thick line along Zip's throat, "Well, thank you for coming with me. I'm glad I'm not doing this alone."
"Course," Dodge says fiercely, his strange rattling voice catching, "You n' the shiny ones brought the water. The freedom. Keep you safe."
Zip nods, his strange sunken eyes watching her out of his skull like face. So like Nux, it's painful. Capable is suddenly unsure she's ready to see his body, though she knows she can't leave him alone in the desert, lost forever in a sea of endless shifting sand.
"Thanks."
She pops back down through the roof and back into the driver's seat quick so that they won't see her cry. She misses Nux something fierce.
The skeleton of the War Rig lies plugging the mouth of the canyon, an almost unrecognizable wreckage of black metal. She parks the car a little ways from it, leaving the engine running. Capable shoves open the door to the car and her boots hit the sand.
"One of you stays with the car," she shouts over her shoulder, and runs to the remnants of the War Rig's cab.
Zip springs off the back of the car and follows her while Dodge slides into the driver's seat, revving the engine.
Capable scrambles and claws her way up the cab. The front of the truck is scorched and blackened. The fire burned hot and fast, but the sand put it out before it had a chance to really go anywhere. She half slithers into the cab through the broken window, searching frantically. Nux's body is gone. The inside of the truck is burned, but not enough to incinerate a corpse completely, and the War Rig's roll cage protected the interior enough to keep a body intact. Mostly.
None of this explains why Nux's body is fucking gone. What monster would steal a body but leave the ride? There were no bodies of the War Boys on the road here. The men belonging to the Bullet Farmer and the People Eater were gone too. Where the hell were the bodies? Rage boiled up inside her. Whoever or whatever took Nux's body was going to pay. She owed him that much.
Zip searches her face. "Valhalla?" He suggests.
Capable shakes her head fiercely. That was just a load of crap Joe told to keep his boys in line. There was something else. That they would be spirited away to a mythical hall in the sky, when Joe treated them like shit on the ground, was just plain silly. Someone had to have had a reason to steal a bunch of corpses. She was certain it wasn't going to be a reason she would like.
Capable was just about to suggest that they go back to the car to look for tracks or something when an explosion nearly threw her from the rig. Zip took the brunt of it, Capable could feel him flinch at the wave of hot air that pelted them with shards of flaming debris. Zip didn't give her a chance to move, he drug her down with him under the belly of the truck, in a small gap between the tank and the cab. From there they could see the flaming wreckage of her car.
More importantly she could see the things dragging Dodge's limp body to their truck.
They weren't like any Wastelanders Capable had ever seen before. Their car was a mishmash of parts, like most, but it was decorated with decaying human corpses stuck onto poles. The creatures themselves were pale and misshapen, and it took Capable a second to realize that they wore clothing made from human skin.
She thought she was going to be sick. The idea that one of those things could be wearing Nux or Splendid-
A few of them broke off and headed back to the ruined rig. As they got closer Capable could see the details in their skin garments- hollowed out faces and leathery shells of limbs. She could also see the almost translucent skin of the mutants who wore them. They'd mutilated their bodies almost beyond the point that they were human. Noses gone, stitched into flat slits, lips carefully sheered off, exposing red gums. No ears, no hair, just vast expanses of rubbery grayish pink skin and dark soulless eyes. She thought she was going to puke.
Zip wriggled around so that he was in front of her, and Capable saw him draw a long serrated knife from his boot. She drew the pistol she'd taken from the armory. They weren't going to take her without a fight. She was not going to become a people suit, not if she could help it. What would Furiosa do? She'd probably have a plan. Capable tried to think. All she could hear was the steady sound of feet towards their hiding spot, and the thudding of her own heart beat.
A sharp crack of a rifle broke through the tension, the sound echoing off of the rocks. One of the mutants dropped, head exploding in gobbets of meat. The other wielded around, searching the rocks for the shooter. Whoever had the rifle dropped him too, a hole opening up in the mutant's chest cavity in a spray of blood.
Capable lay frozen, Zip's hand like an iron band on her ankle, keeping her in place. The shooter might not know there was anyone hiding. The mutants that had taken Dodge were out of sight now, and Capable was itching to be after them. Without a doubt they had taken Nux's body, and most likely Splendid's too. The moment it was safe she would-
Boots crunched in the gravel, pausing in front of their hiding place.
The shooter bent, setting down his rifle, and Max's face peered in at them.
"Long way from home," he observed.
To be continued...