His throat afire, nostrils thick with smoke, and the bite of Guzzoline still in his mouth, he roused to consciousness. He couldn't open his eyes or perhaps they were open and it was too dark to see anything.

Was Vahalla a place of night? He had always envisioned it with fresh roads lacing a vast desert, the sun beating down from a cloudless sky but never burning.

His skin sizzled as though he still congealed in the belly of the burning car. The pain lanced through his waking mind till he could barely catch breath, the whole right half of his body stymied with agony.

"Witness..." he croaked. "Did someone... witness?"

The ground budged underneath him. He let out a strangled cry as he was hauled onto a metal surface. A soothing voice of an older man mumbled as soft cloth drifted down over his ruined body.

This was no Valhalla. He hadn't passed through the chrome gates into eternity. He was still living his half-life, his body wrecked, his world one of darkness. He had seen other War Boys returned to the Citadel from failed raids, their bodies already weakened by disease now destroyed by fiery collisions. He had always looked on in curious disgust at their curling flesh and pathetic cries for a merciful end. Now he was being returned to the Citadel to lay in wait for a soft death, the target of scorn and repulsive pity, no longer revered as one of the greatest War Boys of his generation.

He was Slit, the ruthless, the unpredictable, the devout. The perfect.

He would reopen his wounds out of boredom and staple them back together, deepening scars to show his devotion, that he would go to any lengths for the Immortan. Tall and muscular despite their lean diets, he was the kind of War Boy who made a glorious end.

He would have wept for his meager destiny if there had been any water left in his body, if he could think about anything but the agony.

The gravelly voice mumbled as he was dragged over uneven ground, every bump sending ripples of misery through his being. Every now and then, a word would float through his ringing ears.

"...But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges...under his raiment...And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man." Slit's torment drowned out the rest of the words then they faded in once more. "And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly."

"Witness..." Slit begged, knowing it was too late for that now.

He would never see the chrome gates, he would never rise to the glorious afterwards, he would remain in the dust and rust with cowards and traitors like Nux.

"I am witnessing, you Cankerworm," the old man snarled to Slit's muted surprise. "Be silent and listen. You might actually learn something worthwhile for once in your miserable, little half-life."

~o~

Blissful coolness spread over his seething skin. The relief brought him around as the bracing rush of cold water fell over his chest, neck and scalp, as though he stood under the steady fall of water from the mouth of the Citadel, the immaculate Immortan Joe sloughing the shameful wounds from his body.

"That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten..."

No. It hadn't been a dream. He was still a ruin of a War Boy, his chance at eternity by the side of his living god lost forever. It was all that filthy traitor's fault. He should have left Nux to shrivel away in the Citadel. It was all because of him.

"Dirty traitor-" he growled.

"Shush!" The unknown man snapped. "Be quiet and listen... and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten..."

"Who are you?"

"John called the Judas," he answered as another wave of water soothed Slit's darkness. "John was a common enough name in the Old World. Though I'm sure you've never met another called it."

Slit's bum eye, the right one with the white membrane shrouding the blue, cracked open. He blinked up at a shiny ceiling, gleaming with electric light, the edges muted with his weak vision in that eye. Steadily, he realized that both his eyes were open. But he was only seeing from the one. He drew a halting breath through his nose.

"I can't see- I can't-"

"I shouldn't think so from the looks of that eye. Had it from birth, eh?"

"No...not that eye." Slit tried to lift a hand to rub his good eye but couldn't muster the strength. "I can't see from my good one."

The hissing scratch of a match being struck drew his attention. The flame was held to his bad eye, the deformed one. "I can see from that one about the same."

"And now?"

"Where?"

"I'm holding it in front of your other."

Slit went silent, his skin starting to seethe again as the water dripped onto the metal floor with a hollow ting.

"I can't see it."

The man called John sighed. "Your vision in that one might come back. But most like not, after all you've been through."

Water sloshed in a container nearby. Slit closed his eyes, silently taking inventory of what he knew. He was alive but barely, his one good eye now useless, his burns extensive. He hadn't been able to hear out of his right ear since he was a pup when the throbbing growth had started behind the lobe. He was useless.

"You filth, you should have left me to die," he snarled up at his savior.

"Perhaps, but I didn't see that happening any time soon when I found you. You'd been sweltering in that wreckage for nearly a day and you still breathed. You're a tough one to kill, Cankerworm."

"I have a name!" He winced as he relaxed his body, the skin still tight.

"I don't doubt it. And it isn't the one your mother gave you, I wager."

"Never had a mother."

"Yes, you did once but you never knew her. There is much you don't know."

Another splash of water and he could focus on his words. "And what do you know? A desert rat. What are you? A Buzzard, Rock Rider?"

"Neither. I am John the Judas. And I know much, much more than you can imagine, more than your false god ever wanted you to know. I would be willing to teach you, if you are willing to be silent. To listen."

The scavenger spoke blasphemy. Slit shivered despite the heat simmering in his muscles. "I have always honored him by my deeds."

"I know." A hand was laid gently against his forehead. It was a touch so foreign to Slit that he almost recoiled, as though it were a killing blow. "I know, son."

"You pity me," Slit retched the words, his stomach tightening.

"I pity what has been done to you since your birth. You are clearly a powerful warrior, one that has seen many battles on Fury Road, who has lived a life in abject dedication to your false god, an honorable one by your standards. You deserve better than a fiery death, Cankerworm."

His words were nothing Slit had ever heard. They filled him with a strong sense of self. A stranger saw his worth more than any other had before, at least any that had told him. He drew a trembling breath, water shuddering over his scarred chest.

"Will I live?"

"I don't know yet. Do you what to?"

"Don't know."

"In the Old World, patients who made their minds up that they weren't going to let their injuries or diseases lick them tended to last longer than others, Cankerworm."

"Slit."

"What?" The fuzzy image of a head hung over him, brown skin, dangling black curls dripping with white, a beard. Vivid black eyes. "What did you say?"

He swallowed. "My name is Slit."

"Perhaps it was once. But I don't think it suits you."

He scoffed. "Why is that?"

"It's too weak. The kind of name that Joe likes his followers to have to keep them down. No, no, my son. You are made for more than a name as weak as Slit."

This Judas knew how to talk, that was for sure. "You can't call me Cankerworm."

"No, I won't. I will call you Ehud. Loosely, it means strength in a language that hopefully still exists somewhere in this wreck of a world. Ehud was a man of great purpose who killed a king by stabbing him in the belly with a double edged sword. It's fitting for a someone like you."

Slit had to admit, John the Judas made it sound nice. "Sounds about right for a War Boy," he muttered wryly.

"For a man. You are not a War Boy any longer. You are a man, worthy of the title. Your false god has been toppled, Immortan Joe was killed along with his other diseased warlords. What you do now is entirely up to you. As a man. Do you understand, Slit called Ehud?"