-Nux-
"Whose?" I asked too loudly.
She answered at the same volume in a sob: "Slit's!"
"Quiet down or I'll come down there and crack skulls!" That was one of the night guards.
What the fuck?!
Slit, my lancer, was dead. He's supposed to be anyway. The woman had to be telling lies, but who would even know that name among the endless dead? Or be able to pick me out of a crowd looking like this?
All of us at that camp were just stragglers unlucky enough to survive the canyon. Not one of us spoke of dead brothers, or home, or Valhalla. No one even spoke of Immortan Joe. We heard a little of this and a bit of that about everywhere from the live cargo constantly passing in and out of the gates, but we rarely discussed any of it. Didn't matter to us because we didn't think we'd ever be leaving that place. War Boys dead or left behind are just casualties of something historic and we all knew it. Our names would die with us un-legendary ones because that's how it's always been. What was Slit's name doing in a stranger's mouth?
I heard Slit declare it, Valhalla. I'm certain I heard his final scream for glory right before the War Rig crushed something, then kaboom. Out I came from patching up the engine, and there was no more Slit in pursuit. I never asked anyone what happened. I didn't need to. Slit was Slit, so he probably wrecked the Razor Cola in one of his temper tantrums like the moody jackass he was- or still is?
Alright, she must have been crazy and making things up, but how crazy do you have to be to cook up a coincidence like this in your head?
I didn't get much sleep that night. I had a thousand and one questions but the guards were already annoyed and I was freezing my ball-bearings off, so I had to go back to the pack for shared body heat. I still watched her as long as my eyes would stay open. She stayed sitting up and watching me too, which was spooky but I think we were both kind of shocked with each other. She shivered too and had to be cold, but she was in better shape than I was, could probably tough out the night in the camp where wind couldn't bite.
Slit survived? It took a while to let that fact to settle in my brains. I thought if I could stay awake I might have just a little time before work to ask how it was possible, but I couldn't keep my eyes open. Like always, I was even too tired to dream.
Morning had come so fast that it felt like I'd had a long blink and the night had scattered away. It was a usual morning for everyone but me. We stood in line for a splatter of never enough sludge in our bowls and most eyes were on the guard serving it. I was busy watching the strange woman.
She was still sitting up, but may have been asleep with her head rested on her kneecaps. She was smeared in dried blood, probably her own, but I wondered if it was Slit's. She said they left him on the salt, didn't she? I remember that part of the conversation happening before she asked who I was. So, Slit survived the war, but had or would soon die on the salt. The realization of that came just as the crap they fed us was plopped down into my bowl. My empty guts revved up at the sight of it even though my brain knew I should probably have lost my spirits and appetite at the thought of my former lancer becoming dried up man jerky out there. Always being on the edge of burning out from empty tubes does funny things to you. Very little could turn me off food of any kind and if I happened to cry like a pup into it? That just added a little needed salt for flavor.
Sweet merciful V8. The truth was I had been trying not to think about Slit for the last several hundred days, instead focusing on being happy that Capable and her sisters made it back. I had heard whispers about the Citadel, rumored to be ruled by women of generosity. If I had helped them make it back, then that was enough. I was okay with dying here, like this, if it meant they got to go home and make things better, bring their hope with them.
Slit. I burned the hell out of that bridge when I helped them, but let's face it, long before Furiosawent rogue the bridge was already soaked in guzz while Slit and I fought over the match.
At the end of every day since the road war I have had to accept that the only closure I would ever get with my lancer was none at all and that no closure was somehow less painful for the both of us. I always thought he was raging on in Valhalla, then I'm told by a complete stranger that he was not only still alive, but had been running around being best mates with her?
My gut clenched and my blood pump pounded with false fear when I looked at Dune again and saw her awake. We made eye contact. I was jealous but felt sorry for her. I hoped what he had done to me, he didn't do to her. He drained me mentally and emotionally every damn day. I care about my litter mate and lancer, and I knew he was the way he was because of what Spanner and Shaft did to the both of us, but that gives no one any right to treat other people like ego stroking wind-up machines. Still, it burned me up to see just how easily I could be replaced.
I stubbornly considered that he might not cark it on the salt either because he was too tough for his own good, apparently. By now he'd be more scars than War Boy. He's probably just fine, I thought bitterly. He was always getting lucky and pulling through whatever beating the world hurled at him. The salt is deadly, though, it's where you put people to forget about them.
I was relieved that he survived the crash and what had sounded like an explosion, of course I was, but things were still... Really, really bad where we left off. I couldn't decide what I felt or what I wanted. Afraid or glad? Did I want to ask that Dune to tell me everything, or be selfish and beg her to say exactly nothing about him?
By the time we were herded to our stations to work I was giving myself a headache trying to picture Slit being a "best mate" to anyone outside me, and he only tolerated the existence of a handful of others. Anyone with a little age and rank above us he respected out of fear and I know it. Again, Spanner's doing mostly. Slit sucks at- hmm. People. He sucks at people. So how then was he this woman's so-called best mate?
That day I only half-ass worked and caught a number of warning swipes from the supervising guards. I was too busy thinking to make much headway with that engine we were working on. Even the brother at my side was snapping at me get my head under the hood. His name is Fuel, one of my old crew mates before Slit and I split off and started doing our own thing wherever anybody needed the back-up. He slapped my shoulder and the back of my head every time I tried to lean away and see what that Dune girl was doing. Every time I looked, I saw that she was watching me too. I also saw that her right hand was gristled and malformed. Looked like scarring. Caught her baring her teeth like a feral at the man behind her trying to wrestle her breakfast out of her hands when it was served to them. He backed right off because those fangs. Past that, her huffing and low rumble as she puffed up and bluffed was a very Slit thing to do. Gave me chills. Yeah, she must know him then.
Fuel clapped the back of my nugget again and back to work I went.
I thought about it while we re-assembled the block. I decided that I had to talk to her again. I was desperately curious of what Slit had been up to, of what he'd become all cut off from home for so long. Maybe he went feral. Maybe he was hardly human anymore. I couldn't know till I asked.
Work was work, same shit on a different day, but it seemed sped up. I had no idea what to ask Dune when I had the chance, I never wished I had more time to work there in that rust dump until that day. Before I could figure out what I was supposed to say to her or remember any of the endless questions I had the night before, we were being corralled and chained for dinner and bed. I wasn't sure if I could chance talking to her before nightfall, guards might think we were conspiring. They were really touchy about us Worker Boys talking to the captives.
I ate. I waited. I tried not to look at her even though I could practically feel her eyeballs boring holes in me.
Night crept in and darkness crawled across the sky slowly enough that I had time to narrow what I'd ask down to a few things. First, I needed to confirm we were talking about the same Slit. Much as he'd argue the facts, Slit hadn't chosen a very original name. Second thing, I needed to know if he hurt her. Slit is Slit, whether I wanted to accept it or not, and he could be a right cunt. Maybe I shouldn't ask it that way, or at all. wouldn't necessarily want my rotten cargo dredged up. Alright, maybe I only had one question in the tank for her. Maybe I should ask how they met? Yeah, that was probably my best bet.
The woman was balled up, head on her knees and arms curled to hide her face as I prepared myself. My head hurt and my guts felt like they were grinding, but I took in a breath, looked at her, and willed myself to speak. All that came out of me was a feeble Hello.
She lifted her head to look at me with wet eyes, probably red too but it was already too dark to see colors. We just stared at each other for a long time, saying nothing. I felt ugly, like I should be shaved and painted proper to meet this person.
"He would..." she paused, covering her mouth for a moment to stuff down the sob cracking her voice, "He'd shout your name like a curse whenever she changed his bandages. Then cry for you in his sleep."
I had to look away, into the pit my crossed legs made before I'd start up with the crying too. I was always bad at shoving back the rust crap in my head before my eyes got wet. Had to bite my lip to stop it from quivering and grind my hands into my eyes to stop the tears.
"Things weren't so good. Last I saw him, I mean," I told her. I didn't expect talking to her to start like that.
Dune nodded slowly with a shiver in her shoulders, "She always thought so."
Talks in third. Huh, "how did- how'd you find him?"
"In a wreck, burned up bad. Left leg gone above the knee."
My stomach lurched around the meager meal I'd had. Imagining that was painful. "He survived that?"
Dune merely nodded and hugged herself tightly for a little bit before finding more to say.
"...he talks like you're dead. Now anyway, when he talks about you. Was grieving too hard before I think to talk."
I had spent so many nights before tonight fighting off my anger for Slit but also wondering if I was the monster who wrecked us up myself. I loved Slit but hated him so much at times. On days when I didn't feel much, I knew that we were both pretty monstrous. Devils in human skin who don't know how to love proper so we just destroyed each other again and again, each in his own way.
"Can't say I thought he might still be tear-assing around somewhere," I admitted.
A part of me had been miserable to believe that he was dead but also kind of relived that I'd never have to justify what side I chose or tell him how impossible he could be to live with. Days I missed him and days I cursed him were sometimes the same damn days. I got the feeling that whatever he told this woman wasn't the manipulative bullshit I'd normally expect of my lancer, who used to twist shit around to make himself look both chrome and somehow pure. If she were fed that kind of lying crap then she'd hate my guts. Surely the Slit I knew would paint me as a traitor, which was somewhat true, but also stupid, greedy, untalented, anything you could say to drag a man's name. But he grieved?
Whatever the hell she found, he didn't sound like my Slit. I wasn't sure if I wanted to stomp on whatever version of him she knew by telling her how wrong she sounded. Slit grief stricken was something I couldn't picture. It would sound like a lie if I hadn't heard this woman tell it with the certainty of having watched someone suffer like that. I could make her hate Slit, I thought coldly. I could tell her what a nasty, vindictive beast he could be, but Slit could make someone hate me too. Slit would only need ten minutes with Capable to make her repulsed that she'd ever been kind to me. It wouldn't be fair to Cape to make her regret being kind and good, wouldn't be fair to do that to Dune either.
My face was getting soggy, so I wiped the collar of my shirt over my eyes and nose to sop up the mediocrity leaking out of me.
"He told her how hard it was, when you 'an him were just sprouts. How you were Dyin'. He said lumps but..."
I sucked in a breath and she quit talking. Yeah, Larry and Barry and a whole host of their mates were killing me slow and rust, till I landed here. Madame had all our 'shelf lives' extended. The thought made every scar from that torture burn and had me wanting to vomit. I heard chains rattle behind me. Fuel was awake and listening, probably remembering having his own 'shelf life' extended.
"Madame had her madman doctor cut the rotten bits outta us. Some of us went and carked it on the butcher block. Some dropped dead later of infection. Rest of us are stuck owing her for an extension on our half-lives." I spat as quietly as I could manage.
I heard Fuel shudder and felt him curl closer around my back. He was definitely awake. When I looked behind me I saw the shine of other eyes open and watching, behind Dune yet more watchers.
Ugh, guess this misery is the best entertainment anyone's had in some time.
No such thing as privacy here, it couldn't be helped, so I pulled my length of chain taut to get closer and speak softer, she followed my lead, and we had a chat.
Last time I spoke to a lady I was laying on my side, holding Cape's hand, telling her how everything was wrong and confusing. I only told Cape a little about Slit, mostly how much we were fighting at the time and how he would outright ignore me sometimes to make sure I knew how horribly I had failed to be an effective War Boy. That had been just two or three days with an angel saint of a woman who was desperate herself.
This time, I was hunched, holding myself tightly with my arms tucked into my shirt and wishing I didn't have to sit with my right leg stretched out to give myself enough slack on my chain to sit close. I was freezing, my foot was numb, and I listened to a woman fighting off tears to tell me strange things in hushed but rapid mutters. Sometimes she was hard to follow, it was like she was trying to say as much as she could before we ran out of time.
I learned that Slit spent years with this woman, who put up with him and his crap, and for a while as she spoke it was hard to picture these things she said. It took time to recognize Slit through her experiences with him. He was still moody, jealous, and stubborn, but being away from the Citadel had changed things. Having all hopes and pride stripped from him had destroyed him. And she blamed herself for where he now was. She missed him and how safe he made her feel? She was mourning a true blue human.
Slit had died during the road war after all. The person she was describing was concerned with the welfare of his companion, was plagued by guilt and self loathing, had spoken about the things that made him feel that way, had told her about things that I'd needed an explanation about for so long but could never coax out of him, had accepted comfort and reassurance from her then gave it back. This was not my lancer anymore. I was nearly convinced Dune was some kind of desert witch who could pull the evil out of people. I almost wanted to throw water on her to see if she could purify it. That was silly thinking, a ridiculous magical excuse to justify how she could do all these things but I never could. Now this new Slit was going to die, or already had died on the salt.
For no reason at all, I felt guilty, and all the wet stuff of my face spewed out my eyes with nothing to hold them back. I barely kept it quiet enough not to get attention from the guards. I'd made a talent out of weeping quietly long before I wound up here. All War Boys had.
I had begun to choke on my sobs about it, all my failure, but much like Capable she'd had the words to ease the pain and help things make sense. Dune's words weren't shiny elegant things in your ears like Cape's. They were raw, kind of bumpity like a lump of mashed potato, but comforting. She told me it was okay that I didn't know what to do. She said sometimes, you just don't know because you're too close to a boulder to see the boulder.
I hadn't told her anything of the nasty shit Slit used to do, but what she said at the end made me wonder if Slit had told her himself, or if she could read minds. "...You didn't deserve any of it, mate. You didn't deserve to get all roughed up inside like that."
She may have meant that as an apology for dumping everything in her head on me at once, but at the time I thought she meant everything else in my history. She patted my hands as they shielded my face from her, and nothing else was said for a while.
"Something is itching on her," she growled.
When I uncovered my eyes I could see her shape twisting and turning against her chain. She was cuffed at her wrists and unable to reach around her back.
"Just scrub it on the dirt," I instructed, but she shook her head.
"Nah, somethin's on her," she reiterated.
"Turn, lemme see,"
She growled, but scooted around. "No funny business,"
"I'm just gonna look before you yanking that chain wakes somebody up!" I asserted, getting anxious the more she wiggled around.
Yeah, it was weird reaching up the back of a strange girl's shirt. It was real weird when what I felt did not feel like skin. At all.
"Oi! You got buzzard rashes!" I hissed, a bit panicked, and trying to scrub my hand off on my pant leg. I didn't need a rash, I was already practically falling apart.
"They're scars you twat nugget, got toasted to a crisp by these assholes when she was a sprout," she scolded me and I felt the burn of my mistake in my face.
"Sorry, sorry,"
I looked again. Found something with sharp little bits tangled up in the loosened threads of her shirt. It had a leather cord on it too. It couldn't come untangled, I had to grasp it in my fingers and the shirt in my other hand and tear it out.
I tried looking at it in the moonlight. Just looked like a twisted up little lump of metal with some shirt stuck in it. Dune turned to see, pulling it from my fingers and looking at it as it sat in her palm.
"It's his staple. They must've dropped it while we got searched." she mumbled.
Now I saw it. It was bent like a bead around a thin cord. Why was it not in his face? Was he wearing this like a necklace charm? Did it fall out? Why not put it back in? Or why not throw it away and replace it?
I tried to take it and look at it again, but she pulled it closer to herself with her jaw clenched. I backed off, didn't wanna upset her.
"Hey, is that Slit's face glitter?" Fuel whispered behind me. "Lemme see it."
"No," was all Dune hissed at him.
"Wait, if we can bend it straight and-" he kept pressing.
"Knock it off," I told him, reaching back to shove away his hand as he tried to reach around me. If she didn't want to hand it away then nobody was going to force her to.
"Can you pick these locks?" She piped up at Fuel. He just shrugged.
The man behind Dune, the one who had tried to pester her out of her food earlier had something to say, leaning in around her.
"I can," the ragged wretched looking man insisted with confidence. "Fast as water runs out."
"You can't pick everybody before we get caught and beat!" one of us Worker Boys warned.
"Don't have to," the biggest of the captives behind Dune rumbled like an idling engine, he was the one who was double chained and muzzled. Nasty looking bloke with something ugly in his eyes about the way he looked at people. "You spring me loose, I take the guard nice and quiet, toss down the keys. If you noisy cunts haven't gotten his attention yet, he must be snoring on the job up there at his post. Just spring me."
My bloodpump was up in my throat as Dune passed the staple to Fuel. None of us had pur tools with us in our sleep spot, but we had hard hands from harder work. It was passed around the gang to all of us boys at least once each as we worked it bare handed to straighten out the steel sliver. Fingers were pricked and rubbed raw on the sharp edges, when it hurt too bad to keep worrying at it, you passed it along.
It became deathly quiet for several long minutes. Everyone was awake now, watching us work that tiny scrap of steel hope with heavy breaths. It came back around to Dune as an irregular but one and a half inch long splinter of metal. She turned to pass it to the raggedy wretched behind her.
"I get this back, or else," Dune said before letting go of it.
"Sure," was all she got back in response as the whole group shifted about to get him within reach to pick Double Cuffs out of his bonds.
Dune turned back to me now, reaching out with both hands to grasp at my shirt, then my face. "Promise Dune, promise her we go to the salt. She can't drive stick. She knows he's not dead. Knowsit."
I think she meant to steal a car. Any car. Great V8, this was happening. We were escaping. I was terrified, but nodded anyway.
"And if one of us doesn't make it out, the other goes. If Dune gets caught, you keep running, got that?"
I understood. I hated it but I understood not looking back for the ones who fall behind. I was raised this way. I nodded again, even if I couldn't stand the idea of leaving anyone behind anymore.
Before I knew it, my chains were gone, and nothing about this escape was quiet from that moment forward. There were screams. Someone set the warehouse on fire. Us boys liberated any road worthy vehicle and everyone piled onto them. A guard was gutted in the middle of the courtyard. I lost track of Dune. The moment she got the staple back and her chains off, she'd bolted the wrong way, deeper into the compound.
Madame's men had woken from their sleep to their barracks lit ablaze. They were shooting into the scattering bodies veiled in thick, choking smoke. I broke my promise, I was looking for Dune, calling for her. I found her by running smack into her. There was another woman with her, clinging to her around the waist and dressed like a bed slave. She'd gone off to spring the girl she was brought in with.
Dune slapped me about the shoulders, screaming at me "GO GO DOLT! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO RUN!"
By then the smoke was so thick I couldn't breathe or see. We had to feel our way out along the wall and slip though a rust rotten patch of sky steel.
We ran, the three of us, on foot, away from the blaze burning behind us to where I knew visiting slavers always parked their rides. There was no other choice. We weren't making it out of here on foot with chests full of smoke.
I don't remember who decided that the three of us were going to pile up on a motorcycle. No one was doing much clear thinking.
We were being chased. Men scrambling in their rigs to round up everyone. I saw lights behind us when I turned my eyes off the road and back. There were leaning from a truck with catch poles ready.
This damn bike, piece of junk, couldn't handle the weight. Twice the bike sped just a little faster, because twice they pulled up close enough to slip a cord around a head and drag the body attached to it off the seat. I was headed southbound alone.
What a shitty promise.
I only vaguely remembered the way to Shatterbone, where I had been sold to Madame, which felt like a full lifetime ago. I knew it was South, that there was a road through the dead sea things, and that if you were going to dump somebody, you'd probably not detour too far from the road to do it out here.
I found no tire tracks in the sand. It had been too long for wind not to have covered them. Where sand slowly transitioned to hard packed salt held some tracks, which told me I was going the right way. I found an empty canteen and a mess of boot prints. This was where I stopped to search the bike, reminded of my own thirst.
Yes, there were some supplies and a half empty leather flask of water. I took one sip before remembering that, if I found him, Slit would be all dried up. I saved the water and tried to calm my bloodpump kicking in my ribs at the very real possibility of finding my lancer. A part of me was afraid to find him for every reason imaginable. I wasn't ready to face him, but I wasn't going to let him die if I could prevent that either.
On I went, eyeing the fuel gage. I wish I had found guzz in the saddle bags, but nope. Things can never be easy, can they? Always short of something. I supposed if I had found guzz, I wouldn't have found water. That's how it always is.
I didn't know what I'd find out here. That scared me too, because I was hopeful even though my head knows how narrow his chances, and my own, were out here. I was mostly expecting a corpse starting to bloat in the heat, not how I wanted to see Slit for the first time in I don't even know how long. What I came upon wasn't a corpse.
My bloodpump just about hopped out my chest to make a run for it when I found the first few tracks, which were hardly recognizable as human foot falls. It was a long groove in the salty dirt, then a dark rust colored smear. Then again and again, the smears got thicker and thicker. I realized it was from a peg leg and a raw, bloody foot. I could see that he'd hobbled in frantic circles at one point. I also found a shred of faded denim torn off on a long jagged arm of dead sea shit, then dog tracks. The animal had been following him, picking up the blood on its feet and leaving colored prints when the tracks were still fresh and wet.
My guts felt like they were twisted as I got back on the bike and walked it along the trail, calling his name as loudly as I could before I saw stars. I heard no reply. I was beginning to panic as I left the bike again to follow the trail under a great fanning canopy of sea skeleton.
This is it. This is the part where I find the body.
When I crawled under, I was blind at first from the light scorching my eyes all day. I froze and waited till my vision adjusted.
I saw bones. A man too long dead to have been left here three days ago. It wasn't Slit. Slit was to my right, on his side, curled over, looking fresher than the old bones, but not by much. He wasn't half eaten by dogs, but he didn't look very alive either.
Here come the tears, and the other fears. Another waste of cola. The leg was gone. He was all scars up the back and side all the way to his head. His wrecked mouth was dried out and eyes sunken deep. He looked not alive but his eyes were open and following me.
"Fuck, guess I'm dead then," He rasped dryly.
I laughed one stricken bark. I felt like I'd just been stabbed so deep that it cut my soul. Still a pessimistic prick.
"You look like cog fodder, mate," I said.
He wheezed at me, said nothing, but extended a middle finger from where his hand lay near his head.
The cola, I poured every drop into him, but he wouldn't let go of my arm.
He said, "M'sorry. Didn't witness. M'sorry." Then he started wheezing fast and weird. He was crying on my arm but too dried out to leak from the eyes right away.
I cringed, he was gone sand crazy, clearly. He thought we were both dead. I shook my head and looked behind me into the light. I didn't think there was enough fuel to get back to the great white. There was only one place close enough to reach. Shatterbone. He needed cola, maybe a meat mechanic.
"Shut your dry face an' save your cola, c'mon Slit." I said with wet stuff already leaking out of my own face. "C'mon we're getting the hell outta here."
I didn't expect to be grabbed at the ears, or for a sun wrecked man to have the strength to lift his arms, and I definitely didn't think he'd pull our heads together. I remembered Furiosa and her friend Valkyrie, their heads together like this.
I cried like a pup. I had to cry. I hadn't cried deep in so long and if I didn't get through with it at that moment then I wouldn't be able see the road in front of me on the bike. He just kept on with his sorrys, And great V8 my chest ached.
How dare you make me so damn happy to see you.
(Shout out to TheMilkman! Thanks for the wonderful review dude)
