How many ? How many days have passed since the Fall, which is called Apokalipsis down bellow under-the-sands ? Eighteen thousand, it is said, even if the amounts of time are much harder to handle than those of bolts. It is more – in any case – much more than most half-lives can claim to have experienced.
What did these lands look like before the desert consumed them? Before the electric winds swept away what the Oil and Water Wars had saved? The Wasteland keep traces of it, like so many marks on a mutilated body. Inert things that the ancients call Derev'ya – trees – still raise their cracked messy branches for crows. Words are still whispered, legends: those of the Boeings, winged giants that one day crossed the sky, those of black-grease grounded Highways. Fables. Abstruse symbols that still litter the ground where the carcasses of fallen vehicles lie. There on the Fury Road.
Once his engine is off, Volta scrapes the sand with the tip of her boot. Ford. Another badge she already has. Twice. Thrice. She's sure to catch a glimpse of a Chevrolet bumper, deeper into this mess of rubble. Quickly, she raises her goggled, rimmed in leather, up to the shapeless dirty scarf that covers her head. Then she picks up the metal thing. it's half burnt but still better than -
A whistle, and she looks up. At the canyon top, the Rockryders are leaving. Here is their territory, their rocky pass. Their toll point too, from which they greatly benefit because no convoy can afford to bypass the mountains. Their tax is paid in Guzzolene, Aquacola, Nestlait or Lectricity, but they will not ask anything this time. None of them will pay attention neither to her, nor to any of the Buzzards out of Sunken City, nor to their current looting: what was interesting or valuable to them, they have already taken. Now, they simply let them clear away the remnants of this never-seen-before pile of shattered machines.
— Davaï, Volta, yells one of her fellows in a voice that has already roared too much in the sound of engines.
The teenager makes a OK sign, her thumb and index finger closed in a circle. Novic. Leaving with a downpour of sand, a cluster of doors stacked on a pole at the front of his Staryytako. Right among the sharp spikes of his car. !in less than an hour, he will have melted it: Volta knows it and she stretches a smile under the harsh linen. The Buzzards – the Kanyuk as they call themselves – are not reusing the parts they collect – sometimes by scavenging, sometimes by deliberately attacking desperate convoys crossing their northern territories. They stopped giving a second life to the pieces of the Old World a long time ago: now they create their own universes from scratch. Rims, hoods, axles have only one name: Metall. A raw material like any other, from which they shape their burried city and their other facilities.
Volta comes from most distant colony and maybe that's why her clan somewhat differs from the other Buzzards tribes. An enclave. Hidden underground under the chaos of the eternal storm sweeping the borders of their grounds. A series of bunkers buried in the midst of windy tumults, of which only lightning rods protrude into this hell of sand and ocher. Of all the Buzzards, of all the souls that still breathe in the Wasteland, the Iskra are the only ones who know how to catch lightning. To constrain it or release it from what everyone call batteries. The are also the only ones who know how to use the infinity of sand that sums up their existence. To blow the Stekloglass. To shape bulbs inside which they breathe light from their Lectricity. This is their only trade with the Citadel, with Gastown, with the Bullet Farm. The reason why they gibberish this mixture of English and Russian better than the other Buzzards. The way they supply their engines with Guzzolene and their offspring with water.
Volta lifts the badge up to her eyes and look at it. Blue, with orange shimmers in the sunset. Why does she like these stupid things ? She is not about to melt them: she will simply slip them into the box which fits under her berth. She doesn't know. Keeping them is a reflex, a mechanical gesture that calms her down amid the roars of the storm, when back to the Bunkers. A kollektsiya, as the eldest Iskra would say. A useless fad that she will keep secret forever. But yet, she pockets the Ford, then shakes her head and focus on what she came for.
She gets out of her motorcycle and rummages through her packs for a moment. From the big bag thrown on her sidecar she gets her tools and looks around. What she will look for in the midst of this rugged disaster – what she will seek from the disembowelled carcass of the huge War-rig still dripping with aqueous and milky substances – already shines in the last rays of the sun. Copper. For her know-how is undoubtedly the most precious of all those of the Iskra, even if she is still an almost-kid.
For a moment, she stops and check one last time the canyon is Rockrider-free. In the rubble of the cliff, she can hear the circular saw of Yegor and Zaveta. The noise stops, and now there is only the echoes of nothingness in the carcasses of the pass. Her dagger is at her boot and her batch of small grenades – no bigger than her fist – on her belt. She blinks, then climbs into the torn metal of the huge black tanker, lying full length like a colossal beast. Its side is open, and the entire inner surface of its main tank, from its head to its tail, shines, plated with copper.
— Molniya, she whispers to herself. The Rockriders have no idea what treasure they had under their eyes.
With feet together, she jumps inside the rig tank, where a bottom of water scatters the dust of her undersoles. She throws her tools aside to a dry place on an unbelievable accordion of crumpled metal, then she unhooks her water bottle from the leather straps on her chest. No opportunity should be lost. She fills it and drinks, not caring about the long streaks of oil that slide everywhere in this smoking cemetery.
Over the hours, strange whispers have echoed, the reason why she went out for this scavenging. It is said that the three Leaders have just died on the Fury Road. The People-eater, the Bullet Farmer, and even Immortan Joe whom the Citadel held for a god. It is rumored that his remains were deposited at the gates of his troglodyte city by his Imperator Furiosa. An absurdity that leaves all souls incredulous, even the Buzzards who wished such events a thousand times. Now, Volta is siphoning the already bloodless remains of this dismembered armada, as a witness: this new Apokalipsis is real. And in this hell of Metall, bodies lie just like engine parts, their blood mixing with Guzzolene, right to the thirsty grounds.
For the Buzzards, flesh is nothing but meat, but they would never taste the Citadel Way Boys. Those dead ones, on this very morning were still alive: the most madly fast, the most absurdly reckless, the most fanatically dedicated to their Immortan Joe. The sickest too, no doubt, because on the verge of their imminent death, ravaged by lymphomas and night fevers, they had nothing in mind but to die heroic to see the doors of glory open. Eating this is directly swallowing death, so Volta looks away from an anonymous rib cage. She brings her eyes back inside the open rig and grabs a sharp tool, half scraper and half chisel. Then she begins to cut a long strip of copper while the breeze returns. A screeching rises, plaintive, overcoming the further howls of the circular saws. She rolls her first sheet of copper, stuffs it into her satchel, then begins to cut a second one.
The tool squeaks again and she stops, frowning, having this growing feeling of being tearing alive a dying creature. Suddenly, she feels something deep and suffocating for this war-rig. Something the eldest Iskra would call sostradánije – compassion – before spitting on the ground. Volta swears, one of these interjections in russian that come spontaneously. That testify of her ancestors history. No. She's not going to feel sorry for a damn tank. She presses harder on its tool which sinks faster and further into the inner lining of the rig. A terrible scrap lament rises, and she looks away.
She freezes and the noise stops, leaving her in the only sound of the ample breath she has taken. Motionless. Vigilant. In the corner of her eye, she has just caught a glimpse of something. There, beyond a breach of razor-sharp metal, against the steep and burnt stone, something has just moved, no doubt.
A blink and her dagger is in front of her. A niddle, sharp as a thorn, forged from the same mechanics that once rumbled on the Road. She is ready to crawl back. To throw one of her quarter-grenades at anything. Now she is standing in the tank water and the complaint rises again. A pathetic moan. Not coming from the War-rig itself but from its close surroundings. She climbs quite high, on what was once the massive side of this eighteen-wheeled vehicule. At a distance, on her guard, culminating above the remains of what was a few hours behind the rig fore-cabin.
Raising an eyebrow, crossing her arms, she assesses the place and shivers. Just below her, half under the folds of the tanker and half hidden in a recess of stone which undoubtedly smasehd him as much as it saved his life, lies a War Boy who does not seem as hopelessly dead as the others. A wreck among the wrecks, not a threat, who will be nothing at all very soon.
— Nothing but raven food, spewed out by its Valhalla, she whispers, and her blade is away.
And while jumping back into the tank, about to start cutting again, she adds ironically as a revenge for all the harm his kind has historically done to her and her fellows on the Road :
— Mediocre, War Boy.