Hey, so... My spouse just went through surgery. Wrote most of this in an anxious haze to keep my mind busy instead of panicking. I'm not doing a proper proofread. Too tired, busy looking after my honey.
"Hey! Scrawn! Come look!"
That's not a name, it's one of many curses they used in place of one. Hexcut was calling me over, not that I gave a shit so I ignored him. He got his own name from getting nailed in the side of the head by a fist decorated in dusters with hexnuts glued to it. The blow left him shivering and drooling on the floor with his eyeballs rolled back into his skull. When he came to with a bloody and swollen face, we all knew it would leave a scar. Shaft and Spanner weren't soft caretakers, and they didn't raise up soft pups. Hexcut had gotten mouthy, had the audacity to ask for more cola, then pissed on Spanner's boot out of spite when he was told there wouldn't be more wet stuff until the next morning. When us others, younger pups, cried out at the sight of our eldest litter mate bleeding on the floor we were only slapped and taught the harsh lesson that if he died, he died. Only strong pups survive. If he couldn't take a few knocks to the head then he'd make a mediocre War Boy.
I was busing myself sharpening a well used razor blade discarded from a box cutter against a chunk of rock jutting from the wall near the big cogs. Most other pups in our litter had been picked to work in the garages and pits for the day. Hexcut was a drum boy during the hours of light. I hung close to him, since no one had picked me today.
"HEY, SKINNY! C'mere! You gotta see this! And grab that stupid Buzzard too!" Hexcut was still calling.
Whatever it was, I could hear the wretched below howling at it too. Maybe it was worth a look. I tucked the blade between my teeth and turned to bless Morsov with a slap across the back of his neck, waking up the sting of the freshly scabbed brand. He spun, shrieking his filthy Buzzard tongues at me and trying to scratch out my eyes. That only got him a swelling lip and another slap across his blade burned scalp. He didn't speak, not our words anyway, so you had to talk to him with your fist.
"Hurry the fuck up! You're missing it!"
Hexcut had abandoned his drum and leaned out over the edge of the platform precariously, grasping at a rail that tried to lean with him. Hex was fearless, I sometimes wanted to be him instead of me.
Just as soon as I was through dragging Morsov to the edge, our elder brothers, fully fledged boys were gathering. There was some wretch's crotch fruit hanging from the lift. Couldn't be more than eight hundred days old with whipping wisps of blond hair on its abnormally round head.
"What a nut job." I said.
The lift moved slow, and the voices around us and over us rose fast.
"Hey, look'it this little fella!"
Hexcut, Morsov and I were being pushed closer to the edge as more War Boys jostled for a position to see what was happening, I moved to get better footing, but my heel caught air instead of patterned steel. My arms swung wild to find anything or anyone to grab. I found nothing, instead something found me. The thick, feverishly hot hand of a grown brother gripped me around the back of the neck and hauled me back from the oblivion of nothingness too much of me hovered over.
"Damn, Pup! Gonna die real mediocre if you don't watch it!"
I looked up to see who it was. The one with thick scars cut through his brows and around the back of his head, exhaust stacks carefully etched into his broad chest. I now know his name, it was Notch. Back then him and Tank terrified me. They were big, they went on patrol every morning and walked by where I sat by Hexcut's drum, but they never so much as glared in my direction. I was invisible until now. First time anyone besides Spanner, Shaft, or Hexcut gave me the time of day without being forced to by lack of other available pup hands for tight spaces under hoods, and it was to be promised a mediocre death if I don't watch out for shit I can't control... Fuck Notch.
"Mediocre, Scrawn! Mediocre!" That was Morsov, for once using a word we could make out. His half toothless grin said that he knew what he just said, and there was vindictive glee in his eyes.
He just had to pick up that word first and spit it back out at me. A rage found me, poured itself into me like cola into a canteen. I leaped upon him with snarling teeth and a roar. We crashed into a wall of legs that merely lifted and kicked us back to the narrow space we'd been allotted to watch a wretched pup kill himself. I pounded Morsov's face till it was more smears of red than white clay. He wailed, balled his fists and tried to pound me back at first, but in no time he was trying to protect his face instead.
Knuckles rapped against the back of my head and Hex was shouting over us. "Lay off, Twig-arms! The pup on the lift is about to fall off! You gonna watch him splat or not?!"
While the Buzzard shit rolled around on the floor, holding his gushing nose, I was being pulled back to the edge to watch the show. Our elders cried out in delight and laughed. Even the guards on the lift seemed impressed, one went so far as to kneel by him and watch to see if he could hold on.
"This boy's got iron in his blood!" A brother called out.
"He's slipping!"
"Witness?"
The pup kept hanging on, the little idiot was even smiling up at us. He laughed. He thought this was fun! I laughed back, this kid was fangin' mental. Everyone shouted witness, he was inevitably going to fall once the lift rattled to a stop. We were all waiting for it but...
The guard snatched him by the wrist just as his fingers lost grip. New War Pup. New brother.
-0-
Duck spoke through yawns and with often closed eyes. He didn't sound bored, only well familiar with the story and how it was to be told. I was surprised at the detail he was able to summon forth from distant memory, he'd only been a child then. The brutality of these youngsters, that was worth a few worrisome thoughts but it was not much of a surprise. I would have assumed anyway that War Pups have no choice but to play by using their fists so that they may learn, survive long enough to go to war. Slit and I often played in the same manner, so really the only reason I was bothered by it was because the mental image of two babes under seven years beating the ever loving shit out of each other was disturbing.
Slit had quit talking, now rolling over to lay himself over my middle and lazily draw little spirals in the sand with his finger. Oof, I could hardly breathe like this with him squashing down the lower half of my ribs. I gave him a push at the shoulder and side, when he ignored me he got a palm slapped over his good ear. He hissed and spat and lifted himself on his elbows to glare before turning himself so he could lay on his back between my legs and use my guts as his pillow. He dropped his head harshly to pay me back for boxing his ear.
"Oof! Gah! You're lucky I already took my morning constitutional, or else I'd shit right on your neck for that."
He mocked my words and tone in sing song. He got kicked in the side with the heel of my bare foot. I got fist in the meat of my calf. It was only halfhearted tomfoolery. He sucked up a huge breath and growled it back up. It wasn't his furious rumble, it was his disconsolate hum. It reminded me of the sound of sandstorms approaching. Something wrong?
I pushed myself up to sit, which bent his neck so he squirmed and tried reaching back to shove me down again. I persisted and tried to slide out from under him whilst batting his grabby hands away. Now his chest vibrated with true irritation. He flipped himself to his hands and knee to hook his fingers around my belts and drag me under him once again. Something with him wasn't right, if it weren't for my concern I'd have re-broken his nose for this. I knew what was coming and tried to brace myself for it, but I always got the air knocked out of my lungs when he'd drop his dead weight on me and lay there like a basking lizard. I had only wanted to be able to look at him when I asked what was up with him, and for what happened to the sprout hanging on the lift.
Now it was my turn to growl and squirm to try finding something close to comfort. Fuckin' heavy forker, even his head felt like bricks sitting on my sternum. Pushing and kicking at him with a knee did nothing but antagonize him into grabbing at hands to restrain them. As I should have expected, he was trying to get my left grasper to his face. Demanding bastard, yet it was not at all hard to tell that his story telling had stopped because something about it was doing a number on him, so I let him have the hand. It was only after my fingers traced the curve of his lip and followed the shape of his jaw that I could sense how tense he had been. He seemed to melt on top of me while I did everything in my power just to fill up my lungs completely under the weight. I don't like having to think about it every time I take a breath. All I could do was take my annoyance and sigh it out while he finagled me into doling out a reward for spitting history into my ears. He still had my wrist in his shackle of a hand and directed my touch around his head until I was scratching through four inches of hair. Head roll his head against my fingertips and moan at it. When I pulled my hand back, there were dark bands of grit under my nails.
"What happened after that? What'd they do with the sprout?"
He grunted at my inquiry, then shrugged.
"Shaved him down, put a coat of white on, named him. Tough nut to crack, Nux."
"Ooooh! Dune sees now. What a little ripper."
Realization took hold, I was wondering why there was no mention of him in this story, I only assumed that it was before his time. No, this was the story of when Slit first saw Nux. He snorted before going on.
"Smiled like a little idiot the whole time the bloodshed boys were buzzing the hair off. Can't blame him, they were chanting his new name. Musta felt like real chrome. Caretakers were fightin' over who got the pup. Shaft busted someone's arm for him... He lost that grin as soon as the branding iron touched him, though." He paused for a moment, pulled in a breath and held it back for a moment. My pinky finger gliding over his staples forced him to let that air out. "While Nux got another laugh outta everyone with the cola-works shooting outta his face, Hex turned and said 'Now that's how you get noticed, that's how you get the name you're after'... Anyway, we got a new brother."
My heart sank a bit at the end of the story.
"You really didn't have a name, did you? Not until," On instinct my fingers slid down the split in his cheek to the corner of his lip. He closed his hand around mine with a wince and moved it away.
"I don't wanna talk about that shit. You wanted to hear about Nux, remember?"
"Nux and you," I corrected him. He only grunted in affirmative, but said no more. Time, he needed time and distraction. I picked up the hair laying over his temple and lifted it between my fingers to feel the length. "You need a trim. Startin' to look raggedy."
"You've never given a rust-fuck how we look." He posited. "The only reason it stays short is because every time I try to hack it down short enough to run a razor over it, you stop me."
I thought about that. Typically I did this, it's true, but my reasoning might not be as sound as I once thought. I was trying to yank him out of his War Boy way, excusing it by telling him that he needed hair to keep his head from getting cooked when I could just as easily have fashioned a bandana for him to tie over that pale scalp. We were going to pay the Citadel a visit anyway, might be pertinent to the goal of having him recognized by shaving him down.
"Hm. Want her to shave it for you?"
He lifted himself and looked at me, jaw hanging slightly and right eyebrow raised up to wrinkle his forehead. He looked like he wasn't sure I was being serious or not. He tested it by answering honest and blunt.
"Yes."
"Fine," I willing able to do it, with one reservation. "But Dune's leavin' yir scav tassel."
He snorted at that, looking very much like he had won some sort of long term dispute, which wasn't entirely untrue. "I'll hold you do it when we get to your rust-hole, Nutter."
He was, for the most part, up off me, so I took the chance to slide my knees up and plant my feet in his chest to shove him back. He landed on his ass and cursed me.
"Dune meant now, Ducky."
He rolled his eyes and reached into Shirley's seats for his leg, checking out how the leather socket was drying. "Nothin' to shave with, Bat-shit. You ever try dry shavin'? Think razor burn feels too shine?"
A debate ensued. Sure, we could wait till we reached the caverns for a sharp knife and the grease he used on his face, but my knife was freshly sharpened and Wilson's burn goop might just lubricate his head enough to get that hair off. Normally, I'd agree that it was better to wait and just let him do it himself, but he needed the aggravation to help him forget whatever was eating at him inside. To prove me wrong, he rolled up his pant leg and tested both the gloop and my knife on his calf. A minute later he was glaring down at the bald patch while he wiped the shorn hair and goo from the blade with his sleeve.
"...You cut my head, I'll shave you bald and do a piss job of it too."
So, it began, first pulling up sweat grimed locks to saw through with a different knife, so that we may save the razor edge of my own for his scalp. It came away in chunks which clung together with his natural oiliness. A pile of discarded hair formed between my boot and his right knee, we considered keeping it to spin twine from it, but felt that it was too straight and greasy to work with. Had to cut real close and careful, as not to take bits of head with the man fur whilst making certain that what was leftover would not overwhelm the blade.
"Hexcut, I was supposed to be his driver, ya know. He told me I was gonna get a name and drive him arpund while he flung thunder. Nux was gonna be our repair boy..."
I stalled mid cut, took a moment to think through my next words before slicing through the hair of his crown. Today was the first day I'd ever heard the name Hexcut, Slit had never cried that name in his sleep, and his words told a scav plain that something prevented this boy's prophecy from coming true.
"Tell me, Slit. What happened to this boy?"
The Slit's hands clenched tight over his flesh and false knees, he was holding something at bay, unwilling to let me see the effect of the memory on his face when I dropped to my knees to look at him. Slowly, his fists relaxed to open hands in his lap.
"Rash fever..." He whispered.
-0-
Nux didn't smile much for a while, not till the brand healed up. Hex used to like keeping him close, liked being near to the pup getting all the praise for being the stubborn shit who didn't fall, but as days went by and the soft skulled bastard got more talkative, Hexcut would shove the new and youngest of our litter at me and say "Let the annoying turd hang on your belt a'while. Can't beat mah drum with him chewin' the ears off m'head."
So, Nux was attached to me twenty four hours and seven days. I didn't understand half the shit he'd squeak out his cola hole, so it only made it more frustrating. Sometimes I'd shove him away just because it was a hot day and I didn't feel like having his sweaty face on me. V8 he liked to cling.
The daily drop off of white grit and hard tack into a metal basin on the floor of Spanner and Shaft's kip meant grabbing handfuls and slapping others out of your way for your share. Took Nux too long to get used to the feedin' frenzy, he got skinnier than me before he got to looking a bit better fed than when he'd initially come up. I fought harder for my mouthfuls, I was always hungry. I was always grinding gears inside. I was always looking for something to grab and shove down my throat hole to quiet the ache in my middle. I always had two bruised handfuls of tack and a mess of grit stuffed into my pocket for later. So, naturally, Nux would drop on his ass next to me and beg with those giant, wet, eyeballs. If I didn't push some into his face, he'd just whimper all night with hunger. I often fed him half my share to save myself the hassle of a shitty sleep. Eventually, he got the idea, learned to shove, throw hands, and grab fast. He grew a round face, felt like I had a fat, smiling tumor on my side.
He started growing taller, Hex gained a couple inches too, I stayed right where I was and started getting slow to move. I was tired. Everyone is tired from heat and the looming of their Half-Life but by the time Nux got a little better at talking, I looked like a walking bag of bones. I got wicked sick, couldn't fight for my own grub, or hold it down for that matter.
Hex started doing my fightin' for me, my grit grabbing too. Everyone, including Shaft and Spanner, thought it was just the curse of an eighth-life. Cancer, maybe gut rot, but likely something wrong with my blueprints. There was no point in wasting blood and grit to prolong the inevitable for a pup too young to lift a lance or reach the pedals. They left me in their kip to rot when I couldn't get up anymore. Hex would come, shirking duty at the drum and accumulating welts from being scorned for it, to force feed me. He came with spiders and cola, food he stole, sometimes bits of well chewed leather, anything eatable. He couldn't sneak food to me passed Spanner, who slapped it out of my mouth if he caught me chewing. He'd say "Stop feedin' what's already dead!" Then deal Hex a mighty whipping with his boot strap.
Nux would be attached to Hexcut's belt when he'd come, whimpering.
"Can't let mah future driver cark it soft. Eh? Eat fucker." He'd demand each day when he's sneak back to the dens, like he believed I was going to live. Hex would eventuality pass his relentless optimism to Nux. Even I believed it.
One morning, when I felt like all of Hex's hope was just a cruel lie, I coughed something up into the spot Hex, Nux, and I shared. I was too dead already to know what it was, but it moved. The bile and sickness wroth like it was alive. The hot splatter on his arm woke my older litter mate, he picked through it with his face twisted in anger. I was terrified that he'd finally given up on me, that no food would come anymore to soothe the stabbing in my middle.
Hex left the den, and I was too weak to weep at the loss. I was soft back then, soft and not too bright. Hex came back, a tall, thick form following after him. I couldn't understand what all the noise was about, he pointed frantically at the sickness pooled under by face and stuck around my mouth. The oldest face I had ever seen pulled up his goggles and prodded at what I'd retched up too.
"Go get Spanner and Shaft. Tell em to meet me up at the Blood Shed." Commanded the old voice. It boomed in my head and rattled with authority. I thought I was destined for a whipping, so I tried to cover my face. No, I was scooped up out of my own filth, and I felt the jolt of every step in my frail bones as he carried me. In no time, the old organic hovered over me, his decrepit face made what I thought was an aging War Boy look young.
"Worms. Belly noodles, he's got. Woulda been an easy fix if they brought him to me months ago. Treatment might make him cark it, now." Organic lamented with his hairy assistant leaning around him to gawk at me.
The old boy, Ace, his lips sagged down at the corners but his eyes remained furious. Stupidly, I still thought I was in for a beating.
Hex sprinted through the Blood Shed and passed us before realizing he had run too far and turning back. Spanner and Shaft were there. I'd never seen fear on their faces before. Two more grown boys appeared. Ace raged so loudly that even the boys who looked like breathing death all shifted and found the strength to put distance between themselves and group of men which had formed around where I lay. I tried to crawl away from the sounds of impending rage fever, but Hex stopped me by hopping up on the slab of stone and propping me forward to watch.
To this day, I can't remember what Ace roared at our caretakers, all I can recall are the frenzied howls and the sound of a belt whizzing through the air, cracking like streaks of lightning over their backs. They fought and struggled and sometimes the boys holding our caretakers down got the belt too. There's something that inspires terror when you realize that the ones who punish you for your shit deeds can be punished too. It made the world feel bigger, more dangerous. The gratification of watching Spanner whipped bloody could wait, I was busy being horrified of ever pissing off Ace.
When it was all over and only the ancient organic mechanic and the sick ones were left around Hexcut and I, I got a needle stuck in me. I thought I was getting blood, sure sign you're about to die soft, instead they dripped poison into me. It was a matter of either kill the worms and shitting um out dead, or kill me and burn my corpse so it didn't spread. Either way, the poison would cure the infestation living inside me.
I suffered, but I didn't cark it. I never quite caught up to Hex as we grew upward, but I stopped being so damn skinny. I got picked more often to learn engines, learned to drive a little too while boys from various crews were testing us to see who they wanted to train up personally. Morsov got picked in place of Hex when our eldest litter mate refused to let us three be separated. He said 'package deal or nothing', got his share of whippings for making anyone's half-life that much more difficult if they tried to force him on crew training without us. Nux was just too young and I just wasn't too great at anything. I'd been picked so few times for basic pup training that I knew practically nothing. No one had wanted a skinny pup back then, now no one wanted an empty headed one. I stayed nameless, but I earned the black around my eyes, if nothing else then for staying alive this long.
Then, it happened, the thing that almost killed the Citadel.
War came because bottles were being found down among the wretched. Pure, clear, rotgut. It always came with a white hand print painted upon it. I saw an Imperator bring one up once. The glass was green and a few barnacles were crusted to the bottom, a telling sign that the bottle had been scavenged from the Great White in the far away South.
This was the first time I ever saw the Immortan from so close. He was always something you strained to see across the space between the War Tower and the Skull Face of the North butte. He came across the bridges with his entourage of faithful high Imperators to see what was being found in great quantity very suddenly.
He was enormous. A towering monolith in white. That's what struck me, white. White skin, white hair, white wrappings and armor that was clear like glass. He was indeed godly, and we felt the weight of his presence even from behind Hex's drum where the three of us watched. Salute we did, kept to our knees we did, but we listened too, hanging by every word. Nux, his eyes glistened with wild, near fevered reverence. It was as if he'd been raised up in darkness and that moment was the first time he'd ever seen the sky above.
"That's our dada?" He asked, voice quivering.
"Believe it, mate." Hex assured.
As the great Immortal spoke with his Imperators and the eldest War Boys who ducked their heads and saluted each time they were so much as looked at, us pups overheard the story behind the bottles. Someone, beyond the canyon, had a set up shop. They had a distillery and had made deals to get through the canyon to trade with the western settlements. Bottles would trickle here from those distant camps. Having tasted the sweet burn of the clear liquid sloshing in the bottles, Immortan Joe had become determined to locate and raid this clan of hooch peddlers. They had something he wanted, knowledge, the ability to produce something the world craves. Luxury. Good hooch is luxury, places like Bartertown and Dump City pay through the nose for luxury. It was the Immorta's V8 given mission to find and preserve the fine things left in this world, so we may one day rise from the ashes. We are the hands and arms of his will, it was his mission that would open the gates to us. I knew then that I needed to be better, needed to get through those gates because its all real, not just something to put up with for your meal ticket.
Our look at our deity was brief. Next, a war party was passing through our small world. Massive rigs lowered by cranes, dozens of war chariots lowered on the lift. The sweat of the hard working cog fodder made the air sickly and humid. The rank of exhaust fumes choked us pups. This was the first time I had ever seen a full war party, the first time I saw the Gigahorse roll by with tires so enormous that they could flatten an entire litter of pups without even jostling the double glassed car. Both Nux and I clung to Hexcut's belts. Excitement and inexplicable fear blended with awe. We felt, smelled, and tasted everything that passed us by. Total sensory overload. Our older brothers roared for blood and chanted their war haka, and then it was over as quickly as it began. We could only wait for their no doubt triumphant return. Even Spanner and Shaft were gone. Older war pups who spent their days training directly with crews looked after us. We got the rare treat of mothers milk, a taste we hadn't known in my litter for many days. I was glad that I was a War Pup, happy that I would become one of them in just five or six more seasons. I was so looking forward to it.
The world would crash soon enough. When they returned, they brought captives who spoke different, they talked our words, but it sounded off. Hex told Nux and I that they were from another land. I remember the creature, a monster bound across the hood of Notch and Tank's Pontiac. The judge, the jury, the executioner. Their rig had a reputation, so did they. In the time it took for their leftover thunder and munitions to be collected for return to the armory, I had stepped too close to the parked chariot, peering at their live trophy. It was wearing a mask, human fingernails adorned it like teeth. Arms were covered in black scars. How could scars be black? I didn't know then that you could make ink from soot and piss for that. The designs etched into its skin sent a chill up my spine. There was a kill count, carved into its hide in black triangles. Spirals and skulls and strange shapes I had never seen before. Nux, as always clinging to my side, was crazy enough to prod the creature at the forehead and utter a quick "hello". Its eyes opened and they were black. You couldn't tell iris from pupil, they were so dark, and the whites so thick with veins that they appeared ringed with blood.
"You shouldn't look death in the eye, boy."
That was when I met the Brew Master for the first time. Dozens of other men were brought up, chained, some gagged. There were pups too, many of them full life or at the very least, reasonably healthy. All younger than 3000 days got white clay and assigned a litter. The old, uneducated, or weak were thrown to the Wretched.
It wasn't until a week later that the murmurs of sickness started, then coughs, then fevers so hot that you could burn up overnight. The old organic talked about something called inoculation and vaccines which were a thing of the old world. That anyone under 13,000 days was likely at risk. We all got it. Even a wife caught it, got thrown out of the vault to obey something called 'quarantine'.
Nux and I, we shivered together in our sleep spot. Hex looked after us even after the red welts started appearing on his skin, even after he started coughing his lungs up till his throat was bloody, he still looked after his future driver and repair boy. Shaft died first. The sound of Spanner's mourning roars is still etched deep into memory. There was always the smell of smoke, of roasting meat. It made us hungry, but Hex begged us not to get up, not to look for the smell of sizzling flesh. I now know that it was the smell of burning bodies. Our litter quickly shrank from two dozen to just nine. The ones we gained from the brewer clan appeared to be immune. They still shunned us in our sickness.
I would later learn, Joe, our father god, had made a frivolous mistake. People from far away lands bring sickness. They always do. It was the first time it came to my attention that a god can make mistakes.
Nux wept into me, we had to cover his hands in cloth and tie them tight to stop him from scratching. He cried so hard and for so long that it would exhaust him into sleep, but it could never last long. He'd be awake and crying again after only an hour or two. He was covered in scabs and red blisters and couldn't be consoled. He just cried all the time, it became my lullaby.
Finally, as the fevers broke and the dark brown crust of our rashes fell away, life became almost normal, but Hex wasn't at his drum anymore, he lay in the blood shed. He was one of the last to suffer. We stayed with him when we could, sometimes I had to leave Nux there to work with our elders piling the fast bloating bodies high for the pyres. Looking back, I'm glad that Hex was pushing me to take Nux with me when I'd leave the Blood Shed. The last thing he said was: "M'fine mate. I'll be right here, go get the smiley thing fed an' bring me back some mothers milk. A'right?"
When Nux and I returned, there was only empty space on the stone slab where Hexcut had been, and the smell of cooking flesh drifting through the stone corridors. If I had left the pup there, he'd have seen Hex burn up, then he'd have been forcibly removed from the body. Hexcut was supposed to be my lancer.
-0-
Slit sagged at the shoulders. I had not even begun to shave his head. It felt as if I had been there, listening to him tell me the story. My skin itched and guts ground up as he told me the life he lived as a tiny boy. They were only the same age as Arddie's little ones, and it was terribly hard to imagine those wee sprouts in the same situation. I was fast becoming aware of just how much he had glossed over the last time we spoke about his early history. He looked away from me, hair all a badly cut mess, salty drops in his eyes that he wiped away quickly. He just glared into the void while his fingers scratched a scar in his arm, carved in the shape of a hexnut. He had many hexnuts scarified into himself in various spots. I now knew what they meant. His brother, a brother to both him and Nux. Another departed soul to thank for keeping my shiny treasure alive long enough for me to find in a wreck. I know that he felt the warm drips of my mourning for a boy I had never met on his naked head while I did my best to sheer away the last of his hair, for he reached back and grasped my knee tight in his right hand. I he let loose not a sniff, not a whimper, he simply made no sound to indicate any discontent, but you learn to see these things in a person's posture. I could feel it in his hand on my leg and the way he gripped.
I had cut his scalp once, it was a tiny knick, I don't even think he noticed because he was up in his head. I pulled out the cord of hair I left on the back of his skull and combed through it with my fingers before twisting it up and braiding it once more. Nice and tidy, he was. I found a reason to wipe my wet face and laugh, just a little.
"You got yirself a tan line from your hair, Duck." Couldn't help myself to trace the shape of his hair line, how pale skin became even more like sun bleached bone under my dark hand.
He rolled his shoulders to stop me leaning over him and got up on his flesh and metal legs. "Ah, leave it, Dune. We should move before we get corpsed and scaved."
So, we drove. He still had that hard look on his face, shaking his head slowly every once in a while like he couldn't believe his own memory of it all. All places have their hell, times of great death. He made it sound like half the Citadel fell ill and most had perished in that outbreak of illness. I swore that I heard Phil mention rash fevers once, at the crow fisher meeting I think. I kept watching him, and he only looked forward, never back nor left or right. It was out of character for him not to be vigilant. He looked different too, without the hair. He looked more like he had when I found him, though what had then been raw, new burns had hardened to tight red and pink aberrations of the flesh. My diseased brain was tempting me with the idea of smearing ashes in his eye sockets to remember the far away memory more clearly. I think he saw it too. He peered at himself in the rear view glass a few times, scratching over his scalp with blunt finger tips. Not even a thank you, forker. No matter, he rarely thanked anyone anyway, unless he was being sarcastic. That pissy look on his face is never what it seems. Well, sometimes it is but in this instance, I knew better.
When I lifted my hand to touch, bring a little good to that ugly-gorgeous mouth, he flinched and turned his head quick to look at me and then back to the path ahead of us. His hands had gripped the steering wheel till I thought his bones might pop through the scars over his knuckles, they loosened over the leather he and Phil had braided over it. They made the wheel detachable, made it real ultra green and pretty too. It had a dog's skull in its center, grinning like mad with an eight-ball held between jaws lined with steel fangs they'd glued in where the old teeth had fallen out. I had helped, I cut up an old pop can to make tin flowers to adorn the eye sockets. Phil liked that. My Ducky seemed off, he winced at the touch and I very nearly dropped my hand away, but he leaned over to follow it, turning his face into my palm.
"After Hex kicked it, Nux was afraid all the time. I didn't get it. I was stupid, wasn't watching... Too fangin' busy trying to learn something, anything fast enough to get on a crew before I wound up a floater."
"Floater?" I was uncertain what the term meant to him. To me it was was gunk that drifts around in the wet stuff of your eye.
"Someone useless, get shit jobs like feedin' pups that c't walk yet. Or shoveling shit outta the dunny. Gates stay closed for um..."
"Oh,"
He looked at me while I tried to comprehend his words to explain his battle fodder slang to me. Nux was afraid, of what? And how did that make Slit stupid? Slit, he looked like that small, lost boy again, just for a second. He looked back to the horizon. "Hex used to sleep with a shiv in his hand. Gave it to me when he was burnin' out. Still got it, sort of. Melted down the metal for this, later down the road."
He lifted his left hand from the gear shifter and turned his arm up for me to see a blade on his wrist that I knew all too well. I looked down at it, ran my fingers from the tip of the metal against his arm to the handle which ran over his palm and each side of the gauntlet. When I looked back to him, he had a far away look that I hadn't seen since he lay at my kip, roasted awful and mostly dead.
"There was this Imperator, Wrecker," He spat the name out like it was toxic, not the same way he used to curse Nux. It was different. "He- Anyway, found out why Hex slept with a friggin' shiv in his hand..."
The story continued, once more, he wouldn't let me caress away the disgust and shame from his face. He took my hand and held it tight to restrain it. I was too absorbed in his words to noticed that we had stopped. For whatever reason, I remembered the way he wouldn't let me touch his face that night we arrived at my old home. Had he talked about this with Phil that night? Was that why he looked to be in pain any time I touched his lips then? Had they recounted the tale of a little brother hiding his face from an evil lurking among them, about my Ducky being carved like a roadkill ready for eatin'? The blood, the way he talked about blood pouring out of him and trying to flow backwards down into his throat, I could very nearly feel it too. It made me gag. He just about crushed my hand in his grip, and then, he let go so suddenly that the blood rushing back into my fingers stung terribly. My guts had gone very, very sour. He gripped that wheel again as if it was the only thing binding him to our plain of existence. I could not speak although he seemed to wait for me to, but I choked. I had no words. His head hung for a moment, then the growl of the engine revving up told me that he wanted to just go. Moving was better than staying still and dwelling. I agreed wholeheartedly, but felt distinctly as if he was hurt somehow by my silence. I just... Needed to take it in and put away the pain of empathy long enough to be present again, instead of involuntarily imagining this.
"You weren't stupid, Slit. You were just a sprout. An' ya did good, the right thing."
"..Mmph. No one ever said that before."
"I woulda killed the pig-devil too."
He slammed his palm against the steering wheel and snarled, it startled me away from him. He was downshifting and then gliding right up into sixth gear. Maybe he needed the speed to get the taste of his own past out of his mouth.
"I feel... Arrgh! Soft. No more fucking stories."
I've never seen somebody wipe their nose so angrily that I feared they might scrape the feature right off their face. He scrubbed his eyes till they were red too. No, a Slit isn't soft, but sometimes he needs to be set straight. I had to fix this, and fix it his way.
