Mad men live on the desert's edge

by Eilisande

They say he's there since the distant times of the end of civilization. They say he walks in the desert, quiet and deadly. They say he can't be killed, but he protect the innocent from the raiders, and the men who try to stop him always end up dead. There are hundred of stories about him, all contradictory, but all true. His name is Max and he's a legend, not a man.

He had appeared one day on the Outback's edge at the end of civilization. A naked, dirty, confused, mute man, something like a stone, or a salt statue in the middle of nowhere. He hadn't been there the day before. Hadn't been there an hour earlier, and no one had seen him arriving. He just appeared among the hills and rocks, where there was neither water nor shade for miles around. Birthed by the void, or the desert, or something else.

The short, yellow grass beneath his feet mingled with the bare rock. The few trees were dry and bare. Only a few rare, skinny low bushes still had some colour on their dying leaves. The plain had been fertile once, not so far back. Fences showed the old fields' position. Houses still stood here and there, lonely and abandoned today, full of life yesterday. Since then, the crops had burned and Men had left.

It was only the beginning. Or the ending.

The sun was high in the sky. The heat made the air barely breathable. Around the man floated a pernicious odour, coming from the west, a mixture of flesh and burnt tires. These fumes did not seem to bother the man any more than the too-bright sun on his white skin.

The sound of a car approaching didn't make him turn his head either, even when the vehicle's speed made the tires screech against the macadam. It had seen better days or better years. Dents covered the car, dust coated it, a cracked window marred its appearance, and the right rear-view mirror hung pitifully.

The young woman behind the wheel pointed her finger at the man.

"I swear, Dad, he wasn't here earlier!"

She wore a Metallica t-shirt over blue elephant-print pyjama pants. Both were stained with blood and grease. If she hadn't changed before she got in the car, she had taken the time to put on heavy walking shoes. A scar ran down the entire length of her right cheek. The suturing of the stab wound wasn't too bad, but it swelled.

"Some mirage," the man with graying hair sitting in the back said. "The dust hid him until now, that's all."

The man also got hurt in the last few days. He was using the back seat to extend his cast leg. A relatively clean bandage covered a cut on his arm. He had to break away from a crowd that tried to hold him back, tearing his clothes in the process. He probably did.

"He's naked. He's not moving."

"Then he must be crazy. Between going back there and walking naked in the desert, I would choose the first. At least it would be a quicker death." They both shivered. The young woman looked in her rearview mirror in anguish and sorrow. The city could still be identified in the distance, not by its buildings, but by the enormous cloud of black smoke hovering above it. Some mephitic odour came from there, carried by the wind. The young woman could swear she was still hearing the helpless inhabitants' despairing howls and the looters's crazy laughter. Murders. Murders and madness everywhere. They had escaped at dawn. Noon had passed, but she wasn't sure the looting and killing were over. Her hands shook on the wheel. At least they were alive.

"What do we do? We can't leave him there."

"We can't take him with us either. We'd have to get rid of half the things we saved."

The man gestured to their stuff in the trunk, on the passenger seat, and at the foot of the back seat. There were pots and pans, a car battery, books, cans of food and medicine, phone chargers, and photographs in broken frames.

"We can't! We'll need it, and it's all our life!"

The young woman's voice became possessive. Her father sighed. He couldn't say any of it was superfluous.

"I know. Slow down when you're next to him, and roll down the window so he can hear us. Don't get too close!"

Agreeing with him, the young woman slowed down the car. It came to a stop a short distance from the man. The driver put the handbrake but made the engine roar to make it clear she would drive off if the stranger threatened them.

She didn't need to. The man stayed still as a stone when they approached and didn't protest when the car's braking threw dust and gravel towards him. He didn't even try to hide his nudity. He just stood there, staring at the desert immensity.

"Hey man!", the wounded man called from the back seat of the car. "All good?"

No response. The stranger didn't even blink.

"Either you got a hell of a sunburn or it's a fucking concussion you have there. You wouldn't be standing like that in the middle of the Outback otherwise, right?"

At last, he got a reaction. The man brushed his lips together in a mechanical gesture. He tried to moisten his cracked lips by sliding his tongue across. He looked half dead.

"We must help him, Dad," the young woman whispered. "The things he must have seen..."

"Who hasn't, these days?"

No one answered the rhetorical question. The man sighed, and continued talking, speaking in a deliberately slow voice, as if speaking to a child or someone in great shock.

"Listen, man, I don't know what you've been through. Hell, I barely have any idea myself. And I don't know what you're doing standing there, if you're hurt, crazy, or if you've decided to find the slowest, most painful way to kill yourself. If so, I'm not judging you. I might do the same if I didn't have my daughter in front of me to take care of. Shit, I took the oath, even though it was a long time ago. Oath to protect people in need, like you, and the devil if I don't plan to continue keeping it when things go back to normal. But right now, I have my daughter to protect too. I can't take you. I can't risk trusting you, and it's killing me. Killing me. You understand that?"

The stranger said nothing.

"The thing is, man, there's not much we can do for you. Do you see this column of smoke behind us? It's Perth. Everything's burning there, the factories, the houses, the people... Hell, there were even idiots who set the oil on fire. This thing is worth more than gold these days! It's madness there, madness. I'll tell you what, I'm glad I retired three months ago because the few surviving police officers there are among the looters. I was a policeman, you know. MFPs. The police station is full of corpses if it hasn't already burned too. They displayed heads on the walls, people I knew. Good people, good cops, all dead. The MFP didn't last long. I hate to say it, but it's true. And to think that we were glorified as the best of the best, the nation saviours…"

"Dad..."

"Yes. Sorry. I forget myself. Sorry. I need... Fuck me dead, dude, don't go that way, that's it. I can't tell you where to go. They say it's worse in the south, on the radio, but I've also heard Melbourne's still holding on. I hope it's true. They say the army's protecting the city. Go there, maybe. Or don't. It's a free country. For now. My advice is, find water, find a car, and you can get by. I'm afraid soon it's going to be the only way to go. Go south, man. Behind you, there's only madness, and in front of you, there's only the Outback. There's nothing there but death on both hands. So. Take my advice, or don't. It's the only help we can offer."

"Sorry," the young woman said. "We don't have any clothes for you. We only have the ones we wear. There were more important things to take."

"Money is still worth something, thank God, even if there's no more banks. Oil and medicine, too. If you can find that, you'll get back on your feet soon enough."

He got quiet, but the stranger said nothing in return. The man knew he listened because his shoulders had tensed while he spoke and his eyes were more focused. His eyes glided over the car and its occupants with enough interest that the former officer grabbed the weapon he kept near.

"Listen," he said louder so the man wouldn't hear the safety of his weapon, "even if civilization as we knew it is gone, there's no reason not to help each other. I have not worn a badge for twenty years to dishonour it now. Here's what we're going to do: I have three pistols and a rifle. I'll throw you one pistol and a bottle of water. If that's what you want, a bullet will end your suffering. Otherwise, the water should last you a few days if you're careful. It should be enough to reach a place where there is still enough water and people that can help you. Don't even try to kill us with the gun. I'll throw the bullets after the gun, a minute after we leave, like a mile from here. We can't do more. That's all right with you?"

The man showed no sign he understood. The ex-policeman sighed. He picked up a bottle of water and one of his pistols at his feet. Lowering the window further, he dropped them one after the other on the ground, his other gun out of sight of the stranger. He was aiming at him through the door, just in case.

"I'm not even sure he understood what we said. Whatever. We can do nothing more, right? We have to look after our own. Start the car, pumpkin, and let's go."

His daughter obeyed. They rolled up the window, and she turned the air conditioning back on. She knew it wouldn't last long, but wanted to enjoy some cool air while it was still possible. She took one last look in the rearview mirror.

"He still hasn't moved."

"Yeah. That's really sad, don't get me wrong, but what can we do? Remember this, sweetie. When faced with horror, some people toughen up and survive. The others break down and wait to die. And believe me, I've seen it many times, even before the fall. This one is too far gone. He's going to die there. He won't even take our bullets to end it. It would make me cry if it didn't make me angry. It's an awful world to live in, and we make it that way. Speed up. If he finds the will to move, I don't want to hear him shoot himself. Better to imagine he'll live and fight tomorrow like we will."

That's when the bullet passed through the window and into his skull. His daughter screamed, her hands gripping the steering wheel, until another bullet silenced her forever. The car slid off the road and stopped.

From afar, the naked man watched two motorcycles approach from one of the not-so-abandoned houses. The two murderers opened the car doors and dragged the bodies to the ground to make it easier to loot the vehicle. On their sidecars, they loaded their prize and left as quickly as they had come, heading south.

Only when the cloud of dust and smoke they had left behind had cleared did the man bend down and pick up the water bottle and the gun at his feet. Eyes fixed on the ground, he walked toward the car with slow but sure steps, stopping only to pick up the bag of bullets on his way. He stood over the two bodies for a long time, not knowing what he was supposed to do. The young woman was lying on her stomach, her blond hair covered in blood. Her father was looking up at the sky with an expression of astonishment forever fixed on his face. Their blood and the sand were forming red mud on the ground. The man leaned down and touched the blood.

Then he heard them. The voices of the dead.

Her name was Sandy Macafee. As a child, she waited until her father came home before going to bed because she was afraid something would happen to him. As a teenager, she laughed and danced and spent too long looking at a blue screen for funny videos, without a care for the real life outside the little box. As an adult, she cried while watching the news. She saw the world crumbling before her when she was finally old enough to enjoy it. While running away, she frantically looked for her best friend in the streets, and someone stabbed her in the cheek. The friend was dead when she found her. She abandoned all her rock records, and her clothes, to save what would keep her alive, her father's weapons and her mother's cookware. She died screaming.

His name was Fifi Macafee. His first memory was the fire truck his mother gave him. Even as a grown man, he had kept it above his bed until the escape, with the diploma that had made him a police officer. He loved birds and plants. He liked to yell at his subordinates but considered them all his sons and daughters. It was just tough love, to make sure they would stay alive. He wanted to be a hero. He firmly believed that any man could be a hero if he tried and that with more heroes, the world would be a better place. He had sworn to protect his city, his fellow citizens, and his daughter. But the citizens had become criminals, the city had turned into a hostile terrain and he did not know how long he could protect his daughter in this new world. May the desert protect her, he had repeated to himself while they ran. May the desert protect her. He died with that thought.

The man suddenly found himself with strange knowledge in his head. How to take care of an orchid. The recipe for chicken Marengo. Police regulations. Oil Wars. Communist manifesto. Makeup. Rap. Jazz. Sustainable development. Radiation. It was all too much for him. He staggered to his feet and walked away, clutching the bottle, the pistol, and the bag of bullets with all his energy.

"I was a policeman, you know."

These words from the deceased kept coming back to his head, without him knowing what to do with them. He headed south.

The man walked for a long time, his bare feet hurt and bleeding. His bare back was red from the sun's exposure. Soon he was beyond thirst, beyond hunger. He staggered forward, but never slowed down, his eyes fixed on the horizon. Everything around him was dying, but he paid no attention to it. The plants were wilting a little more every day. The earth was cracking and fissuring. The sun did not shine any brighter, but not a cloud formed above the abandoned fields. Not a breath of wind softened the air, and the temperature rose inexorably. The man no longer smelled the mephitic odours coming from a city he had never seen, but the smell of rotting flesh from decimated herds was not much better. Flies and lizards seemed the only survivors in this immensity.

On the third or fourth day, a car pursued by motorcycles passed by him. One biker fired a bullet in his direction, which grazed his ear, before refocusing on the pursuit.

"Nutjob!" he screamed. "We'll come back to finish you, slagger!"

The wind carried away the rest of his threat. The man did not care. He walked. The next day, he saw the man's body on the side of the road, near to his motorcycle. Gasoline was leaking from the tank, drop by drop. Both man and machine were twisted and smashed nearly beyond recognition and they both smelled as bad. The man passed them without looking.

Civilization was dying in the desert. With each step he took, the man was hearing a voice, whispering a disjointed speech in his ears.

"…remember, remember, for them, for me, what it was, the greatness, the greatness, the corruption, the compromises, never again, rebuild, remember, for them, for me, to rebuild, you must remember, for them, for me, the laughter, the applause, the gunshots, the music, the decency, remember..."

He tried to ignore the voice. He couldn't. It screamed in his head, louder and louder. It was more painful than the blisters on his feet from the hot asphalt, more painful than his peeling back, more painful than his dry throat.

He stumbled and got back up. He walked, holding his head in his hands. He felt a cry rising in his guts, but his throat was too dry for him to scream. Only a long, continuous rattle escaped his throat. In his head, the voice continued, more and more frantic.

"…find them, you have to find them, the people, humanity, remind them, tell them, remember, carry on, it will soon be too late, remember, teach them, how to plant, find water, find energy, a balance, find them, find them..."

The man collapsed to the ground, brutally scraping his knees against the asphalt. He continued to drag himself on the road, on his hands and knees. Eyes closed, he muttered two words, faster and louder every time, like a mantra.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!"

His right hand hit something soft and light, something round, which rolled a little further away. It made a small noise, like a bell. The man opened his eyes. It was a toy, a ball made of bright red, white, and blue plastic, stained with dried blood. Three steps away lay a pitifully small body. A child. A boy, tiny and broken. The man closed his eyes, and then he saw.

The child was happy and safe. His father loved him, his mother loved him. He was playing in a garden, he was playing at school and the water was flowing. There were games, laughter, juice, and fruits. And then... he had to stay at home, his mother was crying, his father was checking how much water was left in the bottles. And after that, how long after, his mother was running with him in her arms, and there was the impact...

The mother. She was a few steps away, one hand outstretching to reach the child. Still young. Beautiful, perhaps, when she was alive. Who could tell now? Besides, the man knew nothing about the concept of beauty. She was like him now, marked by the road, by the trials, by blood and dust. Her feet were bloody, like his. One foot was swollen and twisted. She had run to escape the motorcycles. It hadn't been enough. They had run over her. Killing her.

He brushed her hand, almost despite himself, knowing what was going to happen. He closed his eyes, and once again saw an entire life pass before him in one instant. He saw her laughing, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and heard. Her entire face lit up when she was laughing. He would have been fine with that vision lasting forever but an avalanche of images and information poured into him.

Rock 'n' roll, makeup, handball, dresses, tax forms, real estate loans, constitutional law, civil rights, colonization, political crisis, depletion of resources, wars, revolts, collapse of society. Fear, thirst, what will happen to my child, someone, protect him, protect me, is there no one left who wants to help others?

The man stood up, aspiring air like a drowning man trying to reach the surface. He collapsed, breathing hard, yelling, and remained there, prostate for a long time near the two bodies, indifferent to the sun, the flies, and the smell. The sun rose to its zenith and descended without him moving more than an eyelash. His long cry had long since changed into a hoarse whisper when he felt the barrel of a gun on the back of his neck. He reacted to the cold of the metal where he didn't to the sun's bite. He turned toward the gun without fear but with so much weariness.

Four women and two men were surrounding him. Everyone had a gun pointing at him. He recognised two shotguns and an Australian police service pistol. How did he know enough to recognise it, he wasn't sure and didn't see reason to wonder, more interested in the people holding these weapons. Half of them knew how to use them. The others were more or less good at pretending to.

The woman who had her rifle pointed to his head and frowned.

"If it's you who did this to them, I'll shoot you like a rabid dog full of fleas, and without regrets. Did you?"

One man cleared his throat. He was nervous.

"Aren't you going a little fast? Maybe he..."

"What? Do you think those who killed these two took the time to undress the gentleman? No, I bet ya that psycho killed them himself. And naked like he is, I would also bet he jerked off on it. I swear, the number of madmen you see on the roads today..."

The man didn't understand half of her speech, but he understood well enough she was accusing him of the murder. The idea made him nauseous. He had seen into the dead woman's mind, seen her sorrows and her hopes. He had felt her agony, still felt it in waves, the feeling of the wheels crushing her back, the abject cracking of her spine, and the blood pooling in her lungs until it choked her. Even if he didn't know who he was, or what the voice in his head was, his entire being rose against the idea of causing such pain to someone. At least to an innocent woman.

"I took the oath, even though it was a long time ago. Oath to protect people in need, like you, and by the devil if I don't plan to continue keeping it someday."

Why hadn't he been there to protect her? To save the child? Where was he? Was it his fault?

He wanted to throw up. He looked up at the woman with the gun, feeling shame. Didn't even know what it was a second before. He opened his mouth and tried to talk. What came out was just a hoarse, inarticulate whisper. Words were not natural to him. They never would be.

"Couldn't save them. Woman, child. The motorbike. Too late."

"He looks sincere," a second woman said, slightly lowering her gun.

"That doesn't explain his nudity. Have you seen his back?"

"He's been there for a while, and so have they," the first man said, also lowering his gun. "See the worms?"

"Fuck, I hadn't noticed the smell. How long have they been here?"

All eyes turned once again to the man on the ground. He felt they were asking him something, but couldn't give a coherent answer. In the back of his head, the voice yelled at him again.

Tell them, tell them, to rebuild, to go back to the cities, secure supplies, they need a government, infrastructures, sustainability, they must unite, not die, not die, leave a legacy, rebuild...

He had hoped the voice had gone, couldn't deal with the pressure she was trying to put on his shoulders. With an animal growl, he dropped his head into his hands and clenched them desperately. The surrounding group took a few steps back. Three of them raised their weapons to aim at him.

"Let's leave him," the third woman finally said. "He's gone crazy."

"Look at that. He's one of the lucky ones then," the last woman said.

"Too bad. I was hoping he would come with us if he wasn't dangerous," the first man said. He's strong and tall. Could have helped us. Too bad. Let's go. Sun is going down, and I don't want to be caught by a gang in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. Let's find somewhere to hide."

The first woman snorted.

"And what are we, if not another gang roaming the Outback? Gangs, corpses like these two, madmen, and a few isolated idealists. That's all there is around here."

"Do you mean to leave him like that? Without water, without clothes? He's going to roast under this sun tomorrow!"

The first woman took out another pistol and loaded a bullet into it before she threw it away.

"There. Let him commit suicide if he is still sane enough to do it."

No one protested. The man wanted to say he already had a weapon, but he dropped it somewhere with his water, so he said nothing and focused on his breathing and the surrounding voices to quiet the screams in his head.

The group got back to their car and van. They had covered them with barbed wire as a fragile protection against an assault. In a few minutes, they disappeared out of his sight, leaving only a cloud of dust and a pistol loaded with a single bullet as the only traces of their passage.

The man remained alone. It wasn't a relief. That meant there was no one and nothing left to help him focus on anything other than the voice screaming in his head. He stared at the gun for a long time, wondering if he should use it. He knew what would happen. His visions and the voice had given him more information than he needed about guns and the damage they caused. But if he could hear the voices of the dead, who was to say they'd stop tormenting him after he put a bullet through his skull?

He forced himself to push aside these morbid thoughts. He needed to do something to make it easier to ignore the voices. Move. Don't stay still. Think about anything else. The man looked around him. Like he saw in the mother and the two travellers's memories, it was truly the middle of nowhere. The road was cutting the landscape in two parts of flatlands with a few dried shrubs here and there. The earth was red and dusty. There were no rocks, no trees.

Funerals. They were important. But with no rocks, the only thing he could do was to take the mother and the child on the side of the road. The two bodies's decomposition smell initially made him retch, but he learned to ignore it. It was harder to ignore the flood of visions that attacked him every time his skin brushed against theirs, but this time, he was expecting it. New knowledge found a way into his brain. He pretended it didn't. He crossed the two corpses' arms over their chests and wiped the dust from their faces. There wasn't much he could do with the mother's blood-strained hair.

Jessie. That was her name.

He spoke to her while combing her hair until he no longer had enough saliva to make a coherent sentence. Afterward, he couldn't tell what he had whispered to her, but each time he touched her cold skin, he could believe she was responding.

He couldn't do anything else for her or Sprog. The man picked up the pistol and walked away. This time, he would not lose it.

Something had changed, he realised. He was no longer running away from things he didn't know. He had a goal. Jessie. She died screaming, two steps from her child, and in his heart something even more powerful than the voice in his head was born. There was a new determination in him. Those who hurt her had to pay. He was beyond thirst, hunger, and fatigue. He walked, his eyes no longer fixed on his feet, but on the horizon at the end of the road. Jessie's laughter and the child's babbles followed him, enveloping him with their warmth. He had to avenge them. No one else would. The woman, the child. In his mind, they became his wife and child. His family. The voice was right. Some things needed to be protected. Some things shouldn't be forgotten.

Days passed again, long and hot and tiring, but he still walked. The landscape changed. There were houses again, here and there. They looked abandoned, like the ones he saw when he started walking. The only traces of human and animal life were the corpses and the flies. The man fed on insects and what he found in the dead's pockets, realizing he needed to do it. He took great care never to touch their skin.

One day, he saw a red motorcycle abandoned against a dead tree. A Kawasaki Z900, Sandy's memory told him. She loved motorcycles like she loved music, with passion. Another memory took its place. He saw that machine, or another just like hit, rushing towards him. He fell and rolled to the roadside to avoid the impact. By reflex, the man let himself fall and rolled to the side of the road to avoid the impact. Breathless and wild-eyed, he stood up and looked around him. There was no engine on the road. It had been Jessie's last memory, just before she died. Was it real? Was anything real? The man couldn't say.

He approached the motorcycle and looked at the straps on the back, at the deflated tires. Someone had clearly loaded it heavily before abandoning it. The tank was empty, the pipes cold. On the ground, the man saw marks of other vehicles, in great numbers. Someone had unloaded that motorcycle to place its loads on the others.

There was something else. On the front wheel, the man scraped a dry and dark substance. Mud, or blood, with a few long brown hairs tangled in the brakes. The man untied them. He heard again the shock, the killers' laughter, and the roar of the motorcycles moving away.

Blood and women's hair. The man examined each trace, trying to recognise the motorcycle models and how many had been there. When he was done, he clenched his fists and walked away. Restore order, enforce law and civilization, shouted the voice. Do your duty, send them to jail, the shadow of a dead policeman in his car approved. Why did they do this to us? Jessie sobbed as a child whimpered.

A voice, soft and calm, muffled all the others.

Make them disappear inside of me. May no one ever see them again. That is justice.

The man let the voice swallow him all.

When he surfaced again, he was sitting in the dirt, leaning against a car. A burning smell hung in the air. He didn't know how much time had passed. Considering how tired he was, he would have said days. He remembered little, images only. He had dried blood on his hands. Yes, he remembered that, hitting someone until he bled. His knee... He glanced at it and turned away, feeling nauseous. He remembered the bullet that did it. His arm was broken. He saw the motorcycle rolling over him again and this time it was his own memory, not someone's else. A relief. He also remembered a car and a truck. A body crushed on the road, destroyed beyond all hope of recognition. A feeling of satisfaction. The rest? Nothing. A dark mist drowned everything else, his actions, and thoughts.

He had found something to wear on the way. He was wearing a leather jacket and a torn shirt too long for him. Both the leather jacket and the torn shirt had blood stains and multiple tears. He still had the gun in his hand, but the bullet inside was gone, lodged in the corpse's chest, which was crushing his good leg.

He had killed. Many times, and without regrets, without emotions. It just needed to be done. He thought vaguely that he should have felt guilty, then stopped caring.

The voice was returning once again, screaming its confusing instructions. Protect, protect, continue the fight, serve and protect, stay true, stay strong, be a bastion, justice, justice, and the people and what needs to be done... He ignored it. The pain helped. He kicked the body away and grabbed onto the car to pull himself up. The pain made him scream. A moan answered him. So he wasn't alone. He looked behind the car.

Where was he? It wasn't the dusty plains any more, but rocky hills and ravines all around him. The car had two wheels hanging above the ridge. He jumped aside, not wanting to fall. He needed to live, even if he wasn't sure why. There was another car on the other side of the ravine, crashed against a big rock. Someone might still be alive inside unless it was one of the bikers lying near it.

He had been the one who shot them down, using the car as a protection. There was a shotgun at his feet with three bullets left inside. He tried to get up but realised he couldn't walk with his leg. He couldn't drive the car either. He would most likely make it fall into the ravine.

Instead, he crawled toward the motorcycle which belonged to the dead man near him. It was still in fine condition, unlike its owner. The man used the bike to get up. He couldn't climb on it and drive with his leg, so he used it as a crutch and walked alongside it toward the other car. His leg nearly gave up up under his weight several times, but he held on and got around the ravine. He passed by two bikers and carefully kicked each body. None of the move.

He walked by himself the last three steps toward the car's front door. It was pure agony. Surprisingly, the vehicle was intact, not crached like the man had thought, but the man at the wheel was still dead. What happened wasn't an accident. The bullet in the driver's jaw had stopped his course. How he brake in time to avoid a collision before succumbing was a mystery. He must have been a skilful driver, but he still had his forehead buried in the steering wheel. The car must have good brakes and the driver inside a heart of steel.

The man patted the car approvingly. Ford Falcon XB. Police force, confirmed by the driver's miraculously intact uniform. Growling, the man opened the door and threw the driver to the ground. They were of similar height, even if their shoulder widths differed. The man covered his hand to avoid touching the dead's skin and stripped him down to the underwear, relieved that the rigor mortis hadn't taken on yet. That one died less than three hours ago, a voice said. So it was someone else who had moaned. The man threw away his blood-soaked shirt and jacket but made sure it was other people's blood. He put on the white undershirt and the leather jacket. They were a little tight, but fit him well enough. The hardest part was putting on the leather pants and boots, but as he stood up, the man felt more alive than ever. It didn't matter that the contact of the leather was so painful on his countless blisters.

Yes, the voice screamed with happiness, stand up, to live is important, you cannot just survive, rebuild, do not regress, remember, remember for them, for the others, for the people, for the cities, for the beauty, remember, the useless is useful, codes are needed, preserve the past to protect the future...

The man growled to silence the voice. Again, a whine answered him, coming from the other side of the rocks. Just looking at the path ahead made him groan again. He still went. It wasn't too steep, but each step was an ordeal. At the top of the escarpment, the man found himself on a small plateau of tall dry grass, and there lay a man in a blackened circle. He had been dragged there. He had struggled. Those who tortured him had tied him to an old water trough used for cows when there still was enough water for everybody. They had doused him with gasoline. Up close, the smell of burning flesh became unbearable. The perpetrators of the crime had disappeared. The man hoped it was those he had left dead below. They may even have died too quickly.

With his hand on his shotgun, the man carefully approached the wounded man, ready to fire if it was a trap of a sort.

"Max? Is it you, Max?"

The man stayed quiet. He had no name. The jacket he wore had no name, just a number, which he tore off before leaning over the dying man. If the smell was unbearable, the sight of the charred body was worse. His eyes were open and his chest was still heaving in painful spasms. He wasn't seeing anything. He couldn't open his eyes.

"Max, old brother, is that you? You escaped?"

His clothes had burned with him. The blackened leather had split in several places, revealing the raw wounds beneath. His torturers had thrown his boots and jacket into the water trough. The man took out the jacket and tried to dust it off a little. Someone had written "Death to Cops" on it with chalk. He gently placed it on the injured man and sat down beside him, leaning against the water trough. He had nothing to break the chains. They may have something in the police car trunk, but what good would it do? The man would still be dying. Would be dead before the man came back.

"Not a pretty sight, huh? Bastards. Wanted to see me beg and cry. But Jim Goose will never beg for guys like them. Jim Goose..."

A wave of pain stopped him. He stood panting for several minutes. He raised an arm, trying to find the man's hand.

"Are you still here, Max? Please do not leave."

"I'm here. I'll stay."

Jim Goose didn't realise he wasn't talking to his teammate. He grabbed the man's hand and pressed it to his chest. There was no voice, no vision. Of course. It was only dead people giving him trouble. Jim Goose was alive. For now. To help, the man placed his second hand on Goose's forehead. He was burning.

"To the end, old brother, to the end. You were right, Max. We didn't know how to stop in time. It's the job. It makes you crazy, man crazy. The world is... The world is..."

"Mad?"

"Yeah. Exactly. Mad. We can't save it. Too late for that. Too late for us."

His dried, lifeless laugh turned into a cough.

"Water," he prayed, grabbing the man's hand. "Water, water..."

There was no water in the trough, just dry, red mud. The man realised how thirsty he was. Of course, he didn't need to drink to survive. He knew that he had survived without food and water for far longer than was humanly possible. But right now, he would have killed for a sip of water. Probably wouldn't have shared it with the dying man.

He stayed. There was nothing else he could do. The dying man's agony lasted until sunset. The man held his hand the whole time, trying to forget the pain in his leg and his broken arm. He listened to Goose's increasingly delirious speech, alternating between nervous laughter and begging for some water and for the pain to stop. When he was conscious of his surroundings, he called the man Max, recalling their shared memories. Finally, he fell into a deep torpor.

The man knew it was over when suddenly memories of Goose flooded into his mind. The police station, more and more empty and dirty, gratitude changing into distrust in people's eyes, the exhaustion, the helplessness, the pent-up anger that builds, that builds, Max ready to quit, the colleagues who could no longer see how violent they were all becoming, the terrible news coming from abroad, the missing water, the fear settling in, the sound of the bullet passing through Max's head, the laughter of the bikers that pull him out of the car, the pain, the pain, the pain, how could they laugh so hard to his suffering, please, he wanted to die, to die already, he would die alone, because Max, Max was dead, but no, Max is here, thanks the Lord if it exists, but the fear, the fear's still there, and the pain, it won't leave, not yet, not now, but it's too soon, he's not ready, help me, please help me, Max, Max, MAX!

Listening to the dead's memories was hard. Feeling someone die was worse. The man screamed for hours. His mind broke.

Max. Was that his name? He no longer knew. Everything was confusing. There was a woman, a child... His own? Police officers... Him?

Staggering, Max stood up. He shouldn't have been there. He must have been somewhere else. He had... someone to find. To protect. No, too late. Jim was dead. His fault. Jessie and the kid... His fault.

No longer caring about thirst or pain, Max rolled down the slope. He stepped over the body of the man he had undressed and rushed into the car. He couldn't stay here. His door's window was cracked by the bullet which had passed through it. It had missed him... right? Max broke it to make it easier, started the engine, and pressed the clutch. The interceptor was as nervous and powerful as in his foggy memories. Max reached the hilltop, took a moment to contemplate the landscape in front of him, and then drove faster, letting the desert swallow him up.