She was almost dead.
The vultures were already circling her as she stumbled on the sand. Max had watched the mob she had escaped from, the ferocity with which she had fought her pursuers. He had stayed safely hidden away, his car shielded by the sharp rocks, an unknown spectator of the brutality the world had become accustomed to. Max had gotten used to watch the bloody chases the Wasteland witnessed everyday, but that didn't really make it easier. She had escaped, though, her motorbike carrying her toward freedom. Now it laid in the sand, already forgotten, a junk of metal completely useless which the sand was already burying in its dry shroud. She had taken a reluctant few steps away from it, had tripped. She had stopped for a handful of minutes, shivering, before resuming her uneven pace. Max could see, even from the distance, the way she was carefully cradling her left arm against her chest. However, he couldn't see her face. She was but a distant, faraway black dot, another speck of dust among the endless desert of the Wasteland. Still he watched, curious, eating what was left of the few supplies he had managed to scavenge.
The vultures were circling closer.
The black dot that was the woman advanced a little further. It paused again. It walked a bit more, still holding its arm, then it collapsed limply on the ground. Max watched it as seconds stretched into minutes, willing it to get back up, to stand up, but the dot stayed still. The vultures descended. Max stepped away from the shadow of his car, looking down on the valley below him.
The wind was howling in his ears in an endless, hollow cry full of sand and grit that constantly lashed against his face. The sun was burning mercilessly on his sunburnt, grazed skin, but Max didn't care. He didn't take notice of the world anymore. The sun and its deathly gaze, the wind and its hopeless cries were merely inconveniences to him. The vultures, lucky spectators. They reluctantly flapped away at his approach. The motorbike had taken a soft beige color as the wind progressively buried it within its sandy gusts. Max glanced at it, saw the gasoline trickling into a dark, already drying puddle on the shifting ground below. The motorbike was another corpse, bleeding its last strengths into the desert.
The woman was dead.
Max was sure of it as he got closer. He first looked around, watching for the distant blurry shapes of cars, motorbikes, trucks, listened for the sound of roaring engines, but only the wind answered his wariness. Then he carefully bent down, examining the corpse half-buried in the sand.
She had very long, curly hair, stiff with dust and dirt, of which color Max could not guess. Perhaps black or brown. The curls spread around her neck and along her back, as if to protect her from some final blow. She didn't seem to have anything valuable on her, only ragged, torn clothes, and a used pistol. Max glanced at what was left of her left arm, thinking about the way she had shielded it against the wind. The wound was fresh, still bleeding, and tiny particles of sand had already lodged themselves inside the reddened, torn flesh. Max looked at the shredded veins and tendons, which were nothing more but pinkish strings also buried in the sand. The sight of the infected stump immediately awakened curiosity in him; the wound carried a story to his eyes. It was the witness of a life he could not see, of struggles he could not guess. He looked at the woman, thinking about the gang that had relentlessly pursued her, and once again looked around him.
No one.
Carefully, Max slowly pushed the corpse onto its side, revealing the woman's face for the first time. Like her hair, her features were buried in a mask of dried, cracked black dirt, dust, brownish blood, and fresh tears. They had left a clean trace on the woman's face, cleaning a bit of the dirt as they had followed their course down her cheeks. Max wondered again about her story, the meaning of those faded tears. He slid a finger on her neck, feeling for a pulse, even if faint, and immediately found it. Life pulsed fiercely back against his pad, alongside her veins, defying the world and the deadly desert that had been closing in on her. Max pulled his finger back, and watched her chest, covered in dark stains, rise very faintly. She was breathing, with difficulty but she was. Respect and guilt arose in him as he looked around once more. He had been so quick to assume she was dead, so quick to think her efforts to escape had been a waste. Max often forgot how life throve, in the Wasteland, despite all odds.
The valley was silent.
The wind howled more gently now, appeased. Max looked up to where the woman was heading. He could make out the outlines of three huge rocks, their shapes rippling and fluttering within the heat of the desert. He looked at the woman again, hesitating. The rocks seemed very far on foot, but he had no idea who or what was hidden there. To take his car would be a huge risk. Without it, he would have no way of moving anymore. His Interceptor was his only freedom. Still, the woman had also taken great risks to reach those rocks. To leave her there would mean death, and she had fought all she could to escape it.
Max Rockatansky used to be a cop. Maybe that was his only chance to do a small, good thing.