Chapter Text
Max hasn’t seen a real human in over 57 days.
Of course, this is when the new ghost appears.
Granted, Sprog and Jessie are always there, waiting in the wings to weep (Jessie) or hurl accusations (Sprog). He sees them plenty in the desert, nothing to quell them or his mind but the harsh sun and blistering sand.
So when the new guy shows up, materializing out of the hot midday sun, Max only jumps a little.
“You better go,” the ghost says calmly.
His voice is nice, oddly soft with his outback burr.
Max ignores him.
A two-headed lizard foolish enough to leave the safety of its home sneaks up behind Max. He kills it with a crunch of his boot and eats it. One does not simply waste resources like that in this burned-out world.
He continues to scan the valley below and only allows himself to look at the new guy through his peripheral vision.
Dressed in dark, dusty riding leathers, the man stands out starkly against the light sandy outcropping. He has medium-ish length dark hair and some sort of black grease smeared across his forehead. He stands casually with his hands tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket. Like Max, he stares out into the valley below.
Max contemplates the new guy’s demand briefly but still doesn't move. His ghosts like to give heartbreaking accusations and sow terrible sorrow, not give helpful advice. And, he learned the hard way that talking back to his ghosts is a terrible idea so asking why he should go is not happening.
“Go, you fool.”
The ghost seems insistent, his tone carrying a slight edge now.
Ignoring his instincts to not take his eyes off this guy, Max looks over his shoulder.
“GO, MAX!” Sprog howls as a vision of a legion of cars plows Max down.
Fuck.
Max leaps into his car and slams on the gas, the wheels threatening to spin out on the loose sand with sheer force. He straightens out the wheel and files down the ridgeline into the valley below.
It’s not enough.
Max can tell, somewhere deep inside of him that breathes more gas fumes and churns with the rumble of a V8 engine; he isn’t going to make it.
The new ghost sits in his passenger seat, his hands gripping the dashboard as if he could commune with and employ the engine to push harder, to go faster.
Still, it is not enough.
The pursuit crashes into Max, flipping the car as sheer bloody panic begins to swell in his chest.
He has survived the wasteland for so long now, held out against so many awful and desperate people that the level of fear rising in Max is surprising and so unhelpful.
His car lands wheels up and Max hardly waits for the dark spots to leave his field of vision before he claws his way out through the window, his sharp breaths coming in pants now.
Briefly, he feels a calming touch on his shoulder, the weight grounding him in his moment of panic before it's gone. There’s a light scent of gazzuline and leather in the air when more bodies, actual human bodies, slam into him. Something heavy hits him in the head and Max knows no more.
↭
He awakes to pain and blood.
Dank clumps of his unkempt hair are snipped and fall in waves below him as the riotous masses hold him still. The distinct buzz of a tattoo gun merrily gorges his back, the pain making him overwhelmingly aware that he is bound in an unfamiliar, dangerous place. More panic spews forth, and Max’s saliva drenches the gag stretched uncomfortably across his face.
He has to get out, to go.
He sees an opening and runs for it, knocking these strange pale demons out of his way. His hands are bound in heavy chains but he doesn’t let that stop him. Dodging this way and that, Max manages to climb a grate, desperately seeking a way out.
“Max? Max? MAX” Sprog’s angelic face leeches into a twisted baleful grin, his little hands raised in claws. The shock of seeing him startles Max into falling back into the water below him.
Still, he wastes no time and continues to run, mindlessly sprinting down unfamiliar corridors until he sees two double doors at the end of the hallway. Pushing his aching knee, Max pumps his arms and slams open the doors only to come to a screeching halt.
Where the hell was he?
Was that… green? Over there on the opposite mountain?
Hearing the rumbling mass of his pursuit, Max has no choice but to jump and latch onto the swinging hook. He swings away from the doors but to his horror, whoever was lifting the hook stopped and now Max is swinging back into the hands of his captors.
Fuck.
As the pale demons claw him back away from the ledge, Max takes one more desperate glance at the open sky and the startling green before being consumed by the darkness once more.
↭
He spends the night in a cage suspended above the ground, a metal muzzle digging painfully into his face, his arms bound in chains behind him. The prickling pain in his neck tells him that some type of medical line was hooked to him when he was out.
He shifts slightly, trying to find comfort for his bum knee, before studying his surroundings.
Judging by the other suspended cages around him, Max clearly is not the first prisoner to be taken by this gang. And by the partially decomposing corpses in some, he won’t be the first to die here either.
“You won’t die here,” Max’s new ghost says calmly, his silhouette illuminated by the moonlight filtering in from above.
Max doesn’t reply- the muzzle is heavy and harsh against his face, making talking painful- and merely raises an eyebrow.
“You won’t, you're too valuable,” the ghost continues, “they need you for something, and that will be your ticket out of here.” He leans casually against an empty cage on the ground next to Max, rolling something dark in and around his fingers. In the moonlight, he is hard to miss, yet with what little warboys- fucking hell, warboys- dart past the ghost, not one acknowledges him.
The moonlight makes his new ghost look even more unearthly, his pale skin luminescent and his dark wavy hair an inky black. His eyes though, such a deep green remind Max of a word so old and different from this wretched wasteland. Its once-buried resting place in the recess of Max’s mind is blasted open; forest. His ghost has forest-green eyes.
Consequently, the moonlight shows the wear and tear of his leathers, the elbows and knees reinforced with something thick, the dusty boots metal-tipped. An empty thigh holster is strapped to his left hip, and there are several nice hiding spots for something sharp and dangerous. More than anything though, it's the way his ghost never stops scanning the room, never stops observing the comings and goings of the space.
This man was a road warrior.
Now, fully illuminated in this dark cavern, Max is confused. He is positive now that he has never seen this man once before. Never killed him or got him killed- that he knew of. So why was he here?
Perhaps those many days lost out in the sand affected Max more than he thought.
“Rest, Max” his ghost gently says, “you’ll fear nothing tonight. Rest, and prepare for what is coming. You’ll find opportunity then.”
As if they were waiting for the command, against all odds, Max’s eyelids begin to droop. His last image was that of his warrior ghost quietly standing guard, his hands gently rolling that dark object between his pale fingertips.
↭
It takes Max to being strapped down to the front of a speeding car, barreling blazingly across the desert sand to realize this is what his new ghost meant about being valuable.
Huh.
Blood bag indeed.
He files that universal donor information away for later and continues to curse the stupidity of man.
His donee, as it were, is a feral little freak who has severe marital issues with the other guy in the car with them.
The crazed mania surrounding this Immortan Joe is intense, even for all the general crazies that come with living in this wasteland. Vaguely, he remembers hearing about this Immortan a few thousand days ago when the man and his followers fought against that massive biker gang. Max had been somewhat near the area but knew even then, he wanted no part of whatever was happening between the two.
And yet.
Here he is anyways, forced to be up close and personal as his donee and partner fight it out against buzzards around the war rig; i.e. dragged into some nonsense wholly against Max’s will.
Fuck this.
He gives a rough growl, furious as the fireball of the flipped spiky car comes too close to comfort. Max glances briefly to the side and makes eye contact with the war rig driver. The heat of the battle and breakneck speed makes it hard for him to discern any real details but the determined glare, alight with something that screams ‘I will do everything to fucking survive’ is familiar.
His reflection in his car’s window shows him the same thing.
It’s Max who looks away first. There’s a prickling in his skin, a slight raise to the hair on his arms. Somehow, he knows he’ll be seeing this driver again.
It takes his donee’s yell for him to notice the large sandstorm building up in front of them.
“She hopes to lose us in there!” one of them screams behind Max.
Judging by the intense clouds and ominous red lighting, Max privately agrees with the war rig’s driver. It's a clever idea.
Suddenly, his muzzle is yanked back as someone pulls on his chain.
Ah, the opportunity then.
He almost melts off the hood of the car when the partner with staples in his face removes the thick medical needle from his skin. There’s no time to appreciate the relief though as he slides up and over to the back of the car.
There, leaning as if it was an easy joy ride and not a breakneck push to survive a sandstorm, is his new ghost.
His ghost merely raises a pointed eyebrow at Max’s muzzle and chain as if he expected Max to be free already.
Jackass.
But not entirely it seems. As Max slides down next to the stapled-face man, he sees his new ghost causally stick out one of his legs. Not wasting a moment, Max props his hands back against the car and kicks out sharply with both of his legs. Not expecting the sudden motion, the stapled-faced man gives a sharp cry and stumbles back. Hitting- something, he flies off the car, disappearing in the swirling sand.
Despite his better judgment, Max looks at his new ghost.
The man grins and says nothing. He does, however, jerk his chin over to the front of the car. Right, Max is still chained to the driver. And, they’re in the middle of a sandstorm.
Right.
Max is still trying to break the back windshield- that stupid suicidal fucking maniac- when the car’s weight is finally not enough to remain on the ground. As the car and its inhabitants go flying, Max thinks about two things:
Survive, dammit.
And-
How in this wretched wasteland, did his ghost manage to fucking trip someone?
↭
There’s a sharp ringing in his ears as Max bursts from the sand. Vaguely, he hears Sprog murmuring something incoherent, and Jessie whimpering, but they thankfully fade as more things come into focus for him.
Miraculously, he’s survived flying off a car in the middle of a sandstorm. Suffering no apparent mortal wounds, he follows his chain back to its other end and finds his donee slumped in the sand, still out cold.
The car is totally fucked, its pieces lying haphazardly around, but there is a sawed-off shotgun near his unconscious jailer.
Perfect.
“That won’t work.”
Ignoring his new ghost, Max picks up the shotgun and lines it up. He pulls the trigger. The hammer falls with a dull click, the chamber is full of sand, and the hand is unfortunately still attached.
His ghost snickers.
Still ignoring the ghost man- a new personal favorite pastime- Max searches the area for anything that might finally detach him from the feral little man. He is debating the merits of just biting the damn hand off- muzzle issues notwithstanding- when he hears a clang. Metal on metal, rhythmic banging, somewhere nearby in the haze. He waits and listens a few seconds longer, pinpointing the exact location of the sound before glancing at the ghost man.
He’s staring directly out toward the sound, his feet planted firmly into the sand, his hand lying by his sides. The ghost’s shoulders are tense and fingers curled into fists. But his face- open and hopeful and wanting-
Hmm, interesting.
Max heaves the unconscious man up and over his shoulders before heading towards the sound.
Better see what all the fuss is about.
At the last minute, Max grabs the shotgun. Who knows, it might come in handy.