Thunderdome Part 2
Max Rockatansky watched the inky night blacken the Wasteland. He winced at the pain in his abdomen and legs. He had been staggering along a desert ridge for a few hours since his entire world had gone to hell – again.
Savannah Nix , Jedidiah and his son and the assorted mix of children of all ages he had rescued from the clutches of Aunt Entity and her gang of marauding maniacs were all gone, flown off on Jedidiah’s airborne contraption. Bartertown was dust, as far as he knew. But he was hopeful, somehow, that he could make it back to that sliver of semi-paradise he has stumbled on called Crack in the Earth. Slake and the others should still be there, the part of the tribe who doubted Savannah’s dream of Tomorrow-morrow Land
He could heal in that place – possibly even recover his damaged but awakened inner self. He certainly had gained some allies there before he had to march across the desert to recue Savannah. Maybe, just maybe, a chance for hope. The dreamy, hope-filled eyes of Savannah Nix kept appearing before Max as he staggered and swayed. He wet his lips and felt the chapped skin.
“Damn, no water,” he grunted, scanning the stars above.
He had to move it before daylight. He had to haul ass across this damned desert before the scorching sun emerged again in the morning to seal his fate. A cool desert night breeze whipped at his black, flowing clothes as he gritted his teeth and marched. And marched.
The sky was a perfect deep blue as dawn approached, and Max blinked in disbelief as the outline of the gargantuan 747 which emerged as the most blessed silhouette he had ever seen. He was back – he had actually made it. His legs wobbled beneath him as he climbed the last ridge and descended down into the incongruous green paradise. The sound of flowing water overwhelmed his senses. Like a thing possessed, and now unheeding of any dangers, Max plunged ahead with ferocity towards the pool in the center of the village. He tripped face first into it and gasped. Never had something felt so cool and perfect and healing. The water flowed over ever part of him, like a glorious baptism. He cupped a hand and raised the water to his mouth and tasted it. Max felt a smile emerge on his face – something which was rare.
After a moment or two, and a few more gulps of water, Max’s senses regained their usual watchfulness. Beads of water dripped from his lashes as he scanned the village for voices, movement, anything. It was unexpectedly quiet.
“Hey, kids! ” Max shouted hoarsely, “Where are ya?”
The only sound was water lapping at his exposed, hungry belly. Max stepped out of the pool, his fingers aching for some kind of weapon or tool to wield. After all the antics over the last few days he felt stripped bare of his normal armor and tools. He would need to make amends quickly, as even in Crack in the Earth, the terror of the Wasteland loomed dangerously close.
“Kids, hey! No more fooling around.”
The answer came in the form of a solid, thin javelin which pierced Max’s upper thigh with a whoosh and lodged there close to the bone. Max slipped and fell with a curse, clutching at his leg which oozed blood generously. Twisting here and there in a panic, Max searched desperately for the person which had just wounded him. She stood proudly up on one of the rocks, agleam in a silver dress with her arm propped aiming a crossbow at him.
“Raggedy-man, welcome to my new Bartertown, ” Aunty Entity said with an inviting smile and gesture, “Like it?”
Max rolled his eyes and fell supine on the ground with a groan. Just my luck.
Jesse was playing with Sprog their son on the rug in front of the television. She was laughing and Max was laughing too. There was music in the background – the amateurish playing of a saxophone. Max could feel the sea breeze in his nostrils coming in through the open window. Then the scent of rain. Max hadn’t dreamed like this in years. He hadn’t really slept in years, to be honest. Only quick snatches of slumber when there was a tense lull between his fight for survival.
“Max, wake up!” It was Savannah Nix’s voice, the fierce woman-child who had somehow reached the core of Max in their brief encounter with each other. She had reminded him somehow of Jesse, his wife.
“Wake up! ” said a voice firmly again, but this was not Savannah’s voice. It was Entity’s.
Max, dazed in a temporary delirium, awoke to feel his arms trussed above his head, bound by a rope. He glanced down at his right thigh and noticed it had been bandaged. At least now I’ll have a limp on each leg, he thought sourly.
Entity slinked towards him like a tigress. Max noted that she had already commissioned the children’s main house as her own. Her Guards were moving things about and setting up gauze curtains and other paraphernalia to make her feel like she was back in her tower at Bartertown. Only, where were the remaining children? Max assumed they were lurking up on the canyon or on the verdant ridge above watching and observing and waiting for the perfect time to attack.
So much for rest, Max thought glumly. Back to the fight for survival.
“You look famished and thirsty, soldier,” Aunty Entity observed with an undertone of tenderness.
Max grunted an affirmative and Entity raised a jug of water over his head and poured the liquid into his mouth. Max angrily took a bite of an apple next as she held it up to his lips, not liking the fact he was being fed like a restrained animal.
“So, Max is the name, huh, sugar? I heard you say it in your sleep.”
“And you must be Eve?” he snarled back as he chewed the apple.
Unfazed, Entity gestured to the waterfall and pools below, “Entity, actually. How do you like my new Garden of Eden? I think we can make a new start here. I’m surprised you didn’t tell me about this place yourself.”
After Max had rescued Savannah Nix and the others from the merciless sand dune, he had led them into the unsavory and dangerous Bartertown to get supplies. They had essentially wrecked the place before being chased out by Entity herself and her squads of loyal killers.
Entity moved examine Max closely. He shifted his stare away, somehow disturbed by her dark, bruised eyes. Her long fingers traced the stubble on his chin and down to his neck and he shivered at her touch.
“I could use a good man like you, Max. I’m not completely unappealing to you, am I?”
Damn if she wasn’t, Max thought. Being this close to such a regal woman was altogether jarring. There was a hidden softness to her looks as he dared to glimpse out of the corner of his eye. The almond- colored skin of her bosom was beautifully revealed in the deeply cleft silver dress which clung tightly the unabashedly fine figure.
“What do you want, “Max sighed, shifting to face Entity straight on.
“You killed all my best men – so I think you owe me.”
“Is that why you let me live?”
“You told me before you were once a cop, right?” Entity asked with a gentleness which surprised Max.
“A Bronze.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“I did for a while. Until….”
“Yes?”
Max felt his throat tighten, almost instinctively. He hadn’t talked this much in years – literally. The image of Jesse and Sprog was still so clear in his mind’s eye from his recent dream that he had to choke back a gasp of air.
“Hmmmm,” Entity nodded, “Survival is all we know, you and I. It’s made us what we are now – hard and cold. But I still think we have a chance to change that and regain something which was taken from us so long ago. Don’t you?”
No wonder this woman had ruled Bartertown with such devotion from her subjects– she almost had a preacher style to her manner. It was convincing.
Max returned her question with a steely, blue-eyed stare.
“It can start with a promise, Max.”
“Promise? To not kill you the first chance I get?”
“Still so savage,” Entity noted with a broad smile, “I thought we were both seeking our lost humanity?”
“Still listening.”
“Okay, ” Entity moved away gracefully to slowly pirouette on her high heels around the open hut which looked out over the running water, canyon landscape and green lushness from its elevated position, “I know we’ve lost Master and the secrets of our methane production in Bartertown, but this place here could be even more valuable. It seems protected and easy to defend. Hydraulics, Max. If we can find a way to use this water to create power – a lot less messy than pigshit, agreed?”
Max considered how Slake and Savannah had become tribal and lived in communion with Crack in the Earth – not exploiting it, but living off its bounty. All that would be destroyed. One of the last few vestiges of a pre-atomic apocalypse would be made to look like the same dry, battered, god-forsaken desert he had been roaming for years.
“The promise?”
Entity’s expression had glazed over with her schemes.
“”For me to trust you this time you must do exactly as I say – in everything. Previous betrayals forgotten and we start over. “
Max shrugged as best he could with his arms over his head. It was a noncommittal gesture.
“Okay,” Entity said patiently, “Maybe you need a little bit more of an incentive.”
Max furrowed his brow with disapproval but before he could protest, Aunty Entity took his stubbled sand-darkened face between her cool fingers. Max breathed in sharply as she pressed a lingering, sweetly luscious kiss to his lips. It had been many, many years since Max has kissed his wife Jesse, but he remembered the sensation as if it was yesterday. His eyelids flickered shut for a moment, despite his surprise. He conjured up Jesse’s living image in his mind’s eye and envisioned her thick, curly hair and flirtatious, sincere smile.
All too quickly Entity released him, watching Max’s anguished expression triumphantly.
“I can see you aren’t dead yet, solider. Do we have a deal? There’s more where that came from. Much more.”
Max’s head was swimming, but not with passion – it was anger. He didn’t like to be toyed with. That kiss had brought forth with painful acuity many years of hidden and untouched memories. Jesse was dead and yet it was if, for a flash, she had been brought back to life in Max’s vision. It was too much to feel again – this ragged, heartless life of so many years of violent survival. There was no point in savoring those sweet memories again – the loss would be double painful.
But crossing this woman a second time would be also be ill-advised.
“Let me look for them before I give you an answer.”
“Whoever left this paradise is close by– I can feel it. Fires were still burning in the pits below when we arrived. I want them alive or dead – no matter. I can give you a few of my men to take with you.”
Max nodded, looking above at his bound wrists, “Sure. Can you get me out of this?”
“For now,” Entity said teasingly, motioning her Guards to unbind the prisoner.
Max rubbed his wrists. “I’ll need weapons – gun, machete, spear.”
“Whatever you need, “Entity beamed, “I look forward to seeing the results of your hunt. Good luck. I’ll be waiting for you when you return.”
Entity’s bruised and alluring eyes gleamed with a flicker towards the primitive bed across the room. The Guards were just finishing up hanging up gauzy, white curtains around the area for their leader’s privacy.
Max forced himself to catch her eye and give her what he prayed looked like a lustful smirk before quickly getting to the business at hand, which was to get armed, find Slake and the children. After that, he would need to deal with Entity and her killer crew.
Aunt Entity’s Guards seemed to tower over Max with their elaborate plumed helmet crests and physically imposing bodies. After having a solid rest, food and drink, Max had his freshly injured leg rebandaged. After a couple deep swigs of left-over Bartertown moonshine, Max was ready to move out. Here he was, auditioning again for Aunty Entity. This time as the leader in charge of a lynch mob/genocide squad of thugs hunting the Tribe that Stayed.
Max looked over his shoulder to see Entity observing him as he gathered his gear, feeling like himself again and armed to the teeth. He returned her gaze unemotionally. Entity let the gauze curtains fall back in place and she disappeared from his view.
Max limped along the streambed and up into the deep gorge. The Guards followed, and their weapons were zeroed in on his back as he staggered along. But Max could feel eyeballs on him from somewhere else as well – up in the trees and rocks ahead.
Where were they? Max felt sure that Slake was watching. Max hoped that the brief bond they had formed when he had first been ‘announced’ as Captain Walker by the children could somehow be renewed. Max got the creeping sensation that he was a walking sacrifice here. Either Aunty’s Guards would slaughter him from behind or the Tribe would assault him in front or he’s be caught in the middle. His chances for survival seems to be dropping quickly.
Winding their way along the river, Max felt himself edging up a steep, rocky incline.
One of the towering Guards, a blonde giant of a woman, tapped Max on the shoulder.
“Hey, Bronze, where you taking us?”
Max smiled to himself. Still a Bronze after fifteen plus years. Word of mouth spread quickly in Entity’s inner circle, apparently.
“Stay here if you want. I’m not forcing anyone on this path.”
The woman snarled, lowered her tooth-decorated visor and dropped back.
Up and up they went until they reached the tallest part of the canyon with a vast view down into the farthest reaches of the riverbed. Max was stunned at how deep it went. As he stood observing, panting, another one of the Guards arrived at his side, looking down at him.
“I think we should just pitch you over the side right now, ” the man chuckled menacingly,
Max shrugged, “Then you can explain to your Paradise Queen why I’m not sharing her bed tonight.”
The Guard stood silent, unable to give a reply.
“Wait here, I’m going to go check out this ravine. Can you keep a look out?” Max handed him the pair of mangled binoculars, which the man grudgingly accepted.
Max dropped down a break in the canyon and moved down a dusty gully.
His thoughts drifted back to his first encounter with Entity and his betrayal of her trust. He still could hear her enraged voice. “Those Who Break a Deal, Face the Wheel!”
After surviving Thunderdome, Max bound and mounted backwards on a horse and do this supposed death in the Gulag – the Desert. They had even symbolically crowned him with put a huge paper-mache clown or fool face. He had remembered using a scary mask to cheer up Jesse, his wife, back in the old days. How things come full circle, he had thought cheerlessly at that point.
But he had survived the desert and later learned that the determined nymphet named Savannah Nix has been his savior. But to Max there had only been a long stretch of blackness and dreams – so many dreams! Goose, Jesse, Sprog, the highway, the oil refinery, the loneliness, music from childhood – all in a lunacy swirl. Then he had awakened in Crack in the Earth. His eyelids fluttered and snapped open. He was alive again – with a monkey screeching, eager hands of noisy children stretching towards him, and screams – his own surprised voice. Gravity tore at his limbs as his body jerked against this assault in a panic. He had fallen and found himself crazily dangling by a his foot upside down! Thinking back now it was almost like hanging from an umbilical cord dropped from the womb. Then a sudden baptism in the pond below as one of the children cut the rope. He remembered the water filling his mouth, his throat, his mind. And as he stood up with a giant breath, he was more alive than ever before. From a tomb of water to the life-giving chasm of air.
He would never forget that moment. He has been saved.
Max’s meandering thoughts snapped to a halt as a froze. Above and around him, emerging from the rocks and the crevices, he saw spears and a dozen eyeballs on him. Max had never been so glad to be ambushed him in all his life.
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