Drive
The Interceptor rolls, tumbling Max, weapons, provisions and odds and ends around, the sky and sand rolling with it. It comes to a bone-jarring stop on its roof against a boulder. Max kicks out the windshield, scrambling to get free of the wreckage before the bikes catch up.
He makes it, but only just. The fight is over fast, Max' shotgun making quick work of the raiders. Two of them fall, brains and blood glistening in the sand. The others flee, not relishing the thought of facing Max. Or they're off to get backup.
Over the ringing of his ears, Max hears the crackle of fire. It's the Interceptor, flames licking at the seats and Max' things, melting away and burning up. He curses and grabs what he can; water, food and ammunition. It's not much and there's no saving the car.
One of the bikes runs fine when Max picks it up and he loads it with his things. He allows himself one last look at the blackened wreck of the Interceptor. It was part of another life, one Max barely remembers now, and seeing it like this pulls strangely at Max' heart. But there's nothing he can do. He kicks the bike into gear and drives off, eager to vanish into the Wastes before those raiders come back. They are welcome to whatever they can salvage.
The bike dies after a few days and Max can't get it running again. He can't even tell what's wrong. After a day of trying everything he can think of, the bike is still dead and he's far from any place he could find a new one. So he stashes it between the jumble of stones and boulders he has used as shelter and goes on on foot, carrying what he can.
The sky is too bright and big overhead. There's a steady wind and it peppers Max with sand, a hundred tiny touches to his bare skin, tapping on his clothes. He hunches his shoulders and walks on, trying to ignore the sense of danger climbing his back and pulling on his skin. The silence is even bigger than the sky, only broken by the sound of his own breathing and the soft shift of the sand under his feet. He walks faster, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance until he can't walk any more.
Max sleeps fitfully in a ditch, dreams of being hunted and captured waking him up over and over again. And then the dreams leave him to sleep in peace until dawn, a low rumble Max doesn't even hear chasing them away.
When he wakes up, the rumble is still there. The Interceptor sits next to him, crouched low on its tires, the motor purring away under the hood. Max pulls open the door and climbs inside. The relief of being behind its wheel again sweeps away any thought of the burned husk it was the last time Max saw it. For a moment, he remembers it as a smashed heap of metal, sees it crushed by a war rig, stares at it sinking into an oil moat, watches it burning bright in the vast night.
Shifting the car into gear, Max steps on the gas, eager to leave those memories behind. They mean nothing to him.
Max drives.
Max stares up at the barrel of the shotgun for a split second. Long enough to notice the gleam of the metal, the grains of sand under his hands, the swirling storm clouds overhead, the trickle of blood running down the face of the man who is killing him.
The shot is louder than anything Max has ever heard, but the silence that follows it is even louder. Max tumbles into the darkness, grasping at nothing, blind and deaf.
When Max comes to, he's out in the Wastes. He's sitting behind the Interceptor's wheel and the engine is running. The low rumble fills Max's ears and his whole body, a comfort and a promise.
Sitting bolt upright, Max's hands go to his face, to the back of his head. He knows the shot didn't miss. They had him, and they killed him, at the side of the road like a rabid dog.
The rumble grows louder.
There's no blood on Max's clothes. At least none that isn't old and long dried, remnants of fights he won or ran away from. Squeezing his eyes shut, Max tries to remember. But there's only darkness and silence between that shot and now. Not even the flashes he gets from other things he wants to forget and never can.
Almost without thinking, Max puts the car into gear. Keep moving, lose himself in the Wasteland. He drives and drives, the rumble and roar of the engine filling his mind. He drives until the memory fades. He drives until he doesn't remember that he can't remember.
Max drives.
Interceptor by Paul Fernando at Noun Project - he has a full set of Mad Max icons!