Chapter Text
The first time Max meets Furiosa JoBassa, she’s carrying a shotgun. In that precise moment, he does not know her name or where she’s from or why she has it; she’s just the woman who has horses and dogs and a shotgun that lives down his road. The double-barrels aren’t pointed at him – professional – but she’s still standing under a floodlight that throws back the corners of the darkness with a shotgun in her hands and a very large dog barking from her heel, and Max is absolutely trespassing on her property in the middle of the night. At least two other dogs are also barking from somewhere he can’t see behind her.
“What do you want?”
Max plants his feet and stops moving when the shotgun twitches towards him. “I found a dog. Pup. It’s hurt.”
The shotgun thinks about lowering. “Let me see.” She snaps her fingers at her dog. “Rei. Down.”
The dog makes a warbling, discontented noise, then slumps to the ground and plants its black-masked face between two enormous yellow paws. After a moment, the others quiet down too.
The pup is curled against Max’s jacket, chewing nervously at the collar. It’s a pitbull, mostly gray, but it’s got a white belly and face except for a splotch around one eye. Some of the white on its head isn’t so white right now, because it’s been hit with something and is bleeding from the side of its skull. Max steps further into the light so she can hear it whimpering.
The shotgun is now pointed straight down. “You’re lucky,” she says. “Our vet’s here right now. Come on.” She points him up a gravel driveway and walks behind him. There’s a house tucked off to the left, and a barn with a floodlight mounted over the entrance on the right. She steps ahead of him at the intersection, walks into the barn, turns right immediately into a doorway, and flicks on a light.
The room is part-office, part-kitchen. There’s a desk and a couch, plus a nook in one corner with a sink, cabinets, a coffeepot, and a mini-fridge.
The shotgun gets stashed under the desk, and then the woman holds out her hands for the pup. Max blinks. One of them isn’t a hand – it’s steel wires and poles and bungee cords and a lot of unidentifiable metal pieces. The three fingers and thumb have rubber grips on the undersides. She sees him staring and raises her eyebrows expectantly.
Max hands her the dog.
The big yellow one has followed them inside; it circles Max, sniffing him endlessly. He probably smells like the diner.
The pup whines a little, cupped in Shotgun Woman’s metal hand while she uses her flesh one to prod at the cut on its head. Its fur is caked with grit. She sets it down on her desk and unlocks an old, beat-to-shit wardrobe that stands behind it. Inside are shelves packed with bottles and boxes; she pulls out one of each: saline and gauze. “Where did you find her?”
Max looks at the floor. “Dumpster.”
Shotgun Woman stares at him.
Max shifts his weight between his feet. “I work at the diner. End of shift, take out the trash. Heard crying. Look inside, there’s a pup. It’s hurt. Everything’s closed. So…” He shrugs.
A teenager with long black hair tied up in a bun pokes her head through the door. “Furiosa? Lily just pooped.” She spies the puppy on the desk. “Oh, who’s this?”
“Hurt pup,” Shotgun Woman – Furiosa – says unnecessarily. “Keep her walking, but have Dag stop in here, will you?”
“Sure thing.” The teenager disappears.
Furiosa digs into a drawer in her desk and comes up with a plastic bag, them scoops the puppy up with her non-metal hand and carries her to the sink. There’s a scale on the counter next to it that she hits a button on before she sets the pup on it. She pulls a treat from the bag and offers it on her fingertips.
The puppy wiggles and snatches the treat.
“What’s your name?”
“Does it matter?”
Furiosa rolls her eyes. “Fine. Are you keeping this dog?”
Max leans against the couch. “Might as well.”
“Then help me with this.” She moves the pup to the sink and gestures at the space next to her with her metal hand. “Grab what’s on my desk.”
He collects the bottle and gauze pads and moves into the indicated spot.
Furiosa flicks her gaze at him, then at the puppy. “She’s about eight weeks. Could have some basic training.” She lifts one hand. “Sit.”
The puppy plants her rear end in the sink. The whip of her tail zips back and forth.
“Good girl,” Furiosa murmurs. She turns on the tap, running a trickle into the sink. The puppy looks at it and licks her snout, then tries to bite at the water. Furiosa lets her play with it for a minute, then turns up the stream and pulls the faucet nozzle out of its holder so she can wash the worst of the dirt from the puppy’s back and legs. “Hold her head.”
Max grabs another treat from the bag and holds it so that the puppy turns towards him. He lets her snap it up, then curls his fingers around the side of her snout so that she stays looking at him while the water rinses out her cut. She licks his palm.
A voice floats through the open door: “Cheedo said something about a new dog?”
“Over here.”
A gaunt woman with white-blonde hair appears at Furiosa’s hip. She’s got a tangle of mismatched braids and loose hair meshed into one larger braid that hangs to the middle of her back. “Oh, a puppy,” she croons. “What happened to you?”
“Found in the trash with a bashed head,” Furiosa says. “Not bleeding too bad anymore.”
Dag nods and nudges Max out of her way with a cheerful elbow. “Let’s have a Captain Cook at the little one, then.” She bends over the sink.
Furiosa meets Max’s eyes over Dag’s hunched shoulders. “You ever had a dog before?”
“A long time ago.”
Her mouth twitches. She yanks open a cabinet and pulls out a bag of puppy chow the size of Max’s torso. “She’s about five kilos right now, so give her two scoops three times a day. There’s a cup in there. Follow the chart on the back – she’s about three months old right now.” She thrusts the bag at him as she rolls past. “You got a pair of flat-bottomed bowls? Small ones? That she can drink from?” When Max shakes his head, the bottom of the wardrobe gets pulled open. She throws a leash at him that folds over his shoulder before he can grab it, and comes up with two doggie bowls, one yellow, one green. “Always make sure she has water. If you’ve got cardboard boxes you aren’t using, you can make her a nest in one. She can’t walk far on her own. Don’t make her. She might be housetrained, but don’t be surprised if she isn’t. There are books and the internet to help you.” She stops and looks past him. “How’s Lily?”
The Dag is cupping the puppy’s chin and drizzling iodine onto her cut, occasionally pacifying her with another treat. “Fair dinkum gas colic. She can have a handful of soaked hay once an hour or so tomorrow, but don’t turn her out on grass or give her grain for another day or two.” She glances at Max. “Where you live, stranger?”
Max jerks his head in the general direction. “Up the road a ways.”
She squints at him. “Yellow house? Big garden out back?”
He nods.
“So you’re the tenant. Been wondering who she was leasing to.”
Max looks over his shoulder, but Furiosa has vanished. “She?”
Dag sweeps a towel from another cabinet and gathers the pup onto the countertop to dry her. “I took over my old boss’ practice when she passed a few months ago. She lived there for… fifty years? Forever. Took care of all this lot for as long as Furiosa’s been here.” She waves at the barn around them. “Hadn’t talked to her daughter in ages, and she… she died suddenly. Daughter had no luck selling the place, but apparently she found a tenant.” She feeds the puppy another treat as she smooths a gauze bandage over the cut. “Anything left alive in that garden?”
Max shakes his head. “Dead before I moved in.”
Dag frowns. “Crying shame.” She looks at the pup. “You don’t have a collar. We best find you one.” She sweeps over to Furiosa’s desk and rifles through drawers without any apparent expectation of being murdered for her snooping, and produces a tiny pink thing that she slips around the pup’s neck. Then there’s a temporary tag with a white slip of paper that can fit under a plastic cover. Dag scratches off the address before Max can say anything, then nails him with an expectant eye. “What’ll you name her?”
He shrugs helplessly. The puppy prances across the desk to him and wags her tail so hard her whole body shakes. “She looks like she has an eyepatch,” he mutters as a concession.
“Pirate!” Dag chirps. “Excellent.” She scribbles it down, then clips the tag onto the front of the collar. “Pi works, too, if you like math or good stories.” She winks. “I’ll send you with a few bandages. Keep the spot clean for a few days and she’ll be fine. The puppy wags at both of them.
She doesn’t completely understand the concept of the leash, or the harness that Dag procures, but Max has dog food and bowls to carry, so there’s nothing to be done until they get to his car. She zig-zags around him as he steps into the aisle.
There’s a clip-clopping of hooves, and Furiosa walks out of a giant dirt arena that takes up half the space under the barn’s roof. She’s leading a tubby white-and-gray pony whose shoulders barely reach her waist.
Pi whines and scoots behind Max.
“She won’t hurt you, pup. She’s just a sick little mare.” Dag kneels to stroke Pi’s head, then walks over to the pony and scratches her rump. “Right Lily-billy? You’d never hurt a baby.” She smiles at Max. “You take care of her now.”
He nods and tugs Pi towards the door.
Furiosa clears her throat. “Hey.”
He stops.
“There’s a law about pitbulls. When she’s over a year or so, you take her anywhere, you have to put a muzzle on her. So. If you decide you don’t want her, bring her back here. Not a dumpster.”
Max looks down at Pi. The big yellow dog, Rei, is lying just inside the door, watching them with one eye open. “Got it.”
The other dogs from before start barking again when they walk outside; he looks over his shoulder and sees their silhouettes in the windows of the house: an Aussie Shepard gone grey with age and a Rottweiler, yammering to each other. They keep at it until Max reaches the gate at the end of the driveway and maneuvers through it with one hand full of food and gear and the other full of leash. Then they’re at his car, parked at the side of the empty desert road. Pi squats and piddles at the edge of the property line.
“Good dog.” Max pulls the door open with two fingers. “You get shotgun,” he tells the pup, and sets down the food so he can lift her inside.
***
It’s rare to find plants that grow above knee-height without serious human intervention anywhere near Citadel, which means that Furiosa can walk out onto the hill in the center of the back pasture any time after sunset and tell you how many people are awake in a two- or three-kilometer radius. The girls call it the Outback paddock. Citadel was built on top of an aquifer, so she can afford to buy enough water to keep a few acres of grass alive and edible, but that’s the last green in any direction until you hit the horizon.
Melissa’s house used to be the exception – the Keeper, the girls called her; Keeper of the Seeds – but her garden has been dead and yellow for half a year now.
Once Dag’s truck rolls past the gate with Cheedo in the passenger seat, Furiosa turns Lily out in a mud pen with a run-in shelter next to Tripp and Bones’ pasture so she has some company. The Welsh pony ambles into the run-in and sniffs at the water bucket, then begins nosing around on the ground in search of hay. Furiosa stoops next to her and lays her ear against her barrel.
It’s quiet for a long moment, and then there’s a reassuring gurgle.
“You’re okay, girl,” Furiosa tells the pony. “Get some rest and feel better.”
Rei trots up as she’s chaining the paddock gate behind her. He yips. A black shape separates out from the dark next to him, blinking at her with yellow eyes.
“You followed them home, didn’t you?”
Nahi’s tongue lolls out of his mouth. He’s mostly wolf, crossed with one or two unknown dog breeds, and she hasn’t found a fence that can hold him. Rei’s a Kurdish Kangal. They’re a hell of a pair for scaring people away.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go home.”
They lope ahead of her to the house, where Jackson and Paddy are pouting about the excitement they missed out on. The four dogs scuffle around each other as Furiosa strips off her barn boots and begins unbuckling her arm. She drops it on Valkyrie’s stomach where she’s asleep on the couch. Netflix is frozen on the TV screen.
Valkyrie throws a hand up and whacks Furiosa in the ribs. “Dipstick.”
“Crow eater.”
“Damn right.” She grins at Furiosa. “How’s the pony?”
“It was gas colic. Turned out fine.”
“Good.” Valkyrie drags a blanket off the back of the couch and nestles under it. “Time?”
“Almost one.”
“Ah, shit.” Valkyrie wrinkles her nose, then kicks the blanket off. “To bed it is. You doing morning feeds?”
“Capable offered to take them, but I need to make sure she doesn’t give Lily grain or hay.”
“What you need is to sleep,” Valkyrie says. “What can she have?”
“Soaked hay. A handful every hour.”
“Great. I’ll tell her. Get the hell out of here.” She throws Furiosa’s arm at her and heads for her bedroom with Jackson and Paddy following at her heels.
Furiosa climbs the stairs to her room in the dark, counting steps. Her eyes are scratchy with exhaustion, and her feet hurt from three hours of laps in the arena with Lily. Rei tries to claim a spot on her pillow until she snaps her fingers and sends him to the floor. She strips out of her clothes, drags on basketball shorts and a clean-ish tank top, splashes water on her face, and crawls into bed.
Rei thunders up next to her, and Nahi follows him. They settle together with their heads on each other’s haunches, tucked against the back of her knees.
***
Max doesn’t work on Sundays. He wakes up to Pi yipping and scuffing at the sides of the box that he put her in at the end of his bed. He tosses aside the blankets. “What’s up, dog? You hungry?”
Pi yips louder when she sees him stand up.
“Okay, okay.” He lifts her out of the box. Her water bowl is half empty, so he carries it to the kitchen sink while she trundles along behind. He refills the bowl, sets it down, puts two scoops of food in the yellow bowl, sets that down, then wanders away to piss.
She’s busy with the food long enough for him to start a pot of coffee, but then she starts pacing in front of the back door.
“One minute, pup. Pi. One minute.” He pours a bowl of cereal, pieces together a cup of coffee, then opens the door.
The house faces south, so the porch on the rear opens onto the Outback. The roof extends to cover it so it’s bearable to be out there during the day. Max sits on the steps with his breakfast and watches Pi sniff at the remnants of the garden. She poops between a pair of sticks that look like they used to support tomatoes, then piddles at the edge of that box and hops over to the next one to investigate.
“Pi.”
She ignores him.
He whistles.
She looks up, and when Max whistles a second time she trots back to him with her tail wagging.
He plucks a flake of sugar-coated wheat-bran from the bowl. “Sit, Pi.”
Pi snaps at the air.
“Sit.”
She sneezes, then sits.
He flips the flake into the air. She leaps to catch it, misses, and crunches it up off the ground. “Good dog.”
***
Max can’t tell if Pi likes the box, and he doesn’t want his jacket to be her only toy, so he puts her in his car again after rinsing garden-dirt out of her cut and replacing the gauze. There’s nothing but desert and scrub-grass to the horizon, so he has a clear view of the barn as they roll down the dirt road. There’s an area out front as well, bigger than the one inside, full of yellow sand. He’s seen people ride in there before.
A green plastic bush that comes up to the middle of Max’s chest has been placed in the swath of hard-packed dirt between the arena and the road. Furiosa is in the in-between space on a horse – a big horse. Tall and brown with long legs. Furiosa’s got her arm on, but he can’t see what she’s using it to hold.
Furiosa and the horse round a corner until they’re running parallel with the car. Then the horse rocks back onto its hind end, takes three massive, lunging strides forward, and leaps into the air, clearing the bush with room to spare. Furiosa moves forwards with it, then sits back once all four feet have touched the ground, gets it balanced and swinging through a turn. There’s another fence next to the rail of the arena with something that looks like a kiddie pool at its base. Max watches the horse set up for takeoff again, but then he has to look back at the road.
The nearest pet store is almost an hour away in Port Augusta. The drive puts Pi to sleep, but once they reach the coast, she’s up and sniffing at the salt on the wind.
The store must reek of other animals, because Pi spins circles around him and tries to get his legs tangled in the leash until he admits defeats and picks her up. They walk to the toy aisle, where he pokes through a barrage of colors. Some things squeak, some things rattle, some are tough rubber, some rough plastic. Pi wants all of them. He picks out pairs for her to inspect and gets the one she sniffs at longer. They wind up with a riot of colors in the bottom of the basket.
The beds aren’t any better. He gets one the same color as the gray parts of her fur. He puts it in the basket and her on top of it, and she goes to sleep again while he wanders around looking for a more permanent tag for her collar. The store does engravings on-site, so he drops a plain black rectangle on the counter, gives them his address and the letters P and I.
***
Lily is thoroughly pissed about her forced starvation by the end of the day. She sulks in the corner of the paddock and paws at the ground in exasperation when Furiosa tosses Trip and Bones their dinner. The two Quarter horses stand together, tails swishing, rattling their buckets and occasionally dropping their heads to grab a mouthful of hay. Eventually, Toast begs permission to take her out and graze her for a few minutes while the rest of the horses eat.
The man with the pitbull drives back up the road.
“I still like that car,” Valkyrie says. “We ever find out who owns it?”
Furiosa glances away from the hay in the wheelbarrow. She catches the car’s taillights and the gleam of sunset off the rear window.
“That’s pitbull guy,” Cheedo says. “He rents the Keeper’s house.”
Toast is sitting on the arena fence, Lily’s lead rope in one hand and her phone in the other. She looks up while continuing to tap out an email one-handed. “Nice car, likes dogs… what’s he do?”
“Something at the diner in town.” Furiosa moves to the next paddock: Pearl and her companion miniature pony, Pee-Wee. The six-year-old Thoroughbred prances in place until Furiosa tosses the two their hay.
“How was she today?” Toast asks. “You were trying her over cross-country fences, right?”
Furiosa reaches over the rail to stroke Pearl’s neck. “She was good. She still wastes too much energy trying to clear the brush fences. It’s a work in progress.”
Pee-Wee jams his little palomino head through the slats of the fence to snag a mouthful of hay. Furiosa shoes him away and opens the gate to the back paddock, where four geldings have been staring at her longingly. Valkyrie hops over the fence with a brace of grain buckets hooked on her arms. She hangs them in the stalls of the run-in shelter near the front of the pasture while Furiosa pitches hay in, and then they close the geldings into their stalls for the night. Furiosa has pulled off her heavy steel arm for the night and thrown on a much lighter, simpler device: an adjustable clamp that is currently fitted for a pitchfork or the handle of a wheelbarrow, so she can balance the weight of muck and hay with two arms instead of one.
“If he’s at the diner, does that mean Angharad hired him?” Valkyrie asks.
“She probably needed the extra help. She looks like she’s going to pop any day now, and Capable’s… well, capable, but she can’t run the diner and cook everything.” Toast procures a toothpick from somewhere and starts chewing on it. “She hasn’t been around in a while.”
The smaller paddock next to the big one in the back normally has three pony mares, but with Lily sick, Sis and Fancy have only each other to bully. They also have to get shut away for the night; the two pastures encompass several acres, and closing them in protects them from themselves and anything that might get through the fence.
Valkyrie hauls Fancy’s door shut. “Doesn’t she have a boyfriend or something? Some socially-inept golden retriever boy?”
Toast rolls her eyes. “They just had their third date. She texted me about it for an hour beforehand, asking for advice.”
“On what, how to do his taxes?” Cheedo is sitting next to the dog kennels, rubbing Jackson’s belly while the big Rottweiler lays on his back with his paws in the air, but she still squeals when Toast picks a splinter off the fence to flick at her.
“There’s more to life than boys,” Valkyrie declares. She shoots a pointed glance at Cheedo. “Don’t you have a curfew?”
“Yeah. Sunset.”
“So… now.”
Cheedo smiles. “Can I get a ride?”
Valkyrie groans as she and Furiosa reach the last paddock. Gen hates other horses, so she lives against the northern wall of the barn, next to the dog kennels. “Your parents already think we’re lesbian witches who are going to bewitch you into doing slave labor for us for the rest of your life-”
“Correction,” Cheedo says. “They think you’re a lesbian witch. They think Furiosa’s a militant separatist cyborg.”
“That’s a lot better than a boring old witch,” Valkyrie complains. She clips Gen’s grain bucket onto the fence post. “Fine, let’s go before they ban you from setting foot on the property. And you’re wearing a helmet.”
The garage that sits between the house and the road has a lot of machinery in it: an ATV, a pair of busted dirt bikes, a farrier’s setup mounted on cinderblocks in the corner, a gator with the spiked chain net for dragging the rings still attached. And then there’s Valkyrie’s bike, resplendent with crow feathers that she’s been gathering for twenty years.
The engine spits, then roars as Furiosa drags the wheelbarrow into the barn and drops it. She walks back outside to see the bike roll past the gate, and Lily and Paddy touching noses. The young gray mare and old gray Aussie – it could be a movie.
Paddy wags her butt, then bounds over to Furiosa to demand attention.
“She’ll come back soon,” Furiosa tells her. She sinks onto the hard-packed dirt. “I’d call that enough grass; she can go back in.”
Toast nods and tugs Lily’s head up from the grass. She has to wrestle her for every step across the five meters to the pen, and Lily pouts when the gate closes between her and food again.
Toast squints at the western horizon, where the sun has only a single sliver left visible, throwing light. “Bet you a round of mucking the Outback paddock that Cheedo gets grounded again.”
“Sure,” Furiosa says. “She’ll get grounded, she just won’t tell us about it and keep sneaking over here, or cook up an excuse for why she doesn’t show up for a week.” She watches Nahi and Rei trot around the side of the barn. “It was your turn anyway.”
***
When Angharad hired Max she was already visibly pregnant and had already been ignoring doctors’ orders against staying on her feet all day for a solid six weeks. That was two months ago. What she was really concerned about, she told him, was keeping the diner together after the birth. Citadel is one of those three-hundred-person towns that has one diner, one tourist-trap inn/Outback tours place, one bar, one grocery store, three churches, one bed-and-brekkie, and one part-time mechanic who owns one of the two competing gas stations on opposite sides of the two-lane highway that is the only well-paved road in town. If the diner goes under, half of Citadel will have to find somewhere else to eat breakfast five, six, or seven days a week before they go tend to their parched-dry cattle.
Breakfast is Angharad’s domain. She opens her doors at five and will stick out all seven hours until noon, serving coffee and whipping out of the kitchen with three plates balanced on one arm every ninety seconds. But after that – that’s where Max comes in, when all anyone wants is a sandwich and maybe a mug of tea, and the person who tries hardest to have a conversation with him is Capable the cook, who spends the spaces between customers sitting on a stool at the counter and drinking coffee like the world is about to run out. Angharad generally remains on the property – she only goes home if she sees vomiting in her near future – but naps and does paperwork in her office for the afternoon and evening, out of the light and heat and noise.
Sundays are easier because so many people go to church, so Angharad prefers to stick out the whole day with help from Capable and Nux the busboy. The other six days of the week, for the ten hours from noon to close, Max runs the front of the diner.
There’s a tall woman wrapped in leather lounging on a bike decorated with crow feathers when he walks across the parking lot just before noon on Monday, Pi straining at her harness as she tries to identify every new smell. Max takes her in the rear entrance.
Angharad’s still up front, but she turns to greet Max, and then registers the puppy frantically trying to lick her ankles. “Max?” she says expectantly.
“I can’t leave her alone for ten hours.”
Angharad looks over her shoulder at the empty diner, then at Max, then at Pi. “Oh, fine. Put her in my office. You bring her chewies or something?”
Max pats the knapsack slung over his shoulder and nods, then ducks into her office. He traps Pi’s leash under the foot of a chair so she can’t get into too much trouble before he ventures into the diner once more.
Capable has taken advantage of the lull in customers to brew herself a fresh pot of coffee. She’s dumping sugar into a cup when the bell over the door tinkles. “Oh, hey Valkyrie.”
The woman from the motorcycle smiles. “Capable, could I bother you for a grilled chicken sandwich to go? Extra bacon.”
“Sure. Be right out.” Capable slides off her stool and takes her coffee with her into the kitchen.
Valkyrie doesn’t sit; she stalks up to the counter and leans against it, watching Max check that they have enough clean silverware. “Where’s the dog?”
Max deadpans: “What dog?”
Valkyrie stares hard at him. “The one you walked in here with, dingbat. The one you brought to the barn Saturday night.” She straightens up when his shoulders stiffen. “Half our animals are rescues, and we have more horses than anywhere within an hour’s drive. We’ve got a few cameras. Where is she?”
Max keeps fussing with the silverware. “Office.”
“So you got no one to take care of her at home?”
Max doesn’t answer.
Valkyrie gives him another thirty seconds of staring, then gets to her point: “You met a teenager at the barn; her name is Cheedo. She’s almost sixteen. You can hire her for dog-sitting. She’d do it cheap. Maybe for free.”
“Why?”
“Because she likes dogs,” Valkyrie says. “And because child protection is going to want testimony that doesn’t come from me or Furiosa.”
Max blinks.
Valkyrie glances over her shoulder at the door. “Looks better legally if I let you draw your own conclusions, but the last time that kid’s father set foot on our property, Furiosa chased him off with a rifle that… may have been of questionable legality. So. Bring the pup by the barn sometime. See if Cheedo’s up for it. Better than letting it harass Angharad into early labor.” She steps away as Capable reappears with her sandwich. “You’re a dear, you know that?”
“Why me?” Max asks.
Valkyrie glances at Capable, then back at him. “Because it matters.” She slaps a set of bills on the counter that are half again what she owes and takes long, easy strides out the door to her bike.