-Ace-

Rev heads. Black thumbs. Lancers. They can drive, mend, and kill any machine once set in motion with a purpose.

The massive garage loft, suspended on high, housed their shiny treasures. These steel beasts and roaring machines were cherished in a way some wretcheds might call borderline romantic. Pale arms tipped with grease blackened fingers polished chrome bumpers and smoothed the softest tatters of cloth available over their creations, the metal flesh of their souls. They caress their chariots as if they were tiny children, then beat their fists against the bone and sinew of their brothers as if to prove to themselves that they are more than their collective sickness.

On this morning, those who stayed behind prayed that the minute raiding party sent forth six and a half days before would return victorious from their wild hunt. Another day and it would be assumed that they had been pillaged, or stolen as is the case with more and more war boys on long ventures these days.

Cars would turn up empty lately. No bodies to be found, vehicles untouched as if they bared a bad omen. Even the Buzzards wouldn't touch them no matter how tempting the scrap.

So the many who had stayed began on the sixth day to wonder if they would ever return, some prepared to mourn in the sacred way which entailed dividing the few belongings of the lost among those he had known.

Two senior boys had gone. Notch and Ike, along with their partners Chug and Fork and two more pursuit teams. A few youngsters on cycles went with them in order to test themselves on their first rides through the dunes with their older brethren. If they weren't home by nightfall this day, the worst would be assumed. The rule for hoping was a week, as there was a limit on the supplies a hunting party is permitted to carry. Three days of millet to eat, and Aqua Cola to drink. That was all. There wasn't any point in hoping for their return if they are gone longer than seven days. Four days thirst out there would kill even a healthy dingo. Not that such a creature had even been sighted in more than twenty years.

Dawn broke over the distant horizon, sending ribbons of hot light across the tepid sands. Sometimes the cacophony of sound in the garage would quiet, just enough that I could turn an ear toward the badlands and listen for the growl of familiar motors.

I had performed the mourning ritual many times, handing out the tools and trinkets of the lost to his closest. I'd done it without count and it always felt like there were more boys to be mourned than days I had lived and those days were many. Notch was one of the ones who had survived many too, living to be 8,000 days plus the ones no one could account for before his arrival. That one that Valhalla kept belching back out, a sick body that refused to die.

I could remember when that one had appeared among the wretched, not much taller than my knee, limbs like thin rails, begging to be lifted up to rise above the others. "I can fight." He had wheezed, a hundred times he had coughed up the words and each time the lift guardians had to wrench his fingers from their trousers and cast him back out into the unwashed masses. They threw him, kicked him away, beat him till his eyes rolled over white and launched him back, but still he fought to the front of the hoard and cried "I can fight!". He'd grown stronger day by day, lapping up the spilled droplets from the rationed flows of Aqua Cola gifted to the wretched from the Immortan. Finally I had snatched up the maggot myself upon return from a run to Gas Town as the brat sprung forth to grasp at my leg, screaming through his dust ruined lungs. "LET ME FIGHT! You're The Ace! Please hear me!"

He earned a hard thonk on the head for grabbing at me like that, but even then despite my annoyance I had dragged him up by the scruff and taken him to be tossed into the pits. He wanted to fight? So be it. I had put it into the hands of V8 and watched the older pups thrash him till all of his sprog teeth were punched out of their bloody sockets. Then when the boy still pulled himself to his feet and asked for more, only then did I let him be adorned with white clay, and embellished him with his new name. He outlived each and every one of the pups from his litter. In time, Notch and his former lancer Tank would do the same for a wretched boy who would come to be known as Chug. When Tank departed to Valhalla, Chug had pleaded to ride with Notch but the older and seasoned War Boy had not been through grieving his lancer. So for his insistence Notch bit off the boy's ear, tested him till he nearly broke, and only then did he accept the much younger Chug as his own.

Shock was different. He had been brought home by the other senior boy back when Ike was still broad in the shoulders instead of the skeletal husk he was today. Shock had been young, maybe only 900 days of age. Shock was said to have been found on a training excursion in the dunes and had chewed off a trainee pup's thumb. Feisty and feral, he had forged a strong bond with the very same pup whose thumb he had swallowed. Lugnugget. They fought, clawed and gnashed their teeth into each other -still do even for fun- but you never saw them apart. It was unnatural to see one of the pair alone now. They had vowed to ride to Valhalla together and battle on the eternal highway as one when it was their time to be witnessed.

Ike and fork... Well, Fork was young and only filling in for Ike's partner, who had departed to Valhalla a dozen raids earlier. Ike desperately wanted to follow him. Ike was as about as old as Notch, had been taken up around the same time too but was perhaps several hundred days younger. His body was no longer well enough to fight. He'd begged to go this time, guilting Notch about it so that he could go out properly chromed on the Immortan's roads. I was hoping he'd be the only one whose' belongings I'd need to sort through, but the wastes hold no promises. All may be gone. Lost to the sand and heat, or the dangers which lurked out there watching the white painted warriors carefully for blasphemous weakness.

Those boys were good fighters, better hunters. That was why Immortan Joe sent them specifically to collect the grog making vagrants who were suckling off the richness of his lands. Living on his territory without permission, selling their brew in Bartertown and profiting while living in the general vicinity of Joe's expansive property. Joe wanted them alive for their expertise. We'd heard a lot about them over time through hushed whispers, little by little it became evident that they hid in close proximity, doing their work in the quiet night, engines purring low and slow as they skulked out of ear shot on their bi-annual runs. Every once in a while one of their bottles would turn up in the hands of a war boy. The bottle would always have a white hand print on it, the unique finger tip whorls in the paint familiar; a reassuring sign that the product was pure and wouldn't poison the drinker. It couldn't be forged unless you reused their bottles, and even then you could tell a fake by the taste. Theirs was a pure root wine that could eat through the stomach of a vulture if you didn't dilute it. I had a few bottles of it stashed away for myself and those woeful nights after particularly long and shit raids which often claimed the short lives of too many of my boys.

I'd been to Bartertown a time or two in the last few thousand days. Any time I saw the bottles I picked them up, trading for trinkets from my pockets.

Immortan wanted that which the grog makers could create in order to trade at that very place. Maybe then he could convince the infamous Aunty of Bartertown to do proper negotiations with him, and he could bring back the precious pigs for meat and partake of the methane fuel her lands produced from the swine shit.

If his boys didn't return, I vowed to keep my blame silent, though I knew where it belonged. The false god. I've been livin' much too long, seen too much, remembered too much. Immortan Joe was as much a god as I was a young pup. Not a bloody bit, but I didn't dare voice that opinion, nor denounce V8 fully. Even if I could only half believe, it had ensnared me into it's tangled web of cult tradition despite my resentment of it's presence. It was all I knew, like listening for engines whispering in the distance was all I knew to do today.

By high noon I had retreated momentarily from my duties to find a quiet place on my crackling old knees by the wheel shrines where I lace my thickly calloused fingers over my head, hailing V8 in prayer. "Return to us those that are not yet awaited. Notch, Nytro, Fork, Cutter, Chug, Shock, Lugnugget. Uplift those who are ready to become fully fledged, Bolts, Zinny, Wingnut, and Gizzard. Open your chrome gates to Ike, where his brother Dun awaits him with open arms. Let them honor him with their deeds. Veeight."

I bowed my head and brushed my lips against doubled fists before uplifting the salute once again to repeat, I was however interrupted by a pack of pups rushing to bring me a message, all howling at once as I stood. "ENOUGH! You, in the front. You speak, the rest of you can it so I can hear!"

You had to be gruff with them, no matter how much you wanted to be tender toward the small ones. If you weren't hard on them, they grew not to respect you, and they'd die soft on the road. The boy in the front chirped the news they had brought with a high lifted chin and a stiff back. "Hunting party returns sir! They have an armored Ford Escort with them! And a prisoner roped up to the hood! Looks like they took one of them slangers alive! And it seems like most got back in one piece too... But Ike's still with us." He added, the small boy shaking his head. Everyone had known how Ike wished to go already. What a shame.

The young ones dashed ahead down the stone corridors to the garage loft, running far ahead of my tired old carcass. I would stalk at my own pace, knowing that I'd get there in plenty of time before they were risen up on the lift, two cars at a time. When I arrived The Pontiac Judge which Notch and Chug had named Valkyrie's Bumper or some nonsense was on it's way up, with it the new addition to our vehicular armory. An armored up Ford Escort which was lined with rail road spikes and ram bars. Notch pumped his fist in the air. All their grease darkened eyes smudged and most of the white clay worn away to reveal fierce sun burns on each boy.

"WE RETURN VICTORIOUS!" Notch called up to the throng of waiting black thumbs and praising brothers.

Cutter and Nytro were with them, having ridden on the roof of the stolen enemy Escort on the ride up. As they made it to the top, Notch slapped Cutter's shoulder. "We have our grog runner booty here!" Then he slapped his young lancer Chug over his bald cranium, causing him to curse loudly and throw an elbow back at his elder driver, but Notch just jigged away from the attack, chuckling. "And this smeg almost got me killed, but he's going to make a shiny driver one day yet!... But don't expect me to let you drive again any time soon you clumsy shit." Chug still grinned hugely as Notch grasped his shoulder and gave him a congratulatory shake. Once they were up top, Notch and I nodded to one another in greeting as I approached to examine the goods.

"Only one?" I questioned, certain there should have been more hooch makers to bag and brand. I looked toward Cutter for an explanation, he needed to learn how to talk, but I knew I woulsn't get much out of him.

I felt my lips twist. I had not been heard and I knew it was because the two younger boys -barely more than pups by my count- were too busy basking in the glow of their triumph.

Notch grit his teeth a bit. I could tell he was ashamed, but he had Furiosa to deal with. I wouldn't bother shredding him myself when he had a far deeper chewing to look forward to for bringing back just one.