There Will Always Be a Max Read online

  The window broken, King pulled the shotgun from the sheath by his left foot. He leaned out the window, gun first, taking a quick left-handed shot at one of the bikers, trusting himself to keep the Force on the road with one hand. The Skull Boy turned sharp, ramping up onto the broken earth, but the shot missed. King corrected and fired again, aiming down at the front wheel.

  The buckshot hit the motorcycle like a bowling ball, mangling the machinery. The Skull Boy bailed out, taking the fall well.

  “Reload!” King passed the shotgun back to Susan and returned his focus to the road.

  A few seconds later, the dismounted Skull Boy’s companion drove up and picked him up. Once settled, the passenger loaded a crossbow and the bolt punched through the door frame behind King’s head. Not quite behind. The back of his heat felt hot. He moved slightly to test. Just a graze.

  Where was Xiao?

  The scout and his bike appeared as King swerved right to stay on the path. Behind and to the right, Xiao leaned into the bike to stay out of the clutches of the dune buggy. The passenger in the car had a wicked scythe, leaning out of the car and swiping at the bike.

  “Take out that cutter!” King commanded. Bo shifted, taking aim. She fired once, twice, three times as the buggy and bike danced along the narrow road, Xiao driving with great skill taxed to the desperate end. The buggy was better equipped for the broken valley floor, powerful shocks compensating for the bike’s greater speed.

  “Ready!” Susan said, the stock popping into King’s peripheral vision.

  He grabbed the gun and leaned into a turn, stilling his mind as he lined up a shot. The world slowed, action-hero cinematic adrenaline giving him the time he needed to aim an otherwise-impossible shot.

  Even in a region of action world, King didn’t often get slow-mo. Roman could tap into it far better, but he wasn’t there. King took his blessings where they came and fired, shattering the scythe mid-swing.

  But even with the blade shattered, the pole was long enough, the swing true.

  The pole slid through and cracked in the rear wheel of the bike, sending Xiao flying.

  “Xiao!” Bo cried, firing faster now.

  “Breathe. Aim. Kill,” King instructed. He looked away from the wreck and brought the car out of the turn. Ahead was a straightaway stretch, several hundred feet before the so-called road curved back around toward the ramp up to the far side of the valley.

  The two-rider bike came up on him, the pair leaning into the turn. The bolt bounced off his hubcap mere inches from the tire.

  King juked the car back and forth, stones scraping and cracking on the door as he dodged. But it wasn’t enough.

  A tire popped, and the car slumped, dragging. They’d hit the tire.

  “Pop that crossbowman now, kid!” King called, straining to keep the car on-track. The Runner had run-flats, but they weren’t perfect. Especially not with that much cargo.

  Bo hit the driver, sending the bike wobbling as the crossbow-man tried to steady his companion.

  King pushed the car forward, testing its limits with the run-flat tire. The choking sound and straining of belts told him this was as fast as it went.

  Couldn’t speed up, couldn’t dodge and weave as fast as them. Which meant it was time for the explosives.

  “Sarah. Grey bag,” he said, eyes on the road, watching the side-view mirrors. “Pull the pins and then you have a five count. Throw on two; make sure they’re at least twenty feet away from us or the gear. You ken?”

  “I ken,” she said, rummaging.

  Sarah eyed the Skull Boys out the shattered rear windshield, throwing on two as instructed. The first grenade caught the two-man bikers as they struggled to keep up, consumed in a plume of flame and dust.

  That left one biker and the buggy. If they could wreck the last bike, maybe they’d be able to get away once they hit the bridge.

  King felt options narrowing with each grenade thrown, each bullet spent, every mile they drove.

  It’d have to be enough.

  Inhabit the role.

  The ramp up the far side of the valley began with a full switchback. The weight and repetition of thousands of wheels had packed down the earth for a wide approach, which King took, riding the edge of what the Runner could handle with a run-flat and a thousand pounds of cargo.

  “Hang on!” he called as they hit the ramp, and King pulled the parking brake and then hauled on the wheel with his entire body.

  The tires squealed as the car swung around, centripetal force slamming King and his passengers to the right. Bo crashed into the passenger’s-side window, and the entire back-seat, from ammo to engineer, lurched and scattered, shells rattling against the window like hail.

  King released the brake and put the pedal to the metal, willing the car forward. “Come on, come on.”

  The remaining bike took a jump off of a stack of rocks and arced up and up and directly onto the ramp ahead of their car.

  “Shit.” King leaned out the driver’s-side window, firing the shotgun, trying to catch the rider before he’d settled out the momentum from the jump.

  But the biker dodged right, running up the side of the valley and ramping back onto the path.

  King dropped the shotgun behind him, calling, “Reload!” He picked up the pistol and took aim.

  The sights pointed directly at another Molotov, which exploded against the front windshield. Shards caught King in the shoulder and grazed his face.

  The car lurched left as he flinched in pain, heading for the cliff.

  King hit the safety, dropping the pistol into his lap to put both hands on the wheel again while his vision went red with blood.

  Focus, old man. You’re a Max. The story needs a Max; it will support you.

  “Damnit. Bo, do you have a shot?” he asked, muscling the car to stay on the ramp as it scaled ever upward.

  “Dune buggy’s right behind us. Shoot forward or back?” Bo asked.

  “Forward!”

  Ahead, the biker dropped a satchel full of something. In this region, “satchel full of something” was never good news.

  Concussive force rocked the car as something exploded below. A high-pitched whistling joined the cacophony. A line burst or shredded.

  “What was that?” Sarah asked.

  “Don’t know. Can’t deal with it now. How’s that reload?”

  Something appeared by his left ear. He reached up and took hold of the shotgun once more. He had two bad options. Steer with the wounded arm or fire with it. He chose bad option A.

  Half-standing out the window, King leaned over, open air and hundreds of feet of nothingness beneath him.

  The Skull Boy let loose with a crossbow bolt, which buried itself in the windshield right at his head level. That was going to be a problem.

  But not just yet.

  He blinked the blood out of his eye, exhaled, and fired.

  The buckshot hit the Skull Boy in the shoulder, and the biker slumped, taking the motorcycle racing off the edge of the path and down to a rocky end.

  King sat back into the seat, faced with an opaque spider-webbing of cracked glass before him. But he could see well enough to know road from not road.

  For now.

  “Reload!” he said, passing the shotgun back to Sarah.

  “Dune buggy coming up!” she answered.

  “Poppers for shite! Won’t but crack their glass!”

  King watched the buggy. “Go for the tires.”

  The Skull Boys leaned out his window and fired another crossbow bolt.

  Sarah cried out. Rearview told King she’d taken it in the shoulder, several inches in from the joint, right at the top of where her lungs might be.

  “Sarah!” Bo said, her gun forgotten.

  “Keep firing,” King said. “Best way to help her is to end the fight.”’

  Sarah slumped in the back seat, the shotgun forgotten. King grabbed the pistol. But he wasn’t half the driver he’d need to be to drive and fire a sidearm backwa
rds. His shoulders were too broad, arms too short. Some people had gorilla arms, incredible reach, like Roman. King was not one of them. He could look over his shoulder and fire inside the car, but that’d deafen them right quick.

  Which meant Bo was their only shooter remaining.

  “Keep firing, Bo. Nearly there, ken?”

  Bo’s gaze was locked on Sarah, the older woman bleeding out on the leather seats.

  Crossbow bolts kept flying. They kept Bo pinned down, firing every other time she did, spoiling her shots and keeping her afraid.

  They came up to another switchback, and King had to brake in order to take it without losing the cargo. As it was, the cart slammed into the wall, several smaller pieces falling loose of the crossbars of the trailer’s cage.

  “Almost to the top. Keep firing, Bo. You can do this. Your mother would be proud. But you have to be the fighter now. You have to protect us.”

  Bo shook in her seat, holding the rifle close. She was flailing, looking for something, anything to hold onto. To lose your mother, to see such violence all at once, right when she thought she was ready, when she thought she wanted to step into the role.

  It was one thing to want to be a fighter, to train.

  It was something else to walk the path, to pull the trigger.

  But Maxes weren’t just guardians; they were inspiration. They called people to their better natures. “You can do this, Bo. I need your help. We’re none of us getting home unless we do it together.”

  King put the car through one more turn and pulled up onto the plateau. Ahead was a narrow stone bridge, no more than twenty feet wide. And it looked like it got narrower at the top.

  “Heading for the bridge now. We need to keep them behind or get them dead,” King said. “Whatever you think of me, know that I need you to step up. You come from a line of heroes. Their blood runs in you. It’s fuel; use it.”

  Bo straightened, her posture set, relaxed. She’d found her grit. She leaned out the window and started firing, even as the crossbow bolts clanged inches from her face.

  King pushed the car to its limits, thumping growing louder as the outer tire continued to shear, threatening to take the inner tire with it.

  On the straightaway, the dune buggy revved and started to catch up.

  “Stop them, Bo. They’re coming up on my side!”

  It was smart. Put the shooter on the far side of their own car, come up on King’s side where they could attack him directly.

  The car thumped up onto the bridge, racing for the apex, where the bridge narrowed to ten, maybe fifteen feet. Not nearly enough for two cars abreast.

  Bo fired off one more shot and then cursed as the buggy passed out of her range. King fired out the window, the pistol rounds doing a whole lot of nothing. Everything shook too much for him to land a good shot through the window.

  Then, out of nowhere, a bike came roaring up onto the plateau behind them, moving at top speed.

  But the rider wasn’t a Skull Boy. It was Xiao. The left side of his face was covered in blood, but even from a hundred feet away, he had determination in his eyes.

  “Xiao’s alive!” King said. “We can do this!” he shouted, as much to himself as his passengers.

  Xiao and his bike closed the distance, the bike undamaged, unlike the hobbled Runner and battered buggy. But rather than harrying the buggy from behind or shooting up the middle to try to force the buggy off, he took the wide way, sliding in on the buggy’s left, bike riding the razor’s edge.

  King tried to signal the biker, to make a plan.

  But Xiao already had a plan. The cars closed on one another, the passenger Skull Boy slashing at King with a knife. King leaned inside the car, raising the windshield. The Skull Boy grabbed the raising windshield and shoved it down, leaning on it with arms thick with muscle, the wrists of a road veteran.

  A signal.

  Xiao gave the signal to break, then counted down. Three fingers. Two. One.

  He jumped out off of his bike and grabbed the wheel of the dune buggy, pulling the car left.

  King hit the brakes, dropping behind the dune buggy. The Skull Boy driver slashed Xiao’s arms with a jagged bone knife, hauling the wheel the other way.

  Too far. Without the Force Runner to stop its movement, the dune buggy, going seventy miles an hour, chewed up the width of the narrow bridge before the Skull Boy could even out the wheel. The dune buggy shot right off, Xiao holding on even though he was plummeting to a doom of his own design, watching as King and the Runner drove on unimpeded.

  The bridge was already too narrow for repairs, so King hit the throttle again.

  They were safe. They were through. Xiao had seen to it. The Max had inspired another champion, borne witness to their deeds, and he would see them home.

  King hit the throttle, and guided the Force on the last leg of the journey to the Enclave.

  * * *

  The car was beat to hell and running on fumes by the time they made it to the enclave. He’d lost probably a unit of blood down his front, jacket and pants soaked, seat too. The car’s fuel line had been shredded; it’d need patching. But they’d made it.

  They passed a watchtower ahead of a gate drawn across the narrow path leading up to a plateau inset on a butte. Naturally defensible, a good spot, dug into the cliff. It had the marks of an engineer’s work—Sarah.

  The group was greeted by a half-dozen tired and scared survivors.

  King carried Sarah up to them—not many people would slit your throat when you were carrying wounded, even if you were a half-deaf stranger whose hands wouldn’t stop shaking, whose heart kept pounding.

  Roman was an adrenaline junkie, a natural-born Max.

  King was just playing the part.

  “What happened?” an older survivor said, leaning on a hand-carved cane as King approached.

  Bo ran up to the group, talking a mile a minute.

  A pair of younger men took Sarah from King and laid her out on a flat, clean rock. Another woman ran up with a bag, gauze and tubing and supplies. They had a proper doctor, or close enough.

  Bo relayed their trip, the ambush, King’s arrival, and their escape. She didn’t stop moving, one hand touching the rifle at all times, like a talisman she was afraid would disappear if she let it go.

  “Max,” the leader said, turning to King. “Thank you. You’ve saved us.”

  “Couldn’t save everyone.”

  “You did plenty, Max,” Bo said. “Just like you said.”

  The leader nodded. “Please, stay. I can fix you up. We have food, water, and gasoline to see you off.”

  The group grew closer, watching him like he was an elephant in a zoo. Children peeked out from behind their parents’ tattered clothes, hair wild, eyes wide.

  “We ain’t seen someone like you in years. Just Skull Boys,” said a dust-covered girl with 4c hair and umber skin.

  “Thought maybe there weren’t nobody brave enough to be a Max left.” A boy, East Asian heritage, his hair clipped short.

  A taller boy with fair skin, wrapped in cloths but still sunburned. “Or they’d all died out.”

  King walked back to his car, unlatched the trunk. His cargo was still there.

  “Did what I could. And I’d be honored to eat with you all. But first, we oughta bury the victorious dead.”

  King stayed the night. He shared stories of his exploits—mostly Roman’s exploits, and the survivors shared their few stories of other heroes, none of them newer than three years. Were the Genrenauts the only ones willing to be Maxes anymore? Something to put in his report. Or maybe their interference had colonized the archetype, edged out the region’s ability to generate its own heroes.

  Worry about that later, he told himself.

  The next morning, Sarah brought him three jugs of crystal-clear water. He refused two of them—he’d be returning to HQ, and they’d need it more than he did. Bo brought him a hand-carved wooden car that read MAX along the top.

  They filled his
tank and gave him a fresh wheel. The rest of the repairs took until noon.

  Once the heat broke, they saw him off with grateful waves and a teary Bo.

  That’s how it was when you were a Max. Never staying, never settling.

  King might never be truly comfortable in the role. But as long as he still breathed, as long as he could still drive and fight?

  There would always be a Max.

  END

  About the Author

  Michael R. Underwood has circumnavigated the globe, danced the tango with legends and knows why Thibault cancels out Capo Ferro. He also rolls a mean d20. His novels include Geekomancy, Celebromancy and Shield and Crocus. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and an ever-growing library, and when he’s not writing/gaming/living the dream he’s the North American Sales and Marketing Manager for Angry Robot Books. He’s also part of the Hugo-nominated podcast, The Skiffy and Fanty Show. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by Michael R. Underwood

  Art copyright © 2016 by Goñi Montes