When the World Went Mad

Hester Shaw can't help but stare as she sees the vehicle head towards her.

It's like nothing she's ever seen. Or, rather, nothing she's ever seen that actually works. In this world (or at least this part of the world), there's a few methods of transport available to you. There's the great predator cities that roam the Outlands. There's the smaller, more mobile trading towns that exist in the shadow of the predators, and in the shadows of a world gone dark. There's the great air vehicles of the sky pirates. But this thing? This thing looks like something out of even before the time of the Ancients. A small, ugly, gas guzzling…thing.

Her mother had a name for them, she recalls. These things were buried under layers of mud and stone. These things had carried the Ancients around in their non-mobile cities, before the Sixty Minutes War, and the sundering of the world. All of the Ancients had at least one of these things. These things that were called…called…

The thing comes to a stop. Its door opens and out walks a man. Least she assumes it's a man – she hasn't seen that many men in her life. One of them killed her mother. One of them was barely a man, but at least kept her alive long enough to find out that the first man that had entered her life was now on the continent that had once been called Europe. Based on those two, she can assume that the driver of the thing is a man. Or was a man. Or is aspiring to be a man. He'd got the build, he's got the height, and distressingly enough, he's got a shotgun holstered alongside one of his legs.

Car.

That's it, she recalls. The man's been driving a "car." One of the vehicles of the Ancients, designed for smooth driving across smooth roads. They drove on the surface of the world, rather than have giant treads carve it up like the predator cities do. It occurs to her that if she's about to die, then she'll at least know the name of the murderer's vehicle.

He takes a step towards her and she takes out her knife. "Stay back," she says.

Like her face, his is covered in rags, bar his eyes. Eyes that meet hers as he walks towards her.

"Stay back," she repeats.

She can't die here, she tells herself. Valentine is still alive. If she dies…well, Valentine will eventually die, but he'll be sucking down oxygen longer than he deserves, and more importantly, he won't die at her hand. He won't get to look into the eyes of Pandora Shaw's daughter, in the knowledge that his actions all those years ago turned out to have consequences.

"Stay back!" she yells.

The man comes to a stop in front of her. It's at this point that Hester realizes that he's really, really tall. Not that she's too short for a girl of her age (she guesses – she doesn't see many girls, or even boys her age in the Outlands), but she can guess that the man before her is taller than most of his kind. The kind that she does see more often, either selling slaves, or being sold as slaves, with a few residing in trader towns that are slightly less monstrous than everyone else.

And what about this fellow, she wonders? He's got the shotgun, but he isn't using it. She watches as he takes off the rags surrounding his face. Behind her shawl, her eyes widen.

"You alone?" he rasps.

Hester doesn't say anything – the man is old. Older than any man (or heck, any person) she's seen. Well, there was Shrike of course, but as weathered as the man's flesh is, and as many scars cover it, she can tell he's not like Shrike. He's at least alive. And the way he talks, as grizzled as his voice is, he's at least still human.

"You alone?" he repeats.

"What's it to you?" Hester snaps.

The man doesn't say anything. He's not even looking at her anymore. He's just looking around her campsite, past the fire, into the wastes.

"No other children?" he whispers.

Hester doesn't say anything – she doesn't know what this man wants with children. But having passed through more slaver towns she cares to mention, she has a pretty good, and extremely sordid idea.

"No others," he says. "Only you this time."

Hester doesn't say anything.

"Maybe I'm better with many than one," he continues, and it's clear to Hester that he's not even talking to her. "Failed to save one." He pounds his fist against his palm. "She ran, you see? But they caught her. Rode her down. The world was going mad even before the bombs fell."

The hell?

"Went mad before. Went mad in the fire. Madness after the fire too. Road warriors and raiders, their fury running as long as the road…"

He's crazy.

Hester supposes she shouldn't be surprised. There's plenty of loonies in the world. Lunacy destroyed the world over a thousand years ago. Apparently lunacy isn't genetic, because millennia after the apocalypse, the human race still has its share of crazies.

Thaddeus Valentine isn't one of them mind you. Valentine knew exactly what he was doing when he killed her mother, and tried to kill her. That's why it's all the more important to get to London and send him to the hell that waits people like him. Madmen who claim to be there before the bombs dropped, like this loony who sits down at her fire…well, she can't drop her guard around them, but she can at least pity them. Shrike earned her pity after all. Valentine earned her contempt.

"How old are you?" the man asks.

Hester doesn't answer – she's seen men like him ask young girls that in the towns she's visited. Some of them are after specific ages.

"Don't know how long," the man continues. "Just the road, and the Interceptor…many roads, you see? The world changed, so I could drive."

Hester says nothing.

"But the world also didn't change," the man continues. "Madness there. Madness here. No roads here, mind you – no roads left. I've seen cities make the roads, tearing through…" He plunges his hand into the soggy ground, ploughing through the grime. He holds up his withered hand to show Hester, the mud dripping off it. "The black gold is still here I see. It flows. It burns. The seas rise and the world burns, but the black gold burns." He grunts. "No tribes though. Only cities."

Hester sighs. She wouldn't mind it if he just attacked her right now or something. That way she could kill him without feeling bad about it, and concentrate on finding London. Anything would be better than listening to this twat's insane ramblings. Shrike at least had an excuse. Shrike, at least, gave her food when he first met her.

"Where you headed?" the man asks.

"London," Hester answers. She sees no reason to lie.

"London," the man says. He uses his finger to cut through the mud. Watching his finger, Hester sees that he's drawing a rough match of Europa and the island of Great Britain. Or at least how they used to be before the world changed and a land bridge formed between them.

"London's a long way," he says.

"It moves around," Hester says.

"Down the road. Always on the road." The man gets up and nods to the car. "Want a ride to London?"

Hester blinks. No-one's ever offered to take her to London before now. Scratch that, no-one's ever offered to take her anywhere. If you can move, first rule is to stay away from predator cities like London.

"Well?" he asks. He puts the rags over his face again.

That aside, she's also wary of getting into any vehicle with a stranger. Valentine gave her rides on his airship all those years ago, but…well, she know how that turned out. Not so much the airship, but the whole "here's a guy who turns out to be a murderer."

"Guess not. Well, see you then."

"Wait."

Hester gets to her feet. "I'll go."

The man nods.

"Just a little way."

The man nods.

"Northwest of here. London's in that direction. We can part ways at the first trading post."

The man nods.

"And I'm staying in the back of your…" She gives the vehicle a look. "In your car. Not the front."

The man nods.

"Got it?"

He nods again, causing Hester to reflect on how insane all of this is. But then, tall, dark, and ugly is right about one thing – the world is mad, and maybe, she can be mad with it. Hell, she already fits the "ugly" part of that sentence, as this bloody world keeps on reminding her.

The man opens the back door and moves around to the side.

"What's your name?" she asks, as she gets in the back.

"Max," he grunts.

Max, Hester reflects. Simple name. Easy to remember.

After some rumbling and clattering, the car starts, and they drive off into the night.

A/N

So, I saw Mortal Engines not too long ago and really liked it. Most of the critics didn't. Which is fine - I'm not going to go on some kind of "critics are out of touch" tirade, though I'd love to see a sequel (and at some point I could try the books). But that aside, something I've seen floating around is the idea that the film is cribbing from Mad Max. And to be honest, apart from the most basic of similarities (post-apocalypse, focus on vehicular transport), I'm really not seeing it. Granted, I've only ever seen the first Mad Max movie, but being aware of the Mad Max aesthetic and mythos...yeah, still not seeing it.

Still, it did give me the idea to drabble up Hester and Max (timeframe aside) running into each other, so drabbled this up.