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The first Maw knew something was wrong, bad wrong, was when Jig comes back from the milk run, dragging a Milker instead of a jug. Sure, he’d heard the war drums, yelling, and a bit of gunfire, but that was nothing off the regular.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
“Furiosa’s back,” Jig said, panting for breath. “With a lotta feral bitches. Tryin’ to take the Citadel.”
“You better not be tellin’ stories,” Maw warned, moving to secure the Den doors behind Jig. “Get the bar.”
“I ain’t!” Jig dragged it over, panted some more, then said, “There’s more.”
“What?” Maw glanced over at the Milker, wondering where she came into things.
“Chainsaw. Said Immortan Joe’s dead. Furiosa killed ‘im.”
Maw stopped, the bar halfway in place. “Can’t be.” It wasn’t the first time some fool had tried to take the Citadel, and wouldn’t be the last, but…. “No.”
“He saw ‘im, with his own eyes.”
“Didn’t.”
“Did too.” Jig faltered, then added, “‘s what he said.”
Maw shook his head and jammed the bar in place. “We just gotta sit tight. And the pups still gotta eat.” That was true, whether Immortan Joe was dead or not. He looked again at the Milker.
“The way was blocked,” Jig explained. “But I found this one. ‘s where the milk comes from, innit?”
“Yeah,” Maw said. “Yeah, good thinking. How we gonna get it out of her?” The littluns were already starting to grizzle, and while Maw was thinking about it, one of them went into full-out howling.
The Milker moved awful fast for something so big. She scooped up the screaming littlun and pressed him to the part of her where the pump went. The screaming stopped, and the littlun sucked, just like on a bottle.
“Huh,” Maw said.
The Milker looked at him steadily, with eyes like a War Boy. When another of the littluns started up, she pointed at the pup and at Jig, snapping her fingers.
Jig looked over at Maw, wide-eyed.
“Do what she says,” Maw told him. Jig fetched the littlun, and they both watched as the Milker hooked him up to the other side.
Deciding that part of things was under control, Maw went over to the stove and started the porridge for the bigguns and tweeners. While he was waiting for the water to boil, he checked their supplies. The Den had its own cistern, topped up daily from the main supply, so the water would last them a while, if it went to a siege. Porridge bin was pretty full, too. Only a couple blocks of cheese for the bigguns, but they could do without that for a while. Milk was normally the tough part, but Jig had taken care of that.
While he was unlocking the lockbox, Retro came over, trailing a knot of the littler bigguns. “’zit true?” he asked, his voice raspy.
“About Immortan Joe,” Maw said. It wasn’t really a question.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t know.” He counted the vials. Four. And three Sick Pups left. Wouldn’t last long.
“Gimme,” Retro said, looking at the vials.
“After the feed,” Maw said, snapping the lid closed. “You know that.”
“No.” He glanced down at the box. “Not that. Well. Yeah, that. But.” He gestured towards the doors. “Fight’s getting closer. Gimme one.” He paused to cough, harsh and rattley. “So’s I can go out historic.”
Maw hesitated. They had six guns in there. Three each for him and Jig. Or one each for them and the Sick Pups, plus one spare.
The other two Sick Pups were watching now. PT had got up, and Banger, too far gone to stand, was leaning forward. Banger made the sign of the V8 with bone-thin hands. “By our deeds we honor him.” A few of the bigger bigguns copied him.
It wasn’t fair, them getting sick just when they were big enough to move up to the Kennel. No choice but to go out soft. Not even half-lives, them. Quarter-lives, maybe. It wasn’t like they’d have any other chance to do war.
They’d last about five seconds each, if they went out in the tunnels where the fighting was. No one would bother Witnessing them. “Not yet,” Maw said, putting the box back on its shelf. “If they start ramming the doors.” Not that that had ever happened before. But if Immortan Joe was really dead, this was unlike any attack that had ever happened before. “I’ll need you here to help me and Jig defend the Den.” They wouldn’t last any longer then, but he’d be able to Witness them. “Meantime, we got the feed to do.” Water was boiling now; he measured out the porridge meal. “See if you can get some milk, for the tweeners.” He handed Retro a bowl. “The rest o’ you, change shit-cloths if you want something to do.”
Grumbling, they got to it. The porridge was nearly done, and Maw was lining up the bowls to scoop it out, when there was a commotion over by the littluns’ cots. Retro was crouched in front of the Milker, holding the bowl half-full, and Jig was behind her, one hand fisted in her hair, the other holding a knife to her throat. “Give it,” Jig was saying.
The Milker looked up at Maw, eyes fearful. “I’m goin’ dry,” she said. “”s why I wasn’t in the parlour with the others; they’s letting me dry out so I can get filled up again.”
“Give it or I’ll gut your neck!” Jig threatened.
“I’ll make more later, prob’ly,” the Milker told him.
“Make it now!”
Maw pushed his knife-hand away. “I don’t think it works that way.”
“It don’t,” the Milker confirmed.
“I reckon it’s like when you take a piss,” Maw told Jig, easing the knife out of his hand. “Once it’s all out, you couldn’t make more right then even if the Immortan himself told you to.”
The Milker nodded. “You think he’d let us go dry, if he could tell us not to? More’ll come in,” she said, massaging where the pump went on.
“I could get her some water,” Jig suggested, looking back and forth between Maw and the Milker.
Maw thought about trying to explain that milk wasn’t exactly like piss that way, probably, but decided it couldn’t hurt. “Yeah.” While Jig was doing that, he asked, “How many of ‘em got fed?”
“The two new ones, Digger, Fee-D, Mace, and Skilly.”
Over half, and all of the youngest ones. Okay. He took the bowl of milk from Retro. “We’ll thin this out with water in bottles for the others,” Maw decided. “Everybody gets some, and they’ll go first next feed.” If things weren’t back to normal by the next feed.
“What about the porridge for the tweeners?” Retro asked.
“We’ll have to make it with water.”
The rest of the feed went pretty much like normal, the bigguns clamoring for their bowls of porridge, a few of them needing to be slapped to keep them from taking the bottles of thin porridge from the tweeners. The Sick Boys and Jig held bottles for the littluns, but they only had to do one each, since the Milker had done the others.
“He don’t like it,” Banger said, of the littlun he was trying to give a watered-down bottle.
“Tough,” Maw answered.
The Milker reached out. “Give ‘im here.” When Banger didn’t stand—he couldn’t—she lumbered over.
“Thought you was dry,” Banger pointed out.
Ignoring him, she rocked the littlun, crooning to him and working the nip of the bottle into his mouth. With a grunt of satisfaction, she lumbered back to her place near the cots.
Banger watched her for a moment, then turned to Maw. “Us, now?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He’d left a little bit of milk in the bowl, and mixed it now with poppy milk from the lockbox, then poured a third of the mixture into each of the Sick Pups’ bowls, stirring it into the porridge thoroughly. They didn’t care much about food anymore, specially not Retro and Banger, but they’d eat if their medicine was in it.
Last of all, Maw scraped what was left of the porridge into his and Jig’s bowls. After a moment, he got down a third bowl, and filled that one, too. “Yours is up,” he told Jig, and took the other two bowls over to where the Milker sat.
She was in the big rocking chair, so Maw took a seat on one of the supply crates, and handed her one of the bowls. She looked at it. “Got a spoon?”
Maw scooped up some porridge with two fingers, and shoved it in his mouth. “Jig, bring the spoon over.”
Jig brought it, and the Milker ate with it. All right.
“You got a name?” he asked the Milker.
“May Ree.”
“Strong name,” he said. It was what he told the new ones that came in big enough to say their names. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to say—War Pups wanted to be strong, but who knew what Milkers wanted?
“You got a name, War Boy?” the Milker—May Ree—asked.
“Maw. And that’s Jig, and Retro, Banger, and PT.” He didn’t know if Milkers could Witness. Probably not. But just in case they could, she oughta know the Sick Pups’ names.
“What about them?” she asked, pointing at the two new littluns.
“They ain’t got names yet. Ain’t been here long enough to be sure they’ll make it.”
“How long have they been here?”
Maw shrugged. “Ten-twenty days.”
“Lee-oh,” she said softly, as if to herself. “Laney’s babe. And the other one’s Chevy’s, but she didn’t name him.” She pointed to Slag, one of the bigger littluns, just about ready to sit up. “How long’s that one been here?”
Maw thought. “He came in ‘bout the time Walkers tried to raid Gastown.” From her expression, he didn’t think that meant much to May-Ree. “Maybe…hundred days? Hundred twenty?”
“Mm.” The Milker looked over at where the bigguns were, licking the last of their porridge out of their bowls. As she looked, one of them tossed his bowl aside and came over. “Him?” she asked.
“Spark,” Maw told her. Spark stood with his chubby fists on his hips, looking at the woman. He’d probably never seen a thing like her in his life, Maw thought.
May-Ree held out her hand, beckoning him closer, but Spark ducked behind Maw’s legs to hide from her, jamming his fingers into his mouth to suck. “How long’ve you been here, sweetling?”
Spark, of course, didn’t answer—Maw didn’t know himself, so he was sure Spark didn’t, either. “He’s one of the oldest ones, about ready to move up to the Kennel.” Putting his hand on the pup’s head, he asked, “What’dyou want, Sparkplug?”
Spark took his fingers out of his mouth long enough to say, “Story,” before plugging them back in again.
“After I’m done eating,” Maw told him. “And after we clean up the bowls and everything. G’wan.” He gave Spark a little push, and the kid toddled off to pick up his bowl.
May-Ree watched him for a moment, then asked, “Which ones have been here maybe…five, six hundred days?”
Maw began to get an idea of why she was asking. Some of the Den Pups, the littlest littluns, came from the Milkers. But they didn’t always last long, the littlest—that was why he waited to give them their Den names. “Dunno. Tweeners, maybe.” Scooping the last of his porridge into his mouth, he asked the woman, “You done with yours?”
“What?”
“Your bowl.”
She was. Maw deputized Spark and a couple of other bigguns to gather up bottles and bowls, and started cleaning the dishes, swishing everything through a tub of water mixed with disinfectant. Before he was done, there was a big commotion outside—running feet, a few gunshots, someone yelling “Witness!”
The Sick Pups came out of their poppy-nod, looking toward the doors and blinking slowly. “Getting close,” Jig said.
Maw nodded, and cheerfully told the bigguns—more than one of whom looked about to cry—to keep cleaning up. “We can’t have Story until we’re all cleaned up. Jig, take over here.” Still trying to act as though nothing were wrong, he got down the lockbox. “What story should we have?”
“’nimals!” Spark yelled, first and loudest.
“No, I wanna a ‘mortan Joe story!” another biggun shouted. A few others chimed in with suggestions, or in favor of someone else’s suggestion. Maw checked that the guns were loaded.
“Today we’re going to hear about the animals that used to be,” Maw announced, handing one gun off to Jig and moving on to the Sick Pups. “Which animals should I tell about?”
The Den Pups were distracted with calling out animals—“horse!” “Tee-wrecks!” “’lephant!” “Jawshark!”—while Maw gave the Sick Boys a quick lesson in how to use guns—they were whited up like War Pups, but only because no one wanted to be the one to tell them they couldn’t. They didn’t have any of the training the other Pups their age had got. “Here’s your safety—leave it on until you’re ready to fire. Don’t shoot until you see the enemy—we don’t have bullets to waste.”
“Horse,” Banger said. “I wanna hear about Horse.” The other Sick Pups looked at him—they still listened to stories, of course, but they didn’t usually ask for them. “Immortan Joe’s rig’s named after ‘em,” he pointed out.
“Okay,” Maw said. “We done cleaning up?” he glanced over and saw that Jig was done. “Gather round, Pups! First, we’re going to hear about Horse.”Licking his finger, he sketched one in the dust of the floor. “Horse was the War Rig of animals. People could ride on them, or use them to pull a car if there wasn’t any guzzoline….”
Maw figured things were exciting enough already, so he focused on the more soothing parts of Horse—how he ate soft green grass and how there were special small ones that pups in the Before used to ride—and skipped over Jawshark and Tee-Wrecks entirely. He talked about how Fox was a flying animal that ate bugs and fruit—which there used to be so much of that it was left out where wild animals could find it—and then started in on Dog. “There was all different kinds of Dog. Big strong ones that could do war, little fuzzy ones that slept in the bed with you and kept you warm. Spotted ones and stripey ones. Every shade of brown, and black and white, too.”
The doors rattled. Spark started to cry, and that set off a lot of the others.
“What do we do?” Jig asked.
“Get the pups to the back,” Maw answered. “Everybody—get to the back of the Den! Far from the doors as you can. Bigguns help the littluns!” He and Jig started pulling littluns out of their cots, handing them over to the bigguns, and herding them all to the back. After a moment, Retro and PT joined in. Banger, unable to walk, made the sign of the V8 and
Everybody, get to the back, far from the doors as you can. Go. Grab the littluns.” He, Jig, Retro, and PT started pulling littluns out of their cots and handing them to the biggest of the bigguns and dragged himself over toward the doors. All the while, the doors kept rattling, the pounding from outside getting louder and louder.
By the time Maw had a moment to think about the Milker, she’d heaved herself up out of the rockingchair and was picking up the spare gun. Maw grabbed for it. “Go! With the others!”
May-Ree shook her head, keeping her grip on the gun. “At least one of those babies is mine.”
Maw looked at her for a moment. She had the same look in her eye as she had when she’d picked up that first littlun, a look to do war with. “Yeah. Okay.” Using his own gun, he showed her how to thumb the safety off.
Looking over his little ragged row of troops, Maw wondered if Immortan Joe felt like this, when he spoke to the War Boys before sending them out—proud and happy and sad and scared all at the same time. He knew they’d die well, eternal outriders on the road to Valhalla, but it was just too soon. They were all just pups, even Jig. He’d black their eyes for them if there was time, anoint them as War Boys, but there wasn’t time—already, the doors were splintering.
Instead, he raised his voice and called, “We are WAR BOYS!”
“WAR BOYS!” the others echoed—all four Pups, and a few of the bigguns, too.
“Kami-crazy War Boys!”
“War Boys!”
“Today, we’re gonna defend the Den!”
The others stumbled over what to echo, some yelling, “DEFEND!” and others “THE DEN!”
The shiny head of an axe poked through the door. “By our deeds, we honor him. V8!”
“V8!”
The door fractured, a great gaping gash torn in it, allowing a glimpse of the enemy outside. Maw fired, the others copying him a moment later. Their shots splintered the doors further, but there was no return fire, and Maw couldn’t see anyone outside, through the holes. Probably, they’d ducked to the sides, where the stone walls would protect them. He gestured for the Boys to hold fire.
“Immortan Joe is dead,” someone said from outside. The voice was female, unfamiliar. “Imperator Furiosa is in charge now. Drop your weapons and surrender, and you won’t be harmed.”
The War Boys looked at Maw, clearly wondering if they should believe it. Maw wished there was someone he could look to for answers. “It’s a woman,” Jig pointed out in a whisper.
“So?” Retro asked.
“Maybe the pups will be okay, at least,” Jig suggested. He looked at Maw. “Don’t you think?”
“Maybe. Furiosa, though.” Thinking Furiosa was softer than the other Imperators wasn’t a mistake anyone made twice. He raised his voice. “If we surrender, then what?”
“Anyone who swears loyalty to Furiosa can stay,” the woman outside said. “Those that won’t, will be allowed to leave with the supplies they can carry. Anyone who swears loyalty and breaks his word will be thrown out with nothing.”
Immortan Joe had run the Citadel for as long as Maw could remember, but he knew from other takeovers that those were fair terms—better than most would give. “Who are you? I want to know who’s telling me, and how I can tell you speak for the Imperator.”
“They call me the Teller,” the woman said. “Of the Vuvalini, the Many Mothers.”
“The what?” Maw had never heard of that tribe.
“Furiosa’s people, before she was stolen and brought here.”
“I want to hear from somebody I know,” Maw decided. “Somebody who took your deal and is still alive.”
There was a murmur of conversation outside. Finally, the woman said, “All right. It’ll take a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Maw said. Then, testing their cooperation, he added, “Move off—stop crowding the doors. It’s makin’ me real nervous.”
It sounded like they were moving away, out there, though Maw decided not to go closer to the doors and check.
“I think I’ve heard of them,” May-Ree said, unexpectedly.
“Hm?” Maw asked.
“The Vuvalini. It’s supposed to be a tribe of women, but they disappeared. I thought it was just a story.”
“Could still be just a story,” Maw pointed out. He looked at the Milker with suspicion. She would probably be all right.
Her face took on a stubborn look. She stepped forward, and before Maw could do anything to stop her, she called out, “Miz Teller? I’m surrendering. And it’s just babies and little kids in here, only one man.”
“I’m not a little kid!” Jig yelled.
“Shut up,” Maw told him. He wasn’t, really, but he sure sounded like one, saying that.
“May-Ree?” A new voice from outside said.
“Cath? Cath, it’s me.” The Milker hurried over to the doors. She peered out. “Tell the others, this is where they keep the babies, our babies!”
“Let me in!” the new woman said.
“I can’t, there’s a thing on the door.” She pushed ineffectually at the bar. “It’s too heavy.”
Maw tried to regain control of the situation, saying, “Milker—this Cath, you vouch for her?”
“What?” the woman asked.
“Can we trust her, if she says it’s all right to let them in?”
“Sure,” May-Ree said, bobbing her head. “Sure, she’s my friend. Cath, can you promise the babies will be safe if we open the doors?”
“Yes,” Cath said.
“You have my word, War Boy,” the Teller woman added.
“Look an’ make sure she hasn’t got a gun to her head or anything,” Maw told May-Ree.
May-Ree approached the doors fearlessly, and confirmed that she didn’t. Teller spoke up. “Speaking of guns, I still need you to put yours down.”
Maw thought it probably would be a good idea to get the guns from Jig and the Sick Pups, now—it would be a bad time for any of them to get overexcited and make a mistake. So he collected them and made a show of tossing them where the women outside would be able to see through the hole in the door. His own, he surreptitiously stuck in the waistband of his pants, just in case.
Then, he unbarred the door. Suddenly, the room seemed full of women, flowing round Maw and his newly-minted War Boys like the water rushing down the rock to the Wretched below. They ran to the Den Pups, picking them up, rocking them in their arms and kissing their faces. Most of them were Milkers, but there were a few from the Wretched, too, and one of Immortan Joe’s Wives, the one with the sunset hair.
Last in the group was an unfamiliar woman, armed and dressed like a Scavenger, old like the History Woman. She looked over toward the pups, but stopped in front of him. “You the tendermother here?” He recognized her voice as the one who called herself Teller.
“What?” Maw asked.
“You the one looks after these babies?”
“So what if I am?” he asked, expecting to be teased about it.
“You the one was gonna die for ‘em, if we came in here meaning them harm?”
“Yeah,” Maw said. “Yeah. That’s the one I am.”
“Tendermother,” she repeated, then cupped her hands, palms-out, below her waist, before spreading them. It wasn’t a gesture Maw had ever seen before, but he could tell it was a sign, it meant something, like the sign of the V8. “We lost our last tendermother…round about the time the babies came to an end. But I’m the Teller.”
“Teller,” Maw said. “Is that…like a History Woman? Tells about the before-times?”
The Teller snorted. “The before-times, and the since-times, and whatever’s in between. Tendermother’s got to be a bit of a teller, and a Teller’s got to be a bit of everything, so I reckon we’ll get by.” She nodded, as if that settled something.
Get by what, Maw was about to ask, but Spark was tugging at his pants leg, apparently scared of all the strangers in the Den. “Whatd’you want?” he asked, picking Spark up and settling him on his hip.
Spark didn’t answer—he had his fingers plugging up his mouth again—but Teller nodded, and repeated, “yes, I reckon we’ll get by.”
#
Things changed in the Den after that—as they did in the Citadel as a whole—but mostly for the better. One of the biggest changes was that the Den moved, to what had been the Wives Quarters under Immortan Joe. It was much bigger, with its own water supply and plenty of sunlight, which Teller said was important for pups. At the same time, the girl-pups were moved in. There were fewer of them than the boys, and sicklier, but Maw had help looking after everyone now.
A few of the Milkers—now titled Milking Mothers—came and stayed on, feeding the littluns the natural way. A lot of others stopped in when they could, to feed and cuddle the pups. War Boys and older Pups visited too—mostly to have a gawp at where the Wives had lived, but Maw quickly got used to putting them to work, handing out food or changing rags. If they came back again, he’d let them try the more pleasant chores, like telling stories or playing with the bigguns.
They had playthings now; that was another change. Some were treasures from the Old World, that the Immortan had brought to the Wives Quarters to amuse them Wives: books with brightly colored pictures, plastic figures of people and animals, even a few tiny cars with wheels that really turned. Several of the War Boys, fascinated with these, began fashioning more out of scrap materials, and the Milking Mothers contributed cloth dolls.
Another change was, he found out the line about Furiosa being in charge was sort of a lie. Teller said it wasn’t a lie, really, because Furiosa was what she called “the public face of leadership,” meaning she was the one who spoke to the Wretched from the platform and negotiated with other leaders and all that, plus she was the war leader, who’d give the orders any time there was fighting. But there was something called the Mothers’ Council, that sat down every few days to talk things over and make decisions. Maw figured from the name that it would be made up of the Vulvalini and the former Wives, but Teller explained that it “had to represent everyone.” Meaning there would be Citadel people in it, and Wretched—who they were supposed to call “Villagers” now—and men as well as women. To his even greater surprise, Maw himself was asked to be on it, all because he was what the Vuvalini called “Tendermother.” (When Riggs, crew chief of the Repair Boys, joined, they tried to get him to take the title “Repairmother,” but he refused.)
One of the things he learned being on the Council was that milk production was way down—now that the Milking Mothers were allowed to choose, a lot of them decided to contribute some other way. But the Den was given first priority: the littluns and tweeners had as much as they could drink, and the bigguns got milk rations now, too. Teller said it would help them grow bigger and not be as sickly.
Teller taught him his letters, too, and the first things he read were the words painted on the walls of the new Den: “We are not things” and “Our babies will not be warlords.” He wasn’t so sure about the second one, worried that the Mothers wanted the pups brought up soft. But Teller told him, when he asked, that they would still need to fight—to defend the Citadel and the village, to keep people from taking what was theirs. “But fighting is—should be—a thing we do, not a thing we are.” Maw wasn’t sure what the difference was, exactly, but as long as they weren’t going soft, he decided it didn’t matter.
Later—much later—he’d begin teaching Pups their letters, himself. And when they learned to read the Words, and asked for the story of how the Mothers took down Immortan Joe, he’d begin to think that maybe, if by the time these pups had babies of their own, the world would be safe enough that those babies could grow up soft—maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.