There Will Always Be a Max by Michael R. Underwood Read Free Book Online Page A

on their luck, away from an Enclave, under imminent threat.
    This was the breach.
    A football field away, King let off the throttle and applied the brakes. “Be the story.” His words were invocation and affirmation at once, a tip Roman had passed on for the first time King deployed back to this world after recruiting the post-apocalyptic knight errant.
    King stopped a hundred feet away, stepped out of the car without visible weaponry. He had a high-caliber revolver in his jacket, two knives in his boots, and a pair of holdout pistols, but left the shotgun inside, the stock pointing toward the driver’s-side window. Ready and available, but not in hand.
    The trio gathered themselves, an older woman with white hair hiding behind the other two. Before her was a girl, almost a woman, tall but gangly, clothes hanging loose, her skin nearly onyx with cool undertones. She held a rifle like she knew how to use it but hadn’t. Her form was tight. Too tight. Roman, Shirin, Mendoza, all the veteran fighters he knew had an ease to their grips. The Italians called it sprezzatura.
    Here, it was just grit.
    The third split the difference, mid-thirties probably, though he looked older. Everyone did here. This region rode people hard, chewed them up and spat them out desiccated. He had a pistol held high—too high, breaking the line of his wrist. It’d be a hell of a kickback if he fired.
    King raised his voice, made it carry across the sand separating them. “Looks like you folks could use some help.”
    â€œWho the hell are you?” called the girl.
    â€œI’m Max.”
    Even a hundred feet away, King could see the words strike home. The people here didn’t talk about Maxes, but each time he’d invoked the name, he could see the subconscious adjustment—like he slid into place in their minds.
    â€œSo what?” the girl said. “You ain’t no one to us. The Skull Boys rule here. No stopping them.”
    A Max rode solo, just him and the car, with a jacket. He arrived just in time to change the course of events to protect those that couldn’t protect themselves.
    Maxes were this world’s guardian angels. Post-apocalyptic tricksters, culture heroes. King’s presentation to the High Council figured Max stories as this region’s equivalent to Jack tales from European folklore. They weren’t always named Max, King had found, just the first one, which gave the archetype its name. But every time he’d visited the region for a mission, there was either a Max figure in the story, or it had broken down because there wasn’t a Max figure. Like this one.
    â€œI’m Max,” King said, the repetition as much affirmation as insistence, “and I’m here to help. What happened?”
    Now sixty feet away, King already had an answer to his question about what had happened to the group.
    A crashed motorcycle. Dead body beside it, cracked cow’s-skull helmet caved into its wearer’s face.
    Dead woman, maybe forty, in leathers and muslin like the survivors, grays and browns. Armored, but it hadn’t helped. Her body was riddled with bullet wounds and long gashes from blades. Her arms wrapped around another Skull Boy, body slacked.
    She’d gone down fighting, had taken two of them with her. But they’d lost their ride, maybe some of their party.
    But the cart—that had something interesting. He had his guess of what it could be but wanted to hear it from them.
    Maxes were messengers, wasteland psychopomps. They got you where you needed to be to live your life, to make your own story.
    This was the life Roman had walked away from. Constant danger, itinerant heroism without end.
    He had a family now, a home.
    But this world would always need a Max.
    The older woman stood up from behind her protectors.
    â€œWe came here for supplies. Xiao spotted this place, but the Skull Boys caught us while we were loading up.”
    â€œThere were