The Emerzary Split
Grub's journey continues, now accompanied by a deformed thylacine.
It had been four sunsets since Grub’d started following the Emerzary Split, by his figuring. It took him a night of watching the Emerzary limping and snuffling round the base of Grub’s post on the walls of Gas Town before Grub understood its purpose. Afore then he thought maybe it were a guardian sent by the Immortan to watch over Grub and the other pups’d been sent to draw and burn. But the Emerzary never looked at the other pups and the other pups only seemed to want to pelt the Emerzary’s lumpy flesh with rocks. The sun rose and Grub knew the Emerzary had been sent just for him, and by the way it would scratch itself and whine, sending antsy glances at the expanse of wastes beyond the cliffs hiding Gas Town, Grub also knew the Emerzary was sent for him to follow away. To wherever the Immortan wanted him to go.
The Emerzary’s whippish tail wagged as it hobbled ahead of Grub, stopping to shove its cracked and scaberous snout into a hole. Its tongue flopped from its mouth, a deep cleft halving its face wide below the nose, teeth jutting at all angles around its malformed jaw. Grub wasn’t sure if Split really were the Emerzary’s name, but Split fit it fine, he thought. It flinched and snarled when Grub reached to touch its boxy head. When Grub’d snuck beyond the wall he’d spotted a third ear, shrivelled and useless, swelling under the Emerzary’s left ear. He desperately wanted to touch it, something told him he needed to know it. Something also told him he had to do it when Emerzary was awake and aware, else it’d be a sneak theft. Emerzary Split were there to get Grub to grow and journey, not be a traitor of a fellow’s body. Grub touched his own ear, now a melted lump fused to his scar-slick skull. Reverie snagged him.
Finger tips slick with scarring left after clapping a hand in defense against his skwyering beauty burn. The Nonnies all laughed and slapped his back, flinging their arms around him in brotherly welcome, their own burnification glinting in the sun, puckering and rumpled flesh raging along their faces, necks and domes. The Dow Nonnis stood back, their arms stiff at their sides. Grub had been afeared of the bits of metal smelted into the Dows’ biceps, markering their rank above Naepertanics who were above Skwyers, which Grub just became under the heat of a stunted flame thrower.
The map of pain laid itself out in Grub’s eye. That day, the sides of his head were scorched, marking him a Skwyer. He could feel the flesh of his right ear tearing in heat, the fine strands of hair that had begun sprouting in brittle tufts burned into a smoke that made him sick in the gut to smell. Next, if he lived long enough, or more true outlived the others long enough, he’d be raised to Naepertanic and to honor it hot metal would be pressed into the sides of his face till the skin seared and bubbled, markering his rank with blister chops. He feared to look too long at the mouth of the Naepertanic that grabbed and rocked him with a whoop. Its lips fused shut on one side, burnification smoothing it down into its blister chops. Its laughter burst lopsided and wet, drool leakign eternal out its mouth, its thick tongue lashing out to slurp the moisture back in.
They’d gave him a boot for his foot, a block of metal and rock lumped together around his twisted limb. It steadied his hips and he could stand even. Didn’t walk any faster but Napalm Nonnies didn’t need to walk, just hold the gunners steady as they belched flame. Time passed and the Naepertanic he served took a cough that only got more jagged as the days wore on. Spittle and blood coated the corners of its mouth, drying in the sun into crackling patterns of white and brown. Each night Skwyers would gather round it and rub its back and stretch its arms high above its head to open its airways. Grub’d sleep next to it, afeared of its disease, afeared of it being alone. Sunrise showed itd died in the night, its tongue lolled from its lips, fresh blood on its hands. Grub couldn’t figure how this happened without him waking to witness. A pain in his spirit flared to know it. He became a Naepertanic before the sun made it to the middle of the sky.
He’d sit slumped in the sun, his burns itching, his face scrunched tight identical to all the other Nonnies stationed on the borders of Gas Town. His blisterchops never seemed to fully heal, they’d crack open fresh with any motion. Below his station, a stab of junk jutted out the wall.
Shreddings of plastic tangled in long strips to jutting pipe and dead branches rustled in the breeze. The fluttering drew Grub's eyes shut, the motion would drag acid heat over his vision, the sun burning pink through his lids and the trace fog of burning guzzoline pricked his eyes. He’d lean on the body of the cannon and feel the prickly cool of his sweat vanishing in the air, tickling the scarring of his ear and blisterchops. He’d remember the rows of projuuz glistening and green and how the yawns of the caves would make their leaves whisper just like the junk shreds. He squeezed his eyes tighter at the jab of tears starting to poke, he daren't let his Skwyer catch him sentermenting.
The Emerzary Split huffed and let out a low whine. Grub startled forward, fumbling in his sack. Heat rising on the horizon shuddered and stuttered. He retrieved a stone carved hollow and plugged with old rubber. He gripped The Emerzary around its bony middle, ripped the stopper away with his teeth, and held the hollow stone between The Emerzary’s legs just as the stream of piss sputtered out, catching as much as he could. The Emerzary snarled at his touch but held steady, spilling nothing. Grub offered to the Immortan a praising clatter in his mind, The Emerzary Split such a gift no other pup’d ever known. A guide for Grub’s odyssing, a beacon to follow as a priest in the Immortan’s quest to conquer the waste. Grub’d find new citadels, new lost bodies and bring them to the Immortan’s heart. Overcome with excitement, Grub splashed a drip of piss into the dirt at his feet, quickly made a paste and smeared it over his brow. He laced his fingers in the hail of v8 and vowed his name up to the Immortan: he were now Emerzary Skwyer Grub, set to serve the Emerzary Split on their grand odysseum to earn his future name of Emerzary Weyv.