This is the first time I have actually published some of my own original work. Please know as I am usually used to writing fanfiction for Warhammer 40K which is much easier. Hopefully you enjoy my work.
In the year 1945, the allies of WWII harnessed a power that would change warfare forever, and bring the most destructive force available for mankind. A century later in 2048, tensions between the nations of the earth broke out into nuclear war. The world was engulfed in detonation after detonation of atomic weaponry, rendering almost all life either wiped out or at so few numbers that the once dominant species is now considered endangered.
It has now been one hundred years since the world entered its final war of nations. Mankind’s survivors have been driven to living in settlements made out of the ruins and wreaks of once great civilizations. Relying on old technology and whatever can be found, these settlements are scattered in isolation from each other.
The only interaction with the outside is with traders, who roam the post nuclear wasteland, trading whatever scrap and supplies they have come across in their travels, whether it be food, weapons, technology, medicine or in the worst of cases: slaves.
Once thriving cities have been turned to ruins. Those who venture into them, never return. The once great highways that connected a nations many metropolises have crumbled, providing only landmarks for those brave enough to venture from whatever sanctuary they left behind them.
Of course there is no peace within the wastes, the fight for survival is a war itself. Across the wastes in the rock hills and ruins that could not support a community, there are the raiders, men a women who prey on any and all for what they have, with no remorse or regret. They cannot be bargained with, and to fight them could mean death.
However, evil men are not the only thing to wander the wastes killing mercilessly. After one hundred years the radiation has left whatever wildlife there was twisted and mutated, the worlds smallest creatures have been made far beyond their natural size, and some animals have developed new ways of catching prey, be it they mimic the call of their prey, or fire small naturally occurring projectiles. They now feast upon whatever they can find in the wastes, be it animal or human.
Mankind would have been eternally extinguished years ago, had it not been for the secluded brotherhood of road warriors, men and women who with the knowhow, skill and bravery, patrol the wastes, doing whatever they can to give relief to the lives of whoever asks for their services. These are the Rangers, some say they are mercenaries, some say they are blessings in strange form. But even them this world is still far from rebuilt.
This is the wasteland. Survival is a war without end. The human race are but one of the many life forms clinging on to this war torn world. You fight or you die. You receive no mercy from the wasteland, nor must you show any. There are no heroes. Only survivors.
Gunfire. Screaming. Blood. Terrified eyes look out from behind a chunk of rusted scrap metal. The eyes belonged to a young boy, only about seven or eight. His dark brown hair was like a shadowy helm upon his head, ruffled and dirty. His eyes were a shade of dark brown, like the earth that he now laid on, praying for the earth and his cover to provide him sanctuary from the atrocities that were now being committed before him.
Before his eyes sixteen people, men women and children, were being, bashed, stabbed raped and shot. They were his friends, his fellow roving neighbours, his family. And here they were, being cut down, some in the prime of their adulthood, some only just getting to that stage in life, while others hadn’t even made it past ten.
Their attackers, a group of men, about five of them, continued to ravage them. One of them was armed with a baseball bat, a small skinny man wearing only trousers and a pre-war hockey mask. He growled in rage as he savagely smashed his bat into a dead man’s head, the flesh torn and the skull cracked open, splattering his intelligence across the earth.
