The way. Part 1

Time has not preserved the name of our hero. We’ll call him Troy.
Time did not leave a mark in the calendar. Let's assume that New Year and Christmas were somewhere close.
Time did not preserve the details when Troy was alone with the road. But we will still tell this story exactly as we heard it from a merchant on a market somewhere near Rock City. The story of how little in our life depends on our plans.

***

Troy was an ordinary mechanic, and there were, to be honest, countless more like him in the Wasteland. He got up at sunrise and walked through the whole village to the garage, where he worked until the whole sky was already strewn with myriads of stars.
That night, as on many previous ones, he hung a padlock on the flimsy tin garage doors and, whistling a simple tune, went home through the main square of the village. At home, a modest, but dinner, was waiting for him. It was prepared by his future wife from products paid on the market instead of a regular salary.

None of the rare passers-by at such a late hour paid attention to an armoured car, which drove in from the eastern mountains. There were no faction logos on the sides of the vehicle, and no flags were wound around the antenna. This would make the driver an ordinary survivor looking for a haven, if it wasn’t for the Crasher located on the hood, covering half of the frontal armor plate.
The armored car door opened and the thick sole of an army boot sank to the ground. The driver was not going to leave the vehicle, he was fumbling around the passenger seat, as if collecting documents scattered around the cabin. But after eight seconds a hand appeared in the opening. There was a metal pin clamped in it, with a small box at the top. With one sharp movement, the sharp end of a metal rod was stuck into the sandstone a couple of centimeters from the stranger’s boot.
Nobody still paid any attention to him. There are lots of madmen around nowadays.
The car door slammed shut, the engine roared and the armored vehicle rushed towards the west, picking up speed with every second.
Later, Troy replayed this scene many times in his head, seen only out of the corner of his eye.

The first explosion happened somewhere outside the village, but everyone heard it. The sky on that side became crimson. Those who were awake stood still, those who were asleep jumped up next to their beds. There was such a ringing silence all around that one could hear someone in one of the houses cautiously asking, “Is it just me, or did the Mandrake fire nearby?”. No one was given an answer to this question, the village was covered with a barrage of shells. They fell so chaotically, splashing burning puddles around that it was impossible to deliberately hide from them.
Troy understood this and just ran straight, ignoring the fire under his feet, his boots could survive more worse. He understood that any shell that fell nearby was certain death. But he kept running and running, because there was only one thought throbbing in his head: “Mei, Mei, Mei”.
He did not see the moment the shell hit his house. When he got there, there were only torn up containers left in front of him, with streams of fire flowing from them. It was impossible to survive in this hell. The whole world, everything that he loved ceased to exist in those ten seconds of running. He froze, staring frantically before him. The explosions sounded less and less frequent, and the screams of the few survivors did not reach his ears. Torn apart by the emptiness that had formed so abruptly inside, he first fell to his knees, and then lay down altogether, resting his head on the heated sand. Flames danced in his eyes, fists clenched in blind rage, and the elusive silhouette of a man in an armored car with the Crusher, wearing heavy army boots, sat in his head.

The damage to the village was colossal. For one surviving house there were three destroyed. Even the garage got it, although there were legends that it was like a bunker, made of special cement. The roof was hit, and a shell that exploded inside destroyed most of the electronics, completely destroyed one armored car and seriously damaged another.
Troy locked himself in his garage for seven days. For seven days, the sounds of working with metal were heard from there with rare interruptions. For seven days, the surviving fellow villagers came to him every day. Some asked for help, some offered his own. He didn’t open the door to anyone. What he was building there remained a mystery to them, because on the eighth night, at the hour of the wolf, when most of the villagers slept soundly, he pushed his armored car out of the village without starting the engine. As always, after a while there were eyewitnesses. Some argued that his armored car was in the shape of a beast, others that it was a truck, and others generally recalled a motorcycle, as on the cover of a magazine recently found at a nearby factory. The only thing they agreed on was that Troy headed west.

***

Troy’s story will definitely be continued. And to brighten up the anticipation of the next part, we are announcing a chain of quick contests. They start on December 4 in our official group on FB. In this contest, you can win both coins, containers and mini-packs, as well as completely unique stickers, banners, decor and a portrait.