Purgatory

Sand Storms were a commodity in the deserts around America, It was hard to stay clean with how quickly they could kick up, and where. A small Caravan trekked from the city known as New York, But in these times known as. The dead city. To a small location within Oklahoma to a town called Bixby, which seemed to be fully intact and was now called, Haven.

The caravan was under heavy storm, and the group had to hug the cart as they went, or risk being lost in the dust cloud. Every man and woman had cloth around their faces to stop the tiny pieces of sand and dirt from cutting them to pieces.

The horses they had managed to find were covered with a large tarp each to prevent them from being injured by the dirt and sand.

"Keep moving! We can't stop in this storm!" Shouted the man driving the cart.

The wind howled making the sound unintelligible. Meanwhile, off about a half mile to the east a small group of Tech raiders were viewing the group through infrared scopes.

The leader of the group was wearing a military grade flexi metal suit. Built to stop even a .303 at point blank. He chewed on a salted toothpick as he took aim on the driver of the cart.

Seven other Raiders took aim at the guards of the caravan. They'd keep the unarmed ones, leave the injured and whoever else was left to die in the storm. Children would be left to their fate.

Slowly the leader of the raiders squeezed the trigger on his M15 Assault Rifle, a loud pop sounded off when the shot was fired. The bullet spun around as it left the chamber and as if it was a homing missile turned ever so slightly to the left as it flew towards the cart driver.

Just a second before impact it sharded into a thousand pieces and destroyed the Cart drivers head. The rest of the raiders fired off their weapons consisting of AK-19's, M13's and .308's

Each bullet hit it's specified mark dropping each guard. Each raider fired off a second round exempting the leader removing all the guards and anyone that had a weapon outside of the tiny cart.

"Time to collect our haul boys!" The leader of the Tech raiders called through his headset.

Unknown to the eight raiders was the fact that there was one extremely bad ass knife combatant in the cart along with all the goods. Druid was the most dangerous person in the world from up close. And he was an inhumanely strong person.

He was lain flat across the floor of the cart with an M16 assault carbine, his combat knife, a flash bang and an EMP detonator. As soon as Druid had heard the first popping sound, he had set the small devices around the cart and covered himself with the shredded cloth, used to line the bottom of the cart.

He breathed softly, his mask causing the sound to be increased ever so slightly. It didn't matter though. The storm was by far loud enough to cover the sound.

His earpiece clicked three times before turning to a static sound.

"Okay Boys, search the guards and driver, I'll go see if anyone's inside the wagon!"

The voice was clearly American. There was no longer any South or North America. Just America. Most of the world's oceans were turned to simple lakes by the Tzar Bomba's that Russia had unleashed. America had thrown it's Bravos' and it's Mikes' even a few Trinity Nukes just for the hey of it.

Everywhere that had a bomb to chuck in did so. Nothing was spared, Even the non-nuclear bombs were dropped. Anything that had exponentially destructive properties to it was launched. EMP's , Neutron Bombs, Bunker Busters, Trinity's, Mikes', Bravos', Tzar Bombas', Incendiaries', Anything and everything was used.

Those had dried up quite a few of the world’s oceans and reduced them to but mere lakes.

"Boss, Seems Ol' Jig here's just takin' a quick kip," One of the Raiders said over the comm.

"Leave him," The leader said.

Druid clutched his knife against his chest. Any second now.

The sound of the back of the cart being opened by the tech raider was just loud enough to be audible. He stepped over to the crate almost immediately next to the exit part.

He kicked the lock to break it. Then opened the container.

Any second.

"Boy's come here, help me unload some of these wrist computers. They seem like they were salvaged from Silicon Valley," The leader said through the comm.

Soon the raiders crowded around the back of the cart. Perfect.

Druid pressed down on the EMP trigger softly and listened to his comm buzz out. He then went into action.

With one fluid motion he flipped over, got up and stabbed his knife through the leader's helmet, It only covered his head's top half. Druid then drew his M16 and pulled the pin to his flash bang and tossed it out.

The Flash bang wouldn't do much other than make the Raiders think he threw a real grenade, until it went off. But by the time it went off they'd all be dead.

Druid pulled the trigger to the M16, unleashing a full on blast of sixteen 5.56×45mm Incendiary hell into the seven raiders. The white phosphorus literally cooking away their chest cavities. Druid collected his knife from the skull of their leader, and then pressed a small button on his belt.

All of the guards, the boxes, the driver and the horses of the cart disappeared in a blur of static. He then hopped down off the back of the cart.

Slowly Druid walked off in the direction the cart was going, His hood over the metal helmet around his head. About a quarter mile away from the cart he dropped his M16. He had no use for it, the thing only had one clip and he couldn’t afford any ammo, the tech raiders wouldn’t have any white phosphorus round on them, apart from the ones he had pumped into them with the assault carbine.

But those were un-retrievable. He looked at the watch on his wrist.

The glass was cracked on the golden Rolex and the hands were slightly burnt and bent, but the battery wouldn’t fail to make them move.

The time was twelve thirteen post meridian. Druid then pulled his sleeve up further and pulled his knife back across the rubber synthetic he had for skin.

Druid was a war machine, made around a man and then left to rot in the depths of his own hell. Until he had escaped that hole. After that, he was in the wake of a destruction so deadly that not even cockroaches were a commodity. Only a few thousand people were left on the surface.

The rest had taken to open fallout shelters deep within the ground. After a few years the population above ground grew by about a million. Counting all the people underground that had decided that staying down there for their lives was not what they wanted to do.

The world had reverted to a nuclear version of the wild west.

Soon a town appeared on the horizon ahead of Druid. That was one thing the post apocalyptic world an the old world had in common.

Towns.

And where towns were there were problems. And rewards.

Druid continued to drudge along through the deep sand.

Raiders weren't the problem around the wastelands, oh no, that title went to some of the biggest and most dangerous creatures in the world. Formally known as Mutants.

Druid was friends with a few, Mutants themselves were made from people binded with animal DNA, or an insectoid. And ever so rarely an arachnid. Druid didn't call them mutants though. Because he couldn't, he literally had no speech ability. He could talk, but he couldn't string together sentences. He could only say words one by one segmenting them up into one word every four seconds.

In some ways he was like a child. But in other ways he was a hero. To some he was a monster.

"Hey look over there," A watchman said, patting his fellow watchman on the shoulder.

"Is that?" The secondary watchman questioned, squinting to get a better look.

"Uh huh, told cha he'd get back before the end of the month, so come on, cough up."

"Oh screw you, i ain't paying shit."

The two watchman began to have a small sissy slap fight. Druid soon came past them and walked into the small town of Dustball.

Dustball was just as the name suggested, a dust bowl. The place had a few merchants that sold water for food or weapons. Unlike the movies before the war like Mad Max and the games like Fallout, Gas wasn't the main theme of the wastes, bottle caps weren't cash, and unlike Metro 2033 bullets weren't the only currency either. Water, hard work, food, weapons, a good personality and skill was the currency. If you had to steal you'd steal. The world worked on everyone's natural talent.

Treat makers stuck with that, people would traverse the world for a small piece of that cake stuck under your boot if you offered it for that. Most lollies and such were synthetic, made by machines that were hand cranked. But ever so few were made from real ingredients.

Peppermint was one of them, Druid loved peppermint. The taste, the smell, it's pattern and colors. He loved it. He adored the little red and white swirled sugar food.

Druid drudged towards the large building in the center of Dustball, He wanted his reward. He had traversed most of the wastes, searched through endless fields of rubble. Just to find what this job rewarded.

A box, of perfectly preserved twinkies.

Twinkies Like in most apocalyptic situations, had almost gone extinct. It was the only soft thing Druid could force through the little grate over his mouth.

He didn't need to force things through the grate, but he didn't enjoy opening it so that things could see what his skin looked like.

His real skin, the flesh that covered his head. Was cracked and rotting, it had gone foul over the

years. Rotten and putred black in places. His face was that of a monster, but his mask made him able to seem better.

In the years before the apocalypse Druid was a military experiment. He was meant to be the perfect soldier, a man and a machine that would do anything it was told, and confirm that it understood.

Druid signed on as since he had no family, and he was the perfect canadite. He was brought to a base buried deep under the Mojave desert. Soldiers, scientists and doctors populated the base. It was a multi million dollar operation.

Druid at first, knew what was going to happen. They'd measure him, check out his brain and inner workings, then give him a few weeks to adjust to  the base.

It was underneath an abandoned factory as a cover. The factory was no longer maintained, and the company that sold buildings had given up selling it, so it was just left there to rot.

The first few weeks of the base were a breeze to Druid, He'd gotten a great cevlar trench coat that looked like browned leather. One of the guys had stuck a big Pepsi logo on the back. It took a week for the tailors to get off. Next was the pants, then the boots, and then the gloves.

Finally he was measured for the helmet. The one he couldn't take off.

They had informed him that he would live his life for America if he had proceeded with the helmet idea. He continued as planned.

He walked down the halls, sat and ate in the mess hall. Stayed generally the same.

Then they gave him the rubber synthetic skin, removed all his bones and replaced them with

carbonated steel. They left only his organs alone, except the lazyrx.

They adjusted it, and his vocal chords, to only produce a single word every four seconds.

Soon They Started him on different courses. They fine tuned his nerves, and even made his limbs detachable. After that they stuck a lot of computer chips into his brain.

They attached a nerve shock chip that allowed him to move so fast that he could punch his hand through a twelve inch thick titanium plate. Then they wanted to take it all a step further.

They installed the TAC-1 into Druid's brain, and stuck a pair of flexi steel wings on his back. The Time Alteration Chip was the first of it's kind, giving the one to it's name.

It literally allowed Druid to pause time, but only for a short period to him. He could even rewind it up to twenty seconds and slow it to a trillionth of it's average speed giving him more time to react than anything known to humans ever. The chip also had a failsafe function. Forcefully throwing the user back a half hour before they died.

And with this they had to alter Druid's body more. They gave him synthetic organs that never degraded, and altered his brain to never degrade.

He was no longer fully human.

After he was counted as a complete subject they started running field tests. It was the first time in six years that he had left the base.

They started him with a basic motion test. Getting him to walk and climb over a few things. They had him running on the obstacle course that new recruits in the normal army ran. There was even a few recruits from the base watching as well as the scientists and doctors. And the guys paying for the project and running it.

Druid crossed the course in less than five minutes. The time it would take to walk the length of the course.

Next was basic firearms. Though, this was more an opposite to what you'd do in the normal army.

Druid stood at the end of a long box, and let the team fire shots off at him. Any that landed a single bullet would be promoted and given six months leave with full pay. So that was some incentive.

None landed a single shot.

Next was Druid's flight tests. After he had the basics of flying with eighteen pounds of cevlar imbedded into his skin along with a trench coat, vest, shirt, gloves, boots and pants made of cevlar with ceramic plates and polymer weave and a few excess pounds of equipment, they tried him against a fighter jet.

It was oddly slow compared to Druid, even though he only had wings and nothing else he managed to travel faster than a mach five jet.

They ran test after test after test after test, again and again and again. Seeing how well they had made their perfect soldier.

He was kitted with some of the most futuristic gear ever made. His nerve system was able to be used like hydraulics. He could fire one nerve and then another to propel his arm into a mans chest through a mech suit with eighteen inch thick titanium plating.

He could redirect a plasma bolt with his hands and the TAC. With his wings he could create a gravity influx and wind vortexes. He could fly faster than mach five, and six. He could deflect seven thousand rounds of ammo. And he could fire a gun so fast that the clip would be empty in twelve seconds.

Next they installed kinesis modules into his hands and arms, and tested them.

Druid was a natural with anything they gave him by now. They had him pick a few things up and throw a few things. Open door locks, stop bullets and even destroy a tank with his Telekinetic ability's.

Finally they did a live test. Russia had started a war with America, and they were winning and America only had a few options left.

They sent Druid into a L.C.Z or live combat zone. With an M16 NATO full automatic assault rifle, a combat knife, an assault shotgun and several pistols.

He was to feed orders through a speaker installed into his helmet to a group of Navy Seals. It was the first live combat situation Druid had been in since the experiment started.

The battle of New York was won in less than a half hour, with the rest of the enemy soldiers left in the city exterminated or captured in the next three hours.

But then they started having problems with Druid, he went missing, only popping up in three locations and killing thousands of civilians. Then vanishing without a trace. They spent months looking for him while the war raged on.

When they found him they detained him and put him back in the military base under the Mojave, but just a week after that the experiment was abandoned, and Druid was left in the base to rot for whatever time he had.

Fifteen years after that Some poor bastard dying of radiation sickness found the entrance. He hacked the computer and stumbled in, he found Druid and in a desperate attempt for a way to live he released him. The poor sod died as soon as the door opened, not by Druid's hands but from the radiation sickness.

From there Druid walked the wastes, redeeming himself, and trying to regain his humanity.

Now he was walking towards a large grey building in the center of Dustball. He passed several small crowds of people. Ignoring them.

Soon he reached a large set of stairs, he climbed them to the top where a grey building made out of painted car parts stood.

A short man sat on a recliner smoking a cigar. Rocking back and forth on the recliner with a dual barrel shotgun in his lap. He had a small CD player next to him.

"Howdy fellah," He said in a clear Texan accent.

"Hello..." Druid replied.

"Now are you that fellah of which i owe a box of Twinkies?" The little man asked with a smile, puffing his cigar.

"Yes..." Druid replied.

The man leaned back in his recliner more and collected a small box from a small shelf that sat behind him. He tossed it to Druid and went back to his rocking backwards and forwards.

"Ya' know, we got one last problem that may just have a six pack of coca-cola's and Pepsi's as the reward, you want the job?"

Druid looked at the man.

"Sure..." He said.

The man hopped out of his seat and walked into the little building and came out with a small six pack of glass Pepsi bottles. And a map, a folded browned map.

"Now fellah, this map shows the location of the 'problems' just go there and wipe them out," The little man said, handing Druid the map.

"Also here's half in advance," The man said, handing Druid the six pack of glass bottles.

Druid looked at the man.

"Chow..." He said, turning around and walking down the stairs.

Druid walked down the stairs and continued down the road. He placed the six pack of Pepsi's down on the ground and continued to walk. He opened the map and looked at it.

His objective was seven miles south east of where he was.

Simple Enough.

~~~~~

Druid walked up the stairs as the sand storm raged on around him, the wind howled. His comm chirped again.

"What the hell is that guy? He took down eighteen of us without even moving!" One of the Raiders shouted through his comm.

"I Don't know, I don't even care we just have to kill it now, Cause if it get's to the base our plans are ruined!"

Druid stopped at the set of doors just at the entrance of the Raiders first fall back locations. He was chasing them up a mountain, so when they reached the top, they were trapped.

"Cover the doors, aim the MG at it, you get upstairs and make sure he don't get in up there!" Barked a Raider.

Druid placed his hand softly against the door. And began to charge a kinetic blast. He only had to wait eight seconds before it was ready. But he wanted to disintegrate the door.

He chuckled to himself, he was going to be the scariest thing these guys had ever seen.

He Activated his loudspeaker and began to let the theme to London Bridge is falling down play.

He waited a few more seconds.

"What the hell is that?"

"Where's it coming from?"

"No, Who's it coming from?"

Druid Then fired his kinetic blast. Shattering the door to minute shards.

"Shit!" One of the raiders shouted.

The ones with guns then unleashed all hell as they fired their weapons. Druid used his extremely large combat knife to deflect the bullets.

"How the hell is it doing that?" Shouted the Raider on the MG.

Druid threw his combat knife at the raider while phasing left and right stepping out of the path of the bullets. He didn't seem to move to the raiders though, he seemed to vibrate.

"He isn't a man, he's a demon!" Shouted a raider.

Druid then used his kinesis to tear a pillar down, then another. The raiders began to flee as Druid brought the building down. The raiders ignored the other retreat buildings and just went right to the top.

"How the hell are we going to kill that, that Thing!?" Questioned a raider through his comm.