My life fades, my vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land. Most of all, I remember the man we called Max, the road warrior. To understand who he was we have to go back to the other time. When the world was powered by the black fuel, and the desert sprung great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They’d built a house of straw. Suddenly their machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. Cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting and a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, waging war for a tank of juice. Good brave men were battered and smashed. Men like Max, who ruled the highways in the name of the law. Who became a lover, husband, father. And with the roar of an engine, he lost everything, his woman, his child, his world. He wandered out into the wasteland, and here he would learn, amid the dark wreckage, that the fire which burns in the heart of man, will endure. Hope survives.
