Hello, over the next few articles I will be revealing the teams of Apocalypse Road, the cars and the stories behind the game, both fictional and real. These first few articles will be covering the various teams in Apocalypse Road and possibly some background on who is behind them and how they turned out the way they did. Some of the teams still have openings for sponsorships and I will make those clear in the story. In addition, I will be providing you a pathway to join the Thunderverse by sponsoring a driver or a team or even a track. I do this to allow you, the fan, to become a part of the game and at the same time provide a small revenue stream for Carla and myself that we use to print prototypes and attend conventions where we get more chances to interact with you. I will try to minimize these opportunities for those of you that are not interested in them. Thanks for your patience! – Jeff Horger

The slow trickle of teams and their crews has begun here in Springfield, Ohio; home of the Essendarium and the most brutal race in the Apocalypse Road series. The Essendarium and its Figure-8 design provides a challenging and dangerous arena for this final race in the series. Apocalypse Road takes place in a difficult and hopefully imaginary future setting where a cataclysmic event has decimated much of the population and allowed for a general collapse of regulations, laws and order. In many places local authorities have stepped in but the overall national control has been diminished severely.

While life has changed, entertainment remains a constant and some powerful entities have survived the apocalypse. One of these behemoths is auto racing. With no regulations and a surplus of military equipment and weapons, the circuit has mutated from racing around superspeedways, facilities that are very hard to maintain without a solid infrastructure to support it, to combined asphalt and dirt tracks. To accommodate the new ‘gladiator’ or survivalist mentality the racers began to incorporate weaponry into the show. With the advent of live-fire weaponry, the courses were reduced even more and enclosed by concrete and steel walls with bulletproof glass rising 40 feet above those.

The drivers were enclosed in titanium cockpits, mostly scavenged from old A-10’s and protected as best they can. Still it is not unheard of for a driver to not make it off the track in one piece. From inside their armored cockpits, the drivers can drive their cars and manually target their guns, no automation allowed. Drivers cannot just be fast or good shots, to stay in the race and have a chance at bringing home the victory for their team, each racer needs to be a brilliant driver and a crack shot with their weapon of choice.

Just under a week before the flag drops for the season finale, the first team to pull into the deserted garage area is R. Blaise Conti’s Hazleton Mountaineer team. Having driven in from their secret outpost in the wilds of eastern Pennsylvania, these rough and tumble mountain men and women pose quite an impressive picture. Not surprisingly, this team from the wilderness drove straight to the back of the garage area and just into the surrounding forest where a handful of the drivers immediately set off into the woods with bow and arrow in search of the evening meal.

Hazleton Mountaineers

Jean-Luc “Frankenstein” Simard (X9X)

“Dangerous” Derek Ciamell (2)

Lob Jammer (21)

Maria “The Maniac” Ciamell (M77)

Soonsin Lee (J96)

Zach “Dash” Dashall (Z88)

Tricia “C” Mahaffey (60c)

Thor (806)

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Next Article in this Series: Apocalypse Road: The Essendarium – Part 2