The ceremony was over
“I don’t know what it is we’ve stumbled into, but I’m thinking it looks mighty big, J.B.,” Ryan said.
“Agreed,” J.B. said, quickly glancing behind them.
The Armorer pointed to the open door ahead and Ryan took the lead, jumping onto the raised step and ducking through the door and into the car. J.B. followed, trotting up the step and out of the sunlight.
The interior smelled of incense, heavy and cloying, and thick drapes hung over the windows, blocking out the dawn light.
A lone figure sat at the table—a woman wearing a hood. She looked up as they entered, lit by the candle before her, and Ryan saw the deep lines of age crisscrossing her face.
“Come in, gentlemen.”
Ryan glanced behind him, checking to see if the sec men had followed them into the car, but no one was there.
As they stepped closer to the elderly woman, Ryan saw what it was that sparkled on her cheeks—twin tears of blood. And then he felt the world drop from beneath his feet.
Alpha Wave
James Axler
Death Lands ®
Hitherto every form of society has been based…on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence.
—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
The Communist Manifesto,
1848
THE DEATHLANDS SAGA
This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.
There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.
But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.
Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.
Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.
J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.
Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.
Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.
Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.
Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.
In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope….
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter One
Krysty’s head throbbed. The pain had been getting steadily worse for the past three hours, ever since they had left the redoubt.
She gazed up as the sun poked through the angry clouds scudding across the violet sky, trying to keep her mind off the pain. As she did so, Krysty could hear the concern in Doc’s voice as he spoke with Ryan and J.B. a few paces ahead.
“Look at her, Ryan,” Doc said, gesturing over his shoulder at Krysty. “That’s not a normal reaction. Something is clearly having a negative effect on our usually effervescent Krysty.”
J. B. Dix, the armorer for the group, glanced briefly at his lapel pin rad counter, his walking pace, much like his expression, unchanging.
“Anything?” Ryan asked, though he already knew the answer. J.B. was a man of shrewd logic, and wouldn’t even waste the intake of breath to confirm it unless the situation had changed. Ryan’s single eye stared out across the empty landscape, before he turned back to address Doc. “Radiation’s at normal, and there’s nothing here we haven’t faced a hundred times before. Dust and muties, mebbe, but nothing new.”
“Sand,” Doc corrected. “Not dust, Ryan—sand.”
Doc was right. All around them, as far as he could see, horizon to horizon, was nothing but sand. Sand and sand-colored rocks and sand-colored pebbles, gradually getting smaller and smaller until the pebbles were just grains of sand and the cycle started over again. It had been like that ever since the companions had stepped out of the redoubt eight miles behind them.
Ryan Cawdor marched ahead of the others with long powerful strides, his dark hair catching in the wind, the SSG-70 Steyr blaster swinging against his shoulders as he set the relentless pace across the wasteland.
Next to Ryan, dressed in a battered, brown fedora and a leather jacket far too heavy for the temperature, trekked J. B. Dix. Where Ryan marched, J.B. simply walked, light-footed and watchful of his surroundings, his movements economical and appreciably silent.
Then there was Krysty Wroth, the red-haired beauty who was Ryan’s lover. She was a reliable whirlwind of energy and joy around which they all revolved. Strong, emotional, Krysty was a strange contradiction of facets. She had some mutie abilities—bursts of supernatural strength drawn from the well of the Earth Mother, Gaia; occasional prescience; and her mane of red hair, strangely alive and responsive to her emotional state. When Krysty was happy her hair shone like a beacon, when she was angry it crackled, curling like a vine around her head. Right now, her hair sat disheveled, drooping over her shoulders listlessly.
Dr. Mildred Wyeth walked with Krysty. Healer and caregiver, Mildred had never adopted the bleak outlook of the others. But she could still kill when