Doc’s madness-inflected tones cut through the howling wind
“Unhand me! I shall not go softly and gently. Unhand me, I say!” The sounds of scuffling increased. There was a shout of pain, and Doc’s voice, raging incoherently, retreated into the distance, buried by the wailing wind.
Jak looked to Ryan. In the dim light, the one-eyed man could see the tension in the albino teen’s face. He nodded.
“Who’s next, love?” Krysty asked as Jak opened the wag door a sliver and squeezed through. “You or me?” She couldn’t believe that they seemed to be breaking all their rules.
“Mebbe both—whatever it takes. Sometimes we’ve just gotta stand or fall as one.”
Prophecy
Death Lands®
James Axler
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
—Erich Fromm
1900–1980
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 One
The sky was a dark blue bleeding into an umbra of purple. It lurched, turned, then spun through 180 degrees. Sickening pain jarred in Jak’s elbow, making him bite back the curse that welled up in his throat as bile sought to join it. The Colt Python .357, never a light blaster at the best of times, felt like a deadweight in a hand momentarily numbed. He spit out a lump of bitter phlegm and turned his head.
“Fuck’s sake, Ryan, can’t fire like this.”
The one-eyed man grunted by way of reply as he pulled hard on the wheel of the wag, seeking to avoid another rut in the dry, hard-packed surface. There was no time for words.
Jak cursed again as he slid across the seat in the back of the wag, careening into Mildred, jolting her arm as she took aim at their pursuers.
“Damn it,” she snapped as the shot from her revolver sailed high and wide of its intended target.
As soon as they had left the blacktop, each of the companions had known that any attempt at a perfect aim was little more than a hope; but none of them had realized quite how deceptive the surface they had chosen would prove to be.
And their pursuers were more familiar with the territory.
“EASY, BOY. WON’T BE long ’fore we have ’em exactly where we want them.”
Jase Demetriou, the driver of the pursuing wag, chuckled. High, with a keening edge, it was the sound of someone who had a high regard for pain and suffering, and who would enjoy inflicting it before the merciful release of a chilling.
“Less laughing and more driving,” the speaker cautioned.
Jase nodded with a manic precision. Unhinged he may have been, but Jase was the finest wag driver to come out of Brisbane ville. He looked like he’d barely hit adolescence, but was pushing twenty-five. The sweet, boyish looks that made him a hit with all the gaudies were betrayed by the glint in his eyes. Corden had covered for him many a time. The sights he had seen sickened him, but without Jase his band of coldhearts could never catch their prey.
Like they were doing right now. The stupes were trying to fire on Corden’s boys, but the graying brigand knew the land around well enough to feel assured that they would never find their target. The plains that spread between what had once been northern Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska were still—in many ways—the same as they had been since thousands of years before skydark. The only difference was that after the nukecaust the crust of the earth had seemed to ripple along this flat expanse. Just a little. Just enough to be invisible to the naked eye, but like a never-ending corrugation when you hit it with a wag. Especially a wag in which you were putting pedal to metal. Speed and poor suspension would jolt you, bounce you around the inside of the wag like a pea in a can.
Jase knew the land like it was a part of him. He’d driven it since he was tall enough to get in a seat and have his foot touch the pedal. It was still rough, but he could ride it. And Corden’s men knew better than to waste ammo while the wags were in motion.
It was real easy: wait until the stupe driver of the wag they were chasing tipped himself over, then go and pick at the carcass like vultures. There was little real danger. Anyone who put up resistance was usually too dazed by the crash to shoot straight. It was simple to pick them off.
Corden smiled slow as Jase skirted another ripple in the earth. This was one easy way to make jack.
In the rear of the old four-by-four they used, the other two coldhearts who rode with Corden waited their call to action. Thornton yawned and scratched at the ginger stubble on his sharp chin. Nothing excited him until the moment