Prologue
On a brisk January afternoon, the United States of America disappeared in a thundering microsecond of nuclear fire.
Within a heartbeat, the governments of the world were gone, scattered to the searing radioactive winds. Every major city was reduced to glowing ruins under rumbling mushroom clouds, while tidal waves of boiling water swept along the coastlines of the continents. Mountains rose and fell, lakes were burned dry, volcanoes erupted at random and titanic earthquakes racked the landscape, shattering bridges and dams and changing the shape of the planet forever. In New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, millions perished in screaming agony before most people even realized what was happening. It was the end of civilization.
When the firestorms finally ceased, and the quakes calmed to gentle rumblings beneath the broken streets, the few survivors stumbled from the ruins of their homes only to discover that the telephones, radios, computers, automobiles and trucks that they depended upon were now useless lumps of plastic and steel. Advanced technology was gone. Glowing craters dotted the landscape, creating deadly deserts where once proudly stood thick forests, cool lakes and rich green fields.
The sky was dark for decades, the endless thunder and lightning heralding the deadly storms of acid rain, torrents of pollution that stripped the flesh off a body in only minutes. Humanity learned to hide from the lethal downpours, but then hordes of mutants rose from the radioactive craters, shambling creatures in every shape imaginable.
Dressed in rags, thousands fled the blackened ruins of the cities, hoping for a better life in the wilds. But the rad-blasted earth would not grow crops, and the scattered clean areas were viciously fought over. Crude cities—often surrounded by high walls—were built from the twisted scrap of the predark world to protect the patches of clean earth and to keep out the slavering muties. Safe behind the ramshackle walls, a primitive form of civilization started to evolve. However, these barbarous enclaves were brutally ruled by self-proclaimed barons and their private armies of sec men who walked the thick defensive walls. In any ville, to disobey a command from a baron meant instant death.
Hideous new diseases, savage cannibals, muties, slavers, acid rain, rad pits, that was America in the twenty-second century.
Welcome to the Deathlands.
Yet amid the madness and death, a handful of fighters roamed the cursed earth of North America. These companions were led by Ryan Cawdor, the son of a baron.
Endlessly searching for some section of the world where they could live in peace, the companions traveled incredible distances in relative safety because they had access to the greatest scientific secret of the predark world. Buried deep underground were huge military bases called redoubts. Nuke-proof, these fortified bunkers were powered by fusion generators and were safe havens of fresh air, electric lights and clean water, their vanadium-steel doors resistant to any conceivable attack. Designed to house hundreds of soldiers, the secret bases had originally been stocked with megatons of food, medical supplies, clothing and weapons. But sometime soon after skydark, the troops disappeared, taking almost all of the supplies with them, leaving only the occasional MRE food pack or stray box of ammo for the companions to salvage. A pair of boots here, a can of oil there, yet these precious items gave them the necessary edge to stay alive in the Deathlands.
Even more amazing than the redoubts themselves were the mat-trans units. These incredible machines were somehow able to shift objects from one redoubt to another in only seconds, no matter how distant the second redoubt. Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to precisely control a mat-trans “jump” had been lost, so the friends had to make a blind jump into the unknown. Usually, it was only to an empty redoubt, once to an Alaskan redoubt full of weapons and food, and sometimes to a bunker full of muties that had forcibly penetrated the defensives of the underground base.
Arriving at a hand-built gateway, Ryan and the others found themselves trapped in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific, one of which was the infamous Bikini Atoll, ground zero for dozens of nuclear bomb tests. The companions also arrived in the middle of a revolt against Lord Baron Kinnison, a disease-ridden drug addict who ruled the tiny villes of the rad-blasted islands with an iron fist.
With muties everywhere, the companions raced to regain the damaged gateway and escape, but were ambushed and blown off the side of a mountain to plummet helplessly into the cold sea….
Chapter One
Slowly, Ryan Cawdor awoke to the feeling of being dragged.
Rough grass moved along the back of his head, and as he tried to brush it away, he discovered that he couldn’t move his arms. In a sudden rush of icy adrenaline, the one-eyed warrior fully awakened to see a giant three-foot-wide crab dragging him by the boots over a flat expanse of warm sand, its shiny black mandibles closed around his combat boots like a serrated vise. Somewhere nearby came the sound of waves breaking on a shore, and the tangy smell of salt was thick in the air.
What was going on? Where were the sec men from the PT boat? For a brief moment he had a flashback to the previous night and the fight on the bridge with the giant spider. Rockets came from the blackness of the ocean, explosions filled the world and he plummeted into the briny depths of the Cific Ocean along with the rest of the companions. Vague memories of fighting to stay afloat filled his mind, brutal currents pulling them into the night, away from the gunboat and the burning wreckage. Wherever the hell he was now, it wasn’t on any of the islands he knew about. There were no mountains on the horizon, no sounds of the jungle or the bitter smell of a partially dormant volcano. He had to have washed ashore someplace new. Which meant the sec men could arrive at any moment. Those PT boats were fast, and way too well armed, even if only with black-powder blasters.
The weeds scratching at his bare skin, Ryan muttered a curse as he tried again to reach the 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol at his hip, but his right arm was pinned down by mounds of sticky white goo covering most of his shirt. He was cocooned for dinner.
Fumbling with his left arm, Ryan found his belt knife and clumsily drew the deadly curved length of the panga. Awkwardly, he started sawing at the flexible goop holding him prisoner, trying to be as subtle as possible. He had to get the blaster before the crab noticed he was alive. Trapped like this, he would be an easy chill for the big blue mutie. Those pincers holding his boots looked as sharp as broken glass.
But small as his movements were, the crab swiveled the eyeballs at the end of slim stalks toward him and abruptly released Ryan’s boots to scuttle over the man, drooling more wet goo from its segmented mouth onto his knife. The stuff was warm and felt heavy, thicker than old honey. Almost instantly his movements were slowed.
The body of the mutie was out of his reach, so Ryan flipped the blade over and slashed sideways at the closest leg. The colorful chitin armor cracked and hot green blood pumped from the jagged wound. The crab retreated, squealing in agony, then turned in a circle and snapped its mandibles for the one-eyed man’s vulnerable face. Ryan quickly jerked back, and only a snippet of his long black hair fell to the ground.
Too close! Thrusting his legs upward, the Death-lands warrior pinned the creature to his chest and started to stab wildly, more hot blood spraying from the savage cuts. Its legs thrashing about, the wiggling mutie squealed in pain, its mandibles snapping constantly, but it was unable to reach the flesh of its tormentor from the awkward angle. Ramming the blade into the back of the crab, Ryan moved the panga about inside, trying to cause as much internal damage as possible. A river of green blood began to pour out,