James Axler - End Day

TIME WARPED

Ryan Cawdor and his six companions struggle to survive postnuclear America, a grim new world where hope for the future is lost amid the devastation.

APOCALYPSE REDUX

In pursuit of a hardened enemy—Magus—Ryan and the companions find themselves in a land more foreign than any they’ve encountered. After unwittingly slipping through a time hole, the group lands in twentieth-century New York City, getting their first glimpse of predark civilization. And they’re not sure they like it. Only Mildred and Doc can appreciate this strange metropolis, but Armageddon is just seventy-two hours away, and Magus will stop at nothing to make sure Ryan and his team are destroyed on Nuke Day...

“This isn’t Deathlands!

Where in nukin’ hell are we?”

J.B. stared up at the wall-to-wall buildings as if he’d never seen the like.

Ryan didn’t seem to notice the Armorer’s distress. He took stock of their surroundings, realizing that the companions had been there before, in the future, amid ashes and ruin. He focused his attention on the traffic, looking from one license plate to another.

“What year is this?” he asked Veronica.

“It’s 2001.”

Doc groaned. “We have jumped back in time.”

“You’re from the future?”

Ryan ignored her question. “What month is it? What day?”

“It’s January 19,” Veronica replied. “Why, do you have somewhere more important to be?”

“Any place but here and now would be just fine,” Ryan told her. “The world ends tomorrow at noon.”

End Day

James Axler

The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text TIME WARPED Ryan Cawdor and his six companions struggle to survive postnuclear America, a grim new world where hope for the future is lost amid the devastation. APOCALYPSE REDUX In pursuit of a hardened enemy—Magus—Ryan and the companions find themselves in a land more foreign than any they’ve encountered. After unwittingly slipping through a time hole, the group lands in twentieth-century New York City, getting their first glimpse of predark civilization. And they’re not sure they like it. Only Mildred and Doc can appreciate this strange metropolis, but Armageddon is just seventy-two hours away, and Magus will stop at nothing to make sure Ryan and his team are destroyed on Nuke Day...

Introduction “This isn’t Deathlands! Where in nukin’ hell are we?” J.B. stared up at the wall-to-wall buildings as if he’d never seen the like. Ryan didn’t seem to notice the Armorer’s distress. He took stock of their surroundings, realizing that the companions had been there before, in the future, amid ashes and ruin. He focused his attention on the traffic, looking from one license plate to another. “What year is this?” he asked Veronica. “It’s 2001.” Doc groaned. “We have jumped back in time.” “You’re from the future?” Ryan ignored her question. “What month is it? What day?” “It’s January 19,” Veronica replied. “Why, do you have somewhere more important to be?” “Any place but here and now would be just fine,” Ryan told her. “The world ends tomorrow at noon.”

Title Page End Day James Axler

Quote The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite, That ever I was born to set it right! —William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Prologue

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 Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Ryan Cawdor peered through the 2.5x telescopic sight of his Steyr Scout Tactical, index finger resting against the longblaster’s trigger guard. Behind the scope’s center post, through the heat shimmer rising off the desert floor, he tracked the five-wag convoy rattling over dirt the color of rust, down a string-straight track between clumps of dry sagebrush and scattered sentinels of saguaro.

At his side J. B. Dix said, “Got a shot on the nukin’ bucket of bolts?”

Ryan didn’t answer. The two wags in the lead, a camouflage-painted SUV and a three-quarter-ton, black-primered pickup, sporting a cabover-mounted machine blaster, raised billowing clouds of dust. If the patterns of the past held, Magus was lounging in the third wag—a big, steel-plate-armored Winnie. The half-human, half-machine monster liked to ride in style, with room to keep spare parts and unspeakable experiments close to hand. Although the drop-down, bulletproof metal shutters on the side windows were raised, a coating of orange dust obscured the view through the glass.

Even if he’d had a target, Ryan wouldn’t have fired. With the Winnie in motion and bouncing over rough terrain, the odds of scoring a hit, let alone a clean kill, were too long. And to open fire would have revealed the companions’ presence to an enemy force they had reckoned was at least thirty-five to their seven.

The issue was more than just superior numbers.

Steel Eyes’s enforcers, which looked like bipedal crosses between carnivorous dinosaurs and bulls, weren’t actually blasterproof but, thanks to a horny, knobby hide two inches thick and bone like reinforced concrete, the squat three-hundred-pounders came damn close to it; in fact, none of the companions had ever seen one downed by a bullet—or a dozen bullets. In a previous encounter, on Magus’s remote gladiator island, they had learned the only way to chill the enforcers was by fire. When the temperature of their copious sweat—a potent secretion that smelled like a combination of ammonia, ether and acetone—was raised to ignition point, they turned into living candles, or more accurately, living blowtorches.

The empty socket under Ryan’s eye patch itched, but he didn’t scratch it. With the sun baking his shoulders and back through his worn black T-shirt, he watched the convoy rumble across the plain, heading for the barren mountains in the eastern distance. When he found himself looking at the rear of the last wag in line, he pulled back from the notch between sandstone boulders, stood up, and slung the Steyr.

“What now, lover?” Krysty Wroth asked.

A layer of desert dust had dulled her usually radiant red prehensile hair; her clothes and high boots were coated with grime. Perspiration mixed with rusty dirt smeared her forehead. The other companions were likewise tinted orange. Doc, Jak, Mildred, Ricky and J.B. looked as if they had just risen from shallow desert graves.

Ryan knew there would be no graves for any of them if they lost the battle ahead; and the dying when it came would be triple hard. Gutted, disemboweled and torn limb from limb, their remains would be scattered across the hardpan, fought over by mutie coyotes, buzzards and pincer-jawed scagworms.

“We follow the convoy at a safe distance until the bastards stop to make camp,” he said. “Wait until they’re all settled in, nice and cozy, then we use frag grens to disable the wags, stun the enforcers and chill any sec men. Mop up the enforcers with the incendies.”

They’d found the cache of AN-M14 TH3 grens among the corpses of a band of coldheart scavengers after a disagreement turned into a gun battle in the hills of New Mex. The nine scavengers wanted to trade some of their predark treasures for a no-holds-barred, romantic overnight with Krysty and Mildred. When they wouldn’t take no for an answer, they took a crisp volley of lead instead. The incendie grens didn’t explode, but when ignited, they burned for thirty to forty-five seconds at 4,330 degrees Fahrenheit—twice the temperature needed to melt steel. The moment Ryan and the companions had laid eyes on the red canisters, they’d all had the same thought: they’d come in handy at some point, especially if they happened to cross paths with Magus and his nasty, sweating playmates again.