James Axler: Hell Road Warriors

FUTURE SPOILS

The human will to survive has sharpened to a knife edge after a century of postnuclear madness. In a lawless land where firepower and savagery rule, power lies with the barons and coldhearts who wield control through terror. Against all odds, a courageous few still fight for something better to live by—honor, decency and hope.

CHILL FACTOR

Emerging relatively unscathed from the apocalyptic rebirth of North America, Canada hides a trove of Cold War–era secret government installations known as Diefenbunkers, filled with caches of weapons, wags and food. Ryan Cawdor and his companions agree to ride sec for a convoy headed west across the remnants of the old Trans-Canada Highway to retrieve the ultimate prize: four portable nuclear reactors. It’s enough power to light up a ville for years, a bright beacon for a new tomorrow. But they have death on their tail, a baron and his sec men who will stop at nothing to claim the prize as their own.

In the Deathlands, the road to hell is a one-way ride...

The boar’s eyes burst as horror pushed through its pupils

The thumb-thick worms in its eye sockets waved like feelers and stiffened like pointers at Doc. The boar’s head swiveled in response, its tusks rasping against each other as its mouth fell open and its tongue lolled out, accompanied by an orgy of wiggling filth.

“By my stars and garters!” Doc exclaimed.

Ryan fired three 9 mm rounds through the dead boar’s head. Its skull broke apart, spewing broken lengths of black worm. The porcine behemoth staggered, but didn’t fall. Fresh worms waved forth from the shattered head and snout as if tasting the air. The corpse tottered toward the humans.

The entire fifty-strong herd of giant, newly dead mutie wild boars began to roll over and rise up.

“Fireblast…” Ryan breathed.

Hell Road Warriors

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.

—Norman Cousins

1915–1990

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 Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter One

Ryan shouldered his Steyr SSG-70 longblaster and put his hand on the lever to open the mat-trans chamber. His companions had cleaned themselves up from the jump, and everyone was geared up and ready to go except Doc, who was coming down from his postjump shudders. The one-eyed man waited while Doc pulled himself together. The walls of the mat-trans chamber were an amber color densely veined with black. Ryan had never seen one colored like that and it made him uneasy. He didn’t know where they were, but it had to be better than the swamps, and Haven. “Ready, Doc?”

Doc took the hand off the wall he was using to steady himself. He drew his huge Civil War-replica model LeMat revolver and set the hammer to fire the shotgun barrel. “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!”

Doc looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over. His mind and body were damaged by being torn through time from the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century by the whitecoats of Operation Chronos. Proving to be a difficult subject, after a period of time they shot him via mat-trans into the future that was the Deathlands. Having his matter transferred from point A to point B never did him any favors.

Being discombobulated was something no one ever got used to, but looking around, Jak, J.B. and Mildred were post-regurgitation and ready to go. Ryan’s eye came to rest on the love of his life. Krysty raised one eyebrow. “Lover, if you don’t pull that lever soon I’m going to pull yours.”

A grin ghosted across Ryan’s face. “Okay, everyone. Triple red.” His companions spread out and leveled their weapons at the door as he pulled the lever. The door hissed open. Ryan’s eye narrowed. The lights were on, and he could hear the hum of a generator. One glance told him this redoubt was unusual. Most were built to a pattern. The architecture here was all wrong. Ryan looked back at the mat-trans and then into the odd little redoubt. His instincts told him the mat-trans they had just stepped out of had been a last-minute addition. The party moved into a long, low room filled with workstations.

Mildred put her fists on her hips and stared around herself indignantly. “Okay, have we traveled back in time or something?”

Jak shook his head warily. “Hope not.”

Doc’s voice was very quiet. “I dearly hope so.”

“What are you talking about, Mildred?” Ryan asked.

“Look at this place!” Mildred threw up her hands. “I mean, look at it!”

Ryan looked at it. The ceiling was low and supported by squat pillars. Everything seemed wrong. The floor was an odd checkerboard of green and white. “And?”

Mildred sighed. “You see the floors? That’s linoleum. Have you checked the puke-green walls? The workstations are top-notch, but check the watercooler and the other stuff.”

Mildred had been cryogenically frozen over a century earlier and, like Doc, was an unwilling citizen of the postapocalyptic Deathlands. Ryan knew she was on to something. “What about them?”

“This place? It’s kitsch.”

Ryan, Krysty, J.B., Jak and Doc stared at Mildred blankly. When she went predark in her speech, no one knew what she was talking about. Mildred gazed heavenward for strength. “It’s totally retro.” Mildred was rewarded with more tolerant looks. She plowed on anyway. “I’m saying this place was built in the 1960s. During the cold war. It’s some kind of bomb shelter, and it’s like it got refurbished fast and dirty at the last second.”