James Axler - Death Hunt

The one-eyed man’s willpower was always strong, but his mind was distracted by the need to take in air. He didn’t have the immediate strength to break eye contact, and by the time he was able to breathe evenly, and devote his full attention to Ethan, the tentacles of hate were already beginning to take hold. Jak was his friend and comrade-in-arms, sure…but if they took out Jak, then J.B. would be freed…. No, he knew that wasn’t the case, but why the hell should Jak escape this torture? What made him so special?

“Chill him.” The words escaped from Ryan’s lips before he even knew it was what he felt.

Ethan stepped back and looked across the line at the three companions who were now fully under his influence. Then he caught Jak’s baleful glare.

The baron threw back his head and laughed, long and loud. This was going to be one hell of a hunt.

Pilgrimage to Hell

Red Holocaust

Neutron Solstice

Crater Lake

Homeward Bound

Pony Soldiers

Dectra Chain

Ice and Fire

Red Equinox

Northstar Rising

Time Nomads

Latitude Zero

Seedling

Dark Carnival

Chill Factor

Moon Fate

Fury’s Pilgrims

Shockscape

Deep Empire

Cold Asylum

Twilight Children

Rider, Reaper

Road Wars

Trader Redux

Genesis Echo

Shadowfall

Ground Zero

Emerald Fire

Bloodlines

Crossways

Keepers of the Sun

Circle Thrice

Eclipse at Noon

Stoneface

Bitter Fruit

Skydark

Demons of Eden

The Mars Arena

Watersleep

Nightmare Passage

Freedom Lost

Way of the Wolf

Dark Emblem

Crucible of Time

Starfall Encounter: Collector’s Edition

Gemini Rising

Gaia’s Demise

Dark Reckoning

Shadow World

Pandora’s Redoubt

Rat King

Zero City

Savage Armada

Judas Strike

Shadow Fortress

Sunchild

Breakthrough

Salvation Road

Amazon Gate

Destiny’s Truth

Skydark Spawn

Damnation Road Show

Devil Riders

Bloodfire

Hellbenders

Separation

Death Hunt

James Axler

…if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and win for themselves the domination of the world.

—Theodore Roosevelt,

1858–1919

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.…

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

“‘It’s a mighty long way down the dusty trail…’”

“Don’t—”

“‘Where the sun bursts hot on the…’ By the Three Kennedys, the next line has completely escaped me!” Doc exclaimed.

“That’s a blessing, if nothing else,” Mildred murmured. She’d been pleading with Doc to stop quoting half-remembered lines, which she found more irritating than if he had been able to quote whole stanzas, for what seemed to be hours. It couldn’t really have been that long, but time was beginning to drag.

The companions were seated in the kitchen area of a redoubt, the last of the dried and still-edible frozen goods in pots on top of the stove. The self-heats had been securely stowed for their journey ahead; they’d leave when their chrons told them it was daylight up above.

A pall of gloom hung over the six friends, caused by the fact that there were only, now, the six. Ryan had veered between raging anger and deep sorrow in the time following the discovery that Sharona had jumped and taken Dean with her.

Although all of the companions had been shocked at the sudden departure of the boy, and hadn’t known what to make of the circumstances, it seemed that Cawdor had been hit on a deeper level—from which a scar had formed that was more pronounced than any physical reminder of his hard, raging life. Questions consumed Ryan’s mind. Had she tricked the boy? Or had he left of his own accord, without a word to his father and friends? Where were they now? What was to become of them? He had withdrawn into himself, not even wishing to share his anger, pain and confusion with Krysty. For several days he had been little more than a spectral presence, haunting the corridors of the redoubt where they were now resting.

He finally emerged into their midst, and spoken, his tone grim, resigned. But it was the dulled quality of his one good eye that was the biggest sign of his pain, its hard glitter and diamond-hardness temporarily gone.

“Wherever that bitch has jumped, and wherever they both are, there’s no way we can follow. And she knows that…” He didn’t add that it was Dean who would have told her or that this was the hardest thing of all to bear. “But even if we can’t follow, we can still hope…I can still hope,” he added after a pause. “All we can do is carry on. I want us to get out of here as soon as we can.”

There were no arguments from the others. To jump from this redoubt would remove Ryan from the source. To move on in physical space would make the moving on within him that little bit easier to initiate.

The companions scoured the redoubt, stripping the place of anything useful. No one spoke much, and the task was achieved in triple-quick time. They were soon entering the mat-trans chamber, settling into positions that would reduce the stress and agony that came with every jump.

It was the one-eyed man himself who closed the chamber door, folding his length into a sitting position, knees drawn up protectively as the chamber air began to crackle as a white mist whirled wisplike from the metallic disks on the floor and ceiling.