James Axler - Skydark Spawn

“What do you mean?” Ryan asked.

“There’s something called the principle of natural selection that says the strongest survive, and that a species continues to evolve through natural and sexual selection. The baron’s contest will ensure that the strongest male survives to breed with the strongest female.”

Ryan nodded, then got up from the table to sign up for the contest. Brody stood, as well.

“Where are you going?” the one-eyed man asked.

Brody put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “There’ll be at least a dozen men in that ring, all wanting to chill you. If you’re going to make a break out of here, you’re going to have to be alive to do it. You’ll need someone to watch your back, and that’s going to be me.”

“Thanks, Brody. You’re a good man.”

“You’re a good man, too, Ryan. Let’s just hope for the sake of your woman that you’re also the best.”

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

James Axler

It seems most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end

Will come when it will come.

—William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar

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

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

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Epilogue

Ryan Cawdor opened his eye, then closed it quickly as a blinding jolt of pain lanced through his skull. He half rose to his feet, then sank back to the floor, dizzy. Bastard jumps always took a toll.

The mat-trans jump was over, and, as usual, he and his companions lay on the floor of the chamber, trying to gather their wits and keep the remnants of their last meal in their stomachs.

After a few minutes, Ryan tried opening his eye again. The pain was still there, but had now settled into a dull throb that he could handle.

“My word,” Doc Tanner said, removing his swallow’s-eye kerchief from a pocket of his frock coat and wiping away a trickle of blood that had seeped from his nose, “it never ceases to amaze me how utterly incapacitating these jaunts of ours can be.”

“Still able talk,” Jak Lauren commented, lifting his right hand and moving his fingers in a motion meant to simulate Doc’s flapping gums. Jak hadn’t fared as well. The front of the young albino’s tan T-shirt was stained with vomit that had leaked out the corners of his mouth. He tried to clean himself up with a few wipes of his sleeve, but all that did was spread the mess around.

Ryan’s son, Dean, had fared better than the others. He looked a bit dizzy, but was already able to stand. J. B. Dix sat with his back against one of the chamber’s walls. He’d lifted his head and had his eyes tightly closed as if he were in pain. He was struggling to catch his breath.

“You all right, J.B.?” asked Ryan.

The Armorer shook his head as he removed his wire-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. “Had a nightmare. I was alone in a forest somewhere. As I walked along a path, I was confronted by a huge mutie.”

“Chill it?” Jak asked.

“No, that’s the thing. It approached me and I leveled my blaster and squeezed the trigger…but the scattergun didn’t fire. I tried it again and again, but nothing. The creature kept coming, but the blaster wouldn’t fire. Dark night! Didn’t know what was wrong with it because I’d just finished stripping and cleaning it in my dream. So there I was, pointing a dead blaster at a mutie just itching to chill me.”

“And did it?” Mildred Wyeth asked.

“Tore me to pieces with a set of talons as long and sharp as my Tekna. And I couldn’t even wake up. Hurt like hell.”

Ryan looked at Mildred, wondering if the dream meant anything.