James Axler - Perdition Valley

“You do not belong here.”

The shaman turned her head to stare, the solid-white orbs of blind eyes pinpointing Doc. “Nature has been violated by your passage. The balance is disturbed, all things tremble.”

“They took me,” Doc said firmly. “This is not my doing. I only want to go back home!”

“To your family,” the women said in unison.

“Yes!”

The drums beat faster, and the fumes from the fire rose darker, thicker, sweeter, until the air in the lodge was murky with swirling fog. Doc blinked hard. No, the air was clear. His mind was filled with a mist. Was he being drugged? Or was this it, was he finally going insane?

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

Shaking Earth

Black Harvest

Vengeance Trail

Ritual Chill

Atlantis Reprise

Labyrinth

Strontium Swamp

Shatter Zone

Perdition Valley

James Axler

For Melissa, as always

Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and the simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and the corrupt.

—Graham Greene,

The Human Factor, 1978

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….

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

Epilogue

Moaning softly, the child baron hugged himself tightly and began to rock in the wooden chair. The motion made it creak slightly and he shuddered at the noise.

Tightening the grips on their longblasters, the two sec men in the throne room of Broke Neck ville exchanged nervous glances.

“Baron?” the corporal ventured, advancing a step. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

Drooling slightly, the youth looked at the guard with unseeing eyes. “He has the secret,” Baron Harmond whispered, the words slurred slightly. “But he doesn’t know it. Not yet!”

“Secret, sir?” a sec man dared to ask, tilting his head. “Who has what secret?”

“Vermont!” Harmond screamed, grabbing his temples as blood began to trickle from his nose. “He’s here, but also back there! I can see him in a hundred places! A hundred times! But Tanner has stayed too long! There is a new future! A different casement! The universe is ripping apart! Time is healing itself!”

Worried, the corporal looked at the window, but could see nothing wrong with either the sill or the concrete casement. What was the doomie baron talking about? Harmond had accurately predicted future events a dozen times before, and saved countless lives, both civie and sec men. But had the young baron finally crossed the line of sanity?

“Should I fetch a healer, Baron?” the sec man asked, starting for the doorway.

“Too late!” Harmond screamed, both of his hands clawing at the empty air. “He is the disease and the cure!”

“Sir?” a sec man asked, puzzled, starting to sweat. An insane baron. He knew of villes with those, and it was never good.

“Cold, so cold,” Harmond whispered, hugging himself tightly.

“Would you like a blanket, Baron?” the corporal asked. “Or we could make a fire.”

“Yes, cold…fire,” the baron wheezed, fighting for air. “The cold…is a fire…consume us all…” Lurching to his feet, he stared at the open window and pointed a shaking finger at the empty air of the north.

“Coldfire is here!” the baron shrieked, then shook all over and collapsed to the floor.

Rushing to his side, the guards turned the child over and pressed fingers to his throat to see if their baron still lived. Or if this was the long-ago prophesized day of death and the second end of the world had finally begun.

“Y-YOU HEARD ME, outlander,” growled the young sec man standing in front of the ville gate. With a double click, the guard cocked both hammers of the homie shotgun. “All of you, j-just move along now, and there won’t be no t-trouble.”

Masked by the night, the six people on horseback gave no reply to the warning. There was only the low moan of the desert breeze mixing with the sound of the panting horses and the jingling of the metal rings in the reins and stirrups.

Looking down at the nervous teenager from the back of his stallion, Ryan Cawdor tried to control his growing temper. Dark clouds covered the moon, so the only light came from the sputtering torches set on either side of the wooden gate. However, Ryan could still see that the huge wep held by the sec man was obviously not scavenged from predark days, but a homie, built from iron pipes reinforced with layers of steel wiring wrapped around each barrel. The wooden stock was hand-carved and the firing mechanism seemed to be taken from another blaster, perhaps a handblaster. Yet the double barrels of the scattergun were worn from constant use, plainly stating the wep was in good working condition and had seen plenty of action.