James Axler - Black Harvest

“Yeah, but this one is unique. Sec chief Robards thinks this Ryan may be the same outlander who chilled Baron DeMann’s brother a few years ago in a gaudy house in Spearpoint.”

Baron Schini suddenly appeared more interested in DeMann’s outlanders. If their leader was the one who chilled the baron’s brother, then he was also the one who chilled her son in the very same gaudy house firefight.

“And if this is the outlander who killed the baron’s brother, what does that candy-ass Robards plan to do about it?”

“Why, chill the scum and his friends on behalf of Baron DeMann, of course.”

The woman shook her head.

“You disapprove?”

“Not at all,” the baron said. “It’s just that if this one-eyed outlander is the same one who killed the baron’s brother, then he’s also the one who chilled my son, Luca. And if that’s the case, I damn well intend to be there to watch the bastard die.”

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

Shaking Earth

Black Harvest

DEATH LANDS®

James Axler

For Evan Hollander, fellow warrior

Is it sin

To rush into the secret house of death,

Ere death dare come to us?

—William Shakespeare,

Antony and Cleopatra

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

Epilogue

Ryan Cawdor let out a gasp and cracked open his eye.

“Everything all right, lover?” Krysty Wroth, Ryan’s titian-haired lover looked concerned.

Memories of a jump nightmare swirled around his head.

Even though the jump had been tough on him, Ryan was in top physical condition, and his ability to recover from the mat-trans jumps was better than most in his small band of travelers. He’d experienced a bad jump dream, nothing more than that.

“Been better, but I’m okay,” he said. “You?”

“I’ve been worse,” Krysty answered.

Ryan believed that to be true. Her gorgeous mane of bright red hair, which usually lay flat against her head and shoulders after a jump, was full and thick, and cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall.

She gestured to her right with a nod. “Doc didn’t do so well, though.”

Ryan looked at Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, a tall and skinny man dressed in an old and worn frock coat. To the casual observer, he appeared to be in his sixties, but it could be argued that the man was actually hundreds of years old. Ryan knelt next to Doc and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You with us, Doc?”

“‘Is this a dagger I see before me—’” Doc muttered.

“Can you hear me, Doc?”

“‘—the handle toward my hand?’”

J. B. Dix, the group’s armorer and weapons expert, removed his spectacles and rubbed his head. “What’s Doc talking about now?”

“It’s Shakespeare,” Dr. Mildred Wyeth replied. “Macbeth.”

“Sounds…interesting,” Krysty commented.

“Sounds crazy,” Jak Lauren said.

The teenaged albino usually fared the worst of all the members in the group after a jump, but this time he looked as if he came through unscathed.

It was Doc who’d had the hardest ride.

He’d be out of it for a while, his thoughts rambling and erratic, but he’d be all right in time.

Ryan shook one of the old man’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“What?” Doc said, shaking his head as if the brain inside were shrouded in cobwebs.

When he saw the one-eyed man standing over him, Doc gave Ryan an angry scowl. “I say, my dear Ryan, if you’d like my attention I suggest you use the nomenclature provided for me upon my birth, meaning you can call me Theophilus, or Theo, if you like, or you can simply use the more vernacular terms Doc or Doc Tanner. There is no need to wrench my shoulder from my body!”

Ryan grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes.”