The streets became a blur of artificial light, people and moving buildings. No time now to make a proper recce. They had seen enough; all they had to do was to get out.
But Ryan had no idea where they were headed. He could only trust Jakâs instinct.
The albino youth cut across more streets, this time firing to left and right, the Colt Python clearing a path before him. Some of the ville dwellers were alert enough to react when the recce party burst past them, drawing their blasters, but the blistering return fire was enough to drive them to cover.
And now, after seeing the vid broadcasts as they took flight, Ryan and the others had no illusions that they could proceed without being noticed.
Their only hope was to reach the exit tunnel and escape down the sewer. And it was nowhere in sight.
Other titles in the Deathlands saga:
Ice and Fire
Red Equinox
Northstar Rising
Time Nomads
Latitude Zero
Seedling
Dark Carnival
Chill Factor
Moon Fate
Furyâs 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:
Collectorâs Edition
Gemini Rising
Gaiaâs Demise
Dark Reckoning
Shadow World
Pandoraâs Redoubt
Rat King
Zero City
Savage Armada
Judas Strike
Shadow Fortress
Sunchild
Breakthrough
Salvation Road
Amazon Gate
Destinyâs 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
James Axler
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
âWinston Churchill,
1874â1965
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 endureâin the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to natureâs 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 villeâs 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 Ryanâs 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 couldnât 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: Ryanâs 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 humanityâs last hope.â¦
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
Ryan Cawdor curled up into a fetal ball, trying to gain some respite from the sand that lashed at his skin, scouring into every crevice, biting through the material of his clothes, the exposed parts of his body raw with the sharp winds that blew the grit against him. The more he tried to cover the exposed flesh, the harder the sands ripped into the few inches of skin that he couldnât cover. What the sand didnât scour, the rain did. The howling winds of the storm carried with them a chem-loaded rain that hit hard with each drop, the soft acids within the water making exposed skin soapy and easy to peel back. Like a rubbery solution that eased away from flesh under pressure, the chem rain began to break down any exposed area. Ryan struggled to cover as much of his skin as possible.
The storm had come upon the companions quickly, and in the flat landscape there was nowhere to hide. As the dusk bled slowly into night, the wind from nowhere had whipped up across the expanse of sand, lifting clouds of the vicious, stinging particles and the bludgeoning raindrops that had eaten into the companions with little warning.
In the confusion and the darkness, they had been separated, despite their desire to stick close together. With no landmarks and no outcrops to provide even the barest minimum of shelter, they had stumbled blind into the storm, losing sight of one another. With nothing to identify their position, they were now completely alone.
Ryan tried to protect his body as much as possible from the buffeting of the storm, burrowing into the loose surface of the desert floor, taking the itching, shifting sands as a lesser problem than the stinging clouds of the storm and the eviscerating rain. Hoping it would soon pass. These storms had never, in his experience, lasted that long. But there was always a first time. Mebbe this would be it, mebbe this would take forever to blow itself out, scourging the skin from his flesh as it proceeded, leaving him nothing but a mess of bleeding flesh, the nerve endings rubbed raw by the insistent grains of sand.
Every fiber and muscle ached as he tried to hunker down lower into the sand, forming a barrier between himself and the storm.
It hadnât started like this. A few hours earlier, it had been differentâ¦
WAKING from a jump, the hammering in Ryan Cawdorâs head felt as if every single atom in his body had been ripped apart and then put back together again with sledgehammer forceâwhich it had, but why did it have to feel that way every time? Why the fireblasted hell couldnât he get used to the jumps in the mat-trans? The companions had made enough of these jumps for their bodies to acclimatize by now, surely?
Getting to his feet, checking almost unconsciously that everything was there, and somehow he hadnât lost a leg or and arm in the jump, Ryan took a look around the chamber. The armaglass was a smoky gray tinged with electric blue. It was semiopaque and he could see the faint outline of the anteroom beyond, thanks to a dim light. It was empty, which was a good thing; and it seemed to be in one piece, which was another. The random nature of the comp-controlled jumps every time the chamber door shut meant that it was always a gamble: one day they could end up in a chamber where the redoubt had been flooded, or the redoubt had collapsed, so that the chamber trapped them in a mass of compacted rock with no way out. The only consoling thought was that this hadnât happened so far, and that the old tech would probably screw up under such conditions, meaning that the chamber wasnât in working order and could not materialize themâ¦hopefully.
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