Breakthrough
More than a century after a multi-warhead nuclear strike wiped out nearly all of earth's population, humanity's feral instinct to survive has spawned a savage new America. Here, the brutality of man and nature conspire against hope. Yet despite its chaos and bloody turmoil, Deathlands is a second chance for the human race…and for a group of warrior survivalists led by a man called Ryan Cawdor.Deathlands is a living hell, but there is someplace worse: a parallel Earth where the atomic mega-cull never happened. Now this Otherworld Earth is in its final death throes. Yet for an elite few, the reality portal offers a new frontier of raw energy, expendable slaves–a bastion of power for Dredda Otis Trask. Her invasion force of genetically engineered warrior women has turned the ruins of Salt Lake City into the deadly mining grounds of a grotesque new order–one that lies in wait for Ryan and his companions.In the Deathlands, danger lurks beyond the imagination.
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Ryan looked at his old friend. âYou know what to do, J.B.â
His hands up, the Armorer stepped into the line of fire. âNow, take it easy,â he said to the tall, backlit figures just inside the cave entrance. âYou know we canât hurt you. You donât have to prove anything more to us. Weâre giving up. See?â
Black figures approached with their laser rifles pointed at his head. One of them came within ten feet of him before it stopped. âWhere are the others?â it asked.
âYahhh!â J.B. bellowed at the top of his lungs.
Ryan echoed the yell as he swung out from behind the rock. The others yelled, too, as hard as they could, to keep from being deafened as the Smith & Wesson pump gun roared in the enclosed space. Orange flame from the muzzle blast licked the ceiling. Ryan racked and fired, racked and fired as fast as he could. On the third blast, there was a mighty groan from above, then in a cloud of dust, the ceiling of the entry chamber came crashing down.
Other titles in the Deathlands saga:
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
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
DEATH LANDS®
James Axler
We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
âLydia Maria Child
1802â1880
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 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 hopeâ¦.
Contents
Prologue
A chunk of burning plastic the size of a softball sailed past Dr. Huthâs lowered head. Smaller objects, bits of concrete, shards of metal and rock, pelted his arms and legs as he struggled down the middle of the street under the terrible weight that lay upon his shoulders, a weight that bent his back to the breaking point and made his thighs tremble.
Seven levels below the surface of the planet, in the swirling smoke of open trash fires, a mob packed the crumbling sidewalks and spilled onto the potholed roadway. Their angry chant of âDie, whitecoat, die! Die, whitecoat, die!â echoed off the two-story-high, gridwork concrete ceiling and the wall-to-wall buildings that lined the gritty street. Like an earthquake, it rattled the No Response Zoneâs few surviving windowpanes.
This was Gloomtown, so named because neither the light of day nor the dark of night penetrated here. Mercury-vapor lamps caged in the soot-stained ceiling cast a perpetual sulfurous pall over its squalor and suffering. In Gloomtown there were no police. No emergency services. And there was no way out, alive or dead.
