Downrigger Drift
The nuclear cataclysm that maimed America altered the rules of existence. The new reality guarantees a grim battle for survival, but the higher human instinct to exist in peace and good will lives on. Legends endure and Ryan Cawdor is a warrior of his time. When the good fight needs to be won, Ryan and his band take a stand.In the nuke-altered region of the Great Lakes, Ryan and his group face the spectrum–from the idyllic to the horrific–of a world reborn. Close to enclaves of peace and sanctuary, Deathlands' most distorted spawn of humanity, cannibals, spread terror. Against the battered shoreline of Lake Michigan, an encounter with an old friend leads to a battle to save Milwaukee from a force of deadly mutant interlopers–and to liberate one of their own.
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Jakâs hand was red and swollen
The slash was dark, puffy and angry looking. It had stopped bleeding, but now it oozed a clear fluid. Mildred sniffed, then wrinkled her nose.
âSweet-sour stink. Either those little bastards have some kind of venom in them, or their feces are more virulent than I first thought.â
J.B. squatted over one of the corpses, probing it with the tip of his flensing knife. âFangs seem solid, not like a rattlerâs, if that helps. I donât see any poison sac in its mouth or throat, either.â
âThanks, John. Whatever the cause, I have to radically revise my prognosis.â
âWhat do you mean?â Krysty asked.
Mildred glanced up. âJudging by how fast itâs progressing, instead of a day or two, Jak might have six to eight hoursâif heâs lucky.â
Downrigger Drift
Deathlands>®
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one has given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort which might have saved the world.
âJane Addams
(1860â1935)
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
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 One
Ryan Cawdor clawed his way up from black unconsciousness one slow second at a time. His single blue eye fluttered, then opened to take in the familiar-yet-different ceiling of yet another mat-trans unit, his arms and legs sprawled out around him. Wisps of the ever-present white mist that accompanied the matter transfer function swirled around his face, dissipating into nothingness as his wits returned.
As jumps went, this one hadnât been as bad as manyâat least, not for him. The dark nightmares that could accompany each body-wrenching trip had been faint for once. Ryan dimly recalled a journey through a forest, and a strange sensation that he couldnât place for a moment, recognizing it as peace and quiet only after a bit of pondering. That feeling vanished as quickly as it had come when he raised his head, only to lower it again as a pounding wave of nausea crashed through his skull. It was the one usual reaction to a jump. This time it felt like someone had stuck a stiletto into his ear and given his brains a good stirring.
âMebbe not that used to it.â His tongue was dry and thick in his mouth, and an attempt to hawk up saliva left him coughing hot, fetid air. âFireblasted whitecoats.â He was never sure what was worse, relying on the unknown technology of the mat-trans to instantly transport him and his companions to an undetermined location in the blink of an eye, or wondering each time he entered one of the smooth-walled chambers if this was the time it would malfunction and scatter their molecules across the entire universe.
Slowly drawing in his arms, Ryanâs right hand spidered to his waist, where he felt the comforting grip of his holstered SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster under his fingers. Glancing left, he spotted the long outline of his Steyr SSG-70 sniper rifle on the floor next to him. Without rising, he reached for the weaponâs smooth walnut stock with his other hand, drawing it close.
