End Day
TIME WARPEDRyan Cawdor and his six companions struggle to survive postnuclear America, a grim new world where hope for the future is lost amid the devastation.APOCALYPSE REDUXIn pursuit of a hardened enemy–Magus–Ryan and the companions find themselves in a land more foreign than any they've encountered. After unwittingly slipping through a time hole, the group lands in twentieth-century New York City, getting their first glimpse of predark civilization. And they're not sure they like it. Only Mildred and Doc can appreciate this strange metropolis, but Armageddon is just seventy-two hours away, and Magus will stop at nothing to make sure Ryan and his team are destroyed on Nuke Day…
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TIME WARPED
Ryan Cawdor and his six companions struggle to survive postnuclear America, a grim new world where hope for the future is lost amid the devastation.
APOCALYPSE REDUX
In pursuit of a hardened enemyâMagusâRyan and the companions find themselves in a land more foreign than any theyâve encountered. After unwittingly slipping through a time hole, the group lands in twentieth-century New York City, getting their first glimpse of predark civilization. And theyâre not sure they like it. Only Mildred and Doc can appreciate this strange metropolis, but Armageddon is just seventy-two hours away, and Magus will stop at nothing to make sure Ryan and his team are destroyed on Nuke Day...
âThis isnât Deathlands!
Where in nukinâ hell are we?â
J.B. stared up at the wall-to-wall buildings as if heâd never seen the like.
Ryan didnât seem to notice the Armorerâs distress. He took stock of their surroundings, realizing that the companions had been there before, in the future, amid ashes and ruin. He focused his attention on the traffic, looking from one license plate to another.
âWhat year is this?â he asked Veronica.
âItâs 2001.â
Doc groaned. âWe have jumped back in time.â
âYouâre from the future?â
Ryan ignored her question. âWhat month is it? What day?â
âItâs January 19,â Veronica replied. âWhy, do you have somewhere more important to be?â
âAny place but here and now would be just fine,â Ryan told her. âThe world ends tomorrow at noon.â
End Day
James Axler
The time is out of jointâO cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
âWilliam Shakespeare, Hamlet
Table of Contents
Ryan Cawdor peered through the 2.5x telescopic sight of his Steyr Scout Tactical, index finger resting against the longblasterâs trigger guard. Behind the scopeâs center post, through the heat shimmer rising off the desert floor, he tracked the five-wag convoy rattling over dirt the color of rust, down a string-straight track between clumps of dry sagebrush and scattered sentinels of saguaro.
At his side J. B. Dix said, âGot a shot on the nukinâ bucket of bolts?â
Ryan didnât answer. The two wags in the lead, a camouflage-painted SUV and a three-quarter-ton, black-primered pickup, sporting a cabover-mounted machine blaster, raised billowing clouds of dust. If the patterns of the past held, Magus was lounging in the third wagâa big, steel-plate-armored Winnie. The half-human, half-machine monster liked to ride in style, with room to keep spare parts and unspeakable experiments close to hand. Although the drop-down, bulletproof metal shutters on the side windows were raised, a coating of orange dust obscured the view through the glass.
Even if heâd had a target, Ryan wouldnât have fired. With the Winnie in motion and bouncing over rough terrain, the odds of scoring a hit, let alone a clean kill, were too long. And to open fire would have revealed the companionsâ presence to an enemy force they had reckoned was at least thirty-five to their seven.
The issue was more than just superior numbers.
Steel Eyesâs enforcers, which looked like bipedal crosses between carnivorous dinosaurs and bulls, werenât actually blasterproof but, thanks to a horny, knobby hide two inches thick and bone like reinforced concrete, the squat three-hundred-pounders came damn close to it; in fact, none of the companions had ever seen one downed by a bulletâor a dozen bullets. In a previous encounter, on Magusâs remote gladiator island, they had learned the only way to chill the enforcers was by fire. When the temperature of their copious sweatâa potent secretion that smelled like a combination of ammonia, ether and acetoneâwas raised to ignition point, they turned into living candles, or more accurately, living blowtorches.
The empty socket under Ryanâs eye patch itched, but he didnât scratch it. With the sun baking his shoulders and back through his worn black T-shirt, he watched the convoy rumble across the plain, heading for the barren mountains in the eastern distance. When he found himself looking at the rear of the last wag in line, he pulled back from the notch between sandstone boulders, stood up, and slung the Steyr.
âWhat now, lover?â Krysty Wroth asked.
A layer of desert dust had dulled her usually radiant red prehensile hair; her clothes and high boots were coated with grime. Perspiration mixed with rusty dirt smeared her forehead. The other companions were likewise tinted orange. Doc, Jak, Mildred, Ricky and J.B. looked as if they had just risen from shallow desert graves.
