End Program
No one waits long for trouble in Deathlands–it's everywhere in the remains of a nuke-altered civilization. The American dream was annihilated more than a century ago by the country's own unchecked power play. But the worst may be yet to come.Built upon a preDark military installation in former California, a ville called Progress could be the utopia Ryan Cawdor and his companions have been seeking. A place where humanity and technology thrive, it's the nucleus of a new hope for Deathlands. The successful replacement of Ryan's missing eye with a cybernetic prosthetic nearly convinces the group that their days of surviving hell are behind them. Then they discover that the high tech in Progress isn't designed to enhance human life, but to destroy it. To block the final assault, the companions must stop Ryan from becoming a willing pawn in the eradication of mankind.
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HOPEâS ADVERSARY
No one waits long for trouble in Deathlandsâitâs everywhere in the remains of a nuke-altered civilization. The American dream was annihilated more than a century ago by the countryâs own unchecked power play. But the worst may be yet to come.
SURVIVALâS CASTOFF
Built upon a predark military installation in former California, a ville called Progress could be the utopia Ryan Cawdor and his companions have been seeking. A place where humanity and technology thrive, itâs the nucleus of a new hope for Deathlands. The successful replacement of Ryanâs missing eye with a cybernetic prosthetic nearly convinces the group that their days of surviving hell are behind them. Then they discover that the high tech in Progress isnât designed to enhance human life, but to destroy it. To block the final assault, the companions must stop Ryan from becoming a willing pawn in the eradication of mankind.
J.B. had five seconds to
get clear
He sprinted from the barn, arms pumping, five seconds to get to cover, five seconds to do the impossible. The howls and taunts of the bikers cut the air to his left, the growl of their engines generating a terrible drone.
J.B. was across the road in an instant, dislodged dirt skipping away beneath his boots. Up ahead, the tall stalks of corn waited like a fence, impossibly thin struts. Thirty feet away, the stalks were on fire, dark smoke wafting across the road as J.B. raced into the brush.
He dived to the ground, arms outstretched, holding the mini-Uzi far from his body. The bikes were close now, roaring past the barn in a cacophony of straining engines.
Then the building went up like a rocket, the interior expanding in a series of massive explosions that reached out to engulf the bikers, giving the companions a chance.
End Program
James Axler
âThe black curtain is the instant when the eyes shut.â
âKoji Suzuki,
Ring, 1991
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 hope.â¦
Contents
Chapter One
Ryan lay flat on his back, naked, cold. He stared up into black, nothingness all around him. He raised his head, struck something just an inch above his forehead and felt pain run through his face. The pain made his nose twitch, as if he needed to sneeze, and a flash of brightness seemed to lance across his eyes in a firework burst.
He moved more cautiously the second time, arms first, feeling around him. There were walls to either side of where he lay, their cool hardness running the length of his body. Ryan estimated that there was no more than an inch gap between the limits of his broad shoulders and those cool walls, as if he had been placed in a narrow tunnel.
He flexed his feet, noticing for the first time that he was not wearing his boots. Those boots had been with him for more miles of Deathlands road than he cared to remember. He would have removed them to sleep, but he could not recall where or when that had been. But now he was naked, his body cold.
