No Man's Land
There's little to remember about life before the Big Nuke, but there's plenty to scavenge in the tainted wreckage of the post apocalyptic frontier. The barbaric code of survival of the fittest, meanest or dirtiest makes for hard living and easy death. But Ryan Cawdor and his friends have stayed alive by holding on to their humanity–playing fair…and chilling only when they've got no choice.A civil war raging in the Des Moines River valley forces Ryan and his companions to take sides, or die. Because somewhere in the middle of the generations-old conflict is a lost redoubt. But Snake Eye, the deadliest gunslinger in Deathlands, stands between them and the way out. And the mutie contract chiller won't step aside until he has Ryan's head.In Deathlands, there's nothing but rock and a hard place….
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DARK EVOLUTION
Thereâs little to remember about life before the Big Nuke, but thereâs plenty to scavenge in the tainted wreckage of the post-apocalyptic frontier. The barbaric code of survival of the fittest, meanest or dirtiest makes for hard living and easy death. But Ryan Cawdor and his friends have stayed alive by holding on to their humanityâplaying fair...and chilling only when theyâve got no choice.
GRIM PASSAGE
A civil war raging in the Des Moines River valley forces Ryan and his companions to take sides, or die. Because somewhere in the middle of the generations-old conflict is a lost redoubt. But Snake Eye, the deadliest gunslinger in Deathlands, stands between them and the way out. And the mutie contract chiller wonât step aside until he has Ryanâs head.
In Deathlands, thereâs nothing but rock and a hard place....
âHelp me up!â
Somebody did, andâwhile he managed to solidify his perch by hanging on to the saddle horn like the rankest newbieâRyan realized that the same someone had also relieved him of the SIG-Sauer, then stuffed it back in his holster.
Then they were riding out through the open gates of the barbed-wire compound, across the starlit prairie.
From behind, he heard the shouted challenge, âRun, little rabbits!â The voice, heard only recently for the first time, was already unmistakable to Ryan. And hated.
âDamn,â Mildred swore. âI thought we killed that mother.â
âRun far, run fast, little rabbits,â Snake Eye called again. âRun and hide! But youâll only die tired!â
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each otherâs children.
âJimmy Carter
Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2002
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....
Contents
Prologue
With a whistling scream the cannonball arced across the clear blue sky.
Snake Eye could probably have seen it had he looked. The things were often visible in flight, and his human eye was very keen.
So was the other eye, hidden behind a black enameled-leather patch.
He didnât bother, any more than he bothered to duck when the explosive charge went off a street over in the small, deserted ville called Taint. It was well named. Not much to look at, much less visit, even by modern-day standards, Taint was a cluster of a few dozen ramshackle structures of sun-warped, rotting planks, scabbied brick-and-concrete chunks, and even sod, piled together without much thought, much less upkeep, on a stream that ran through a wide, flat valley on its way to the Des Moines River. At the moment, it happened to lie right between the armies of the Uplands Alliance and the Des Moines River Valley Cattlemenâs Protective Association, who were coming together in the latest installment of their generations-long war.
Snake Eye was the perfect mercie. He was good at his job, faster than any normal human, and his heart was cold beyond stone. He always fulfilled a contract and took pride in the fact.
