Playfair's Axiom
A legendary warrior of nuke-spawned America, Ryan Cawdor understands the hard-and-fast rule of Deathlands. Where there is life, death is only a matter of time.Still, staying alive is the dubious luxury of being quick, hard and willing to abide by a code of honor long abandoned to the wreckage of this postapocalyptic hell zone: truth and fair play.St. Louis is a concrete jungle of fetid heat, acid rains and cutthroats. With J. B. Dix gravely wounded, Ryan and his group become captive guests of a local barony. Freedom lies in the success of a deal: recapture a runaway teen, daughter of the ailing baron. But the dangerous power behind the throne rests with a self-proclaimed holy man. His gruesome manipulation of life and death are about to put the group in a race for their own salvation.
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Mildredâs anguished cry echoed around the circular ruins
Ryanâs heart seemed to seize in his chest. He ducked behind the wall and turned.
The Armorer stood as if rooted in place. Ryan could clearly see the spot where a small portion of his leather jacket had been pushed aside a fraction of an inch by the heavy-caliber slug that had blown right through the small manâs chest, front to back.
Time froze. A thin streamer of blood hung in the air behind J.B.âs back, fractionating into red droplets as it distanced itself from him.
With a roaring in his ears and an abyss of emptiness opening in his gut, Ryan watched his oldest living friend, the man whoâd had his back since he was a young pup, spin and topple into the dust.
For the St. Louis Science Fiction Society
for years of friendship. Your lovely hometown deserves better than it gets herein.
We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need.
âEpicurus
3rd century BCE
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
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 One
âWe followed!â Jak Lauren stated.
The long-haired albino teen had his pallid lips pressed so close to Ryan Cawdorâs ear that he could smell his funk, even though after days of harsh exertion in close unwashed company his nostrils had become inured to such. The fact that it was nuke hot and swamp humid close to the Sippi River didnât much help.
âI know.â A canny fighter and consummate survivor, veteran of years of trekking across the hellscape of the Deathlands, Ryan reckoned that a low grunt of acknowledgment was less likely to alert their shadowers that they had been spotted than even the slightest nod of his head.
Picking his way over a mound of dust-covered rubble, Ryan swept the ruins with his lone blue eye. It was morning, bright and hot. They were in the midst of what had been a great cityâs downtown. Now it looked as if it had been picked up about two hundred feet and dropped.
Theyâd left the gutted bunker an hour before and had seemingly made scarcely any progress at all clambering south through the urban devastation. Around them jumbles of busted-up masonry rose in heaps against the sides of mostly intact buildings, some as high as three or four stories. Behind them rose taller buildings, skyscrapers, some canted precariously, with windows blank of glass like blinded staring eyes. Not all of them had fallen the same way, although it was clear that a nuke-blast some distance to the west had done most of the damage.
To their right rear rose a vast mound, its white surface cracked like a colossal egg. Over everything a single dark skyscraper towered like a nail impaling a pale yellow sky. It dominated the devastated downtown. South of it a solitary flying creature kited on huge wings.
Sweat ran down Ryanâs face from the line of his long black curly hair. His mouth felt as if it had a prickly pear lobe lodged inside it. The long ragged scar that ran down the side of his face throbbed.
