Gaia's Demise.

Deathland series.

James Axler.

...for when all the strong elements, military and feudal, were unhinged, mighty forces became adrift, and the void was open. And after a pause, into the void strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatred that has ever corroded the human heart. The door of opportunity was open, the dreadful time was at hand, and God help us, it was all about to begin once more...

-Sir Winston Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, 1938

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 endure-in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature's 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 ville's 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 Ryan's 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 couldn't 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: Ryan's 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 humanity's last hope...

Prologue.

A hundred years ago, a rain of nuclear bombs obliterated civilization in a few minutes of blazing horror. It was the end of the world. Doomsday. Skydark.

The great cities were gone in a blinding flash, replaced by bomb craters whose deadly glow illuminated the nighttime sky. Mountains rose and fell, valleys slammed shut and lakes boiled under the atomic bombardment, permanently altering the topography of North America. Burning clouds of isotopes and poisons filled the sky in an endless, raging hurricane, and acid rain pounded the lush farmland and forests of the continent into sterile desert.

With the first nuclear explosion, the tissue-thin tapestry of civilization was ripped apart. The rule of law was replaced overnight with the somber, draconian edict of survival of the fittest. Cannibals hunted prey, cold-hearts brutally raided farms and slavers seized anybody they could as chattel. Plus, lost in the wilds of the new world were functioning predark war machines. Shielded against the onslaught of the atomic holocaust, the computer-operated juggernauts were patiently waiting to continue a war that was long finished, and death was almost always the reward for the person who foolishly awoke one of the terrible sleeping giants.

In crumbling ruins, ragged people fought to the death over a dented can of food or a single precious bullet.

Any type of gun was more valuable than gold, defense against the horrible swarms of muties, twisted abominations that arose from the nuke craters and feasted on the flesh of humanity.

Slowly, over the long decades, civilization of a sort was returning to the world. Crude walled cities were rising from the ashes of the past. The populations of these villes were ruthlessly governed by self-appointed barons, each ruler backed by a private army of brutal sec men. Whips and chains kept the people inside, while barbed wire and blasters kept the muties out.

Electricity was seldom seen, starvation universal, rape a daily event, death the only known means of escape. This was America in the late twenty-first century. Welcome to the Deathlands.

But one small handful of people refused to surrender hope. Ryan Cawdor and his companions traveled the continent searching for someplace where they could settle down and live in peace. Armed with functioning pre-dark weapons, the companions killed only when necessary, and preferred trading for supplies rather than stealing. In a world gone mad, these simple acts of dignity nearly made them legends.

In addition, Ryan Cawdor and the others knew the greatest military secret of the predark world: the redoubts.

Hidden across America, these often huge underground bunkers were built by the government to withstand direct nuclear hits. Powered by the near limitless energy of nuclear reactors, most redoubts were still intact after a century, incredible havens of safety with fluorescent lights, air-conditioning and drinkable water. Originally, the subterranean bases were stockpiled with everything needed to rebuild the country after the coming apocalypse-weapons, tools, military vehicles, fuel and medicine. Those countless tons of supplies were long gone, with only a few forgotten boxes of dusty weapons and dehydrated food packs remaining. However, these meager scraps from the past were more than enough to give the companions a fighting chance to stay alive. And sometimes they came across a major prize.

Yet even more importantly, the redoubts were linked together by the incredible mat-trans units. These amazing machines depended on technology advanced almost beyond understanding. The mat-trans units could transfer a living person from one redoubt to another in only seconds, which allowed the companions to quickly leave a dangerous area, hunt for food and continue their search for a permanent home.

Unfortunately, it now seemed possible that others might also know the vital secret of the redoubts.

A few days earlier, a stranger named Overton had attacked Ryan's home ville of Front Royal with an army of sec men. The troops were wearing impossibly clean blue shirts and were armed with predark weapons in mint condition. Overton's goal was to conquer Front Royal by any means available, then physically link it with two neighboring villes in Virginia, creating a single massive walled city, a gigantic metropolis the likes of which hadn't been seen for more than a century. The would-be usurper was finally neutralized by Ryan, but the reasons behind the insane plan were lost in violent death, and the mysterious origin of the weapons was never resolved.

Had Overton been working alone in his plan to seize control of those three East Coast baronies? Or was he a vanguard, an advance agent paving the way for somebody else? Was creating a new metropolis in Deathlands the final goal, or only the first step of a much larger plan? And was the secret of the redoubts' existence still safe?

A dying man had said the answers to these questions could be found in a distant ville called Shiloh. While the baron at Front Royal started to rebuild the badly damaged ville, Ryan Cawdor and the companions left on a perilous overland journey to try to discover if the brutal war for the baronies was indeed over.

Or only just beginning...

Chapter One.

"Black dust!" the man screamed, pointing toward the horizon. "What the hell is that?"

A dozen people at the campsite stopped whatever they were doing and turned to look in the direction indicated. Cresting a hill far down the road was a wag of some sort-no, it was a rolling box of metal, with a stream of faint bluish smoke coming from its rear. The sides were sloped at sharp angles, no windshield or windows were visible and it had numerous big black wheels. There wasn't a single visible piece of wood in the whole contraption.

"A wag," a teenager murmured, wiping his mouth on a dirty sleeve as he placed aside his plate of stew. Standing, the teenager grabbed a longblaster from the top of a woodpile and worked the bolt, chambering a round. He licked dry lips as a soft wind ruffled the thin rags that were his clothing.

Another man stood and pulled a crossbow into view from his nest of clothes. "A metal wag. I never seen one that moved before!"

Leaning heavily on a repaired crutch, an elderly man glanced over his shoulder to a nearby grassy field. A crude wall of thickets and sharp sticks formed a defensive barrier around the clearing, and in the middle stood a faded yellow school bus, its many windows heavily patched with gray tape and bits of plastic. The wheels were sunk into the hard ground, and a tilted stone chimney rose from the back. The rusted remains of a few other wags doted the field, the grass thin enough in spots to see the cracked black material underneath. Way off by itself, the rounded shell of a beetle-shaped vehicle was surrounded by weeds, the open front door showing that the interior had been completely stripped except for a cushioned seat that had a hole cut in the bottom. The opening continued through the chassis and deep into the ground. Fat flies buzzed around the battered wag, and for an unknown reason, a half moon was painted on the door.

"A working wag," Tant breathed excitedly. The young man drew a bulky revolver from the belt holding his buckskin jacket closed, and lovingly ran his hands over the Parkerized finish of the big-bore weapon. The wooden handle had been replaced with bone long ago. "Must be some baron," a pretty blonde suggested, and she pulled a long carving knife from her sleeve.

"Or slavers," another man grumbled, touching a ragged scar that completely circled his thick neck. In his massive hands, he held a metal rod tipped with a razor-sharp radiator fan. The ends glistened, mirror bright in the morning sun. "They got wags. Well, sometimes."

"We best leave it alone," an old woman stated. She hobbled a bit closer to the roadway but didn't cross onto the gravel of the berm. She knew her place. That honor was for menfolk only.

"Let them leave without a toll?" an old man snapped angrily, watching the wag come steadily closer. His face was deeply lined, but not from hunger, and a puckered star on the right cheek marked where he had been shot in the face at close range. His boots were patched, his jacket was lined with the fur of mountain lion and a brace of oiled revolvers jutted from his wide leather belt. "Black dust, what for, woman?"

Her weak eye wandering aimlessly, the old woman scowled down the road and gestured at the strange vehicle. "Are ya daft, Spector? That ain't be no civvy wag. That's a war wag, a tank!"

Raising a hand to strike her, Spector held his anger at the outburst, knowing she was only doing so for the good of the collectors. Dimly, he recalled hearing the word before from Grandda. His father's father had been a great leader of the collectors, siring fourteen children before dying. A mutie had leaped from the belly of a deer they killed one winter and tore off his arms before the others could bludgeon it to death.

Drawing a blaster, Spector squinted against the distance. Naw, couldn't be a real tank as the wag didn't have those metal belts on either side that chewed up the streets. It had whatyacallems.

"Tires," Tant said, loading a massive crossbow. The quarrel was of green wood, but the barbed tip was steel, lashed into place with human hair.

"Blasters," he added, scowling. "Them there be fancy autoblasters on its top!"

"Autoblasters?" asked a pregnant girl brandishing an ax, a naked child hiding behind her voluminous skirts.

"Fire more slugs than a hundred sec men at once!"

A young man with only the wispy hint of a beard on his jaw curled a lip. "Horseshit," he declared.

"It's the truth."

"Let it pass, Da," a redheaded boy suggested, the glass bottle in his hands sloshing slightly. The whiskey bottle with its burning rag of a fuse was actually only filled with urine, but most folks thought it to be a Molotov and steered clear of the pretend firebomb.

Pushing back his cap, Spector stood firm before the steady advance of the war wag. "Anybody can pass," he stated, shifting his grip on his wheelgun. "Long as they pays a toll. This be our road, child! Don't we sweep away the leaves in the fall and fill in the holes after the snows? Our grandies guarded this here road for the eagle god, and so do we. Ain't nobody pass 'less they pays a toll. One can food, one bullet or a day of work."

The group took heart from the ancient words and formed a line across the long expanse of concrete. Only the faintest suggestions of ruins marked where the mighty booths stood, but those had been destroyed in skydark. There were cracks in the surface, but those had been carefully patched. Every weed was pulled, the loose gravel along the east side raked into neat order and the grassy strip to the west trimmed neatly. Beyond the strip lay the broken remains of shattered concrete, trees growing wild from the cracks, and most of the surface masked by decades of grass and vines. But that wasn't their side. That was the north, and they were the southbound. The war between the two rival gangs had ended many winters ago in a bloody fight still referred to as Death Day. Now only the south remained to rule the great road of exit that stretched from the mountains to the terrible ocean.

The big wag was a lot closer now, its speed unchanging. Spector could see it was a lot bigger than he'd first thought, and the body was made of different colors, not painted camouflage like hunters did to hide in the bush. No, sir, the metal itself was a clean green in one area, and blackened with fire damage in another, as if the machine were pieced together from a dozen damaged wags. Surprisingly, it made excellent camouflage. Once in thick bushes, the machine would be damn difficult to spot. Big cans and bags were strapped to the sides under layers of fishing nets.

"Loot," Tant said greedily, releasing the safety lock on his crossbow. "Look at it! They got so much they can't keep it all inside!"

Spector stepped between the man and the approaching wag so that the needle tip of the quarrel touched his chest. "We ain't be thieves or coldhearts," the older man stated. "This be our road, and we take tolls. That be all. No raping the women or taking more than usual. Understand?"

Tant felt a rush of heat to his face, partly from shame but the rest from anger. His hands tightened on the stock and trigger of the crossbow, the muscles in his arms hardening as he fought conflicting emotions. Spector stayed motionless, letting the younger man decide the matter for himself. A good leader didn't always command, but sometimes listened. The engine noise of the war wag was discernible when the younger man finally relaxed his aggressive stance.

"Sorry," he apologized, and fired.

At point-blank range, the shaft went completely through the old man's chest. Staggering backward onto the road, Spector fell to his knees and Tant swung the stock of the crossbow like a club. Spector's head broke apart, one eye flying off into the wood, bones and brains spilling onto the pale concrete.

Retrieving the blaster from the dead man's clothing, Tant turned to face the rest of the collectors. The butt of the weapons were still warm from the dead man, and somehow that gave the killer a rush of courage.

"Now I am in charge!" Tant shouted, thrusting a blaster into the air. "And I say we take everything from everybody who tries to pass! Why should we starve when food comes to us by itself?"

Eagerly, the rest of the family took up the cry and several stepped closer to spit on the sprawled form of Spector. Only a few of the older women and younger children didn't join the rally against their fallen leader and quickly moved away from the others. Their brethren seemed like outlanders to them, strangers drunk on the freshly spilled blood.

"Rules, reg'lations," one man slurred, brandishing a glass tipped spear. "What mean they? The strong live, the weak die. That be the rules here!"

"So speaks Ben, my new lieutenant," Tant shouted. "For I am the leader now."

The collectors roared their approval, and Tant threw his crossbow at the man. The weapon landed at his feet, which were swaddled in plastic and rags in place of boots. Passing his spear to a man with a club, Ben knelt before his new leader and lifted the gore-smeared weapon with a grim reverence.

"Death to the outlanders," Ben said, bowing his head.

"Death to all!" Tant shouted, staring hatefully at the wag coming straight toward them. The vehicle hadn't attempted to swerve into the trees or stop and turn. More fools they, for this was where they would die, and that machine become his to command.

"Positions!" Tant ordered, cocking both hammers on his warm blasters.

The collectors scrambled to their pits and dropped out of sight as Ben raced into the bushes to kick at a block of wood half-hidden amid the greenery. With the block gone, a weight dropped out of sight into the ground and from the trees a barrier swung into the sky on squealing hinges and slammed down hard across the roadway. The heavy beam was a chiseled tree trunk, bristling with rusty nails and bearing the eight-sided metal disk of the tribe painted the magic colors of red and white. All travelers stopped at the sight of the sign of power.

"Hold for a toll!" Tant shouted with an amiable smile, tucking one blaster into his belt.

The wag didn't slow.

"There be muties ahead!" he added in warning, his smile dropping into a sneer. "Much danger! Death everywhere."

As if in reply, brilliant headlights flashed into operation, the beams temporarily blinding the collectors. Cursing in rage, most dropped their blasters to cover their eyes. Only a few managed to wildly fire their weapons at the invader. Fletched arrows struck the side of the vehicle, the wooden shafts shattering on the armor. A spear smashed on the turret, the glass tip exploding into glittering sparkles. Homemade bullets musically ricocheted off the chassis, leaving gray smears, and the one round that hit a tire simply sank into the resilient material and disappeared, doing no visible damage.

Then the powerful engines of the war wag revved louder, and it surged forward with renewed speed, covering the last fifty yards to the gate in only seconds. The wag smashed into the stout barrier headfirst, and the wood exploded into splinters, a rain of nails spraying from the impact.

Baring his teeth in rage, Tant stood firm and steadily fired his revolvers at the looming wag until they clicked on empty chambers. For the briefest flicker of time, Tant saw a single eye looking at him through a tiny slit in the metal hull of the incredible machine, an eye of icy blue. That was when his resolve broke, and the killer dashed for the safety of the berm, but it was already too late.

The great machine leaped forward in a surge of speed, and the prow slammed into him with the force of an avalanche. Pain filling his world, Tant dropped to the roadway and went directly underneath the juggernaut.

For an electric moment of time, he waited to be crushed flat, when Tant realized in a rush of clarity that there was space below the wag. The bottom was almost a yard off the ground! He started to laugh in relief, when the machine sharply turned and the last two wheels went straight for his head, missing his face by an inch but rolling over his left arm, mashing it flat, every bone pulverized from the colossal weight. Shrieking at the pain, Tant tried to pull away and the bottom of the wag slammed against his head, sending him into blackness. Seconds later, the sprawled body of Tant appeared behind the transport, with a small cut on his forehead and his entire right arm bloody pulp. Tears streaming from his aching eyes, Ben rushed over and shot Tant in the heart with a crossbow quarrel, making himself the new leader.

"TRIPLE STUPE BASTARDS," Ryan Cawdor muttered, easing his foot off the gas of the LAV-25 armored personnel carrier. "Guess they never saw an APC before and didn't know what it could do."

"Well, they sure know now," J. B. Dix said, tilting back his fedora as he watched the tiny outpost vanish into the distance behind them through an aft blaster port. When satisfied the danger was over, J.B. removed his finger from the trigger of his Uzi submachine gun and slung the deadly weapon over a shoulder. Lying on the deck between his boots was a bulging satchel of explosives, with a Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun tucked between the straps. Even in the tight confines of the APC, the Armorer never let his weapons get far away from a ready hand.

Ryan nodded in agreement as he steered the wag around a fallen tree and some large potholes. The driver's seat of the predark machine was designed for soldiers from that time period, large men loaded with lots of equipment. Ryan was barely comfortable in the chair, and his wild mane of black hair brushed against the control panel set in the ceiling directly above the Plexiglas ob port used to see outside. The man's face was seamed by a long scar, courtesy of his brother Harvey, and a crude leather patch covered his left eye. A SIG-Sauer blaster, with a built-in baffle sound suppressor, was tucked into the leather holster at his right hip, the curved handle of a panga knife jutting from its customary sheath, within easy access. Hanging nearby from hooks set into the rough metal walls were a bolt-action longblaster and a sleek AK-47 machine gun.

Sitting against the aft doors, Jak Lauren merely grunted in reply as he continued to strop a knife on a whetstone with steady strokes. The pale teenager was dressed in camou-colored military fatigues and a battered vest decorated with feathers and bits of mirror and metal sewn into the seams and collar. But that was a trick; razor blades were sewn inside the collar and any enemy grabbing him soon discovered that the hard way when they lost fingers. The youth was a true albino. His skin was dead white, and ruby-red eyes peered from a cascade of snowy hair. A massive Colt Python .357 jutted from his belt, and at least a dozen leaf-bladed throwing knives were hidden on his person.

"Fools die," Jak stated coldly, tucking away the leaf-bladed throwing knife and, like magic, another appeared in his hand. "What else new?"

"I saw wags on the side of the road," Dean Cawdor said, a Browning Hi-Power blaster held casually as he watched the horizon for any signs of pursuit. "Think they might try and come after us?"

"Those wrecks? Even if the wags worked, they'll be busy squabbling over who's in charge now that we killed their leader," J.B. stated, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses to a more comfortable position.

"Good," Dean said, clicking the safety on his blaster with a flick of his thumb. The boy tucked the blaster into his belt. Although only eleven years old, going on twelve, Dean already carried himself with the deadly assurance of a seasoned warrior and seemed to look more like his father with every passing day.

"I just thank Gaia they thought a wooden beam would stop us," Krysty Wroth said gruffly. "Could have been a lot worse."

The shapely redhead squatted comfortably on the steps leading to the overhead turret, checking the loads in her Smith & Wesson .38. Krysty had lost the blaster in that hellish garage at Front Royal when she'd gotten caught by Overton's sec men. But J.B. had found the blaster under a bench when he'd done some work on the LAV, the weapon discarded there, apparently, by one of the blue shirts. The neat .38 handled better than the powerful .357, and she was happy to have it once again in hand.