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….
Contents
Chapter One
Ryan Cawdor let out a gasp and cracked open his eye.
“Everything all right, lover?” Krysty Wroth, Ryan’s titian-haired lover looked concerned.
Memories of a jump nightmare swirled around his head.
Even though the jump had been tough on him, Ryan was in top physical condition, and his ability to recover from the mat-trans jumps was better than most in his small band of travelers. He’d experienced a bad jump dream, nothing more than that.
“Been better, but I’m okay,” he said. “You?”
“I’ve been worse,” Krysty answered.
Ryan believed that to be true. Her gorgeous mane of bright red hair, which usually lay flat against her head and shoulders after a jump, was full and thick, and cascaded over her shoulders like a waterfall.
She gestured to her right with a nod. “Doc didn’t do so well, though.”
Ryan looked at Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, a tall and skinny man dressed in an old and worn frock coat. To the casual observer, he appeared to be in his sixties, but it could be argued that the man was actually hundreds of years old. Ryan knelt next to Doc and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You with us, Doc?”
“‘Is this a dagger I see before me—’” Doc muttered.
“Can you hear me, Doc?”
“‘—the handle toward my hand?’”
J. B. Dix, the group’s armorer and weapons expert, removed his spectacles and rubbed his head. “What’s Doc talking about
