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Ryan touched the wires together
The jolt of electricity made him gasp, and he was thrown backward with a blinding flash of light. The door squealed as the twisted metal tried to move in the straight grooves of the frame.
“Fireblast! I didn’t expect it to hurt like that,” Ryan groaned as he scrambled to his feet. Then he followed Jak’s gaze.
A thin trickle of water was visible, running faster and then furiously down the crack between the two doors.
Without warning, a high-pressure stream of water shot through the gap and caught Ryan in the ribs. The force threw him against the wall of the corridor, and for a moment light exploded around his head.
Then it went black.
Lost Gates
Death Lands®
James Axler
Fear is a habit; so is self-pity, defeat, anxiety, despair, hopelessness and resignation. You can eliminate all of these negative habits with two simple resolves: I can! and I will!
—Author Unknown
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….
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 One
Ryan Cawdor groaned as he opened his eye. It was gummed, heavy and felt as though a branding iron was being thrust repeatedly into it. Other than that, he was glad to be alive. As always, if he felt this bad, chances were that his opponent had to have come off worse. If he could remember who his opponent was….
At least lacking one eye spared him the pain of double vision. It was a grimly humorous thought that would, under any other circumstances, have made him grin. Not now, though. That would have been a signal to any potential enemy that he had regained consciousness. Besides which, it would have hurt too much. His face felt as though it had been trampled on by a herd of mutie cattle. The type that had razor-sharp hooves.
As the focus of his eye gradually came into some semblance of clear vision, Ryan could see that he and his companions were in a darkened wag. The jolting of the chassis as it bumped over either a rough road surface or a cross-country route jarred his vision, making it hard to pick out detail in the gloom. It also made his body ache. Every muscle and tendon felt rubbery and sensitive to the slightest impact. It felt as though each muscle and tendon had been taken out, rubbed in grit and then carefully replaced. He would have winced, if it wouldn’t have alerted his captors to his conscious state.
Trying to keep as stable as possible, to improve his vision and stop the aches that ran up and down his frame, Ryan cast his eye over the dimmed interior of the wag. It was a basic wag, which looked as if it had been stripped at some point. There were no seats other than the two occupied by the driver and shotgun guard. He could make out three men, all armed with what looked like remade Armalite longblasters, who were hunkered down, backs resting against the shell of the wag. Between them were his companions. Jak, an albino, stood out because of his long white hair. Likewise Doc, whose head was down, his long silver mane shaggy as it banged against the floor of the wag.
With their darker hair and clothing, Krysty, Mildred and J.B. were harder to pick out.
The wag was a closed-in, metallic-bodied vehicle. It had no windows other than the windshield and the two on each door. There had to be rear doors, but these were solid. The pool of light from the front of the wag ended long before it reached the guards and the unconscious cargo in the rear. They were either not supposed to know where they were being taken—assuming the journey was long enough for all of them to regain consciousness—or no one was supposed to see in. Or maybe both. It kind of didn’t matter right now.
But how did they get here? And why?
Ryan was mentally in a fog, and it was hard to remember anything from before the black curtain had fallen. Had there been a fight? Were they ambushed? Or was it…
Fireblast! It returned to him in pieces, and he wondered how they had been slipped
