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“You’re familiar with the mandate of the Consortium, right?”
Grant nodded brusquely. “Yeah. To dig out old predark tech, and try to figure out a way to enslave your fellow human beings.”
Gray frowned at him. “If you want to believe that about us, go ahead.”
“Thanks,” retorted Grant. “I will.”
“Get back to the subject,” Kane said impatiently. “Why were you patrolling out here with a silenced weapon?”
Fear flickered in Gray’s eyes. “We didn’t want to draw attention if we had to shoot at something.”
“Whose attention?” Kane asked, a steel edge in his voice.
Gray inhaled deeply through his nostrils, fixed an unblinking gaze on Kane’s face and whispered, “The ghost walkers.”
Ghostwalk
Outlanders®
James Axler
Special thanks to Mark Ellis for his contribution to the Outlanders concept, developed for Gold Eagle.
The Road to Outlands—From Secret Government Files to the Future
Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.
Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence. What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.
Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.
In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.
Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends. But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?
Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.
Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.
For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.
After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.
With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 1
Kane did not hear the shot or see anyone with a gun.
The shock of the bullet’s impact high on his right shoulder jerked him around, his feet tangling, his back slamming hard against the adobe wall.
Kane let his body sag to the ground. He could hear only his own strained breath as he swallowed air into his emptied lungs. As quickly as he could, he crawled behind a heap of chipped masonry. Pain streaked up and down his arm like flares of heat lightning, but he didn’t think any bones were broken. Still, he had to clamp his jaws tightly shut against a groan of pain. He fingered the small hole punched through his tricolor desert-camouflage blouse and winced.
His mind swam with anger. Your own fault, dumbass, he snapped at himself. He knew he should have checked out every structure in the ruins of the old village before leaving the shelter of the walls, but
