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Devil Riders
James Axler
A century after the nuclear conflagration almost destroyed the world, humanity endures in a lawless land. Those who inhabit Deathlands are either killers or those who would be killed.But an elite few defy the laws of this new natural selection–playing both sides of the eternal game of life and death. Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists never leave a friend behind…or a coldheart alive.Stranded in the salty desert wastes of West Texas, Ryan and his companions find pre-Dark wheels and set out on a treacherous journey across inhospitable terrain. Hopes for a hot meal and clean bed in an isolated ville die fast when the companions run into a despotic baron manipulating the lifeblood of the desert: water. But it's his fortress stockpiled with enough armaments to wage war in the dunes that interests Ryan, especially when he learns the enemy may be none other than the greatest–and long dead–Deathlands legend: the Trader. In the Deathlands the future is here, but the past is never far behind.
“Describe him,” Ryan demanded
The one-eyed man’s heart was pounding in his chest. It was impossible. This could not be happening.
The brothers exchanged a glance. “The Trader? Hell, I dunno,” Sparrow said. “Never saw the guy. He was always inside a big-ass tank, stays behind a blister of the mil glass.”
“How many wags?” J.B. pressed him. “Describe them!”
Sparrow scrunched his face. “Well, there were three, one big wag and two others, each plated with metal and covered with blasters. Big stuff. Baron Gaza was scared to death of the guy. Hell, who wouldn’t be with all his weapons?”
“More,” Ryan said through clenched teeth.
Fumbling for a reply, Jed scratched his head. “Well, I heard Kate call the big truck War Wag One. That help any?”
The universe seemed to go still at those simple words, as if it were breaking apart and rejoining in a new pattern, reorganizing itself on a most basic of levels.
“He made it,” Ryan said quietly. “Trader’s alive!”
Other titles in the Deathlands saga:
Pilgrimage to Hell
Red Holocaust
Neutron Solstice
Crater Lake
Homeward Bound
Pony Soldiers
Dectra Chain
Ice and Fire
Red Equinox
Northstar Rising
Time Nomads
Latitude Zero
Seedling
Dark Carnival
Chill Factor
Moon Fate
Fury’s Pilgrims
Shockscape
Deep Empire
Cold Asylum
Twilight Children
Rider, Reaper
Road Wars
Trader Redux
Genesis Echo
Shadowfall
Ground Zero
Emerald Fire
Bloodlines
Crossways
Keepers of the Sun
Circle Thrice
Eclipse at Noon
Stoneface
Bitter Fruit
Skydark
Demons of Eden
The Mars Arena
Watersleep
Nightmare Passage
Freedom Lost
Way of the Wolf
Dark Emblem
Crucible of Time
Starfall
Encounter:
Collector’s Edition
Gemini Rising
Gaia’s Demise
Dark Reckoning
Shadow World
Pandora’s Redoubt
Rat King
Zero City
Savage Armada
Judas Strike
Shadow Fortress
Sunchild
Breakthrough
Salvation Road
Amazon Gate
Destiny’s Truth
Skydark Spawn
Damnation Road Show
Devil Riders
DEATH LANDS®
James Axler
For my buddy, Rich Tucholka
The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago…had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
—Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life (1923)
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 (#u27cf906b-7d76-5d7d-8eb1-8912d3589312)
Chapter Two (#uccc94392-1bae-5527-9355-5b075da6a2c1)
Chapter Three (#u5eda6c80-44b0-5cf2-9dae-5dca3dfd638f)
Chapter Four (#ud3401580-ae49-57dc-a1c9-27a5477af5b6)
Chapter Five (#u4b872278-7a39-5f52-aa8c-b1130d3d3123)
