Tainted Cascade

Tainted Cascade
James Axler

The blighted aftermath of a global nuclear showdown, Deathlands exacts a blood price. The living pay it; the dead don't care. For one legendary band of warriors, this barbaric new world holds a chance for redemption: the secrets of the past. They roam a disfigured America, searching for pre-dark tech…seeking the path to a future worth living.Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert remains a death pit of scorching heat, cannies and grim odds. Ryan Cawdor and his group survive the trek there, only to be drugged, robbed and left for the slave trade. Escaping their captors leaves them alive but stripped of their prized gear: their weps, J. B. Dix's glasses, Dr. Mildred Wyeth's medical kit and, worse, her secret codex. The companions must rely on each other to challenge their enemy and settle the score.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ryan demanded

Mildred didn’t answer. She turned away and rammed two stiff fingers down her throat, trying to induce vomiting. It took Ryan only an instant to understand. With a curse he tossed away the canteen. Poisoned. The whole bastard lake was poisoned!

Dropping the Steyr, the man clumsily cut his arm with the panga, hoping the pain would keep him awake as his world started to go dark. But Ryan barely felt the passage of steel through his skin and knew that it was already too late.

Enraged over his failure to recognize the trap, Ryan felt an adrenaline surge course through his body. But the brief respite vanished quickly, and, still fighting to remain conscious, the one-eyed man slumped to the ground and went still. The rest of the companions joined him moments later.

Soon, there was no movement at the crystal lake other than the steady rush of the waterfall and the bright sunlight reflecting off the gentle waves.

Tainted Cascade

Death Lands

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

Slavery as an institution that degraded man to a thing has never died out. In some periods of history it has flourished: many civilizations have climbed to power and glory on the backs of slaves. In other times slaves have dwindled in number and economic importance. But never has slavery disappeared.

—Milton Meltzer

1915–2009

Slavery: A World History

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 Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Moving low and fast, the six sweaty horses galloped across the blazing plain of the Great Salt desert, the grim-faced riders hunkered low in the saddles, their hands desperately reloading weapons.