Breakthrough. James Axler

on>

      

      Ryan looked at his old friend. “You know what to do, J.B.”

      His hands up, the Armorer stepped into the line of fire. “Now, take it easy,” he said to the tall, backlit figures just inside the cave entrance. “You know we can’t hurt you. You don’t have to prove anything more to us. We’re giving up. See?”

      Black figures approached with their laser rifles pointed at his head. One of them came within ten feet of him before it stopped. “Where are the others?” it asked.

      “Yahhh!” J.B. bellowed at the top of his lungs.

      Ryan echoed the yell as he swung out from behind the rock. The others yelled, too, as hard as they could, to keep from being deafened as the Smith & Wesson pump gun roared in the enclosed space. Orange flame from the muzzle blast licked the ceiling. Ryan racked and fired, racked and fired as fast as he could. On the third blast, there was a mighty groan from above, then in a cloud of dust, the ceiling of the entry chamber came crashing down.

      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

      DEATH LANDS®

      James Axler

      We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

      —Lydia Maria Child

      1802–1880

      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

       Prologue

       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