Arcadian's Asylum. James Axler

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      The baron stood before them

      “Your skills and capabilities will enhance the progress of my ville as we work toward the perfect society. I want you with me, not against me. And of your own free will.”

      “Do we really have a choice?” Ryan asked. “We’re here, surrounded by your sec.”

      Arcadian considered that. “You may have a point. If you made a break for freedom, we could stop you. The fact that we found Dr. Tanner proves we can sweep this ville with relative ease. But if you choose to run, a firefight would only take out some of my men and lead to your demise.”

      “So if we say no?”

      “Then you’ll be held until you say yes. And you will.”

      There was a steel and ice there that betrayed a will that Ryan knew wouldn’t be refused.

      “What do you have in mind for us?”

      Arcadian’s Asylum

      James Axler

      Death Lands _®

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them—and then, the opportunity to choose.

      —C. Wright Mills

       1916–1962

      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

      “They say a week in a truck is a long time. ’Specially if you ain’t got no shitter, and no time to stop. Me? I say it’s how you get to know who your real friends are.”

      Trader Toms cackled in a wheezing, cracked tone that broke down into a phlegm-ridden cough. Hacking and snorting, he drew up a phlegm ball that followed his trail of tobacco juice into a bucket bolted to the side of the wag. He was still wheezing and cackling, shaking his head and repeating the last four words to himself with a shake of the head when Doc Tanner politely cleared his throat.

      “I believe the derivation of the phrase comes from ‘a week is a long time in politics,’ used by media commentators in the decades before skydark. They used it in much the same way, as it was not unknown for politicians to change their allegiances more often than they would change their underwear.”

      Toms wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of a begrimed hand, leaving streaks of dirt in their wake. “Hell, that wouldn’t be difficult with me,” he breathed, the rattle in his chest making the words seem echoed and distant. “I gotta say, Doc, that’s why I like having you around. You may be madder than a bunch of stickies put in sack and beaten with clubs, but you know some seriously old and weird shit. Just like you, in fact.”

      “Why, thank you,” Tanner replied mildly. To be sure, the fat man seated in front of him may have uttered those words in a tone that suggested he meant no insult—indeed, was growing fond of Doc—but the old man still had to bite back the bile and not heed to the temptation of taking the fat man’s equally fat head and ramming it into the bucket, so that he drowned in his own spit and phlegm.

      Grinding his teeth, he glanced across to where Jak Lauren sat, cradling his 357 Magnum Colt Python as though it were a newborn babe. The albino youth’s face was as impassive as ever, but as their eyes met briefly there was a flicker that told Doc he would be backed up all the way.

      But no: keep quiet, smile politely, and wait for the big payoff. It had been a long trek across the plains, with the companions unsure of where the next ville or settlement may lay, and their horses were almost exhausted—as were they—when the approaching convoy had become more than a cloud of dust on the horizon.

      With no cover, and sapped of their energy, all that they could do was stand their ground and wait to see if the newcomers were hostile. Fortunately—or perhaps not, he mused as he watched the repulsive fat man wobbling on his seat—they had been greeted with nothing so much as deference. The convoy had drawn to a halt at a distance that had indicated no immediate attack would be forthcoming, and the fat man and his two sec lieutenants had dismounted from their wags to approach. This they did unarmed, before declaring themselves and making it known that, if little else, they had recognized Ryan and J.B. by description.

      “You can see I got me one hell of a convoy, and I could use extra sec. ’Specially sec that knows what the hell it’s doing. And you boys do. Guess the rest of you ain’t no useless crap, either, else you wouldn’t be riding with One-eye and Four-eyes.”

      The offensive words contrasted with the artless and disingenuous way in which they were spoken. If nothing else, Doc had to admit, they had been aware of Trader Toms’s failing from the first.

      With little in the way of food and water left between them, and no real knowledge of the terrain, it had been an offer that couldn’t be refused.

      Although, as the fat man shifted on his seat, raised one ass cheek and let rip with a fart so loud that it sounded above the whining note of the engine, Doc did