Dark Resurrection. James Axler

on>

      

       The piles of corpses and severed hearts grew

      Realizing what was coming, the slaves struggled futilely with their bonds, weeping and begging their captors for mercy.

      All but the companions.

      Jak, Krysty, Mildred, Doc, and J.B. were staring at Ryan. Their fixed, defiant expressions all said the same thing: we’re not going to check out like that. Not like chickens on the chopping block.

      The one-eyed warrior nodded in agreement, then he looked away. If they couldn’t escape, they could do the next best thing. They could take out as many of the bastards as possible before they were cut down.

      Ryan Cawdor withdrew deep into the core of his being, shutting out the grisly sights and sounds around him. He wasn’t preparing himself to die, he was preparing to fight and chill to his last ounce of strength. To expend it all, here, now. And when that strength was gone, death could nukin’ well have him, ready or not. It took only a moment for him to make the attitude shift. It was like a gate swinging open.

      And when it was done, Ryan felt a sense of freedom and power.

       Dark Resurrection

       James Axler

      Death Lands_®

      EMPIRE OF

      XIBALBA

      BOOK II

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Special thanks to John Todd, Jr., for the insights he so graciously shared about the geography, history and culture of Veracruz, Mexico, and for his Web site’s excellent collection of maps and photographs.

      Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.

      —Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788–1860

       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

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Epilogue

       Prologue

      John Barrymore Dix staggered forward under the sickening roll of the tugboat’s deck, his stride limited by the steel trace that connected the manacles around his ankles. Rain in wind-driven sheets whipped across his shoulders and back. His clothing was already soaked through, front and rear. Water ran in rivulets down his pant legs and squished inside his boots. His beloved fedora was saturated, as well; moisture steadily leaked through its crown onto the top of his head and peeled over the sides of his face.

      A drowned rat in chains.

      He wasn’t alone.

      Jak Lauren and Krysty Wroth lurched a few feet ahead of him. The albino youth and the tall redhead were similarly drenched, similarly hobbled, weaving from side to side as the slow-moving ship wallowed through oncoming seas.

      Behind the five-foot-six-inch Dix, and in front of Jak and Krysty, were twenty-seven other prisoners. Their captors had passed a rope through their ankle shackles, so individuals couldn’t break ranks and commit suicide by jumping overboard, and thereby avoid being worked to death. J.B. and the others circled around the main deck in a drunken conga line, marching to the beat of the Matachìn coxswain, who sat on a canvas folding chair on the stern. The hood of the pirate’s plastic poncho shadowed his face as he pounded on a steel drum with a pair of rag-wrapped hammers.

      The rest of the galley slave contingent, sixty souls in all, continued to row in unison under cover of metal, pipe-strut-supported awnings that bracketed the port and starboard rails from amidships to stern. Among the chained rowers were Ryan Cawdor, Dr. Mildred Wyeth and Doc Tanner, who watched from behind their long oars as J.B., Jak and Krysty rounded the rear of the superstructure and stumbled across the heaving deck.

      It was leg-stretching time for one-third of the conscripted crew.

      Every couple of hours the Matachìn pulled one person off each of the thirty benches, leaving the remainder to row. The pirates forced the chosen to circumnavigate the tug’s deck at least a dozen times, no matter the weather or sea state—a regimen J.B. figured had come from years of trial and error. Regular stretching was essential to keep slaves in proper working condition; it prevented debilitating muscle cramps and tears. The object was to wring the most out of the rowers before