Shadow Box. James Axler

      

      The monster held in place for a moment

      Then the huge beast staggered, a brief three-step dance across the sand, before bellowing another of its unearthly banshee wails, boiling saliva pluming around its face.

      Kane watched in horror as the monster threw the crocodile-masked Incarnate to one side, and the man went head over heels before slumping to the ground, covered in sand. At the same time, the monster seemed to turn, to spin in place, its reverse-hinged legs kicking up great clumps of sand, moving faster and faster.

      A blur, and then nothing. The creature was gone.

      Kane rushed over before Brigid could stop him, ignoring her pleas to be careful. There was a hole in the ground now, a roughly circular tunnel that appeared to go straight down. Kane could hear scrabbling down there as the nightmarish creature disappeared from view, and he kept his Sin Eater trained on the opening in the sand for a long moment, debating in his mind whether he should follow.

      Shadow Box

      Outlanders^®

      James Axler

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Special thanks to Rik Hoskin for his contribution to this work.

      “Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live?

       Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the

       spark of existence which you had so wantonly

       bestowed?”

      —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818.

      The Road to Outlands—

       From Secret Government Files to the Future

      Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

      Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

      What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

      Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

      In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

      Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

      But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

      Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

      Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

      For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

      After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

      With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 1

      A dog’s carcass lay in the middle of the street in the town called Hope. Rats surged around the corpse like a flowing river, yanking off strips of flesh with their needle-sharp teeth.

      Brigid Baptiste suppressed a shudder and turned away from the revolting spectacle as she and Kane and Grant followed their diminutive guide through the narrow, twisting streets of the shantytown.

      Hope was located somewhere along the southern coast of California, close to what had been the border with Arizona. With the recent fall of several baronies, the small Outland villes had been swamped with refugees seeking food and shelter. Eighteen months ago, Hope had been a quaint fishing ville with a population of less than two hundred. Now its populace had swelled to over five thousand and a vast, makeshift settlement had formed at its outskirts.

      Theft and murder were daily occurrences; what people wanted they simply took. That wasn’t the whole story, of course. Many of the refugees had come to Hope genuinely looking to create a better life for themselves and their families. But crime had escalated over recent months, and Hope had become a destination for scoundrels of every stripe to hide out and carve a niche for themselves, free from reprisals.

      Kane, Grant and Brigid had come to Hope chasing a rumor. Word had it that a black marketer called Tom Carnack possessed some very valuable salvage and was offering it to the highest bidder. Carnack presided over a whole tribe of loyal brigands, and he rarely left the safety of his base in the Hope shantytown.

      The Cerberus crew had heard that Carnack was currently in possession of the genetic material from the baron reproduction program. The rulers of the baronies had been hybrids of human and alien DNA, and they had governed with an iron fist. More recently it had come to light that these strange hybrids were in fact the chrysalis state of a higher form of life, a warlike alien race called the Annunaki whose goal was the absolute subjugation of humankind. The ever present threat of the return of the Annunaki hung heavily over every human being on the planet. The objective of the Cerberus team had always been to safeguard humankind. Carnack’s promise of reborn barons did not bode well.

      “They