After an atomic blast hurled the world into an uncertain future, the past still reaches out in hope…and damnation. In a kill-or-die world, one steadfast group of survivors possesses superior fighting skills and sense of fair play that have made them living legends. In their struggle to seek a better way of life, they are unravelling the powerful secrets of the hell on earth called Deathlands.A pre-dark legacy of shattering promise lies beneath the ruins of nuke-ravaged Seattle. Ryan Cawdor and his warrior companions come face-to-face with the ancestors of a secret society whose members were convinced that paradise awaited at the centre of the earth. This cult is inexorably tied to a conspiracy of twentieth-century scientists devoted to fulfilling a vision of genetic manipulation. In this labyrinthine ville, carved from the subterranean passages of a doomed past, some of the descendants of the Illuminated Ones are pursuing the dream of their legacy–while others are dedicated to its nightmare. Even in the Deathlands, twisted human beliefs endure….
Survival is a dangerous enterprise in the aftermath of a nuked America. Humanity perseveres, but the Deathlands code is far simpler: kill or be killed, live or die trying. Driven by the fires of hope, a resilient band of warriors traverse the new frontier of the future, survivors by skill and legends by reputation.The legend of the trader returns in the simmering dust bowl of the Badlands, the past calling out to armorer J. B. Dix. Her name is Eula. Young, silent and lethal, she's part of a new trading convoy quick to invite Ryan Cawdor and his band on a journey across the hostile terrain. But high-tech hardware, fast wags, flowing jack and friendly words don't tell the real story behind a vendetta that is years in the making.
More than a century past the fiery dawn of post-nuclear America, Ryan Cawdor and his companions journey across a land lost yet reborn, where lawless violence and human perseverance clash, and unsolved mysteries hint at redemption. Though hope lingers under the blood and the dust, looking blindly toward the future is the surest way to get killed.Staying hard and cold for today is the only way to survive…Traversing the terrain of Utah, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists find new evidence that the past is alive and dangerous–with a score to settle. Once before they'd battled and destroyed the brilliant and cunning cyborg known as Delphi, but he's reborn and ready to continue his drive for domination. His vast understanding of preDark tech, his cadre of well-armed cutthroats and his legions of worshippers make him monstrous in his quest for power. And he's eager for the keys to the kingdom that only the legendary Deathlands survivors–and their secrets–can help him attain.
Postnuclear America has changed little since the primal leveling of the twenty-first century. Warrior survivalists Ryan Cawdor and his band live by a code that honors the kind of absolute freedom only a raw frontier can provide.Until rumors of a wider, more prosperous world than the Deathlands thriving deep in Mexico, untouched by the nukecaust, lure them into uncharted waters….Captured by the pirate foot soldiers of the mysterious Lords of Death, Ryan Cawdor and his companions sail into a surreal world where electric lights blaze but blood terror reigns. In Veracruz, Mexico, Ryan is marked for slaughter, his effigy linked to an ancient deity. Helpless, Krysty, Dix and the others await a horrifying fate at the hands of whitecoats manipulating pre-dark plague warfare. As the Lords of Death unleash their demonic vision, hope–for Ryan, the others and nascent civilization–appears irrevocably lost.
The end of the world arrived in a nuclear rush, forging the agonized remains of past and present into a new reality known as Deathlands. Now life is a simple series of rules of survival, where having is better than not having–and anything is worth killing for.But in a world that has seemingly turned against mankind, the possibility of miracles can exist….Of all the resources Ryan Cawdor and his group struggle to recoup, hope for escaping the grim daily life-and-death struggle has suffered most. But now reports of a ville holding the mythical waters of rejuvenation, a fountain of youth, appear to be true, luring Doc and the others on a journey inspired by promise, tainted by mistrust. Hiring on as sec men with a convoy headed to the healing waters of Babyville, the survivors discover the deadly price of immortality.In the Deathlands the future looks like hell–and delivers far worse…
The brutality of post-nuclear America has spawned a dark frontier where the harsh and unforgiving new rules of existence cannot obliterate the decency and determination that drive the true human spirit. It's tested and tormented but never destroyed.A lust for power and a strong sec-force are the basic requirements of any Deathlands baron. But brilliant, charismatic Baron Eugene Arcadian has bigger visions than simply a monopoly on jack and trade. He wants the future. Turning his ville into the nascent heartbeat of the new civilization would require the help of Ryan Cawdor and his warrior group. But for these unwilling participants, the endgame of their enigmatic host remains hidden in the secret maze of laboratories beneath Arcady, where a new terror is about to be reborn….
Reborn primeval in the fires of thermonuclear hell, America's aftermath is one of manifest evil, savage endurance and lingering hope. Traversing the lawless continent on a journey without destination, Ryan Cawdor seeks humanity in an inhuman world. In the Deathlands, life is cheap, death is free and survival demands the highest price of all.Magus is a steel-eyed cybernetic sociopath whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Now, the savage Pacific isles above a long-submerged Southern California are his new arena. Ryan wants a second chance to chill Magus once and for all. But as the ringmaster of torture orchestrates his magnum opus, a stunning sideshow is under way. PreDark white coats believe they have found the key to turn back time and intercept the deed that erased human history.
In the postapocalyptic world of Deathlands, the past and its way of life are as obsolete as myth. Now the days are filled with death, violence and little promise. Still, the human spirit endures, and a group of intrepid warrior survivalists dare to believe that out there, something better is on offer. If they live long enough to find it.Across the flat plains of the Dakotas, an iron horse shrieks and rumbles across refurbished tracks. Inside the boxcars, Ryan Cawdor and his companions face trouble unlike any other. Jak is missing, Krysty is dying and the train is loaded with sec men, whitecoats and a horrifying experiment–a baron with psionic abilities using stolen children to fuel his mad dream for mind control of every living soul in Deathlands.
No one waits long for trouble in Deathlands–it's everywhere in the remains of a nuke-altered civilization. The American dream was annihilated more than a century ago by the country's own unchecked power play. But the worst may be yet to come.Built upon a preDark military installation in former California, a ville called Progress could be the utopia Ryan Cawdor and his companions have been seeking. A place where humanity and technology thrive, it's the nucleus of a new hope for Deathlands. The successful replacement of Ryan's missing eye with a cybernetic prosthetic nearly convinces the group that their days of surviving hell are behind them. Then they discover that the high tech in Progress isn't designed to enhance human life, but to destroy it. To block the final assault, the companions must stop Ryan from becoming a willing pawn in the eradication of mankind.
In the wake of a nuclear Armageddon, the hellscape of Deathlands conspires to torment strong and weak alike, festering most deeply in those who still possess the deepest core of human decency. Now the past lies in the ashes, while the mysteries of the future unfold in the hands of those willing to live each new day in search of hope for tomorrow.The endless struggle for power among the barons is a way of life in Deathlands, but Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists take no sides–unless forced to. But as the land around the Rio Grande reaches the breaking point in a bitter war, the companions are harnessed into battle, moving toward a grim confrontation with an old enemy whose secret stockpile of twenty-first-century nerve gas is poised to unleash infinite madness once more upon a ravaged earth.In the Deathlands,history readies to repeat itself…