Showing results by author "James Axler" in All Categories

Washington, DC, was hardest hit in the nukecaust that heralded the Deathlands era. But beneath the crater of radioactive ruins, a functioning city of survivors is crafting a culture that plans to reshape America. Ryan Cawdor and his companions enter into this enclosed, underground world and find an ordered and progressive society based on the tenets of the US Constitution. But as they settle into this seeming idyll, the companions uncover a sinister threat at the ville’s heart and a bold plan to finally wipe out the last remnants of humankind.

Ryan Cawdor awakens from a mat-trans jump to inexplicably find himself in a version of his past (just after the events of Deathlands 45: Starfall). Ryan's son Dean is back, Krysty isn’t pregnant yet, and Ryan, who is the only one who feels the pull of the timeline split, is trying to keep it together. The companions are in immediate need of medical supplies and get caught up in a clash between warring barons and a traveling gypsy caravan and circus. Someone ambushes and is sabotaging the gypsies and the companions decide to help.

Fleeing from the growing sinkhole that was once the Glory mines, Ryan Cawdor and his companions struggle to make their way east to Ryan’s home of Front Royal as a safe haven for delivering Krysty’s child. Along the way, they are welcomed into a Deathlands community based on the structure and devolved traditions of a 20th century Iowa State prison. One of the bizarre customs that has evolved is the tallying of victorious acts of violence as a way of achieving dominance. Through a misunderstanding, Doc Tanner is believed to have achieved 246 of such acts.

Ryan Cawdor's post-holocaust odyssey across America is about to come full circle—Ryan Cawdor is going home. Forced away from Front Royal by a power-mad brother who had already committed fratricide, Ryan had roamed a devastated America searching out the small pockets of life where civilization was being reborn. Emerging from a gateway in the ruins of New York City, Ryan decides to put his own house in order—it's time to avenge the deaths of his father and older brother.

Near what was once the Pacific northwest, Ryan Cawdor and his roving band of post-holocaust survivors discover a beautiful valley untouched by the nuclear blast that changed the earth forever. Resisting the temptation to settle in that idyllic land, the group is captured and forced deep beneath an extinct volcano to an isolated community of in-bred scientists. These psychopathic descendants of a 20th century government research team are blindly laboring to find better ways of genocide, unaware that the world they are striving to slaughter has already died.

Almost leveled by the Soviet missiles that annihilated most of the West Coast, Snakefish is in the midst of a reconstruction, financed by a commodity far more valuable than the usual Deathlands jack. But greed and man's lust for power threaten to shatter the hard-won peace and tranquility of this fledgeling community as disparate factions fight for control of the substance that will give them wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

The world blew out in 2001. Vast areas of what was the United States lie beneath an unbrella of noxious dust and radioactive debris, a mantle of destruction drawn over a land of doom. Much of the East Coast has been oliterated; the Southwest is a land of fire; cities of smoldering ash have give birth to horrifically mutated life forms. Such is the Deathlands, legacy of global annihiliation.

When Ryan ingests bacteria-infested food, he lies near death — his body paralyzed but his mind traveling rapidly back to his early days in the Deathlands...moving through the southwest on post-nuke vehicles called warwags...and his run-in with the Baron. Towse, near what was once Albuquerque, is a ville in a freakishly beautiful landscape populated by scabbies and armed Apaches. Baron Alias Carson and his bejeweled wife, Sharona, welcome Ryan, J.B. Dix, and the Tracker to their treacherous world.

Emerging from a gateway into the snowy barrens of the Colorado Rockies, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior group are forced to strike a deal for survival. This part of white hell is controlled by Baron Nelson, a grief-ridden widower burning for vengeance against the hired killers who murdered his boy. Not far from Nelson's barony lies Yuma, a nasty hellhole every badman in the Rockies calls home. Ryan, Doc and J.B. Dix begin a perilous journey across desolate mountains to Yuma to capture and deliver the boy's killers back to the baron.

Three generations after nuclear blasts all but vaporized the Earth, a group of warrior survivalists led by a charismatic man named Ryan Cawdor roam the hostile environment called Deathlands. Their quest becomes a grim struggle for survival as they search for a better life beyond the nuke-ravaged cities. And it is one such harrowing journey that brings them to the heart of Moscow.

But the future in a world shrouded in the radioactive red dust clouds of a generation-old global nuclear war depends on finding hidden caches of food, weapons and technology - the legacy of a preholocaust society - stashed in lonely outposts known as redoubts. When Ryan Cawdor discovers a redoubt in the bitter freakish wasteland that now passes for Alaska, he also uncovers a new threat to a slowly reemerging America.

Eight Generations after the atomic mega-cull, a shattered world still struggles to heal itself. The iron-fisted rule of the nine baronies is compromised by an intrepid group of warriors who have uncovered secrets as dark as they are damning. For nothing in the history of humankind is what it seems. Reality is obscured by the grim impermanence of power...and deceit. All that remains is the human spirit's enduring will to survive.

The brutal struggle for power in post-nuclear America continues for the nine barons who rule the new world order. These emissaries of a long lost race are facing extinction from within their own ranks and from the rebel forces fighting to reclaim earth and expose the horrifying truth of mankind’s heritage. Computer programs from the world before the Skydark are being salvaged and use to power the cities and villes of the 22nd century. An enforcer turned renegade, Kane and his group learn of a mother load of tech hidden deep within the ocean of the western territories.

Kane and his fellow Outlanders are thrown into a world where the nuclear war never happened but a clandestine war rages on against the sinister forces that still rule humanity. Here, this deadly spectre has openly revealed itself - as mankind's great benefactors. As Kane and his band meld with their doubles in this new reality, their quest to change history is confronted by ultimate evil.

A former enforcer for the new lords, Kane found shelter in Cerberus Redoubt, along with the archivist Brigid and fellow magistrate Grant. They know that unseen forces guard an ancient secret, which has thrown a dark shroud over the future. Behind them stands the impenetrable past. But all that changes when they are suddenly catapulted into another reality - and here, as they attempt to remake the future, the enemy races to turn time into a weapon of destruction.

Deep in the Outlands, in Cerberus redoubt, Kane, a renegade Magistrate from the united baronies, experiences a shocking mind probe. It imprints him with a knowledge that propels him to the other side of the world, with the archivist Brigid and brother-at-arms Grant. In the heart of Tibet, Kane's small group of Outlanders wages a perilous quest pursuing a legend, only to discover they are not alone in their search for the Chintamani Stone. The ancient relic has the power to conduct the final assault on the Earth's destiny...or destroy the destroyers themselves.

The passage of time hasn't healed the ravages of the nukecaust, but where once there was only the Deathlands, new centres of power loom above the domain of the unwanted, the hell zones of the Outlands. Though the outlanders distrust and hate the rulers of the fortified villes, even they wouldn't dare imagine the megalithic power guiding their destiny.

A former Magistrate in the grim world of post-holocaust America, Kane cuts his ties to the ruling order and its launched on a reluctant quest to uncover the truth about a bitter enmity that haunts humanity. He knows the answer is out there - beyond the garrisoned cities, the Outlands' hell zones, the ancient seats of planetary power. Barely ahead of a Grudge task force, Kane and his fellow exiles venture from Cerberus redoubt to the hell zones and other global hot spots via the Mat-trans units.

A dark and unfathomable power governs post-nuclear America. Its tentacles reach from the heart of the garrison - ruled cities to the lawless Outlands where a last bid for freedom remains. A former warrior of the secretive regime, Kane has become a fugitive of the order he once served, racing to expose the blueprint of a power that's immeasurable evil. Kane's quest allies him with fellow outcasts Brigid Baptiste and Grant, all willing to risk the peril of seeking the truth.

Cornerstone is a ville like no other that Ryan Cawdor and his companions have ever encountered. Hoping to find medical treatment for wounds sustained combating Magus and his creations, especially Ryan’s own debilitating injury, they have been brought to Cornerstone by their new friends, a relationship forged from those same battles. The ville appears to be a prosperous bastion of civilization, sheltered from the savagery of the Deathlands by virtue of the community’s relationship with an extraordinary manifestation of the will of Gaia.