Child Of Slaughter. James Axler
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MORTAL RIFTS
When Doc is taken captive by a band of marauders in what was once Nebraska, Ryan and the companions rally to get him back. But they aren’t just fighting the local muties. They’re also up against the area’s terrifying terrain, which shifts and morphs at a moment’s notice. With their options dwindling in this mazelike region that doesn’t obey the laws of physics, the team joins forces with a beautiful and deadly woman who evens the odds on the battlefield. But while this warrior seems to be on their side, she has a secret agenda that could spell the end for them all…
THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE
Since the nukecaust, the American dream has been reduced to a daily fight for survival. In the hellish landscape of Deathlands, few dare to dream of a better tomorrow. But Ryan Cawdor and his companions press on, driven by the need for a future less treacherous than the present.
Doc heard scuffling down by his feet.
“What now? Rats, I suppose, come to feast on my flesh.” He reached around for a rock to throw but found nothing. “Begone, vermin!” The scuffling got louder.
Suddenly, he heard a different sound from the same place, a distinctive sound that could not be mistaken for any other. Giggling.
Doc’s heart hammered in his chest. He meant to snap some words of defiance to try to intimidate, but before he could, his visitor scrambled forward.
Hands grabbed hold of Doc’s ankles and wrenched his legs straight with an iron grip. Then he heard a voice, high-pitched and girlish in the lightless void. “You’re mine now. All mine.”
And all of a sudden, there were many more hands, coming from all directions. And all of them were grabbing at him…
Deathlands: Child of Slaughter
James Axler
Man, a mere inhabitant of earth, cannot overstep its boundaries! But though he is confined to its crust, he may penetrate into all its secrets.
—Jules Verne,
The Steam House
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…
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