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      Where ere we tread, ’tis haunted, holy ground.

      —Lord Byron, acclaimed poet and

      founder of Romanticism

      World’s full of ghosts. They ain’t real, but they’re

      everywhere. Maybe learn from ’em. If we

      do, maybe we don’t make their mistakes again.

      —Domi, survivor, pragmatist and fighter for a rebuilt future

      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 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 1

      Cerberus redoubt had repelled the invasion by Ullikummis and his cult, but at great cost. Brigid Baptiste was missing, and Manitius base scientists such as Clem Bryant, Daryl Morganstern and Henny Johnson were dead.

      Mohandas Lakesh Singh took another step, his breath coming raggedly in the relentless New Mexican heat. Ahead of him, the feral albino outlander girl Domi scouted, pausing to look back over her shoulder every few moments, concern etched across her porcelain features. The wild woman had already fashioned a head wrap from the scientist’s shirt, tying the sleeves around his forehead, then flipping the tails of the shirt over like a hood. Lakesh felt like something out of Lawrence of Arabia, but he had to admit that the cover kept him from sweating too much, and what moisture he lost was wicked away by the garment.

      Domi stopped and crouched low, her ruby-red eyes sweeping the edge of the scruff ahead of them. Back before the nukecaust, engineered by the Annunaki overlords, the ground they covered had been a highway that cut through the desert. Now Lakesh was getting his kicks on the cracked and centuries-worn Route 66. Ironically, thanks to the desertification of “the Mother Road,” it had not been considered a vital target for Soviet nuclear missiles, and long stretches of the old interstate highway were relatively intact and easily traveled.

      Lakesh pulled a map from his pocket, feeling the tremors in his hands.

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