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      “You strong boys going to help with these chains, or what?”

      Ryan and Jak leaped from the wag and followed Mitch into the shed while Annie remained in the passenger seat. Jak glanced back, making sure that the woman wasn’t reaching for the shotgun that was nestled in a rig beside her.

      “It’s just through here,” Mitch stated as Ryan trailed him into the shadows of the outbuilding.

      The one-eyed man flexed the muscles of his hand, reaching beneath his coat for the holstered SIG-Sauer. He didn’t trust Mitch or the woman, and he cursed himself for getting into this situation. If Mitch could help them, that was fine.

      But this felt increasingly wrong.

      Baptism of Rage

      James Axler

      Death Lands_®

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Youth is wasted on the young.

      —George Bernard Shaw

      1856–1950

      THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

      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….

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Prologue

      The warm autumn sun played across Doc Tanner’s back, but the cold Nebraska air behind it was heavy with the threat of approaching winter. Tanner didn’t mind. There was something enlivening about that chill, the very essence of what it was to be alive seemed contained therein.

      Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner was a tall man, striking and handsome in his own way. His hair reached down past the collar of his crisp, white shirt, and bright blue eyes peered inquisitively from beneath his high forehead.

      He was a man of great learning, with two degrees to his name and a tea chest in his attic that was filled with diplomas and certificates that he had never bothered to display. Tanner knew that the proof of learning couldn’t be found in degrees, wasn’t awarded on slips of paper. Learning was about understanding, about the application of knowledge in new and interesting and remarkable ways.

      Even now, Tanner’s mind was working over a hypothesis that one of his colleagues had been discussing with him earlier that day. He had been presented with a theory of time movement, his colleague proposing the ability to actually travel through time as though it were a road with way stations and stop-off points. The theory struck Tanner as preposterous, the stuff of science fiction, and yet he found himself turning the concept over and over in his mind as he made his way along the streets back to the cozy, two-story home that he shared with Emily and his children, Rachel and Jolyon.

      Whether possible or not, Tanner realized, the idea of traveling through time held untold fascination. Imagine going back in time to the days of Pompeii or Atlantis or Our Lord Jesus Christ. Imagine if one could go back and halt the crucifixion. Wouldn’t that be a quandary for Pastor Richards when the Tanner family listened to his sermon on Sunday at the local church?

      Tanner smiled at the thought, before pushing it to one side. No, traveling back in time was fraught with danger; the potential to generate a new history, to create a paradoxical situation, was simply too hazardous. Better perhaps to travel forward, follow the road into the future to see the wonders that man would bestow upon himself in a hundred years or more.

      Pushing open his front door, Theophilus Tanner smelled the wondrous cooking aromas coming from the kitchen. “Emily?” he called. “I am home.”

      A moment later, as Tanner hung his jacket over one of the hooks beside the door, his wife appeared, her long skirts swishing about her as she trotted along the gaslit corridor to meet with him.

      “How was your day, my darling?” Emily asked, her voice as soothing as a lullaby.

      Tanner nodded. “It was…” he began and then checked himself. “It was but a mere precursor to the wonder of seeing your beauty once more, my heart.”

      Emily was abashed, waving away his compliment. “You only say that because you smell what’s cooking,” she chastised him. Even so, she stood on tiptoes and kissed him gently on the cheek.

      “Pot roast?” Tanner asked as Emily’s lips brushed against him.

      “Yes, and it’s almost ready,” Emily assured him. “Mayhap twenty minutes before it is served. Time enough for you to shave those whiskers.” With that, she turned and made her way back to the kitchen to check on the simmering pot roast.

      Tanner reached up and stroked his hand along his jowls, feeling the rough stubble that was forming there. Emily had never liked to kiss him when he had evidence of a beard, and so he had always remained clean-shaved for her. He checked his pocketwatch, tilting to see the time in the dull gas-lamplight of the passageway. A quarter of seven. Yes, he could quickly run the razor blade over his forming beard before they sat down to their repast.

      Shortly thereafter, Theo Tanner took a boiling kettle of water to the bathroom at the rear of the house and filled the basin there. His shaving equipment, the blade, strop and soap, were held in the cabinet, well

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