James Axler - Deathlands 59 Amazon Gate

It was a hard battle, but the hordes of muties grew less

The Amazons raced forward to gain ground, treading on the corpses of their chilled foes and driving the remaining stickies back. Surveying the carnage, Ryan gave a sigh of relief and exhaustion. "Fireblast, I thought they'd never stop coming."

"They'll need to regroup, too," Gloria stated, "if they're going to attack. So we should have some time." The Gate queen directed her people to make camp, clear the chilled and tend to the few minor wounds the warriors had received.

Ryan gathered together his people. Speaking softly, he said, "It's not the stickies I'm worried about." Doc noticed the puzzled look that Jak gave the one-eyed man, and spoke. "If I am not mistaken, my dear Ryan, you allude to the fact that our little mutie friends were genetically altered?"

Ryan nodded. "And if we're approaching the place you've heard of, then"

"Then the danger may not be from the stickies," Mildred finished.

A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

TORONTO NEW YORK LONDON AMSTERDAM PARIS SYDNEY HAMBURG STOCKHOLM ATHENS TOKYO MILAN MADRID WARSAW BUDAPEST AUCKLAND

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

First edition September 2002

ISBN 0-373-62569-3

AMAZON GATE

Copyright 2002 by Worldwide Library.

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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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Sometimes I wondered if it was possible that the whole structure of government wasn't just some sort of absurd joke, and that underneath it all, underpinning the whole structure and fabric of our society, there was a covert and secret society that had it all nicely arranged for their own ends. After all, if Adam Weishaupt had gotten his way, then the Illuminati would be running the world. Maybe they were. The only consolation is that they'd bomb themselves out of existence, which isn't much of a consolation, is it?

Printed inU.S.A.

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 endurein 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

Something was wrong, but for the life of himand it could mean thatJak Lauren was unable to work out exactly what it was.

The albino hugged the ground, smelling the rich loam as it filled his nostrils with a heady scent. The roots and leaves of the plants mixed into a rich aroma that still couldn't hide the stench of death, the rancid aroma of rotting flesh and dried blood that permeated his clothes and into his very skin.

He blinked, his red eyes stung by the sweat that trickled into them. Despite the irritation, he resisted the temptation to reach up and wipe the liquid away, loath to move his arm and disturb the foliage around him. Until he was sure what was happening, even the slightest movement was a danger. Even the merest whisper of a rustle could bring death down on him.

Jak's long white hair was lank and loose around his face, strands of it plastered to his skin while other loose hairs tickled and poked at the corners of his nose and mouth. Like the sweat, he ignored the irritation.

Instead, he focused on what was around, straining every nerve end, concentrating his senses so hard that he could almost hear the blood pounding in his veins, the hissing of his own central nervous system.

None of that did anything to waylay the gnawing at the pit of his stomach. Jak knew fear; despite his always seeming calm in the middle of a firefight, his stillness when hunting and stalking, his almost stoic acceptance of every dangerous situation he had faced in his journeys across the Deathlands, Jak knew fear, recognized and embraced it. Embraced it, and yielded to it rather than fight it and set his body at war with itself. It was only by knowing fear and accepting it that he could gain the calm to find space in which to act rather than react, to take control and win.

Jak knew fear, and this wasn't fear. The nagging, insistent feeling was more akin to anxiety, to a fear of the future, to a knowledge that there was something awful and awe-filled around the corner. Something large and unknown that would leave him with no indication of how to defeat it.

It was then that he realized what the gnawing was. It wasn't fear; it was the terrible knowledge that he couldn't win. The inevitability of the great chill.

His breathing stilled until it had almost stopped. He returned the center of his attention to the immediate surroundings. It was still and calm, with no life or movement around him. The smell of death was now old, no longer immediate.

Jak knew it was time to move. With an infinite degree of care, he moved his sinuous muscles, bringing his limbs to a position where he was able to lift his prone body in one swift and flowing movement, rising to his feet in a fraction of a second, hair and skin like the white tip of a suddenly peaking wave. At the apex of his rise, he shot a glance around before dropping to his haunches. There had been nothing in view, no movement of any kind. Unusual for that aloneno sign of bird or animal life, no predators or scavengers moving in on the chilled corpses. Now, hunkered in the grass and foliage, partially sheltered but still able to keep a clear view for a full 360 degrees, Jak took stock of his thoughts and tried to remember what had happened.