James Axler - Deathlands 46 Gemini Rising

Deathlands 46 - Gemini Rising By: James Axler Publisher: Silhouette Books Publication Date: 1999 ISBN-10: 0373625464 ISBN-13: 9780373625468 The satellite dish shook under the steady barrage of rounds Staying low, Ryan knew that attacking meant certain death. Pawing through the bloody clothes of the corpses piled under the dish, the one-eyed man found the wrong end of an AK-47, a bent knife and a single gren. Bullets zipped through the trees on either side, the cross fire closing in like the mandibles of an army of killer ants. Ryan tried to gauge the distance to the fuel dump. The resulting blast would obliterate the whole outpost, chilling him as well as the blue shirts. But if Ryan Cawdor was going to die, then he would take Overton and his troops along for the ride.

Ryan pulled the pin and prepared to charge. Gemini Rising There is not one people in the history of the world to whom gaining their independence had not brought forth the tortures which ancient poets and theologians reserved for the damned. Sir Winston Churchill The Gathering Storm , 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 Chapter One "Git!" the first sec man snarled, leveling his blaster. Dressed in tattered rags, with strips of cloth wound around their feet as crude shoes, the couple before him whimpered in fear but didn't move an inch, so the sec man worked the bolt of his weapon, chambering a round. "We just want to get out of the cold, sir" the man began, raising his empty hands. Without a word, the other sec man worked the bolt of his old BAR rifle. The wooden stock was bound with gray tape, the lens in the scope badly cracked, but the barrel was twice as wide as that of the hunting rifle and shone with fresh oil. "Move away slow, liar," the first guard ordered, edging closer to the gate of the ville.

The wall surrounding the town was built of everything, bricks at one point, cinderblocks at another, field stones and notched logs here and there. But the patchwork barrier stood ten feet tall, and the top glistened with jagged broken glass. The only visible entrance was a wide gateway, the arch lined with bricks supporting two thick wooden doors hung on six mismatched hinges. The left door was bolted into place, closing off half the entrance. The second was open, allowing a glimpse at the houses and structures within. To the left rose a high mound of busted shale, and to the right was a huge excavation, a stone quarry whose stepped slopes extended hundreds of feet deep to a calm pool of muddy water.

In the distance, dark mountains stretched above the thick growth of green forest and disappeared into the gray autumn clouds. "Liar?" the pregnant woman gasped. "Oh, but sir, I can promise you that" "You said you two walked here from Culbert ville," he interrupted. "That was stupid. First off, I never heard of the place, and secondly your shoes and pants ain't dirty enough." The second guard took over. "Plus you claimed not to have eaten in a week.

Ain't no traces of hunger on your faces." "Liars and cheats don't get into our ville." The man wet his lips, turning to look at each of the armed sec men in turn, while the pregnant woman shivered and hugged her thin coat closer to her body. "But, sir," she whimpered, "I'm close to birthing and the babe will die in this cold." "Don't care. I said git!" the sec man shouted, his breath foggy in the early-morning chill. "Unless you wanna take an air dance like those horse thieves!" The couple darted a glance to the gallows, which extended over the stout wall surrounding the ville. A pair of human figures dangled at the end of thick knotted ropes, while a crow sat on one man's shoulder pecking at his face. Hands bound behind his back, the other weakly struggled to scare away the rest of the black birds circling closer and closer.

A strip of bark hung about his neck with his crime scrawled there for all to read. "Mebbe we can make a deal," the man said softly, his tone and demeanor changing subtly. "Last chance," the first sec man stated without emotion, his callused hands tight around the stock of his rebuilt weapon. "How would you like some of this?" the woman asked, lifting her skirts. The guards started to back away, but forced themselves to look just in case it was a diversion so she could draw a weapon. "What's the bitch?" The sec man seemed confused. "Few outlanders want to rape a pregger." She smirked, easing open a tiny pocket on the pack and withdrawing a little bottle filled with white powder. "Now, just a pinch of this will make ya more happy than ten women, and you can sell the rest." "That's paradise for free!" the man added, grinning eagerly as if he had a done deal. "Just let us inside to spread around some of the joy. "Just let us inside to spread around some of the joy.

Okay?" "Jolt," the guard said in horror, and then he spit as if the word itself were unclean. "Stinking drug dealers." "Light 'em up!" shouted his partner, and both men fired. The smugglers were so close the flame from the muzzles actually reached their faces. The .22 long round from the hunting rifle blew away a piece of the woman's forehead, and the gushing corpse staggered backward from the gate, her hands clawing the air. Bleeding from a terrible wound where his ear used to be, her companion snarled in bestial rage and drew a massive black automatic pistol just before the second sec man cut loose. The big-bore rifle stuttered three times so fast it almost sounded like one shot.

The trip-hammer blows of the military cartridges opened his chest wide, and he joined his wife on the frosty ground, steam rising from the red blood pumping out of the gaping holes in their flesh. The first sec man stood alert and watched for signs of treachery from friends hidden in the bushes, while the second guard ransacked their pockets, taking only a small derringer from the woman and the big handcannon from the man. "Never seen its like," the first guard said. "What is it?" "A .44 Automag," his comrade replied, dropping the clip and looking inside. "Big motherfucker. "You could trade for a good horse with that monster." The man grinned as he tucked the gun into his belt. "My idea exactly." "Now, my daughter would like that palm blaster." "Well, it's my turn to get paid, but I missed with the first shot." He tossed over the derringer. "So it's yours. "So it's yours.