James Axler - Deathlands 37 Demons of Eden

/* /*]] */ Dlands 37- Demons of Eden The Lakota raced to their chief's aid

The steady blaster fire from Ryan's friends converged on the warriors, and he glimpsed a bare-chested man jerk and stagger backward, a crimson arterial spray jetting from a severed carotid.Behind him, over the thunderous noise, Ryan heard Krysty cry out in pain and surprise. Instinctively his head turned in that direction.He saw Krysty, her back against the curving cavern wall, slowly sliding toward the floor of the walkway. Her hand was pressed against her chest, just below her left breast. A feathered shaft jutted between splayed fingers. She kept her hand there as she eased into a sitting position, as though she were trying to catch the blood.For an instant their eyes met, hers showing a dull green in the throbbing bright green glow of the cave.Ryan saw death in them. 37 in the Deathlands series A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDETORONTO NEW YORK LONDON AMSTERDAM PARIS SYDNEY HAMBURG STOCKHOLM ATHENS TOKYO MILAN MADRID WARSAW BUDAPEST AUCKLANDIf 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."For Melissa and Jim Mooney Artists and sacred warriors of the circleFirst edition May 1997ISBN 0-373-62537-5DEMONS OF EDENCopyright 1997 by Worldwide Library.All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.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.and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.Printed In U.S.A.Nothing lives long,Only the earth and the mountains.Death song of White Antelope, Cheyenne war chiefTHE DEATHLANDS SAGAThis 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 Ryan Cawdor withdrew his head from the crest of the ridge and mouthed, "Trouble."Krysty Wroth slowly raised her head over the edge of the ridge, catching only a brief glimpse of a strange, wheeled vehicle outfitted with a white broadcloth sail before Ryan pushed her head down."Your hair might as well be a signal flare," he whispered."Sorry, lover."Mildred Wyeth, J. B. Dix, Doc Tanner and Jak Lauren looked up at them tensely, holding the reins of their horses. They didn't voice any questions. The companions were so in tune with one another's moods from their time of traveling through Deathlands together that they instantly assessed from Krysty's and Ryan's body language that a triple-red situation was in progress.Ryan tapped her shoulder. "Take a look if you have to, but keep your head down."Krysty cautiously poked her head up over the crest of the bluff. She stared at the scene below, barely able to suppress the utterance of horror rising to her lips.The prairie schooneror "wind wagon" as they were sometimes calledmatched the configurations of a longboat. It was about twelve feet long from bow to stem, and a tall mast with a furled sail was set amidships, stretching upward twenty feet. A pair of maneuvering sails was folded like wings against the sides of the craft. Four spoked wooden wheels lifted the keel several feet above the ground. Mounted astern was a huge, wire-encased, four-bladed fan and a diesel engine.Flapping from the rigging attached to the mast were clumps of human hair, finger bones and shriveled ears. A black pennant fluttered from the masthead, bearing the outline of a scarlet skull. Pirates.Krysty recognized that emblem, if not from sight, then from tales she had heard in small western outposts, including her Colorado ville of Harmony. It was the insignia of the Red Cadre, a loosely knit group of scalphunters and marauders who preyed primarily on the Indian tribes in Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming.According to rumor, the Red Cadre set forth on its raids of pillage and murder in a fleet of wind wagons. The leader of the Cadre called himself Hatchet Jack, and as far as she knew, he could be one of the four freebooters below.As if picking up on her thoughts, Ryan whispered, "Don't think Hatchet Jack is with them, but he'll be close by. This little raiding party wouldn't wander far from the fleet, not in that small craft."The schooner stood in the center of a small cup formed by three sloping bluffs and a dry creek bed. To the left was a grove of poplar trees running raggedly between the farthermost hills. Three ponies were hobbled nearby, grazing on the tough saw grass. Two of the animals bore saddles made of wood and blankets. The third was apparently a packhorse.A dark mound, like a huge, humped cigar, lay at the rear of the schooner. It was a buffalo carcass, waiting to be skinned. Its wooly hide was still intact, which was more than could be said for the Cheyenne man tied spread-eagled to the wooden spokes of the schooner's rear wheel.Krysty had heard stories of "peeling," a torture certain marauder bands reserved exclusively for Indians. The pirates had practiced the ritual with great enthusiasm on the man. Entire strips of flesh had been flayed from his torso and upper arms. Great red, raw patches were exposed to flies and the late-afternoon sunlight.Though she felt acidic bile climbing up her throat in a burning column, Krysty studied the victim for any sign of movement. She saw none. His swarthy face was a livid mask of dried blood that had flowed from the crimson patch atop his skull where his scalp had been torn away.She squeezed her eyes shut as the bluff beneath her seemed to spin like a cork caught in a whirlpool. She had seen many monstrous deeds during her life in Deathlands, and had narrowly escaped similar fates more than once. Still, she had never grown accustomed to the horrors people inflicted on others simply for the sake of seeing them suffer.It took a great effort for her to open her eyes again. She sensed Ryan watching her, gauging her reaction. Krysty gritted her teeth and focused her gaze on the woman tied to the front wheel. She wasn't spread-eagledrather, she sat on the ground, her back against the hub, her wrists tied to the spokes level with her ears. She was totally naked, and her knees were drawn up to her chest and pressed tightly together. Krysty couldn't see what her face was like, but her skin was white, though dabbed red in places. Her head was bowed, and her hair, though hayrick tangled, was cut short and dark blond in color.A pirate strutted past her, carrying an earthenware jug. He ignored her and she did the same. Another marauder walked over to the Indian, pushed his coat aside, fumbled briefly and urinated on the man's blood-drenched pant leg.Hoots of laughing approval came from the man's three companions. Krysty squinted her eyes and studied the pirates. The man with the jug was huge and ugly. His swart, flat-nosed face was embraced by a square-cut beard of an unidentifiable color. Gray threads were interspersed with tobacco-stained streaks. He looked to be about fifty years old.The other three were undistinguished in attitude and appearance. None was tall; in fact the one who was emptying his bladder looked shorter than even Jak Lauren's five feet five inches. One of the pirates was beefy, and a potbelly swelled over the waistband of his trousers. All of them had long, wild-looking hair.The only firearms Krysty spied among them were a battered Winchester repeating carbine cradled carelessly in the crook of the tall man's arm and a single-shot muzzle loader propped against the stern of the schooner. The stock and barrel of the Winchester were patched and bound in two places with shrunken and stitched deer hide. The other weapons were a variety of knives, nail-studded clubs and a short-handled ax.The tall man handed the jug to the beefy, swag-bellied man and wiped his beard with bloodstained fingers.Ryan tugged on her sleeve, and she eased back down beside the big, dark-haired man. She dabbed at the film of sweat on her upper lip. "What are we going to do?"Adjusting the black patch covering his left eye, Ryan replied quietly, "We ride in and kill them."He and Krysty slid down the hillside on the seats of their pants. The expressions on the faces of the four people below were tense and watchful. J.B. took off his eyeglasses and stowed them in one of the many capacious pockets of his coat. The brim of his battered and bullet-holed fedora was pulled down over his forehead. With his left hand he held the reins of a roan mare, and his right hand rested lightly on the trigger guard of the Uzi hanging from a lanyard around his neck.Though Jak's white, scarred face was as impassive as ever, his ruby eyes glittered at the sense of danger. The young albino's stance reminded Krysty of a vicious snow leopard, straining at its leash.The other two people tending the horses were the only ones who hadn't been born into the war-ravaged remnants of the United States of America. Dr. Mildred Wyeth and Dr. Theophilus Tanner had been thrust into Deathlands due to prenukecaust technology.A stocky black woman with beaded, plaited hair,Mildred Wyeth looked as though she were in her mid-thirties, but chronologically she was well over a century old. A medical doctor and former specialist in cryogenic sciences, Mildred had entered a hospital in late 2000 for minor surgery, but an allergic reaction to the anesthetic had necessitated her body being placed in cryonic stasis until a treatment could be found.It never was. The world was blown apart before she was revived, and she slept, like a fly trapped in amber, for nearly a hundred years. Ryan and his companions had found and freed her. They had brought her back to life, into a world she had never dreamed existed. By her perspective, she had gone to sleep as a thirty-six-year old professional woman and awakened a moment later to the devastating realization her hundredth birthday had come and was long gone. Amazingly the ill effects of the anesthetic had disappeared.Other than her skills as a medic, Mildred had also proved herself invaluable as a tenacious survivalist. She had won a silver medal for free pistol shooting in the last-ever Olympic Games, and she was the best shootist that any of the companions had ever seen.Doc Tanner, unlike Mildredwho had bobbed unknowingly down the temporal streamwas the subject of a cold-hearted scientific practice known in pre-dark days as trawling. Since the 1940s, American military scientists, and their counterparts in other countries, had tried to reconcile relativistic physics with quantum mechanics. By the late 1990s, the reconciliation attempts had spawned the supersecret experiment known as the Totality Concept. There were several subdivisions of the experiment, such as Over-project Whisper, Project Cerberus and finally Operation Chronos.With the use of a complex matter-transfer device called a gateway, the project scientists had tried time and again to snatch subjects from a past temporal line and trawl them to the present.Their only success was a man from 1895. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, Ph.D., scientist and scholar, was plucked from the bosom of his beloved family and deposited in a sterile subterranean chamber a century down the timeline.Though he learned all he could about the twentieth century, Doc never abandoned the hope of returning to his wife and two children. His constant attempts to return to his own era so angered the whitecoats of Operation Chronos that they eventually used him as a trawling subject again. Rather than send him back, they opted to transfer him to a year nearly a century in the future. The wrenching changes left their marks on Doc. In his worn frock coat, his skinny frame looked gaunt, and his face old beyond his actual years.Sixteen-year-old Jak Lauren had all the hard, bitter experience of a man twice his age. He had whiter than white skin, with fearsome ruby eyes and a shock of blindingly white hair. He possessed incredible hand and eye coordination and favored bladed weapons over blasters. Scars from several near-fatal encounters marked his body, the least of which curved up from the corner of his mouth and across his high-planed face. Though Jak had buried two sets of families during his young life, he hid the tragedies behind a taciturn mask and an eerily calm, detached manner.Ryan Cawdor and J. B. Dix had been companions for many years, since they traveled the Deathlands in a pair of war wags with the legendary Trader. Tall and hard muscled, with a scar running down his face from the edge of the patch over his left eye, Ryan was a natural-born leader.J.B. was an armorer, and he had served Trader's war wags as a weapon smith. His wiry, short frame and unmemorable face disguised a devious mind and a facility with weapons that approached the artistic.By contrast, Krysty Wroth was tall and slim. Because she possessed the empathic ability to sense danger in the offing, she was, by Deathlands definition, a mutie. Her fiery mane of thick red hair was the outward manifestation of her mutation, stirring, curling, moving as if it were a separate, sentient organism.Krysty was also gifted with a power that had been passed down the female line of her family. The women were in tune with the electromagnetic energies of Gaia, the great Earth Mother. By tapping into these energies, the geopower field of the planet itself, Krysty could gain superhuman strength for a limited time.Though Ryan was the group's undisputed leader, he and Krysty were equal partners in their relationship. Though he rarely spoke of it openly, Ryan loved her fiercely. The other great love of his life was his eleven-year-old son, Dean. The issue of a brief encounter between Ryan and a young woman named Sharona, Dean had been united with his father for only a short time. Recently Ryan had enrolled the lad in the Brody School in Colorado, and he missed the boy far more than he had thought he would. He found himself thinking of his son often, concerned for his safety. But travel was hazardous, and the locational jumps unpredictable. So he bided his time to give Dean a chance for independent growth, to let him cope on his own.Ryan and his companions used the gateway chambers to make mat-trans jumps. Though gateways were hidden in subterranean redoubts all over the continent, the vast majority were concentrated in the Southwest. There was always an element of danger when using the gateways, since the destinations were random. As Doc had frequently pointed out, it was like deliberately jumping from a warm yet familiar frying pan into a potentially raging fire of unknown temperature.The last jump had deposited them in a redoubt on a Montana mountain plateau. It was, ironically enough, the first of the subterranean installations they had ever found. The century-old garish painting of Cerberus, the three-headed black hound, was still on the wall, though faded and peeling.Doc was adamant about not making another jump so soon, so the band of travelers decided to strike out overland to explore the area. Though the last time they had visited the region they had been pursued by a warlike band of Sioux, they saw no trace of any tribesmen.They reached a small settlement nestled in the foothills of the mountain and, after staying there a day and a night, they purchased mounts and provisions and rode off cross-country. It wasn't as dangerous an undertaking as it seemed, since both J.B. and Ryan had skirted the fringes of the region years before with the Trader. Recalling rumors of a "free ville" near Yellowstone, Ryan had made that their destination.At the base of the hill, the six companions quietly engaged in a war conference. Ryan quickly outlined the situation to his friends."We've got nine blasters between us," he said. "As far as I could tell, they've only got two."Mildred shifted uneasily. "You want to stage an ambush?""Welcome to the Deathlands," J.B. drawled, checking out the firing mechanism of his Uzi.Mildred cast him an irritated glance. "I don't need to be reminded of where I am, John."Walking over to his horse, a big-chested sorrel, Ryan withdrew his Steyr SSG-70 rifle from its saddle scabbard.Doc spoke for the first time, his tone flat yet touched by anxiety. "You have a plan in mind, my dear Ryan?"Ryan nodded, carefully cycling a 7.62 mm round into the chamber. "Mildred, you're our best shot. Climb to the top of the hill and choose a target with this. When you pick it off, I'll ride out and engage them.""Why just you?" Jak asked."I'm the best horseman, and this maneuver will call for some fast and fancy riding."Krysty fastened her eyes onto Ryan's face. "You may be the best horseman, but I'm the best horsewoman. I'm going with you."Ryan didn't object. "Fine. Shoot to kill.""What about rest of us?" Jak asked."Mop-up," Ryan answered. "Move in on foot after our charge." He handed the rifle to Mildred and swung into the saddle."'Half a league, half a league, half a league onward,'" Doc muttered. No one bothered to ask him the meaning of his recitation. One of his most endearingand sometimes most annoyinghabits was his fondness for quoting predark poetry and proverbs.Krysty mounted her bay as Mildred, with the rifle cradled in her arms, scaled the hillside. Seating her denim-encased buttocks firmly in the saddle, she drew her .38-caliber Smith amp; Wesson 640 revolver. Glancing over at Ryan, she saw that he had already pulled his SIG-Sauer P-226 blaster from his holster. He directed his horse to the right-hand foot of the bluff, and Krysty cantered over to the left-hand side.She sat immobile in the saddle, holding the pistol skyward in her right hand, reins held loosely in her left. She waited. The sound of the rifle shot was an unbelievably loud crack. The vibration knocked against Krysty's eardrums.Almost without conscious thought, Krysty dug her boot heels into her mount's flanks, and the horse lunged forward. Hoofbeats hammered in a thundering rhythm, and she saw Ryan galloping furiously toward the wind wag. He had a good hundred-foot lead on her.The pirates didn't freeze. One of their number lay facedown in the dust, the earthenware jug still gripped in his hand. Thick red fluid leaking from a bullet-blasted skull mingled with the liquor dripping from the jug. The other three men scrambled for their lives, and Krysty tried to track them with her Smith amp; Wesson. The range was still too great for accurate shooting with a handblaster, but she squeezed the trigger anyway.She focused on the running pirates. They were dashing for the line of poplar trees that bordered the far side of the creek bed. One had snatched the hemp halter of a grazing pony and was hauling the animal behind him.Krysty passed the prairie schooner and continued to gallop toward the poplar break, determined not to allow the pirate to get astride a horse. The bearded freebooter with the Winchester paused in his running, turned and drew the rifle to his shoulder. He fired directly at her, flame and smoke spouting from the barrel.She thought she felt the wind of displaced air as the bullet spun past the right side of her head. She extended her arm and fired the Smith amp; Wesson, double-actioning the trigger so fast her hand and wrist began twinging with the strain. The pirate whirled and dashed into the trees, bullets kicking up clods of earth all around him. A dark spot appeared in his lower back, black against the tan of his coat. The man's momentum carried him several yards farther before his legs folded and he fell.A shape entered Krysty's line of vision from her left, and she reined in her horse, swinging her pistol in a short arc in that direction, squeezing the trigger. As the hammer fell, she realized it was Ryan, riding up abreast of her. Krysty cried out in panic and jerked down her gun hand. It was too late. The firing pin fell on an empty chamber.Ryan galloped past her without a word, as if Krysty had done nothing more life threatening than point a finger. Her overwhelming wave of relief was swallowed up by an equally overwhelming wave of embarrassment and anger.Then, yelping a wolflike cry, a pirate cut in front of Krysty. He was astride the pony, leaning over its neck. She recognized him as the coldheart who had pissed on the Cheyenne man.Krysty kicked the bay down into the creek bed, fumbling with her empty blaster, not daring to holster the weapon for fear of dropping it. For a minute it was a wild race, with her horse's long-legged stride overtaking the pony. Chunks of gravel and dirt flew in a shower in the wake of both galloping animals.The bay was gaining, and the woman felt a growing surge of triumph, which abated quickly when she remembered she was pursuing a murderous savage with a blaster that couldn't be fired. She reined in her horse.The pirate, as though sensing his pursuer's predicament, slowed his mount, then cast a fierce, dark-eyed glance over a shoulder. Barking, " Yee-haw ," he sharply yanked the pony's head up and around. The animal neighed in protest, reared, then was bearing down on Krysty. The pirate placed the blade of a knife between the decayed stumps of his teeth and thumped the pony's sides, urging it on.Krysty snapped the bay's head around and heeled it in the opposite direction. The horse floundered for a moment, trying to set its hooves firmly to lunge into another gallop. But before it could move, a heavy weight slammed into the woman's body from behind and a little to her right. She glimpsed and felt a stained sleeve encircling her neck. The fading sunlight glinted from steel, and Krysty took the first course of action that occurred to her. She threw herself to the left, releasing the reins, grabbing the sleeve and kicking free of the stirrups.The fall raised a small explosion of dust as Krysty and the pirate, locked in a straining, belly-to-back embrace, slammed into the creek bed. The red-haired woman released the sinewy arm and tried to roll away, flinging herself painfully across sharp-edged rocks. She levered herself onto her back, kicking out with her right leg, the chiseled silver point on the toe of her boot smashing full into the man's open mouth. His rotted teeth caved in, and blood spurted in liquid tendrils onto his chin.Her attacker made a gargling sound as he coughed up splinters of bone, crimson froth bubbling on his pulped lips. Face a mask of rage, he scrambled toward her, knife held for a downward thrust. He reached out to grasp her by an ankle.Suddenly the pirate leaped to his feet, eyes wide and filled with astonishment. The knife fell from his suddenly slack fingers, and as he turned slightly, Krysty saw a blue-rimmed hole in his temple. He swayed, sighed, sat down carefully, then fell facedown in the rocks. A red-edged, fist-sized cavity occupied the back of his head.Weak-limbed and trembling, Krysty tried to rise. She made it to one knee and slowly turned her head in the direction of the pounding hoofbeats coming down the creek bed. Ryan cantered toward her, SIG-Sauer in hand.He reined to a stop and swung out of the saddle. Standing over Krysty, he extended his left hand. "Why do you look so surprised, lover? You're still alive."Relieved laughter rolled from Krysty's throat. "I appreciate you telling me that.""Thought you might."Taking his hand, Krysty allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. Then Ryan caught her up in a crushing embrace, and pressed his lips to her face. Next page