Showing results by author "James Axler" in All Categories

Carving out a living in the Deathlands is no easy feat. To most, the only thing that matters is one more day spent above ground. To the man known as Trader, the only thing that matters is the bottom line. After Trader and crew offload their last haul, they set their sites on the next score. An underground military installation.

Carving out a living in the Deathlands is no easy feat. To most, the only thing that matters is one more day spent above ground. To the man known as Trader, the only thing that matters is the bottom line. In a mutie-filled, irradiated wasteland, Trader and crew set out to find the scavvie Marsh Folsom. Stories going around say that Folsom has knowledge of an underground cache with a legendary bounty.

Once a fearsome warrior of the new order, Kane discovers a secret that has damned humanity since the dawn of history. Now banished as an enemy of the state, he joins forces with Brigid Baptiste, keeper of the archives, and Grant, brother-in-arms and innovative weapons specialist. In the place that was once called New Mexico, Kane finds the first hidden clues to humanity's future.

Ryan Cawdor's post-holocaust odyssey across America is about to come full circle—Ryan Cawdor is going home. Forced away from Front Royal by a power-mad brother who had already committed fratricide, Ryan had roamed a devastated America searching out the small pockets of life where civilization was being reborn. Emerging from a gateway in the ruins of New York City, Ryan decides to put his own house in order—it's time to avenge the deaths of his father and older brother. 

Caught in the vice of the mountains, J.B. and Mildred are ripped from their friends by snowmobile-riding bandits that worship violence, velocity, and their black-horned Baron. Ryan tries to mount a rescue, but against raging blizzards, drug-fueled barbarians and a fracture in his own ranks, progress is frozen in its tracks.

Near what was once the Pacific northwest, Ryan Cawdor and his roving band of post-holocaust survivors discover a beautiful valley untouched by the nuclear blast that changed the earth forever. Resisting the temptation to settle in that idyllic land, the group is captured and forced deep beneath an extinct volcano to an isolated community of in-bred scientists. These psychopathic descendants of a 20th century government research team are blindly laboring to find better ways of genocide, unaware that the world they are striving to slaughter has already died.

Stories of the Trader and his convoy of war wagons endure in the badlands of post-holocaust America. A dealer in Deathlands' most precious commodities - weapons and fuel - Trader takes note of a young Ryan Cawdor. Surrounded in myth and rumor, Trader sets into motion the beginnings of legend at a place called Virtue Lake...At Spearpoint, the ultimate redoubt housing a valuable cache of predark technology, two opposing wills clash. Levi Shabazz intends to carve his own empire out of the vast wastelands, but the Trader intends to thwart him and end his bloody siege of power. 

Still working on securing the partnership with Grace Milligan for her fuel refinery while in Fairzie, Trader and Marsh cross paths with a scouting party that has followed stories about a fuel source. That’s only the tip of the spear. That scouting party has been sent by Ironhand Jackson, the boss of El Dorado. In El Dorado, Ant, a woman who works as an enforcer for Hoyt Lynch, the self-made lord of Boardwalk, arrives to kill Jackson. Lynch has learned of the fuel refinery’s existence and desperately needs it because his own fuel reserves are running out.

Resources are scarce in the Deathlands, but the mega-cemetery of Oregon holds the treasures and trinkets of three million corpses killed in the nukecaust. Stumbling into warring parties of graverobbers, Ryan Cawdor and his companions fall in with an old ally of J.B. Dix who offers an attractive promise of unlimited ammunition for their services. But the graves hold other secrets that could spell the annihilation of the human race unless their excavation is halted.

A virulent strain of a predark biowep has been unleashed upon the denizens of northern Kansas, turning them into rotting, flesh-eating monsters. Running from the mindless, soulless rottie hordes, Ryan and his companions arrive in the civil-war-torn ville of Sweetwater Junction. They've got one shot at beating the hungry rotties: Turn the bloodlust of the ville's warring factions away from each other and toward a common enemy. 

The Earth is laid waste by a devastating blight that destroys the world's food supply. Mass starvation wipes out millions almost overnight. Society collapses, and those who survive must contend with renegade groups striving for naked power. A new currency comes into existence - precious food and the force of arms that helps get it at any cost.   

In a hidden redoubt in Ohio, Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists take possession of the ultimate Deathlands War Wag — a crude but effective tank called Leviathan. But having this steel-plated behemoth is a double-edged sword when they fall into the trap of Lady Ward of Novaville, who wants Leviathan for her own means of destruction and domination.

Golconda, the secret underground military complex hidden away before Skydark and rediscovered by Trader, is a bounty of riches, filled with arms, ammunition, and wags. But having those things is not enough for the man called Trader. With this newfound wealth, he’s got a dream that’s burned within him. Determined to build a trade caravan strong enough to plow through the most inhospitable areas of the Deathlands, Trader gathers a new crew to face bandits, raiders, and mutie menaces spawned by the world destruction known as Skydark.

Ryan Cawdor and his band of post-holocaust survivors come face-to-face with a specter from the past: out of the swirling dust that was once New Mexico bursts a regiment of pony soldiers, led by a man with flowing yellow hair. Brandishing Colts and Winchesters, the horsemen grimly prepare to destroy the ragtag strangers, intruders who dare to penetrate their ruthlessly defended stronghold. 

Looking for respite after a bitter struggle in Kentucky's Hazard ville, the wayfarers must make do with Arctic tundra and earthquakes. Trapped in the hostile landscape by a mattrans jump, Ryan and companions find the ultimate challenge to their will to survive. The odds dwindle when they become the new bounty in a struggle for dominance between a group of Neanderthals and descendants of a military garrison stranded generations ago.

The battle-weary Companions count their blessings when they find refuge at a tranquil ville, founded on the principles of harmony and enlightenment. However, they soon discover this supposed utopia is anything but. Violence waits in the silence, hidden beneath the pagodas and prayer halls. As sinister machinations unfurl like lotus petals, the Companions reckon with the true price of inner peace in a world gone mad.

Following up rumors of trouble on his old home ground, Ryan Cawdor and his band seek shelter inside the walls of what was once the largest shopping mall in the Carolinas. The baron of the concrete fortress gives them no choice but to join his sec teams. As outside invaders step up their raids on the mall, Ryan has to battle both sides for a chance to save their lives.

Magus is a steel-eyed cybernetic sociopath whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Now, the savage Pacific isles above a long-submerged Southern California are his new arena. Ryan wants a second chance to chill Magus once and for all. But as the ringmaster of torture orchestrates his magnum opus, a stunning sideshow is under way. Pre-Dark white coats believe they have found the key to turn back time and intercept the deed that erased human history. 

Traversing the terrain of Utah, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists find new evidence that the past is alive and dangerous — with a score to settle. Once before they'd battled and destroyed the brilliant and cunning cyborg know as Delphi, but he's reborn and ready to continue his drive for domination. And he's eager for the keys to the kingdom that only the legendary Deathlands survivors — and their secrets — can help him attain.

Ryan Cawdor awakens from a mat-trans jump to inexplicably find himself in a version of his past (just after the events of Deathlands 45: Starfall). Ryan's son Dean is back, Krysty isn’t pregnant yet, and Ryan, who is the only one who feels the pull of the timeline split, is trying to keep it together. The companions are in immediate need of medical supplies and get caught up in a clash between warring barons and a traveling gypsy caravan and circus. Someone ambushes and is sabotaging the gypsies and the companions decide to help.