Hell Road Warriors

FUTURE SPOILS

The human will to survive has sharpened to a knife edge after a century of postnuclear madness. In a lawless land where firepower and savagery rule, power lies with the barons and coldhearts who wield control through terror. Against all odds, a courageous few still fight for something better to live by—honor, decency and hope.

CHILL FACTOR

Emerging relatively unscathed from the apocalyptic rebirth of North America, Canada hides a trove of Cold War–era secret government installations known as Diefenbunkers, filled with caches of weapons, wags and food. Ryan Cawdor and his companions agree to ride sec for a convoy headed west across the remnants of the old Trans-Canada Highway to retrieve the ultimate prize: four portable nuclear reactors. It’s enough power to light up a ville for years, a bright beacon for a new tomorrow. But they have death on their tail, a baron and his sec men who will stop at nothing to claim the prize as their own.

In the Deathlands, the road to hell is a one-way ride...

The boar’s eyes burst as horror pushed through its pupils

The thumb-thick worms in its eye sockets waved like feelers and stiffened like pointers at Doc. The boar’s head swiveled in response, its tusks rasping against each other as its mouth fell open and its tongue lolled out, accompanied by an orgy of wiggling filth.

“By my stars and garters!” Doc exclaimed.

Ryan fired three 9 mm rounds through the dead boar’s head. Its skull broke apart, spewing broken lengths of black worm. The porcine behemoth staggered, but didn’t fall. Fresh worms waved forth from the shattered head and snout as if tasting the air. The corpse tottered toward the humans.

The entire fifty-strong herd of giant, newly dead mutie wild boars began to roll over and rise up.

“Fireblast…” Ryan breathed.

Hell Road Warriors

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.

—Norman Cousins

1915–1990

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

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

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter One

Ryan shouldered his Steyr SSG-70 longblaster and put his hand on the lever to open the mat-trans chamber. His companions had cleaned themselves up from the jump, and everyone was geared up and ready to go except Doc, who was coming down from his postjump shudders. The one-eyed man waited while Doc pulled himself together. The walls of the mat-trans chamber were an amber color densely veined with black. Ryan had never seen one colored like that and it made him uneasy. He didn’t know where they were, but it had to be better than the swamps, and Haven. “Ready, Doc?”

Doc took the hand off the wall he was using to steady himself. He drew his huge Civil War-replica model LeMat revolver and set the hammer to fire the shotgun barrel. “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!”

Doc looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over. His mind and body were damaged by being torn through time from the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century by the whitecoats of Operation Chronos. Proving to be a difficult subject, after a period of time they shot him via mat-trans into the future that was the Deathlands. Having his matter transferred from point A to point B never did him any favors.

Being discombobulated was something no one ever got used to, but looking around, Jak, J.B. and Mildred were post-regurgitation and ready to go. Ryan’s eye came to rest on the love of his life. Krysty raised one eyebrow. “Lover, if you don’t pull that lever soon I’m going to pull yours.”

A grin ghosted across Ryan’s face. “Okay, everyone. Triple red.” His companions spread out and leveled their weapons at the door as he pulled the lever. The door hissed open. Ryan’s eye narrowed. The lights were on, and he could hear the hum of a generator. One glance told him this redoubt was unusual. Most were built to a pattern. The architecture here was all wrong. Ryan looked back at the mat-trans and then into the odd little redoubt. His instincts told him the mat-trans they had just stepped out of had been a last-minute addition. The party moved into a long, low room filled with workstations.

Mildred put her fists on her hips and stared around herself indignantly. “Okay, have we traveled back in time or something?”

Jak shook his head warily. “Hope not.”

Doc’s voice was very quiet. “I dearly hope so.”

“What are you talking about, Mildred?” Ryan asked.

“Look at this place!” Mildred threw up her hands. “I mean, look at it!”

Ryan looked at it. The ceiling was low and supported by squat pillars. Everything seemed wrong. The floor was an odd checkerboard of green and white. “And?”

Mildred sighed. “You see the floors? That’s linoleum. Have you checked the puke-green walls? The workstations are top-notch, but check the watercooler and the other stuff.”

Mildred had been cryogenically frozen over a century earlier and, like Doc, was an unwilling citizen of the postapocalyptic Deathlands. Ryan knew she was on to something. “What about them?”

“This place? It’s kitsch.”

Ryan, Krysty, J.B., Jak and Doc stared at Mildred blankly. When she went predark in her speech, no one knew what she was talking about. Mildred gazed heavenward for strength. “It’s totally retro.” Mildred was rewarded with more tolerant looks. She plowed on anyway. “I’m saying this place was built in the 1960s. During the cold war. It’s some kind of bomb shelter, and it’s like it got refurbished fast and dirty at the last second.”

Ryan nodded. He’d read old books about the cold war in his youth. Having a library of books was just one perk of being the son of an East Coast baron when he was growing up. Mildred was confirming his suspicions.

“Reactivated,” he said. “Probably added that mat-trans at the last minute.”

Jak shrugged. None of that meant much to the young man from the bayous of Louisiana. He had more immediate questions. “Where?”

Everyone turned at the sound of Doc tapping his cane on the wall. He tapped a painted flag over the door to the mat-trans chamber. It had two red stripes, one on each side and a white center. A stylized red maple leaf dominated the middle. A second smaller flag was painted beneath it. Ryan recognized the Union Jack in one corner of the flag and some shield off to the side.

Doc cocked his head. “I am confused.”

That was news to nobody.

Mildred shook her head. “We’re in the Great White North.”

“A Mari Usque Ad Mare.” Everyone stared at Doc. When it came down to being predark obscure, he had Mildred beat hands down. Doc sighed in defeat and translated from the Latin. “From Sea to Sea.”

“So where are we?” Ryan asked.

“Canada,” Doc concluded.

Ryan grimaced. He had been north of the Deathlands a few times, usually against his will and mostly in what had once been Alaska or Siberia. What little he knew about Canada was that it was vast and bastard cold.

“Where?” Jak repeated.

Doc tapped the smaller flag painted beneath the maple leaf. “That is what confuses me. At first glance the flag below is the Canadian Red Ensign, but upon consideration I believe the coat of arms is incorrect.”

“It’s the flag of Ontario,” Mildred said. This garnered her more uncomprehending stares. The physician shrugged. “I dated a radiologist from Toronto once.”

Ryan and his friends walked through the redoubt, clearing it room by room. They found a dormitory, an infirmary and a lavatory all in order. They looted supplies from every room. Mildred found a treasure trove of medical supplies, but it was the sight of toilet paper still in its packaging that nearly made her burst into tears.

Jak raised his head and sniffed the air. “Food.”

“Damn!” Mildred swore. “No freakin’ way! I smell pizza!” Blaster out in front of her, she made a beeline toward the smell of pepperoni and cheese. Ryan didn’t know what pizza was, but he found himself salivating at the scent.

“Triple alert, people!” He kicked open a set of double doors. His longblaster pointed at an empty kitchen. Beyond it lay an equally empty cafeteria.

“Just missed whoever was here,” J.B. observed. “We better take a look around here. Bastards might creep up and attack.”

A recce of the immediate area revealed nothing. The companions went back to the kitchen.

“We just missed pizza!” Mildred was agitated at the loss. Ryan took in several receptacles stuffed to the gills with plastic packaging. A sea of plastic eating utensils lay in the sink. Whoever they had just missed, there were a lot of them. Other people were using this place.

Mildred scoured the kitchen. “Look at this!” Ryan looked. It was a freezer unit. A wall full of them, and walk-in size. It was more than a freezer. It was literally a kitchen cryogenic unit. Mildred picked up a white binder with the Canadian flag on it and began flipping through it. “Jeez! This thing is more sophisticated than the unit I came out of.” She scanned pages of inventory. “Look at this, hams, venison, sides of beef, vegetables, fruit juice concentrate… Man, they even managed to freeze wine and beer!” Mildred closed the binder. “Someone went to one whole hell of a lot of trouble to stock this place, and not just with those crappy MRE packs in the redoubts, but with real food that would be as tasty as the day as it was frozen, even if that was a hundred years ago.”

“Just like you?” J.B. observed.

Mildred’s lips quirked. J.B. was a man of few words but every once in a while he said something sweet. “Something like that.”

Ryan looked at the food vaults and then Mildred. “Can you unfreeze something?”

The physician tapped the binder. “The thawing process seems to take four-to-six hours, depending on the foodstuff, and that’s not counting actual cooking time.”

Ryan wasn’t sure they had four-to-six hours. No one would leave a treasure trove like this unguarded for long. He was starting to get an itchy feeling. “See if they got ration packs or anything quicker.”

Doc opened a regular refrigerator and pulled out four, fourteen-inch-diameter disks shrink-wrapped in military olive-drab packaging. “These seem merely cold. Mayhap like dear Dr. Wyeth, they are thawed and ready for the oven of this brave new world.”

Mildred lunged. Her eyes lit up at what Doc found. “Damn, Doc.” She shuffled the pizza pies. “Pepperoni and cheese…pepperoni and cheese…veggie… Oooh! Yeah! Hawaiian!”

Jak peered at the Canadian military pizza packages. “What Hawaiian?”

“Canadian bacon and pineapple.” Mildred scanned the control panel on one of the large ovens and punched buttons. Instantly heating coils blazed orange. “It says just five minutes to brown the cheese …” Mildred slid in the pies on their packaged plates and set the timer. “What else have we got in there, Doc?”

Doc pulled out two six-packs of olive-drab cans emblazoned with maple leafs. He peered at the fine print. “Lager.”

Jak’s chin lifted. “Beer?”

Beer was at premium in the Deathlands. Only the most prosperous villes could devote any arable land or grain to produce it. Most just distilled shine out of whatever agricultural scraps were left over. Doc looked at the cans suspiciously. “One-hundred-year-old-resuscitated lager—it is hard to lend it credence. Perhaps one of us should test it first and—”

Jak snatched a can. The tab cracked with a decisive pop and hiss and suds spilled over his fingers. He blew off the froth and his ruby-red eyes closed as he tilted the can back. Everyone watched Jak’s snowy white Adam’s apple move up and down as he poured back about half the can. His eyebrows pulled down in consideration as he regarded the can. Jak let forth a belch longer than most sentences he uttered. “Good,” he proclaimed.

“A most potent eructation,” Doc declared. “And a good portent that the lager has lost none of its luster.” He passed out cans to the rest of his friends. He fumbled with the tab for a moment but it cracked and he held up his foaming can. “To good friends!”

“To good friends.” They clicked the cans together and raised their beers to their lips.

Ryan’s shoulders relaxed and his eye nearly closed as he drank. Jak was right. It was good. It was real good.

Mildred sighed and squinted at the fine print on the can. “Diefenbunker? Hey, wait.”

No one waited. Mildred ran back to the inventory binder and pulled up a pizza wrapping from the trash. “Everything around here says Diefenbunker.”

“’Facturer?” Jak suggested.

“No, the places with the mat-trans are called redoubts, but in my day, a place like this was called a bunker or a bomb shelter.” Mildred began flipping through the kitchen inventory binder. “Allotments, Central Diefenbunker.” Mildred stabbed her finger onto the page. “Borden, Borden, Ontario! There was a map on the wall back in the last room!”

Mildred ran off. The team followed clutching their beers and blasters. The woman stood in front of a wall-size map of Canada. Her finger traced a line up from Lake Ontario. “Borden! We’re right here! About, oh, an hour’s drive north of Toronto!”

Ryan scanned the map. There was little red star just east of someplace called Angus. Mildred’s fingers began leaping from province to province locating little red stars. “Look, Nanaimo, British Columbia. Penhold, Alberta. Shilo, Manitoba. Valcartier and Val-d’Or, Quebec. Debert, Nova Scotia. Bunkers, all out in the sticks, but not far from each provincial capital.”

Ryan nodded. “Good work, Mildred.”

Mildred beamed. Ryan didn’t hand out praise often. She went to the nearest computer and hit the space bar. The Canadian flag popped up, but other than that the computer responded to nothing she tried. “Without a password I think we’re locked out.”

Out in the kitchen the oven pinged.

The map was forgotten as they filed back into the kitchen.

“If Toronto’s the capital,” J.B. mused, “then it probably got hit.”

J.B. was probably right, Mildred thought.

They sat around the kitchen counter as she found a pizza cutter in a drawer. She cut slices and doled out fresh beers all around. Krysty took one bite of the pepperoni and cheese slice and closed her eyes. “Gaia…”

Conversation ceased as the friends attacked the hot food and cold beer. It wasn’t often that they got to eat their fill of anything. Much less something that good. Ryan spent some time savoring the flavors. “You pulled your weight today, Mildred.”

“Yeah, well, it isn’t Domino’s.” Mildred spoke through cheeks bulging like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter. “But damn, it’s been a long time.”

“Indeed.” Doc finished his first slice and nodded. “I was always rather partial to Poppa John’s, myself.”

Mildred stared over her fourth piece. “When did you get Poppa John’s?”

“During the time of my unfortunate captivity. Perhaps it was in the Chicago lab… I was particularly enamored of their anchovy and onion pies.” Doc’s eyes grew faraway as he reviewed pain and indignities inflicted upon him over a hundred years earlier. “That is, when the scientists saw fit to share any with me. I fear after my last escape attempt my rations were rather severely reduced in diversity, quality and quantity.”

Mildred felt her eyes sting. Whenever she felt like she couldn’t take living in this hellish future another second, she reminded herself that Doc’s suffering dwarfed hers. Mildred pushed the plate over. “Have another slice, Doc.”

“I believe I will try the Hawaiian, thank you, my good Doctor.”

The pizzas disappeared to the last crumb. Krysty and Mildred weren’t above licking their plates clean. The cans of lager were shaken, turned upside down and sucked for the last bit of foam. Ryan wiped his mouth with the back of his fist. “Someone’s been here. A lot of them. And they’re going to be back. We’ll recce the rest of the redoubt and hopefully avoid a confrontation.”

Doc sighed. “A shame to have feasted so well, only to regurgitate our repast in some mat-trans only the Fates know where.”

Ryan admitted it was one bastard sad thought indeed, but there just wasn’t going to be much time for digestion. “Let’s do it.”

They scouted out the rest of the redoubt. More of the rooms upstairs had been raided. In the second dormitory the beds had been stripped down to the frames. A tool room and a machine shop were bare bones. They came to another room, and J.B. rocked on his heels. “Dark…night.”

Jak whistled.

Dark night was right. Ryan shook his head. The barrel-shaped vault looked like another add-on, quick and dirty as Mildred had said. It was an armory. Many of the racks were empty, but a shocking amount of weaponry was still in place. Ryan counted more than a dozen military blasters, the only difference being their plastic furniture was a dark green rather than the usual Deathlands black. Spare mags, bandoliers and crates of ammo were stacked along the walls.

“Nuke me!” J.B. ran to a rack. “Ryan! Ryan!”

The one-eyed man ran his hands over the racks of weapons as he walked over to where J.B. stood transfixed. Ryan looked at a little bolt-action rifle with a funny little scope that was set too far forward.

“Know what that is?” J.B. asked.

Ryan frowned. The Armorer wasn’t normally the gushing type. But his old friend was a gunsmith of the first order, and the weapon in front of them had detonated his passion. “A blaster?”

J.B. gave Ryan an offended look. “That is a Steyr Scout longblaster, Tactical version.”

“Yeah?”

“It was designed to be the ultimate do-it-all rifle— 7.62 mm, big enough for a good shot to take any game in North America. But look at it!” J.B. handled the rifle with almost erotic enthusiasm. “Unlike most bolts, this detachable mag has a ten rounder.” J.B. flipped the rifle over. “See here? It carries a spare mag in the stock. Here?” He pushed a button. “Cleaning kit in the butt. Here, sidesaddle on the stock holds five ready rounds in these clips. And here?” The fore end of the little rifle split and deployed forward like a praying mantis’s wings. “Bipod.” J.B. snapped the bipod back in place and handed the rifle to Ryan.

It was light, not much more than six pounds. Ryan eyed the short fluted barrel. “Going to kick some.”

“Recoil reducing stock,” J.B. said smugly. “And check the sling. Three swivel positions and two straps. One for carrying and one for wrapping your arm through to steady you.”

Ryan looked at the little scope. “Not much magnification.”

“It’s 2.5 power.” J.B. nodded. “It’s not a sniper rifle. It’s the weapon of a rifleman, of a scout.”

Ryan shook his head. The scope was completely forward of the action. “Scope’s too far forward.”

“It’s supposed to be. Shoulder it.”

Ryan shouldered the longblaster and instinctively wrapped his arm through the sling. He peered through the scope. It was about a foot from his face, but the image within was crystal clear, and he could still see everything else in front of him.

J.B. knew Ryan saw it. “You see! That’s what they call long eye relief. It allows you to see your target in the scope, but at the same time you can still see what is going on around you. When you shoot a Scout, you want to keep both eyes open, and that allows you to…” The Armorer trailed off as Ryan turned his single blue eye on him in vague amusement.

J.B. cleared his throat. “And if the scope ever breaks?” He reached over and flipped up front and rear iron sights. “Back in the day it they said it was one of the fastest, handiest rifles ever designed. Experienced men could bust clay pigeons out of the air with one.”

Ryan wasn’t sure what a clay pigeon was, but taking a bird in flight with a longblaster was something. He was a keep it simple kind of man. He had to admit everything about the little longblaster made absolute sense, and it felt absolutely right in his hands.

“One more thing.” J.B. was grinning uncharacteristically. “Look at the muzzle.”

Ryan looked. It was threaded.

J.B. reached into the rack and pulled out a factory-fresh black sound-suppressor tube. “I’ll work up some subsonic rounds for you. Keep them in the side carrier. Between that and the tube you got a silent shot whenever you want it.”

“Sold.” There were three Scouts in the rack. Whoever had been here had probably looked at them and dismissed them at first glance like Ryan had. “I want ten mags on a bandolier. Take the other suppressor tubes. Cannibalize the other scopes and any parts you can think of for spares.”

“Right. You’ll probably want a slightly longer length of pull. I’ll take a spacer from one of the spares and lengthen it for you.”

“Just grab it all. You can smith it after the next jump.”

J.B. festooned himself with rifles and gear.

They left the armory and followed the corridor, which opened up into a very large room. It was clearly another crude, last-second expansion. Ryan stopped short, and J.B. nearly dropped his load as he bumped into him.