by James Axler
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
The survivors of postnuclear America struggle against the free fall into anarchy and barbarism. Hot lead keeps people sharp, but it’s the fire within that keeps them alive. Ryan Cawdor and his band roam Deathlands searching for somewhere to call home. Until then, it’s survival at all cost.
LINE OF ATTACK
New Hampshire is rich with big game, more than enough to feed Ryan and his hungry companions. But claims to a fallen elk get ugly and Ryan is forced to chill another hunter, the self-proclaimed king of the Granite Highlands, over the meat. Soon the hunters become the hunted as the dead man’s widow gives chase, armed with predark tanks and heavy artillery. As the kill zone widens across cannibal-ridden lava fields, Ryan and his group search for leverage in the merciless landscape.
Krysty bent forward slightly as if she was about to burst into a run
“Sense anything?” J.B. asked.
“Too much,” she replied, rubbing her temple, “with so many people dying violently inside the ship.”
Taking a revolver from the wall, Ryan cracked open the cylinder and checked inside. “Not fired,” he said, closing the weapon with a snap of his wrist. “They were caught by surprise.”
“And who leaves working blasters behind?” J.B. said. “That makes no sense at all unless—” In the darkness, they heard a noise and something flew across the office to hit the Armorer in the throat.
Staggering backward, J.B. crashed into a desk. His glasses came off as he collapsed against a wall, the Uzi tumbling away, his fingers twitching feebly….
Other titles in the
Deathlands saga:
Way of the Wolf
Dark Emblem
Crucible of Time
Starfall
Encounter: Collector’s Edition
Gemini Rising
Gaia’s Demise
Dark Reckoning
Shadow World
Pandora’s Redoubt
Rat King
Zero City
Savage Armada
Judas Strike
Shadow Fortress
Sunchild
Breakthrough
Salvation Road
Amazon Gate
Destiny’s Truth
Skydark Spawn
Damnation Road Show
Devil Riders
Bloodfire
Hellbenders
Separation
Death Hunt
Shaking Earth
Black Harvest
Vengeance Trail
Ritual Chill
Atlantis Reprise
Labyrinth
Strontium Swamp
Shatter Zone
Perdition Valley
Cannibal Moon
Sky Raider
Remember Tomorrow
Sunspot
Desert Kings
Apocalypse Unborn
Thunder Road
Plague Lords (Empire of Xibalba Book I)
Dark Resurrection (Empire of Xibalba Book II)
Eden’s Twilight
Desolation Crossing
Alpha Wave
Time Castaways
Prophecy
Blood Harvest
Arcadian’s Asylum
Baptism of Rage
Doom Helix
Moonfeast
Downrigger Drift
Playfair’s Axiom
Tainted Cascade
Perception Fault
Prodigal’s Return
Lost Gates
Haven’s Blight
Hell Road Warriors
Palaces of Light
Wretched Earth
Crimson Waters
No Man’s Land
Nemesis
Chrono Spasm
James Axler’s
DEATHLANDS
Sins of Honor
Honor is not about making the right choices. It is about dealing with the consequences.
—Sophocles
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 One
Ignoring the rumbling in his empty stomach, Ryan Cawdor took a deep breath to steady his aim, set the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on the velvety throat of the huge elk and gently squeezed the trigger. The crack of the longblaster rang out in the snowy forest, disturbing the early morning peace of the New Hampshire foothills.
Squirrels, birds, rabbits and winged lizards burst out of hiding from among the various shrubbery and fled into the distance. Several hundred yards away, the steel-jacketed round punched cleanly through the elk, and the animal screamed in pain as red blood gushed from both sides of its neck. Staggering away from a partially frozen creek, clear water dripping from its distorted mouth, the dying animal blindly slashed around with its deadly antlers at the unseen source of the terrible pain for an exceptionally long time. But every movement only caused fresh blood to gush from the hole. Soon its eyes dimmed, the movements slowed, then with a terrible shudder the elk collapsed heavily to the frosty ground and went still.
“Dark night, that was a good shot!” J. B. Dix exclaimed, slapping the other man on the shoulder. “Looks like we eat tonight.”
“Finally...” Krysty Wroth sighed, the word almost becoming a laugh with her profound relief.
Working the arming bolt of the Steyr Scout to chamber another 7.62 mm round, Ryan said nothing in reply, his full attention on the tall pine trees surrounding the motionless elk.
There was a rustle in the nearby pine trees and a huge shapeless mutant descended from the shadowy bough. Nearly transparent, the flapjack quickly undulated across the clearing, drawn irresistibly toward the smell of fresh blood. As it neared the elk, the mutie eagerly extended a ropy appendage toward the pool of crimson on the icy ground.
Tracking the mutie, Ryan aimed and fired again.
A second shot dully boomed from the opposite direction of the snowy foothills. Even as the 7.62 mm round plowed through the flapjack, it also jerked as another bullet slammed into the creature with triphammer force. The crisscrossing rounds spun the flapjack around, gobbets of transparent flesh smacking into the laurel bushes and tall pine.
Chittering in agony, the mutie re-formed as best as it could, and weakly flowed back toward the safety of the dark trees. But the two rifles fired again, the double report echoing across the snowy landscape. The 7.62 mm hollowpoint round went deep into the amorphic creature and exploded out the other side leaving a ragged hole larger than a clenched fist. At the exact same time, a massive .66 miniball plowed through the thing, tearing a wide tunnel of ragged flesh and crushing internal organs.
Sticky fluids pumping from the hideous wounds, the dying flapjack changed direction toward the bushes, when the two longblasters fired in unison. The diverging rounds tore the translucent mutie apart, and pieces of it landed on a patch of snow, the clear body slowly darkening into a mottled brown ooze.
As the first traces
of gunpowder had reached the forest, dozens of small animals scampered away from the deadly clearing, and soon a deep silence engulfed the forest, the only sounds coming from the babbling creek and the rustle of the wind through the gently swaying nettles.
“Anybody zero the other shooter?” Ryan demanded, working the bolt action on the Steyr Scout to eject the spent cartridge. Catching the empty brass, he tucked it into a pocket for reloading in the future.
Ryan was a tall man, towering above the other members of the group by several inches, and he radiated a sense of physical strength the way a campfire did heat. Curly black hair hung almost to his shoulders, and the hole where his left eye used to be was covered with a black leather patch.
“Alas no, my dear Ryan,” Doc Tanner rumbled, squinting in the distance. “He is as Hermes, messenger of the gods. Unseen as a ghost in the morning fog.”
Looking as if he had just stepped out of the ancient past, Dr. Theophilius Algernon Tanner was dressed in knee-high boots, black pants, a frilly white shirt and a long swallow-tail frock coat. Although clean, his clothing had clearly seen better days and some of the patches were starting to come loose and reveal bullet holes in the fabric.
A gunbelt was strapped around his waist, a massive replica LeMat .44 revolver holstered at his hip. The leather ammunition loops in the gunbelt were most empty, but the nine chambers of the titanic LeMat were completely full, including the stubby 18-gauge mini-shotgun attached underneath the main barrel of the oddball weapon.
Looking through a pair of dented National Guard binoculars, a stocky black woman gave a rude snort. “Crazy old coot,” Dr. Mildred Wyeth muttered.
Turning sideways, Doc flashed oddly perfect teeth. “Just because I may be a crazy old coot, madam, does not automatically mean that I am also wrong. Correct?”
Having no salient reply to that, Mildred merely shrugged and continued to search for the other shooter.
“Found! Two clock, tree line,” Jak Lauren whispered, pointing in that direction with a 357 Magnum Colt Python revolver.
A true albino, his hair was the color of new snow, with his skin almost as pale, although the chill in the air gave the young man a faint pinkish hue this morning.
“Well, I don’t mind one more at the campfire,” J.B. stated, adjusting the wire-rimmed glasses perched on his face. “There’s plenty of meat. That buck must easily weigh a couple of hundred pounds. No prob!”
“What if want all?” Jak asked pointedly.
“Then he chews lead,” J.B. replied, swinging around a 9 mm Uzi machine pistol, and working the arming bolt. Aside from the Uzi machine pistol, J.B. also had an S&W M-4000 shotgun slung across his back. A battered leather bag that held munitions hung at his side.
“Unfortunately, he’s not alone,” Krysty added, her long crimson hair moving as if stirred by secret winds that only it could feel.
The statuesque beauty was wearing a bedraggled bearskin coat over a green military blouse and denim pants that were barely able to contain her shapely figure. The wide leather belt around her trim waist supported a sheathed knife and a canteen, but there was also a double row of ammunition loops, only a few of them containing live bullets
“How many more?” Ryan demanded sharply.
Krysty frowned. “A lot.”
“A dozen?”
“Easily.”
“Fireblast,” Ryan growled, resting the Steyr on a shoulder. “Be nice if we still had that implo gren.”
“Cows and wags, lover.”
“True enough,” Ryan muttered.
The morning chill seemed to have no effect on the big man and his fur-lined coat hung open, allowing him fast access to the SIG-Sauer handblaster and a curved panga sheathed on his gunbelt. Two bandoliers of rifle ammunition crisscrossed his chest.
“Pity the redoubt was empty,” Krysty said, studying the distant clearing for any more scavengers.
“The last two were empty, as well,” Ricky Morales complained, taking a swig from a battered aluminum canteen. “I’m almost hungry enough to try that flattened roadkill we found yesterday!”
“Not been that hungry,” Jak stated grimly, then he relented with a friendly chuckle. “But mighty close!”
Wearily, Ricky nodded in agreement. The tepid water had eased the growling in his stomach, but didn’t make it go away entirely.
At sixteen Ricky was well on the way to becoming a husky young man. A big-bore Webley .45 revolver was held casually in his hand, and a bolt-action DeLisle carbine was slung across the back of his recently acquired FBI parka.
“Any chance we can negotiate a deal?” Mildred asked, resting her hand on her holstered blaster. “It’s been three days since our last real meal, and that can of string beans the seven of us split for breakfast barely took the edge off my appetite.”
Her old Czech .38 ZKR target pistol was holstered on her right hip and there was a worn canvas satchel slung over her left shoulder.
“Only one way to find out,” Ryan stated, breaking cover by walking out of the snowy hedges.
Immediately there was a flurry of movement in the distant hills and a huge man stepped into view from a huckleberry patch. The stranger was colossal, much taller than even Ryan, with a sloping brow and protruding jaw that gave him a definite simian appearance. He walked in the rolling gait of a sailor on a ship during a storm.
“Mutie?” Jak asked, scratching his nose in case the other man could read lips from this distance.
“No, just big,” Mildred replied, adjusting her scarf for the same reason. “There was a professional wrestler back in my time called André the Giant. He was so huge it was hard to believe he was just one guy.”
“His bastard size is not what’s worrying me,” Ryan countered, subtly shifting his grip on the Steyr.
He was unimpressed by the other man’s statue—hot lead brought down almost everything in the Deathlands. What was much more worrisome was the stranger’s clothing. The man was wearing what looked like a brand-new U.S. Marine ghillie suit, the black-and-white-patterned fabric without any rips, stains or patches. His matching combat boots shone with polish, and the giant Thompson .45 rapid-fire gleamed with fresh oil. A spare ammunition drum hung at his side in a net bag, and a Glock 9 mm handblaster was tucked into a nylon shoulder holster. Spare ammunition clips lined his leather gunbelt, yet there was no sign of a backpack or canteen.
“Baron?” J.B. muttered.
“Must be,” Doc whispered, pretending to cough into a fist.
Hobbling, Doc was using an ebony walking stick as a cane, as if he was weak or infirmed. But that was an old trick that had served the companions well many times before in the past. The silvery color of his hair made Doc appear to be old, but the discoloration was merely a side effect of the experiments conducted upon the man by Operation Chronos. Doc was actually in his thirties with a wiry strength.
“Looks like he wants to cut a deal,” Ricky said.
“Or just wants us to break cover so the snipers can chill us,” Krysty countered.
In wordless agreement, J.B. flipped the switch on the Uzi from single-shot to full-auto.
“How many rounds in that magazine?” Ryan asked, going around a chunk of cinder-block wall sticking out of the cold ground. Ivy had covered the outcropping before dying.
“Twenty-two,” J.B. replied. “Almost full.”
“Got a spare?”
“Plenty...just no brass in ’em.”
Stopping on a grassy knoll, the giant man rested a boot on a tree stump and gave a friendly wave.
Coming to a halt on the edge of a frozen creek, Ryan waved in return, then jerked a thumb back and forth between them as a sign to parlay. The stranger nodded in agreement, then gave an odd smile and placed two fingers in his mouth to sharply whistle.
At the noise, dozens of mounted peop
le galloped out of the distant forest to form a half circle behind the giant. The horses were a motley pack, palominos, piebalds and roans, but the saddles were identical, and each came with a gunboot containing some sort of a longblaster.
The riders were as different as their mounts, and each of the men and women wore tanned buckskins and a heavy fur coat. The similarity of the home-made clothing carried the strong impression of a uniform.
“Sec men,” J.B. announced. “He’s a baron, all right.”
“We can take them,” Ricky said with the conviction of youth, straightening his shoulders.
“Put the pin back in that gren, boy,” Ryan commanded, lowering the barrel of the Steyr. “An old friend of mine once said that it was easier to make a deal than to make brass.”
His shoulders hunched for battle, Ricky eased his aggressive stance.
“There’s no sign of chains or skinning knives,” Mildred said, bracing herself for a possible rush. “At least they’re not cannies or slavers.”
“Probably,” Jak growled, putting a wealth of meaning into the word.
“You never can tell,” Krysty said, her hair coiling tight to her head in preparation for battle.
“Smile, aye, and be a villain,” Doc added softly. His face maintained a slightly puzzled expression, but his hand inched closer to the holstered LeMat revolver.
“Where you from, outlanders?” the giant called out with a friendly smile.
“Thanks for helping with the flapjack,” Ryan said, sidestepping the entire issue. “Much appreciated.”
“The...what did you call it?” the giant man asked with a frown, then burst into laughter. “Black dust, they do sorta look like a pancake come alive, don’t they?”
“Sure enough,” Ryan said with a tolerant smile. He was still holding the Steyr in both hands, but didn’t have a finger on the trigger. To anybody sane that would mean he was willing to talk.
“Well, we call ’em pires,” a stocky sec man added, hefting the flintlock longblaster cradled in his arms.
“Pires...as in vampires?” Mildred asked, a note of surprise in her voice.
“Don’t know that word,” the giant muttered, clearly displeased by the fact.
