Dark Resurrection. James Axler
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The piles of corpses and severed hearts grew
Realizing what was coming, the slaves struggled futilely with their bonds, weeping and begging their captors for mercy.
All but the companions.
Jak, Krysty, Mildred, Doc, and J.B. were staring at Ryan. Their fixed, defiant expressions all said the same thing: we’re not going to check out like that. Not like chickens on the chopping block.
The one-eyed warrior nodded in agreement, then he looked away. If they couldn’t escape, they could do the next best thing. They could take out as many of the bastards as possible before they were cut down.
Ryan Cawdor withdrew deep into the core of his being, shutting out the grisly sights and sounds around him. He wasn’t preparing himself to die, he was preparing to fight and chill to his last ounce of strength. To expend it all, here, now. And when that strength was gone, death could nukin’ well have him, ready or not. It took only a moment for him to make the attitude shift. It was like a gate swinging open.
And when it was done, Ryan felt a sense of freedom and power.
Dark Resurrection
James Axler
Death Lands®
EMPIRE OF
XIBALBA
BOOK II
Special thanks to John Todd, Jr., for the insights he so graciously shared about the geography, history and culture of Veracruz, Mexico, and for his Web site’s excellent collection of maps and photographs.
Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788–1860
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
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Prologue
John Barrymore Dix staggered forward under the sickening roll of the tugboat’s deck, his stride limited by the steel trace that connected the manacles around his ankles. Rain in wind-driven sheets whipped across his shoulders and back. His clothing was already soaked through, front and rear. Water ran in rivulets down his pant legs and squished inside his boots. His beloved fedora was saturated, as well; moisture steadily leaked through its crown onto the top of his head and peeled over the sides of his face.
A drowned rat in chains.
He wasn’t alone.
Jak Lauren and Krysty Wroth lurched a few feet ahead of him. The albino youth and the tall redhead were similarly drenched, similarly hobbled, weaving from side to side as the slow-moving ship wallowed through oncoming seas.
Behind the five-foot-six-inch Dix, and in front of Jak and Krysty, were twenty-seven other prisoners. Their captors had passed a rope through their ankle shackles, so individuals couldn’t break ranks and commit suicide by jumping overboard, and thereby avoid being worked to death. J.B. and the others circled around the main deck in a drunken conga line, marching to the beat of the Matachìn coxswain, who sat on a canvas folding chair on the stern. The hood of the pirate’s plastic poncho shadowed his face as he pounded on a steel drum with a pair of rag-wrapped hammers.
The rest of the galley slave contingent, sixty souls in all, continued to row in unison under cover of metal, pipe-strut-supported awnings that bracketed the port and starboard rails from amidships to stern. Among the chained rowers were Ryan Cawdor, Dr. Mildred Wyeth and Doc Tanner, who watched from behind their long oars as J.B., Jak and Krysty rounded the rear of the superstructure and stumbled across the heaving deck.
It was leg-stretching time for one-third of the conscripted crew.
Every couple of hours the Matachìn pulled one person off each of the thirty benches, leaving the remainder to row. The pirates forced the chosen to circumnavigate the tug’s deck at least a dozen times, no matter the weather or sea state—a regimen J.B. figured had come from years of trial and error. Regular stretching was essential to keep slaves in proper working condition; it prevented debilitating muscle cramps and tears. The object was to wring the most out of the rowers before