Chapter One

      The blast took Ryan Cawdor and his companions by surprise, knocking everyone off their feet before they knew what had hit them.

      As Ryan crashed to the ground, he twisted and gaped through the smoke for a glimpse of who or what had attacked them.

      A slender mutie stood not fifty yards away, his crimson skin glinting in the blazing sunlight. He scowled at Ryan from behind the sights of a shoulder-mounted, jury-rigged gren launcher.

      There was no time to shout a warning. The mutie’s hand was on the firing mechanism.

      Ryan swung up his Steyr Scout Tactical longblaster, which already had a round chambered. Sucking in a deep breath to steady his hand, he sighted on the mutie and squeezed the trigger.

      The one-eyed man was an experienced marksman. His shooting skills had played a major role in his surviving for so long in the hellish Deathlands—all that was left of the United States after the world blew up in 2001. So he knew for a fact that as soon as he pulled the trigger he’d fired a kill shot.

      Ryan felt an unsettling stillness all around him, like the calm that descended before a terrible storm. Then he experienced an odd sensation, a combination of powerful suction and expulsion all at once, equally balanced.

      Suddenly, a wave of force slammed into him. His body buzzed and shivered as he hung in the wave’s grip, caught like a moth in a spiderweb.

      The wave held him there for a split second, then it let him go with a shock like a blow below the belt. As he gasped at the wrenching release, he saw the sun-scorched ground between him and the mutie ripple as if it was the surface of a lake.

      A low hum started, building to a deep rumble that Ryan felt in his chest and bones. Then a flash of light exploded in front of him. When it faded, he saw that a tall rock wall now stood between him and the mutie.

      It wasn’t an optical illusion. Ryan grimaced at a puff of dust springing from the striated reddish-brown rock wall. It was kicked up by the bullet he’d fired, the one that had been frozen and unfrozen in midair on its way to the mutie.

      “Fireblast!” Ryan cursed.

      “What the hell? Where did that come from?” asked J. B. Dix, Ryan’s longtime friend and one of his traveling companions. Known as the Armorer because of his mastery of all manner of weapons, J.B. was on the ground a few feet away. He’d been toppled by the gren blast like the rest of the team and was staying down out of the line of fire.

      “Beats me.” Ryan rolled over to face forward again. Fresh rounds were punching across the flat land up ahead, fired from the blasters of the muties in the trenches. For the moment, at least, the greatest danger lay in that direction.

      Lining up a nearby mutie in his sights, Ryan fired his Scout, grazing the side of the enemy’s head. Ryan’s companions smoothly followed his lead. J.B. flung himself around on his belly and whipped up his Mini-Uzi to open fire on the nearest trench.

      “Where any this come from?” Jak, an albino who spoke as few words as possible, flipped onto his knees and aimed his .357 Magnum Colt Python at another trench. “Land look solid before. No trenches.” At the first sign of a mutie popping up, he cracked off a shot and the mutie’s head exploded like a watermelon on a target range.

      “Nice shot!” Ricky Morales scrambled up beside Jak. If he felt any aftereffects from the gren blast, he didn’t show it.

      Ricky swung up his De Lisle carbine and swept it left while Jak swept his Python right. Seconds later, both young men were filling the noonday air with sizzling lead and hitting mutie targets on opposite ends of the middle trench.

      Mildred Wyeth and Doc Tanner chimed in soon enough, adding to