James Axler - Deathlands 00 - Encounter

VIP免费

2024-12-19 0 0 641.93KB 300 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Whatever the poison was, it wasn't quick

As Trader slipped helplessly down the wall to the floor, his

heart felt squashed in his chest, crushed into a space so small it

could hardly beat against the surrounding pressure. He labored

against the pain and the terror for an eternity, then both seemed

to miraculously lift. Trader realized he was looking down on his

own body from a vantage point along the ceiling. He watched his

own legs jerk and kick, and his head bang the floor, leaving a

broad smear of blood. It didn't matter; the pain was no longer

part of him. It belonged to the body, the dying physical form to

which he felt not the slightest kinship.

Encounter

#00 in the Deathlands series

James Axler

A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • AMSTERDAM •

PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM • ATHENS •

TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST •

AUCKLAND

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be

aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as

"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author

nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped

book."

First edition February 1999

ISBN 0-373-81197-7

ENCOUNTER

reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in

any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now

known or hereafter invented, including xerography,

photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or

retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of

the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don

Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the

imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to

anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even

distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the

author, and all incidents are pure invention.

® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks

indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and

Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in

other countries.

Printed in U.S.A.

CONTENTS

ENCOUNTER - A Deathlands Prequel

INSIDE DEATHLANDS - Birth of a Series

A FAMILIAR TALE—A STRANGE LAND - Laurence James

on Deathlands

PROPOSAL FOR A SHORT PAPERBACK SERIES - The

Moment of Conception

THE IDEA TAKES HOLD - Further Thoughts

CONTEXT - Editorial Trends

THE CONCEPT OF DEATHLANDS

PACKAGING THE VISION - A Picture Is Worth…

DIALOGUE BETWEEN WRITER AND ARTIST

IN THE WRITER'S EYE - Character Profiles

HISTORY AND DESTINY - Major Characters

GATEWAYS IN THE SERIES

IMAGES FROM DEATHLANDS

BEYOND DEATHLANDS - The Outlanders Connection

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....

Prologue

The travelers' campfire raged against the oppressive

blackness of the surrounding deep woods. The one-lane,

dirt-track road that had brought them all to this lonely place

was no longer visible beyond the bubble of light created by

leaping flames and sheets of sparks flying into the overcast sky.

These wayfarers, their faces starkly lit, crouched as closely as

possible to the blaze, both for warmth and safety.

Night in Deathlands was a scary time.

Night was when the beasts hunted, creatures whose size and

appetites had been magnified by the radiation effects of the

global nuclear holocaust of generations past. Night was also the

time when packs of mutants—known variously as stickies,

scabies, scalies—roamed the countryside in search of living

victims. Of Deathland's many terrible predators, these monsters

were arguably the most dangerous—cunning, ruthless and

capable of unthinkable violence.

Accordingly, when Deathlands folk were caught at night in

the open, it was safer to dispense with sleep altogether, to light a

big bonfire and feed it until dawn, with a loaded blaster held

cocked in one's hand. Along with their readied weapons, the

travelers each gripped a jar filled with a colorless, homemade,

distilled hard spirit. Before sundown, these folks had been

strangers on the road. Justifiably wary and suspicious, they had

been prepared to defend themselves from one another, to fight to

the death if necessary to keep their meager goods and their lives.

Now that they had supped together, and washed down the meal

of char-roasted jackrabbit with plenty of white lightning, they

were passing around hand-twisted black cheroots, and laughing

and telling stories like old friends.

Sooner or later in such an amiable gathering, when tongues

had been loosened, when guards had been lowered, when the

heat of the fire mingled inextricably with the heat of the liquor

in the belly and brain, the subject turned to a man whose

exploits, both heroic and commercial, were the stuff of legend.

He was known simply as Trader.

While more than a few men and women made their daily

bread by running Deathland's dangerous and unreliable roads,

by swapping quantities of this for quantities of that, only one of

their number merited the name Trader with a capital T. Over

the years, he had earned a reputation for hard dealing and

uncanny luck, a genius for finding the secret stockpiles of goods

hidden by the United States government prior to doomsday.

Trader and his crew plied the ruined highways and back roads

in heavily armored convoys, dispensing looted blasters, bullets,

fuel, medicine and canned food to whoever had the necessary

jack, or its equivalent in barter goods. He specialized in moving

predark weapons, which were as vital as food and water in

Deathlands, a place where no law, no social order offered

protection from hunting packs of muties and the

radiation-altered beasts of the field, or from bands of "norm"

human marauders that preyed on the unwary and the foolish.

Of all the Trader stories that circulated around the nightly

campfires of the hellscape, and around the crowded gaming

tables at the gaudy houses in the villes, the one most often told

was, not surprisingly, the most disturbing. It spoke of a private

revenge so vicious that it inspired shock and loathing in a

thick-skinned people accustomed to accounts of savagery. And

because the vengeance it described was so complete, it inspired

wonder, as well, wonder at the impenetrable darkness of one

man's soul.

On this pitch-black night, in this place surrounded by thick

woods, along this scrap of a road two days walk from the nearest

ville, beside this roaring fire, a man with a long, weather-seamed

face and a pale, wispy beard began the familiar tale on a

personal note, as did almost everyone who ever recounted it.

In a loud, clear voice, he said, "I know a man who knows a

man, who come on the place known as Virtue Lake the morning

after Trader did the dirty deed."

Heads nodded appreciatively around the fire. Sometimes the

witness's name was Bob, sometimes Tom or Jim, but he was

always "a friend of a friend." The gathered men and women

carefully set their blasters between their boots and, cupping

hands around half-full jars, leaned closer in order to better hear,

hoping to pick up a new fact or a fresh twist.

"This man, name of Bob," the storyteller went on, "was three

hours walk from Virtue Lake when he started smelling smoke. Of

course, Virtue Lake always had a peculiar downwind stank to it,

which come from the refinery's tall stacks, but right off Bob

knew this was different. It had a sharpish, burned-wood tang,

more like a forest fire. As he topped the rise that overlooked the

ville, off in the distance, through the smoke haze squatting on

the dry lake bed, he saw the dust from Trader's convoy, heading

west."

"Below him, everything built by the hand of man was charred

to cinders. The whole ville was flattened to the ground like a

giant's foot had stomped it. All them triple-swell gaudies you

heard so much about were gone. Baron's big house was gone.

Squatters huts down by the lake shore were gone. Warn't no sign

of the big old predark oil refinery, neither. Up until that very

day, hundred years after sky-dark, it'd still put out a passable

grade of gas, though some folks claimed it was cut fifty-fifty with

goat piss."

"Bob started down the hill to have himself a better look-see at

all this nukin' strangeness. Where the refinery used to be, there

was nothing but a great big hole in the ground. And it was on

fire. Bob thought he heard someone screaming down at the

bottom of the hole, but he couldn't get close, what with the

pillars of flame and oily black smoke shooting up from the pit."

The storyteller let his audience ponder this image of

damnation while he paused to wet his whistle with a swig of

sixty-proof hooch. Refreshed, he resumed the tale.

"The stank in the ville was like nothing Bob had ever smelled

before. He had to cover his face with a rag or puke his breakfast

jerky out his nose. Stank of death it was, rank, foul, nasty ripe. It

was plain to Bob where it was coming from. Everywhere there

was bodies laying about. Close to the refinery pit, the corpses

were all blown to pieces. Arms, legs, heads scattered in with the

piles of smoking trash. Farther off, where the gaudies used to be,

the dead folk were whole and their bellies was already swelling

up in the heat of the sun. Some looked like they'd been poisoned

to death, their faces had gone all black, tongues black, too, and

sticking out, dried green froth on their tight-stretched lips. See,

Trader hadn't just done in the ville's sec men. Everybody was

dead. Hundreds of people. Too many for Bob to count. Women,

children, little bitty babies. The sheep and goats in the livestock

pens were chilled, too. All the corpses left unburied as a warning

by Trader…"

The man sitting next to him piped up, "Don't do me no

wrong, unless you want some of the same."

The storyteller nodded in agreement; that indeed was the

grisly message Trader had set adrift in his wake.

The baron of the ville, he was a crazy, sick fuck, and the

people who lived there were by reputation all liars and sluts,

chillers and thieves. Or they were slaves working the refinery

until they dropped in their chains. The kind of place where, even

if he was careful, a man could wake up dead for no good reason.

Now Trader, he was never one to turn down a profitable deal no

matter who it was with. Point of pride to him. Brung his goods

up the pike and expected a fair return for the effort, even from

Satan himself.

"I'm not gonna lie to you. No one knows for sure what

happened at Virtue Lake because there were no survivors left to

tell the tale. But it's a safe bet that the ville done Trader a

biggish wrong, and in return Trader made them pay, biggish."

"A hard man," someone on the other side of the campfire

said.

"Don't come no harder," the storyteller agreed.

In Deathlands, hardness was the personal quality that

counted above all else. It made the difference between living and

dying. And between just dying, and dying well. In that regard,

Trader's legend shone like a hammered steel icon, an icon that

was polished nightly by folks he'd never laid eyes on.

"Huzzah to Trader!" one of the women exclaimed. And with a

ragged chorus of "huzzahs!" they all drank a toast to his name.

Afterward, a man on the far side of the fire said, "I heard even

the flies on the dog shit was dead."

"Yeah," another woman added, "and I heard even the

buzzards wouldn't touch all them swoll-up bodies. Circled and

circled high overhead, then just flew off with empty bellies."

On cue, the storyteller delivered the anecdote's customary

final line. "Some people say all the bones are still there, right

where they fell, right where Trader left them."

Satisfied that the tale had been told right, the travelers leaned

back, settling into their own private reveries as they lifted jars to

thirsty lips. To chill a man or two, or even a woman or two, over

some soured business deal was one thing, but to lay waste to a

whole damned ville was another. Beside the fire's roaring heat,

with white lightning filling their veins with courage, each of the

travelers took a moment to ponder the question of whether,

under similar circumstances, he or she would have had the

solid-brass balls to do what Trader had.

To chill them all.

Around the bright circle, no one smiled. No one spoke. Some

closed their eyes and pretended to doze. In their secret heart of

hearts, as well as they knew their own names, they all knew they

could never hope to measure up to Trader's terrible revenge.

Of course, as was often the case with myths told around

campfires, the truth about what really happened at Virtue Lake

was an altogether different story…

Chapter One

The recon wag's wheelman let out a groan as, an instant too

late, he caught sight of the tank trap on the road just ahead. A

single glance told Giles that the crude slot hacked across the

roadway was wide enough and deep enough to bury the wag's

front end past the axles. He slammed on his brakes, but it didn't

do any good. The wag was going way too fast. It skidded on the

rotten tarmac and abruptly nosed over into the ditch. The

crunching impact slammed Giles headfirst into the driver's ob

slit. As the starflash of concussion inside his skull faded, he

opened his eyes. The world around him started to spin violently

and his vision began to tunnel in. Gritting his teeth, Giles fought

back the wave of dizziness and nausea. To black out now meant

capture, and capture meant death.

Shifting the wag into reverse, he floored the accelerator. The

wag's rear drive wheels dug in, and it jerked back a foot or two

out of the ditch, then something on the undercarriage hung up

and the engine stalled. The wag crashed back down.

Giles punched the starter button and pumped the pedal,

relieved when the engine instantly roared to life.

"Come on!" shouted the long haired man sitting in the front

passenger's seat beside him. "Move it!"

Blood bathed half of Jonathan's face as he reloaded a fresh

30-round clip into his folding stock Ruger Mini-14. Before he

could poke the muzzle back out the gun port, before Giles could

get the transmission in reverse, a flurry of bullets rattled both

sides of the wag. The wheelman and his front passenger ducked

as a hail of armor-piercing slugs cut through the wag's half-inch

external steel sheathing like so much tissue paper. Hard points

of light pierced the relative darkness of the wag's interior, which,

after a couple minutes of intense combat, was starting to look

like the inside of a cheese grater.

"Shit, they nailed Billy!" Hammerman cried from the back

seat. "Aw, he's fucked up, big time."

Giles still thought they had a chance. Grinding the gears, he

jammed the wag in reverse, then came another burst of autofire

and both back tires blew out. He tromped the gas anyway,

sending bare hubs spinning, flat tires flapping, shredding apart,

but the wag didn't move at all. Through the ob slit, Giles saw two

tall figures step in front of the ditch. They had M-60 machine

guns; the belts of linked 7.62 mm ammo were dragging on the

ground. As they took aim from the hip, he threw himself below

the level of the dash.

The wag shuddered violently as a torrent of AP rounds

thudded into its still howling engine. There was a horrible

grinding noise, then a loud clank and the engine went suddenly

dead. The machine gunners stopped firing. As the dust cleared,

through his ob slit the wheelman could see more figures moving

in. A glance through the rearview periscope told him there was

nothing behind them but empty road.

"Where's Shabazz?" he asked. "He was supposed to cover our

asses!"

"Bastard double-crossed us," Hammerman snarled.

A steel rifle butt clanged on the wag's roof. "Out!" someone

shouted at them.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Whateverthepoisonwas,itwasn'tquickAsTraderslippedhelplesslydownthewalltothefloor,hisheartfeltsquashedinhischest,crushedintoaspacesosmallitcouldhardlybeatagainstthesurroundingpressure.Helaboredagainstthepainandtheterrorforaneternity,thenbothseemedtomiraculouslylift.Traderrealizedhewaslookingdownonhis...

展开>> 收起<<

James Axler - Deathlands 00 - Encounter.pdf

共300页,预览60页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

James Axler - Deathlands 00 - Encounter

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: