Prologue

A hundred years ago, a rain of nuclear bombs obliterated civilization in a few minutes of blazing horror. It was the end of the world. Doomsday. Skydark.

The great cities were gone in a blinding flash, replaced by bomb craters whose deadly glow illuminated the nighttime sky. Mountains rose and fell, valleys slammed shut and lakes boiled under the atomic bombardment, permanently altering the topography of North America. Burning clouds of isotopes and poisons filled the sky in an endless, raging hurricane, and acid rain pounded the lush farmland and forests of the continent into sterile desert.

With the first nuclear explosion, the tissue-thin tapestry of civilization was ripped apart. The rule of law was replaced overnight with the somber, draconian edict of survival of the fittest. Cannibals hunted prey, cold-hearts brutally raided farms and slavers seized anybody they could as chattel. Plus, lost in the wilds of the new world were functioning predark war machines. Shielded against the onslaught of the atomic holocaust, the computer-operated juggernauts were patiently waiting to continue a war that was long finished, and death was almost always the reward for the person who foolishly awoke one of the terrible sleeping giants.

In crumbling ruins, ragged people fought to the death over a dented can of food or a single precious bullet.

Any type of gun was more valuable than gold, defense against the horrible swarms of muties, twisted abominations that arose from the nuke craters and feasted on the flesh of humanity.

Slowly, over the long decades, civilization of a sort was returning to the world. Crude walled cities were rising from the ashes of the past. The populations of these villes were ruthlessly governed by self-appointed barons, each ruler backed by a private army of brutal sec men. Whips and chains kept the people inside, while barbed wire and blasters kept the muties out.

Electricity was seldom seen, starvation universal, rape a daily event, death the only known means of escape. This was America in the late twenty-first century. Welcome to the Deathlands.

But one small handful of people refused to surrender hope. Ryan Cawdor and his companions traveled the continent searching for someplace where they could settle down and live in peace. Armed with functioning pre-dark weapons, the companions killed only when necessary, and preferred trading for supplies rather than stealing. In a world gone mad, these simple acts of dignity nearly made them legends.

In addition, Ryan Cawdor and the others knew the greatest military secret of the predark world: the redoubts.

Hidden across America, these often huge underground bunkers were built by the government to withstand direct nuclear hits. Powered by the near limitless energy of nuclear reactors, most redoubts were still intact after a century, incredible havens of safety with fluorescent lights, air-conditioning and drinkable water. Originally, the subterranean bases were stockpiled with everything needed to rebuild the country after the coming apocalypse—weapons, tools, military vehicles, fuel and medicine. Those countless tons of supplies were long gone, with only a few forgotten boxes of dusty weapons and dehydrated food packs remaining. However, these meager scraps from the past were more than enough to give the companions a fighting chance to stay alive. And sometimes they came across a major prize.

Yet even more importantly, the redoubts were linked together by the incredible mat-trans units. These amazing machines depended on technology advanced almost beyond understanding. The mat-trans units could transfer a living person from one redoubt to another in only seconds, which allowed the companions to quickly leave a dangerous area, hunt for food and continue their search for a permanent home.

Unfortunately, it now seemed possible that others might also know the vital secret of the redoubts.

A few days earlier, a stranger named Overton had attacked Ryan's home ville of Front Royal with an army of sec men. The troops were wearing impossibly clean blue shirts and were armed with predark weapons in mint condition. Overton's goal was to conquer Front Royal by any means available, then physically link it with two neighboring villes in Virginia, creating a single massive walled city, a gigantic metropolis the likes of which hadn't been seen for more than a century. The would-be usurper was finally neutralized by Ryan, but the reasons behind the insane plan were lost in violent death, and the mysterious origin of the weapons was never resolved.

Had Overton been working alone in his plan to seize control of those three East Coast baronies? Or was he a vanguard, an advance agent paving the way for somebody else? Was creating a new metropolis in Deathlands the final goal, or only the first step of a much larger plan? And was the secret of the redoubts' existence still safe?

A dying man had said the answers to these questions could be found in a distant ville called Shiloh. While the baron at Front Royal started to rebuild the badly damaged ville, Ryan Cawdor and the companions left on a perilous overland journey to try to discover if the brutal war for the baronies was indeed over.

Or only just beginning…