Chapter One

Ryan Cawdor rested his forefinger lightly against the Steyr rifle's trigger as he swept his gaze over the urban shockscape of the ravaged ville. He hunkered in the late afternoon shadows draped carelessly over the smashed remains of what had once been a concrete-and-steel building in downtown Idaho Falls, Idaho, before a nuclear warhead had nearly blown the city out of existence a hundred years earlier.

He kept the bilious green-tinged sunset behind him, an old gunfighter's trick and the first rule of a predator. His position also carried his scent away from the area he surveyed. The last bath he had taken lay nearly four days' hard travel behind him; he knew he carried a strong musk that an alert animal, mutie or man could detect.

The cold wind, full of the threat of approaching winter, swirled around the big man. He felt it rake through his clothing for a moment, searching across his flesh with frozen skeletal fingers. The touch lingered even after the wind passed on, chilling him to the bone.

Then the scream rent the air again.

The effort sounded strained and thin, as if the screamer's pain had almost crossed the threshold into sensory overload. It keened through the tumbledown buildings, bouncing from the haphazard walls that still stood.

"Lover." The voice was soft, undemanding.

Ryan gazed over his shoulder at the fire-haired woman hunkered down behind him. He spoke without hesitation. "We wait."

She nodded reluctantly.

The scream died away, winding down rather than getting cut off short. The screamer still lived.

"Mebbe by the time we find whoever's screaming, it'll be too late."

"Better to be late trying to save somebody rather than being early to your own lynching." But the words sounded hollow even to Ryan's ears. Even being intelligent about a play wasn't always easy.

The saying had belonged to the Trader, the man who had finished Ryan's training in survivalism in Deathlands. In his day, the Trader had been a man strong enough, big enough and violent enough to become a legend. His word had been his bond, and a law unto itself. He had saved individuals and once or twice sent a whole community straight to hell when it crossed him or threatened anything that was his.

"I know." The woman grimaced and put a hand to her head. Her other hand held a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 640. "It's just getting hard to take. More than just screaming now. I can almost hear words."

Ryan had nothing to say to that. Krysty Wroth had a gift, inherited from and cultivated by her mother, and it hinged on mutie abilities that Ryan never even pretended to understand. But he did understand her pain and frustration because he saw it etched into her beautiful face, saw the way she carried it in her movements. All the hard years of his own youth, all the carnage he'd seen and caused while traveling with the Trader and the war wags, hadn't completely dehumanized him. But it had hardened his sense of purpose. He was determined to live and to bring his small group through whatever waited up ahead intact.

Krysty was hurting, but she wasn't going to die from it. At least, that was the present thinking.

He scanned the terrain again. The shattered remains of the building they stood on gave him a vantage point almost twenty feet above the ground. If they had been in a forested area or the plains or mountains, the advantage would have been enough.

The blasted remnants of the ville proved to be another matter. Idaho Falls had been a small but thriving metropolitan area back before the nukecaust that had ended the world. In addition to the destruction caused by the bombs, a hundred years of chem storms and nuclear winter raised scars that stood out on the buildings.

Rusted hulks of cars, trucks and buses lined what used to be streets. Acid rain had scoured most of the paint from the vehicles. Windows that had survived the end of the world had been claimed by the survivors.

Looking out over the broken maze of streets and structures, Ryan was certain nothing remained that they could salvage themselves. But the companions had come to the city to trade with the survivors that still lived there, or to take what they needed any way they could. Supplies—especially when they traveled near rad-blasted areas and remnants of unrecovered villes—remained a concern. And they intended to gather any information about the area they didn't already have.

He glanced back at Krysty, worrying about her. For some unknown reason, she had been hearing the screams inside her mind since early that morning after the mat-trans jump that had brought them into the region, long before the noise had become a physical presence to the rest of the group.

"Lot of bastard pain, Ryan," she whispered hoarsely, her sentient red hair curled protectively against her nape.

"You," he asked, "or the other?"

"Gaia, I can't even tell anymore. Me, the other—it's all the same now." She made a gagging noise and tried to cover it with her hand so the sound wouldn't travel. Her shoulders hunched with dry heaves. "No separation."

Ryan looked at her, seeing the way her hands shook. He was a big man, tall and broad, carrying a lot of muscle in his back and shoulders. His curly black hair nearly reached his shoulders. His right eye shone cobalt blue and piercing; the place where his left eye should have been was covered by a scuffed black leather patch that kept infectious material out of the empty socket. A long scar trailed from the corner of his right eye to the corner of his mouth. He reached out and touched her hand. "I'll be back."

She looked at him, her eyes not quite focusing. "Sorry, lover. I know it's all my fault. We shouldn't be shackled to taking something on like this."

"No. It's not your fault. Just how things worked out— that's all." Ryan released her hand and scrambled down the side of the rubble. He thought briefly of leaving the Steyr with Krysty since she had the high ground and could cover him. But he also realized that in her present condition he was better off keeping it.

He dropped from the last chunk of concrete to the street level. His boots rang hollowly against the cracked sidewalk for just a moment. With the wind keening through the debris around him, he doubted the sound carried very far.

A dozen broken-down wags littered the street in front of him. One of them stuck out from the side of the building where it was partially buried under a pile of shattered masonry. All of the wags had long since been stripped.

Three skeletons sat in the wag jutting out from the building. Tattered bits of clothing remained stuck to the yellowed bone. The skeleton behind the wheel had no head, while the one in the passenger's seat had a mouthful of broken teeth and a collapsed lower face. The third skeleton sat in a child's safety seat at a crooked angle.

Ryan didn't let himself dwell on the scene. Too many of them existed across Deathlands. He stared at the building across the street. A sun-faded orange sign sticking up from the debris read Kidwell's Korner Kafe—Ice, Beer, Magazines.

"Jak," Ryan called softly.

"Yeah." The voice barely carried across the small distance.

"Let's go."

"Sure, Ryan." Jak Lauren stepped out from hiding, a .357 Magnum Colt Python in his hand. "Krysty?"

"Hurting." Ryan started forward, aiming in the direction the screams had come from as near as he could judge.

"Find it, chill it Then move on." Jak moved into position behind Ryan. The teenager had the stark white coloration of a true albino, and the snow-white hair to match. His eyes gleamed like fiery red rubies in the hollows of his scarred face. Iridescent patches of gray and brown clung to his camou-style clothing, and the sharp bits of metal carefully sewn into the material didn't show at all.

SHIFTING SHAPES SKITTERED across and through the debris filling the street. Ryan recognized them as rats, and they were some of the biggest he had ever seen. Nearly eighteen inches tall at the shoulder, they looked like small dogs and hunted in packs like wolves. Coarse brown hair covered their rangy bodies. Their tails trailed behind them, hairless and as thick as Ryan's first two fingers held together. Their behavior patterns drew his instant attention because they didn't act afraid of him at all.

When he had been at his vantage point atop the crumbled building, the rats hadn't warranted much study. Anywhere people still clung to shreds of civilization, rats were a sure bet.

But now he gave them his full attention because they were giving him a big share of theirs.

"Fuckers probably rabid." Jak walked at Ryan's side little more than an arm's length away. Far enough away they wouldn't get tangled with each other when they moved, but close enough they could move together if they needed to.

"If they decide to attack, a man might not live long enough to find out anyway." Ryan reached to his right hip and loosened the thong holding the SIG-Sauer P-226 in the holster. He took up the razor-edged panga in his left hand, fingers curled loosely around the haft. The blade was an eighteen-inch extension of himself, and he knew it intimately.

"Mebbe chill couple. Let eat each other." Jak fisted some of his leaf-bladed throwing knives.

"No." Ryan kept walking, determined to give the rats a wide berth if at all possible. He crossed the street, staying away from the main body of the pack.

After the nukecaust, Mother Nature's hand was no longer solely responsible for the grand designs of all creatures great and small. Especially in the rad-blasted areas. Mutie blood showed up, changing things forever. Sometimes the rad-burn had created a wholly new creature with no ties to whatever had originally sired it.

Without warning, the scream rushed through the street again, echoing within the cavernous vaults left inside the collapsed buildings. The rats paused, throwing their broad warty snouts into the breeze.

"Smell it?" Jak asked.

Ryan took a breath. The albino teen's senses were more developed than most, but he had no problem sorting out the fecund scent of death. "Yeah."

The scream dragged on for a few short seconds, then broke in the middle. For a moment, Ryan thought the screamer had finally died. Before he turned to glance in Krysty's direction to check with her, the voice returned as a snuffling sob.

He couldn't recognize the words, but he knew from the tones that the screamer was a woman.

Ryan stayed close to the crumbled remains. He kept the panga ready in his hand while he followed the barrel of the Steyr forward. Furtive movements sounded inside the building.

With his trained eye, Ryan saw past the ruined facade of the building. Paths had been cleared through the rubble, a sure indication of some kind of habitation.

The Trader had taught Ryan and everyone else under his command to look for signs such as those. Paths around a body of fresh water or a river were understandable and to be expected. Man and beast alike both needed a source of fresh drinking water to survive.

But a path worn into an area where there was no source of water meant something else entirely. Especially when the crossers of those paths were human. At those times, the Trader had pointed out, a smart man knew he had a host of buyers just waiting to be approached. Men or women who made it a habit of crossing other people's paths were looking to get something they wanted from the other party—by whatever means they could get it.

Ryan knew from studying the barren earth worn between the patches of weeds and grass that the area was heavily traveled. It meant either the predators gathered there to attack those weaker than themselves, or that someone had gone into business managing supply and demand for the area.

The big man's curiosity flared into being. Though he had seen a considerable amount of Deathlands, he wanted to see more.

He took up the Steyr in both hands and followed the trail up the steep incline in front of him. He glanced at Jak, watching the youth step into the shadows under some of the broken rock. Jak disappeared within three steps, leaving nothing to mark his passage through the rock.

WRAPPING THE STEYR'S SLING around his forearm to better balance the weapon, Ryan crested the hill. Peering over the edge, Ryan studied the scene unfolding before him.

Over the top of the hill, the land fell away and pooled in a bowl-shaped depression rimmed by stacks of junked cars and the shattered remains of a few warehouses and garages. A rusted fence topped with barbed wire encircled most of the lot. Over the broken remnants of two wire gates, a listing sign with faded paint proclaimed Samuelson's Wrecking Yard.

Nearly two dozen armed men dressed in mismatched clothing and animal skins stood in a loose circle in front of the junkyard around a captive handful of men, women and one child. Three corpses lay stretched out on the barren ground. Two of the dead were women, stripped naked and showing signs of dying hard.

From his position, Ryan could smell the death lingering on the fresh corpses. Another shallow breath brought a different scent to his nose, this one totally animal, ripened with a pungent sourness. He scanned the terrain again, more deliberately this time, and spotted the first of the dogs hunkered down in the spaces between the rusting cars and cracked debris given up by the buildings.

For a moment, Ryan thought the pack of dogs was waiting its chance at the corpses. Urban predators learned to be patient. A wild pack marauding the countryside and coming up on a ville would have a harder time bringing down any of the citizens living within the ville's protection. But tumbledown cities like Idaho Falls gave up their dead as a matter of course. The natural predators living within the bowels of the ruins served the purpose of keeping disease to a minimum by disposing of the decaying flesh.

One of the men stepped forward, taunting his captives. He stood tall and rangy, leaned out to muscle over bone. His cheeks showed great hollows as they sunk in tight against his skull. He wore his black hair pulled back in a long ponytail, which was threaded with finger bones yellow with age. A spotty beard covered most of his lower face under his deep-set eyes. He wore a scuffed and torn leather jacket with a brightly colored patch across its back that Ryan couldn't quite make out.

"This here's Slagger territory," he shouted at the captives. "Man crossing through here better pay up some tribute if he expects to make it across."

"We didn't know," one of the women yelled back. Her voice shuddered with fear. "We're new here. Nobody told us."

"Ignorance of the law ain't no excuse," the Slagger leader said. "Lotta Road Brothers paid the price before skydark. Got no mercy in my heart for you piss-poor fuckers come through here unprepared."

"You've already chilled two of us," one of the men in the captive group said. He was stoop shouldered but carried a lot of weight in his chest, which showed he was accustomed to manual labor. Bruises and drying blood covered his face. He stepped forward, shifting his weight. "How many more you reckon on chilling?"

The Slagger leader grinned. "Gonna chill you all if I've a mind to do it."

Ryan read the stoop-shouldered man's intentions before the man made his move. With nothing left to lose, a person would generally shoot his whole wad on one desperate move. The Trader knew that, and he'd taught the crews of his war wags that philosophy.

Without another word, the stoop-shouldered man leaped at the Slagger member nearest him. A growl of inarticulate rage tore from his throat.

The Slagger struggled to bring around the chopped-down shotgun he carried. He was young, barely into his teens, and scrawny.

"Crain!" one of the women in the group yelled, starting forward. Another Slagger butt-stroked her in the stomach with his weapon. She let out a thin yelp and dropped to her knees, clutching her belly. Before she could defend herself, the Slagger butt-stroked her again in the head.

Ryan watched without making a move. He knew from the woman's voice that she wasn't the one Krysty had somehow linked to.

The stoop-shouldered man backhanded the young Slagger in the face. Blood spewed from his broken nose and covered his face as he staggered back.

Crain came up with the shotgun. Moving with an economy of motion, he lifted the scattergun and pointed it at the Slagger leader. His hand swept both hammers back.

A grin painted the Slagger leader's thin-lipped mouth as he reached for the pistol holstered on his hip. It came free in an eye blink, the coldheart's left hand wrapping instinctively around the cut-down barrel. His right hand dropped to the big lever action under the breech.

Ryan knew instantly that it wasn't a pistol at all. The weapon was a lever-action rifle that had the barrel and stock cut off, reducing it to something less than two feet long.

The Slagger leader ripped through five shots in quick succession, fanning the lever action.

Crain got off one round. The double-aught buckshot spanged off the rusting wag an arm's span away from the Slagger leader. The pellets slammed through the oxidized metal and unleashed a rust-red metallic fog that coiled over their intended target.

All of the Slagger leader's bullets hit Crain. From the sharp sound of the detonations, Ryan figured the abbreviated rifle was chambered in .30-30. They blew through Crain's chest, punching his heart out.

A ragged cheer punctuated with jeering laughter filled the area. "Halleck! Halleck!" some of the Slaggers chanted in appreciation.

Halleck fed bullets into the rifle's side breech and grinned at his men. "Fucker had it coming. Nobody draws down on me and lives."

The butt-stroked woman lay on the ground, holding both hands over her face as she wept aloud.

The young Slagger recovered his weapon, then quickly turned it and fired the remaining round into the quivering corpse's face. Flesh, blood, bone and patches of hair flew outward, eliciting another cheer from the coldhearts. The Slagger wiped the blood from his face—his own, and his victim's—and reloaded his weapon.

If there had been a way clear, Ryan would have passed by the area. There was too much to risk, and no potential gain in sight.

Except for the voice and screams rattling around in Krysty's skull.

He pulled back from the crest, moving among the broken rabble. Without warning, pebbles and a small wave of dust hurtled down the slope of one of the shattered slabs to gust into his face.

Ryan didn't even try to fool himself into thinking it was caused by the wind. He looked up, his single eye narrowing, and spotted the man-size silhouette that sprang at him.