Showing results by narrator "Delores King Williams" in All Categories

Arch-criminal Tyvian Reldamar has gotten complacent. For him, he's reached the pinnacle of all he's really hoping to achieve: he's got money, he's got women (some of which aren't even trying to kill him), and he's got his loyal friends and family nearby and safe. Except...maybe not so safe. Because this is Eretheria, a city known as much for its genteel aristocracy as for its diabolical scheming. Long without a king, the scions of the ruling families scrabble for control - including levying cruel taxes and drafts on the peasantry in order to wage "polite" wars against each other.

J.B. Dix takes several arrows before his team manages to extricate themselves, and, while the wounds themselves are not fatal, Dr. Mildred Wyeth worries with good reason that the arrows may have been tainted. J.B. soon shows symptoms of a deadly infection. Their best chance is a journey of several days to where there had once been a hospital when Mildred trained there a century earlier, in the desperate hope of finding the drugs that J.B. needs to survive.

Having narrowly escaped with their lives from the redoubt near Cornerstone, the Deathlands survivors known as the Companions arrive via mat-trans at a destination they presume to be North Dakota, if the mysterious codes given them while in Cornerstone are accurate. That assumption is soon put in doubt as they discover a devastated city covered in continual ashfall, a sky perpetually obscured by black clouds illuminated only by sporadic lightning. The former metropolis is not deserted, however, but densely populated with ravening hordes of barely human creatures.

As a warrior, Kane served the lords of the villes, but on a punitive expedition he'd caught a forbidden glimpse of the future that made him an outcast. In exile with him are Brigid Baptiste, golden keeper of the archives, and Grant, an only friend in a hostile land. Together, they've sworn to uncover the secrets of the world's fate...as written in its dark past.

Once a fearsome warrior of the new order, Kane discovers a secret that has damned humanity since the dawn of history. Now banished as an enemy of the state, he joins forces with Brigid Baptiste, keeper of the archives, and Grant, brother-in-arms and innovative weapons specialist. In the place that was once called New Mexico, Kane finds the first hidden clues to humanity's future.

Ryan Cawdor awakens from a mat-trans jump to inexplicably find himself in a version of his past (just after the events of Deathlands 45: Starfall). Ryan's son Dean is back, Krysty isn’t pregnant yet, and Ryan, who is the only one who feels the pull of the timeline split, is trying to keep it together. The companions are in immediate need of medical supplies and get caught up in a clash between warring barons and a traveling gypsy caravan and circus. Someone ambushes and is sabotaging the gypsies and the companions decide to help.

Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert remains a death pit of scorching heat, cannies, and grim odds. Ryan Cawdor and his group survive the trek there, only to be drugged, robbed, and left for the slave trade. Escaping their captors leaves them alive but stripped of their prized gear: their weps, J. B. Dix's glasses, Dr. Mildred Wyeth's medical kit and, worse, her secret codex. The companions must rely on each other to challenge their enemy and settle the score.

Survival is a dangerous enterprise in the aftermath of a nuked America. Humanity perseveres, but the Deathlands code is far simpler: Kill or be killed, live or die trying. Driven by the fires of hope, a resilient band of warriors traverse the new frontier of the future, survivors by skill and legends by reputation. The legend of the trader returns in the simmering dust bowl of the Badlands, the past calling out to armorer J. B. Dix. Her name is Eula. Young, silent, and lethal, she's part of a new trading convoy quick to invite Ryan Cawdor and his band on a journey.

Weary, sick, and hungry, the group barely survives a trek through the torturous deserts of the Southwest which leads into the bayous of what was once Louisiana, a place one of their own first called home. The eerie, lifeless silence of the swamps warns of trouble ahead. But nothing can prepare them for Dr. Jean, a madman who has harnessed pre-Dark tech to create an army of crazed zombies marching toward his own twisted vision of Deathlands domination.

After the events of Deathlands 131: Freak Pharm and the overthrow of the corrupt pseudo-medical theocracy there, Ryan Cawdor, Krysty Wroth, and their fellow companions had decided that the recovering community of Bomville would likely be the safest place to prepare for the eventual birth of Krysty’s child, rather than venturing out yet again into the unknown. Otherworldly circumstances soon convince Ryan and Krysty that the opposite is true.

The pot-smoking and relentlessly abrasive mad scientist Dr. William Hammersmith, whom the companions first encountered in DL 124 Child of Slaughter, has made “New Zea” his home. The mad scientist uses private-sector mat-trans technology to track and transport Ryan Cawdor’s small team of survivalist warriors from the Deathlands to the islands under siege in order to enlist their aid in training the soft local populace for the imminent attack and lend their own battle-tested mettle to rescue the imperiled community.

In the epic conclusion to the Cornerstone saga, the sinister forces at work in the troubled ville grow insidiously stronger, and Ryan Cawdor is the only one with first-hand knowledge of the true enemy. However, he’s trapped outside the ville, wanted for murder, and, with a hijacked Cornerstone mission team, must return to the redoubt where he and Jak Lauren nearly died, in hopes of finding the means to defeat the monster in Cornerstone’s midst.

The Cornerstone saga continues as a disgruntled Ryan and troubled Jak return from their harrowing scavenger mission to find that there are two mysterious new arrivals in the ville, presumed initiates to the ways of Gaia, the Earth Mother. Krysty explores her relationship with Matriarch in this flourishing paradise founded on the beliefs instilled in her as a child, but there are serpents in this garden. Death and destruction will come to this place of peace, and the true enemy may not be what it seems.

In the altered reality of the Deathlands, America's coastal waters haven't escaped the ravages of the nukecaust, but the awesome power of the oceans still rules here. It's a power that will let Ryan Cawdor, first among post-holocaust survivors, ride the crest of victory — or consign his woman to the raging depths. Emerging from a gateway on the ruins of the Georgia coastline, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists embark on a voyage up the Atlantic coast. But treachery awaits as they're beset by pirates, then a violent storm.

In the harsh territory near what used to be the Western badlands, Ryan Cawdor and his crew join the search for the wreck of a crashed space station. But in the ruins of Las Vegas, he falls prey to a maelstrom of violence. Hostage in a bitter war between regional barons, Ryan finds that even his best effort is an odds-even gamble and that his son's life may depend on the whims of destiny.

In the crumbling remains of a tunnel that was part of the Underground Railroad, a mysterious artifact reveals one of the darkest secrets of Africa's ancient past. Intrigued by the strange, encrypted stone, archaeologist Annja Creed opens a door to a world — and a legend — bound by a fierce and terrible force. She is not alone in her pursuit of the impossible.

Following the events of Deathlands 133: Grim Choices, Ryan Cawdor and his companions find themselves far from their intended destination of the surviving redoubt on the outskirts of what once was the capital of a mighty nation. The gateway they’ve arrived through has planted them in the geographic middle of the Deathlands, and they soon find themselves in a violent struggle between multiple warring factions for the spoils of a legendary stockpile, buried in a former military installation somewhere in the region.

Ryan and his friends become the subjects in a deadly experiment when they're taken captive inside a redoubt at the South Pole. A team of scientists is convinced the Earth must be purified of mutants, and now they have the perfect lab rats to test their powerful bioweapon. Within Antarctica's harsh and unstable conditions, the companions must fight the odds and take down the whitecoats before millions are killed. But in this uncompromising landscape, defeating the enemy may be just another step toward a different kind of death....

Meet Whitney, Taylor, and Charisse, three women who have been best friends since high school. However, this devoted troika is about to discover a wave of unexpected troubles.

Desperate to find water and shelter on the barren plains of former Oklahoma, Ryan and his team come upon a community that appears, at first, to be peaceful. Then the ville is attacked by a group of its own inhabitants — people infected with a parasite that has turned them into slave warriors for an unknown overlord. The companions try to help fend off the enemy and protect the remaining population, but when Ryan is captured during a second ambush, all hope seems lost. Especially when he launches an assault against his own crew.