Arcadian's Asylum

Arcadian's Asylum
James Axler

The brutality of post-nuclear America has spawned a dark frontier where the harsh and unforgiving new rules of existence cannot obliterate the decency and determination that drive the true human spirit. It's tested and tormented but never destroyed.A lust for power and a strong sec-force are the basic requirements of any Deathlands baron. But brilliant, charismatic Baron Eugene Arcadian has bigger visions than simply a monopoly on jack and trade. He wants the future. Turning his ville into the nascent heartbeat of the new civilization would require the help of Ryan Cawdor and his warrior group. But for these unwilling participants, the endgame of their enigmatic host remains hidden in the secret maze of laboratories beneath Arcady, where a new terror is about to be reborn….

The baron stood before them

“Your skills and capabilities will enhance the progress of my ville as we work toward the perfect society. I want you with me, not against me. And of your own free will.”

“Do we really have a choice?” Ryan asked. “We’re here, surrounded by your sec.”

Arcadian considered that. “You may have a point. If you made a break for freedom, we could stop you. The fact that we found Dr. Tanner proves we can sweep this ville with relative ease. But if you choose to run, a firefight would only take out some of my men and lead to your demise.”

“So if we say no?”

“Then you’ll be held until you say yes. And you will.”

There was a steel and ice there that betrayed a will that Ryan knew wouldn’t be refused.

“What do you have in mind for us?”

Arcadian’s Asylum

James Axler

Death Lands

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them—and then, the opportunity to choose.

—C. Wright Mills

1916–1962

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….

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

“They say a week in a truck is a long time. ’Specially if you ain’t got no shitter, and no time to stop. Me? I say it’s how you get to know who your real friends are.”

Trader Toms cackled in a wheezing, cracked tone that broke down into a phlegm-ridden cough. Hacking and snorting, he drew up a phlegm ball that followed his trail of tobacco juice into a bucket bolted to the side of the wag. He was still wheezing and cackling, shaking his head and repeating the last four words to himself with a shake of the head when Doc Tanner politely cleared his throat.