Showing results by narrator "Mort Shelby" in All Categories

A cold sense of dèjá vu becomes reality as the group emerges from a gateway they'd survived before — a grim graveyard of lost friends and nightmares. The consuming need to escape the dangerous melancholy of the place forces Ryan and company onto the frozen tundra, where an even greater menace awaits. The forbidding land harbors a dying tribe — cursed members of the ancient Inuit, who seize the arrival of Ryan and his band as their last hope to appease angry gods...by offering them up as human sacrifice.

Ryan Cawdor is gunned down and left for dead by the new Provisional US Army, commanded by a brilliant general with a propensity for casual mass murder and a vision to rebuild America. Waging war from his pre-Dark, fusion-powered armored locomotive, he's poised to unlock the secrets of the Gateways — as the rest of Ryan's group stand powerless. All except one. Hope may be lost for Krysty Wroth. But revenge is enough.

Emerging from a gateway in the Midwest, Ryan senses trouble within the well-fortified ville of a local baron, whose understanding of pre-Dark medicine may be their one chance to save a wounded Jak. But while his white coats can make the drugs that heal, the baron knows the real power and money is in the hardcore Deathlands jolt. And where drugs and riches go, death shadows every step, no matter which side of a firefight you stand on....

Hearing a rumor that the Trader, his old teacher and friend, is still alive, Ryan and his warrior group struggle across the treacherous Texas desert to find the truth. But an enemy with a score to settle is in hot pursuit — and so is the elusive Trader. The predark city of Sonora — preserved for a century in the salt and sand of the nukescape — becomes the staging ground for a showdown between mortal enemies, where the scales of revenge and death will be balanced with brutal finality.

A century after the nuclear conflagration almost destroyed the world, humanity endures in a lawless land. Those who inhabit Deathlands are either killers or those who would be killed. But an elite few defy the laws of this new natural selection — playing both sides of the eternal game of life and death. Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists never leave a friend behind...or a cold heart alive.

In the relatively untouched area of what was once Niagara Falls, Ryan and his fellow wayfarers find the pastoral farmland under the despotic control of a twisted baron and his slave-breeding farm. Ryan, Mildred, and Krysty are captured by the baron's sec men and pawned into the cruel frenzy of their leader's grotesque desires. JB, Jak, and Doc enlist the aid of outlanders to organize a counter strike — but rescue may come too late for them all.

Emerging from a gateway in New England, Ryan Cawdor and his band of wayfaring survivalists ally themselves with a group of women warriors who join their quest to locate the Illuminated Ones, a mysterious pre-dark secret who may possess secret knowledge of Deathlands. Yet their pursuit becomes treacherous, for their quarry has unleashed a deadly plague in the twisted plot to cleanse the Earth.

The Marshall islands, once the testing grounds for 20th-century weapons of mass destruction, remain perversely beautiful. But the infested waters become the battleground for looting pirates and sec men in still-functional navy PT boats, all driven by greed and madness to plunder the predark caches of science and technology hidden in the islands. Ryan Cawdor and his band emerge in this perilous waterworld, caught in a grim fight to unlock the secrets of the past.

Emerging into one of the pre-dark installations known as Redoubts, the group is taken prisoner in a fully functioning army base operating in a parody of life before the blowout. Its occupants are inbred soldiers, a legacy to the lost secrets of the Totality Concept. Led by the mad general of an obscene military project, the base has found its last hope in the ragtag bunch, a fate that may be even more horrifying than the hell they have survived.

In a hidden redoubt in Ohio, Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists take possession of the ultimate Deathlands War Wag — a crude but effective tank called Leviathan. But having this steel-plated behemoth is a double-edged sword when they fall into the trap of Lady Ward of Novaville, who wants Leviathan for her own means of destruction and domination.

Emerging from a gateway into the snowy barrens of the Colorado Rockies, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior group are forced to strike a deal for survival. This part of white hell is controlled by Baron Nelson, a grief-ridden widower burning for vengeance against the hired killers who murdered his boy. Not far from Nelson's barony lies Yuma, a nasty hellhole every badman in the Rockies calls home. Ryan, Doc and J.B. Dix begin a perilous journey across desolate mountains to Yuma to capture and deliver the boy's killers back to the baron.

A bad jump from a near-space Gateway leaves Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists in the devastated heart of the American Midwest. Moving through the ruins in the safety of an abandoned war wag, they discover a small community that was once the sprawling metropolis of Chicago. The town seems devoid of life, until the first night, when Krysty Wroth vanishes without a trace. Then the group is attacked, leaving Doc Tanner gravely wounded. Ryan realizes that someone, or something, wants them gone — or dead.

When Ryan ingests bacteria-infested food, he lies near death — his body paralyzed but his mind traveling rapidly back to his early days in the Deathlands...moving through the southwest on post-nuke vehicles called warwags...and his run-in with the Baron. Towse, near what was once Albuquerque, is a ville in a freakishly beautiful landscape populated by scabbies and armed Apaches. Baron Alias Carson and his bejeweled wife, Sharona, welcome Ryan, J.B. Dix, and the Tracker to their treacherous world.

If there’s one thing Smoke Jensen hates, it’s a man who fights dirty. And no one fights dirtier than a politician. Especially a lying, cheating, no-good grifter like Senator Rex Underhill. Luckily, with another election coming up, this senatorial snake in the grass has some serious competition: Smoke’s old friend, Sheriff Monte Carson. Carson’s an honest man, and he’s got Smoke’s full support. But Underhill’s got support, too: a squad of hired guns ready to hit the campaign trail - and stain it red with blood.

Major David Valentine and his fugitive battalion are the remnants of an expeditionary force shattered in its long retreat from disaster in the Appalachians. Between a raging blizzard, bands of headhunters, and the need to recover wounded soldiers lost during the retreat, Valentine is in for the toughest winter of his life. And Valentine is losing allies fast. Some of the clans in the region have declared themselves in favor of the Kurians, throwing Kentucky into civil war. But the Kurian overlords have determined that the region isn't worth the effort of another conquest.

Freedom is on the march as the rebellion against the Kurian Occupation of Earth takes the offensive. David Valentine has recruited an ad hoc company of former Quisling soldiers and puts them through a trial by fire with a successful raid against an enemy armory. Now, they're ready to join forces with a guerilla army planning to establish a new freehold in the Appalachian Mountains. Valentine knows that a permanent outpost near the East Coast would provide a strategic victory over the Kurians - and he believes that only his old ally Ahn-Kha could be leading the guerillas.

After three years of exile from humanity's war against the Kurians, David Valentine returns to battle. The Lifeweavers, Earth's allies in the conflict, have mostly vanished, but those that remain are held captive by an overlord known as the Seattle Kurian. To free them, Valentine must convince the legendary resistance fighter known as Adler to join his cause. But the "Old Man" is something of an overlord himself....

Joe Miles must save a family from the killing torrents of a flash flood - while under fire from thieves after a railroad payroll. Once fired for being old, he's still young enough to be a hero.

Something tan and cylindrical struck the roof and rolled off. The men inside didn't wait for the dynamite to blow; they lurched into the sunlight, firing as they ran. A brutal war began when two bold men left Kane's mine to work their own strike. This was the final battle.

A traveling prospector wandering around California looking for gold spends a few peaceful days with a man hiding a sad story.