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

Mankind has ceded the night to the corelings, demons that rise up out of the ground each day at dusk, killing and destroying at will until dawn, when the sun banishes them back to the Core. As darkness falls, the world’s few surviving humans hide behind magical wards, praying the magic can see them through another night. As years pass, the distances between each tiny village seem longer and longer. It seems nothing can harm the corelings, or bring humanity back together.

Generations after a near nuclear annihilation, America is a radiation-ravaged wasteland swarming with a thousand horrifically mutated life forms. Ryan Cawdor and his band of post-holocaust survivors barely escape a self-destructing redoubt in the new southwest and embark on a journey overland to find the nearest gateway. But without an adequate supply of food and water, their quest is doomed.

Once, Frank Morgan had a wife and a future on the land — until a rich man with a grudge drove him out of Colorado. Since then, Morgan's taken up the one skill that always came easy — gunfighting — and drifted to a mining town in the New Mexico Territory. But there's nothing easy about two vicious gangs descending on the town and threatening to wreak havoc. With his reputation preceding him, Morgan is elected to stand in the outlaws' way. 

After narrowly escaping the devolved prison community of Ispville, the companions make their way on foot for the arduous 200-mile trek to the ruins of Chicago and the redoubt that holds the nearest known gateway, as winter sets in. This is only the first stage in their journey to the intended refuge of Ryan’s home ville of Front Royal, and hopefully a safe haven for the birth of Krysty’s child. To make matters worse, they’re the reluctant guardians of fellow former prisoners, a mother and three young daughters, none of whom possess the companions’ survival skills.

Stories of the Trader and his convoy of war wagons endure in the badlands of post-holocaust America. A dealer in Deathlands' most precious commodities - weapons and fuel - Trader takes note of a young Ryan Cawdor. Surrounded in myth and rumor, Trader sets into motion the beginnings of legend at a place called Virtue Lake...At Spearpoint, the ultimate redoubt housing a valuable cache of predark technology, two opposing wills clash. Levi Shabazz intends to carve his own empire out of the vast wastelands, but the Trader intends to thwart him and end his bloody siege of power. 

Cursed with a magic ring that forbids skullduggery, Tyvian Reldamar’s life of crime is sadly behind him. Now reduced to fencing moldy relics and wheedling favors from petty nobility, he’s pretty sure his life can’t get any worse. That is until he hears that his old nemesis, Myreon Alafarr, has been framed for a crime she didn’t commit and turned to stone in a penitentiary garden.

Marshal Vladmir Karamatsov is dead, the victim of the fierce undersea battle for Mid-Wake. But with his arch enemy gone, John Thomas Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer and survival authority, discovers a terrifying new threat looming on the eastern horizon. On an expedition to secure peaceful relations with the Far East, Rourke's son Michael and his ambassadors are imprisoned by the mysterious leader of the Second City of China — a sadistic madman intent on unleashing another nuclear holocaust on an already war-ravaged world.

Ryan Cawdor has been narrowly rescued from a harrowing, uncontrolled plummet through the maelstrom of time, only to find himself stranded in a place outside of the reality he knows, his savior not quite the man he appears to be. At the Cawdor family home of Front Royal, the companions meet Ryan’s long-lost son, who is no longer who he once was. They learn Front Royal has fallen to invaders, forces under the command of a longtime bitter enemy and constant nemesis.

An earthquake in the Arkansas dust bowls leaves the companions for dead, until they are all reunited except for armorer J. B. Dix. Alive, though with no memory of the past, he is in the uncertain employ of the iron fisted ruler of a vital outpost along the routes that traverse the wastelands. Duma is the biggest, most dangerous ville in all of Deathlands, where jolt, jack, booze, and sex are worth more than human life. Stalking Duma and preparing to attack this orgy of firepower is a crazed band of inbred worshipers of Nagasaki...and their unwilling new sec force led by Ryan Cawdor.

Following up rumors of trouble on his old home ground, Ryan Cawdor and his band seek shelter inside the walls of what was once the largest shopping mall in the Carolinas. The baron of the concrete fortress gives them no choice but to join his sec teams. As outside invaders step up their raids on the mall, Ryan has to battle both sides for a chance to save their lives.

Looking for respite after a bitter struggle in Kentucky's Hazard ville, the wayfarers must make do with Arctic tundra and earthquakes. Trapped in the hostile landscape by a mattrans jump, Ryan and companions find the ultimate challenge to their will to survive. The odds dwindle when they become the new bounty in a struggle for dominance between a group of Neanderthals and descendants of a military garrison stranded generations ago.

Magus is a steel-eyed cybernetic sociopath whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Now, the savage Pacific isles above a long-submerged Southern California are his new arena. Ryan wants a second chance to chill Magus once and for all. But as the ringmaster of torture orchestrates his magnum opus, a stunning sideshow is under way. Pre-Dark white coats believe they have found the key to turn back time and intercept the deed that erased human history. 

Traversing the terrain of Utah, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists find new evidence that the past is alive and dangerous — with a score to settle. Once before they'd battled and destroyed the brilliant and cunning cyborg know as Delphi, but he's reborn and ready to continue his drive for domination. And he's eager for the keys to the kingdom that only the legendary Deathlands survivors — and their secrets — can help him attain.

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. 

In pursuit of a hardened enemy — Magus — Ryan and the companions find themselves in a land more foreign than any they've encountered. After unwittingly slipping through a time hole, the group lands in 20th-century New York City, getting their first glimpse of predark civilization. And they're not sure they like it. Only Mildred and Doc can appreciate this strange metropolis, but Armageddon is just 72 hours away, and Magus will stop at nothing to make sure Ryan and his team are destroyed on Nuke Day....

Pulling sec duty aboard a steamboat on the mighty Sippi is a welcome reprieve for Ryan and his friends…until armored warships reduce their vessel to a burning husk. Abruptly stranded in a nightmarish, poisonous swamp, fighting off crocodiles and muties, the companions and their crew of allies get to work building rafts. Their escape route, however, is swiftly intercepted, and they learn they've sailed into the middle of a fierce conflict between two villes fighting over the iron trade. The companions don't seem to stand a chance against the fleets of ironclad gunboats. 

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.

Devastation from the nukewar shattered civilization and left a planet both primitive and ripe for rebirth - or retaking. While the balance of power has fallen to avaricious, amoral barons, a handful of humanity still holds hope of a future worth fighting for or dying to defend. If a better life inside the hellground exists, Ryan Cawdor and his friends will find it.

Compassion is a luxury in a brutal land where life is cheap, but Dr. Mildred Wyeth holds fast to her physician's oath to show mercy. Now she's stricken by a plague that brings on a deep craving for human flesh. Unwilling to lose one of their own to this pervasive pestilence without a fight, the companions follow the trail to Cajun country, where the mysterious queen of the Cannies is rumored to possess the only antidote to the grim fate that awaits Mildred...and perhaps her warrior friends.

Crawling out of the ruins of a nuke-shattered America, a new reality shapes an unpredictable terrain of human resilience and unabated savagery. Born and bred in Deathlands, Ryan Cawdor has seen the pulsing of its dark heart. And he understands more than most that tomorrow is certain to arrive. But to see it means surviving today — any way he can.