Книги автора: James Axler

Dedicated to fighting terror wherever it's found, the warriors of Stony Man do not consider failure to be an option. But the men and women of this top secret unit remain ever vigilant in the knowledge that some day a threat so enormous may arise that nothing can stop I t…not even the hardest commandos on the planet. That day may be now….It is brilliant technology from the space race days, shelved long ago in favour of more sophisticated weaponry. No nukes, no warheads, just simple rods of stainless steel corralled in space and sent jetting into Earth's atmosphere at Mach 2 to hit selected targets with white-hot balls of molten metal. Cheap to make, impossible to stop, and easy to deploy, it has fallen into hostile hands. Across the globe, a demonstration of the accuracy of Sky Hammer leaves little doubt that this could be the endgame for Stony Man…and the world.

MORTAL RIFTSWhen Doc is taken captive by a band of marauders in what was once Nebraska, Ryan and the companions rally to get him back. But they aren't just fighting the local muties. They're also up against the area's terrifying terrain, which shifts and morphs at a moment's notice. With their options dwindling in this mazelike region that doesn't obey the laws of physics, the team joins forces with a beautiful and deadly woman who evens the odds on the battlefield. But while this warrior seems to be on their side, she has a secret agenda that could spell the end for them all…THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARESince the nukecaust, the American dream has been reduced to a daily fight for survival. In the hellish landscape of Deathlands, few dare to dream of a better tomorrow. But Ryan Cawdor and his companions press on, driven by the need for a future less treacherous than the present.

Seeking refuge in a post-Armageddon America, Ryan Cawdor and his crew of misfits travel together for survival and sanity. Known as Deathlands, this lawless hellscape is defined by destruction, death and despair.Only those who persevere with the belief in a better future stand a chance in this world where each day brings a new, and potentially lethal, struggle.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.

WEARY WANDERERSIn the war-torn wasteland known as Deathlands, desperation and destruction have replaced dreams and peace. Each day arrives with a new life-threatening challenge for wanderer Ryan Cawdor and his fellow band of survivors…FEAST OR FAMINEBizarre murders are taking place in a fertile farming community, and the locals are quick to point fingers at Ryan and his companions. But they know another culprit is responsible. A colony of mutants has been driven from its underground home, forced to find sustenance in the light of day. And only human flesh will satisfy their hunger. Caught between a rock and a horde of hungry cannibals, Ryan and the companions face an ultimatum–help the cannies reclaim their territory, or risk becoming the next meal. Except something far more sinister– and ravenous–lurks beneath the lush fields…

DESPERATE MEASURESSince the nukecaust, the American dream has been reduced to a daily fight for survival. In the hellish landscape of Deathlands, few dare to dream of a better tomorrow. But Ryan Cawdor and his companions press on, driven by the need for a future less treacherous than the present.CAUGHT IN THE CROSS FIREPulling 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. But in Deathlands, even the underdog can bite back…

CHILD VORTEXAn orphaned teen with the ability to transform into a vicious whirlwind latches on to Ryan and the companions as they travel through former North Dakota. Her deadly power seems like a boon at first, until it starts to control her. When threatened, she destroys everything in her path… including those she loves. Then a group of outcast fighters kidnaps the young woman and manipulates her—and her terrifying mutation—for their own destructive agenda. With the vortex unleashed, the companions face a tough decision: chill the orphan or perish in her violent wake.AMERICAN NIGHTMARESince the nukecaust, the American dream has been reduced to a daily fight for survival. In the hellish landscape of Deathlands, few dare to dream of a better tomorrow. But Ryan Cawdor and his companions press on, driven by the need for a future less treacherous than the present.

TIME WARPEDRyan Cawdor and his six companions struggle to survive postnuclear America, a grim new world where hope for the future is lost amid the devastation.APOCALYPSE REDUXIn 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 twentieth-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 seventy-two hours away, and Magus will stop at nothing to make sure Ryan and his team are destroyed on Nuke Day…

Remnants of America's past are littered across the postapocalyptic landscape, but little remains of the predark ideals of law and order. Survival is a blood quest, and lethal force the means to power. Still, a handful retains their humanity among the coldhearts, and in a world where nothing lasts forever, hope is a commodity as precious as jack.Steeped in beauty and mysticism, the canyons of Mesa Verde, Colorado, survived the blast that altered the American West. Hired to track a group of missing children, Ryan Cawdor and his band follow the trail to a legendary city carved in stone, older and stronger than the nukecaust. The inhabitants of the palaces of light are more than warriors and survivors; they are masters of mind games that prey on illusion. And true believers in a metaphysical endgame poised to push the companions over the edge of reality…into certain death.

The nuclear cataclysm that maimed America altered the rules of existence. The new reality guarantees a grim battle for survival, but the higher human instinct to exist in peace and good will lives on. Legends endure and Ryan Cawdor is a warrior of his time. When the good fight needs to be won, Ryan and his band take a stand.In the nuke-altered region of the Great Lakes, Ryan and his group face the spectrum–from the idyllic to the horrific–of a world reborn. Close to enclaves of peace and sanctuary, Deathlands' most distorted spawn of humanity, cannibals, spread terror. Against the battered shoreline of Lake Michigan, an encounter with an old friend leads to a battle to save Milwaukee from a force of deadly mutant interlopers–and to liberate one of their own.

After the Mega cull, the weak died off, so that a century later, the living have descended from only the toughest stock. Still, it takes more than strength to survive Deathlands.It takes skill, cunning and a warrior's heart. But for Ryan Cawdor, staying alive isn't just about living. In this nuke-transformed America, it helps if somewhere, deep inside, there's hope of finding something better.A virulent strain of a preDark biowep has been unleashed upon the denizens of northern Kansas, turning them into rotting, flesh-eating monsters. Running from the mindless, soulless rottie hordes, Ryan and his companions arrive in the civil-war-torn ville of Sweetwater Junction. They've got one shot at beating the hungry rotties: turn the bloodlust of the ville's warring factions away from each other and toward a common enemy. But that means splitting up and hiring on as sec for both sides and surviving the firefight–before the real hell is unleashed.In Deathlands, time is blood.

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 coldheart alive.Stranded in the salty desert wastes of West Texas, Ryan and his companions find pre-Dark wheels and set out on a treacherous journey across inhospitable terrain. Hopes for a hot meal and clean bed in an isolated ville die fast when the companions run into a despotic baron manipulating the lifeblood of the desert: water. But it's his fortress stockpiled with enough armaments to wage war in the dunes that interests Ryan, especially when he learns the enemy may be none other than the greatest–and long dead–Deathlands legend: the Trader. In the Deathlands the future is here, but the past is never far behind.

After a century of chaos following the nukes, Deathlands is forming pockets of civilization, aided by preDark stockpiles of weapons, fuel and pieces of 21st-century knowledge. But these troves are hard to come by, and survival remains a blood quest.For Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists, luck is sparse, chances slimmer, yet hope drives them onward.The sulphur-teeming Gulf of Mexico is the poisoned end of the earth, but loaded cargo ships ruined by skydark lure doomie and cutthroat alike. Here, Ryan and the others glean rumours of whole cities deep in South America that survived the blast intact. But as the companions contemplate a course of action that may divide them, a new horror approaches unseen on the horizon. The Lords of Death are Mexican pirates raiding stockpiles with a grim vengeance. When civilization hits rock bottom, a new stone age will emerge, with its own personal day of blood reckoning.In the Deathlands, the future could always be worse. Now it is…

Everyone who lives in Deathlands must endure the hellscape of a world mutilated by nukes and madness. Survival is a grim pursuit, achieved only by the most ruthless means. Yet Ryan Cawdor and his companions remain determined to persevere by doing whatever it takes to surviveWhen a mat-trans malfunction strands Ryan Cawdor and his friends in a gutted redoubt in the West Indies, the crystal waters offer them a tantalizing glimpse of untouched splendour. But the oasis is abruptly shattered by violent and ruthless pirates, and Ryan has to barter with a young guide, a teenage boy on a blood quest against a sadistic local warlord, to navigate a land teeming with predators–mutie, human and animal. The race is on to find a second redoubt, buried deep in the inhospitable heart of Monster Island. As pirates, mutie sec men and monsters converge, the kill zone widens, blood flows…and the group rushes to escape paradise before it destroys them.Because even paradise has claws in Deathlands.

Decades after the nukecaust, Earth's fate remains in a stranglehold. The stunning otherworldly design of the blueprint for domination is crucial to rescuing humanity from eternal slavery.As the Cerberus exiles dare to challenge the planet's increasingly powerful usurpers, the battle to navigate time and dimension continues–aided by brute force and the age-old strategies of war.Kane and the team learn of a secret doomsday weapon rumored to be hidden in Russia. But where would the paranoid scientists of communist rule hide a battleship-sized device from aliens of supreme intelligence and mind-reading abilities? Where few can fi nd it–on another astral plane, complete with whitecoats still unaware of the nukecaust. But mysterious interlopers have tapped into Cerberus intelligence, forcing their bid to control the Death Cry. And if Cerberus can manifest the Death Cry into reality–the potential for one last global holocaust becomes a death race.

A legendary warrior of nuke-spawned America, Ryan Cawdor understands the hard-and-fast rule of Deathlands. Where there is life, death is only a matter of time.Still, staying alive is the dubious luxury of being quick, hard and willing to abide by a code of honor long abandoned to the wreckage of this postapocalyptic hell zone: truth and fair play.St. Louis is a concrete jungle of fetid heat, acid rains and cutthroats. With J. B. Dix gravely wounded, Ryan and his group become captive guests of a local barony. Freedom lies in the success of a deal: recapture a runaway teen, daughter of the ailing baron. But the dangerous power behind the throne rests with a self-proclaimed holy man. His gruesome manipulation of life and death are about to put the group in a race for their own salvation.

Raw courage and knowledge of the arcane secrets of preDark technology have enabled Ryan Cawdor and his warrior companions to live and roam a land tortured–but not destroyed–by apocalyptic madness. In a world where the price of living is paid in fl esh and blood, nothing is ever free, not even death.In Deathlands, power brings more power to those able to command it by means fair or foul. Yet few among the most tyrannical barons can rival the ruthlessness of Sandra Tregart, whose despotic visions are being realized by resurrected technology: air power. With her restored biplane, she delivers death from the skies to all who defy her supremacy–a virulent ambition that challenges Ryan Cawdor and his band in unfathomable new ways.

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….

Humanity has been held in subjugation for thousands of years, manipulated by a cruel alien race. But what began as a game among self-styled gods evolved into an internecine power play.Divided by ego and greed, the enemy faced resistance–and a reckoning–from an intrepid group of human rebels. But now the Cerberus operation lies in disarray, its members missing or broken, even as the Annunaki threat is reborn in a new and more horrifying form.Enlil, cruellest of them all, is set to revive the sadistic pantheon that will rule the Earth. Based in his vast Dragon City, Enlil plans to create infinite gods–at the cost of humankind. With the Cerberus team at its lowest ebb, can they possibly stop his twisted plan? Or are they, too, destined to be absorbed by the God Machine?

After an atomic blast hurled the world into an uncertain future, the past still reaches out in hope…and damnation. In a kill-or-die world, one steadfast group of survivors possesses superior fighting skills and sense of fair play that have made them living legends. In their struggle to seek a better way of life, they are unravelling the powerful secrets of the hell on earth called Deathlands.A pre-dark legacy of shattering promise lies beneath the ruins of nuke-ravaged Seattle. Ryan Cawdor and his warrior companions come face-to-face with the ancestors of a secret society whose members were convinced that paradise awaited at the centre of the earth. This cult is inexorably tied to a conspiracy of twentieth-century scientists devoted to fulfilling a vision of genetic manipulation. In this labyrinthine ville, carved from the subterranean passages of a doomed past, some of the descendants of the Illuminated Ones are pursuing the dream of their legacy–while others are dedicated to its nightmare. Even in the Deathlands, twisted human beliefs endure….

Survival in America's nuke-blasted frontier is both a curse and a salvation for Ryan Cawdor and his warrior companions. Though the basic needs of existence must be fought for and won with blood– each day alive means another chance to seek refuge and a better way of life in a hostile and brutal world, where hope still fires the human heart.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. In the Deathlands, you are sentenced to your destiny from the moment of birth.…