James Axler – Keepers of the Sun

Ryan was the first to come around and he sat motionless, resting, his arm still around Krysty, her long red hair brushing his wrist.

He glanced sideways at her, seeing an attractive woman in her midtwenties. As she was still unconscious, her bright emerald eyes were hidden. She was close to six feet tall, strongly built, and wore a blue jacket and a white shirt over dark blue pants.

Across the chamber, J.B. was stirring. John Barrymore Dix, hailing originally from Cripple Creek, was known throughout Deathlands as the Armorer because of his unique knowledge and skills with all weaponry.

J.B.’s first act on recovering was to check that his beloved fedora hat was still in place, then to take his spectacles from his pocket and place them on the bridge of his bony nose. He peered across at Ryan.

“Not a bad jump.” J.B. had always been a man of few words.

He was Ryan’s oldest friend. They had met as young men, full of gall and sand, and rode with the Trader in his war wags. They’d traveled and fought all across Deathlands for more than ten years, learning the manifold skills of killing at the hands of the notorious master.

J.B.’s next move was to check his blasters, the Uzi machine pistol with twenty 9 mm full-metal jacket rounds and the brutal Smith amp; Wesson M-4000 shotgun. The weapon had been designed to hold eight rounds of Remington flechettes, each round containing twenty inch-long, needle-pointed darts.

“Not bad,” Ryan agreed.

It wasn’t just that the flood had vanished from the gateway chamber. The six friends had been sitting chest deep in the water. Now they all seemed to be bone-dry, and there wasn’t a trace of moisture on the floor.

Ryan closed his good, right eye and opened it again. He automatically checked his own hardwarethe Steyr SSG-70 hunting rifle, which fired a 7.62 mm bullet, its accuracy increased with a Starlight nightscope and a laser image enhancer. On his right hip he carried his trusty SIG-Sauer P-226 automatic pistol, which fired fifteen rounds of 9 mm ammunition. Everything was in place and bone-dry. Finally Ryan’s hand poised along the taped hilt of his eighteen-inch panga, sheathed on his left hip.

Jak Lauren was next to recover.

The teenager blinked open his ruby eyes, running fingers through his shoulder-length white hair. He swallowed hard. “Don’t feel bad.”

Jak was only five feet four inches tall, and barely pushed the scales over one hundred pounds. But he was a fine acrobat and the finest hand-to-hand fighter that Ryan had ever known. He was also a genius with the leaf-bladed throwing knives that he kept hidden all about him.

Despite his age, Jak had lived several lifetimes. He’d been a married man and a father before tragedy had robbed him of that happiness.

Krysty had come around from the jump without Ryan noticing. He felt her stir against him and turned to kiss her lightly on the cheek. “Welcome to somewhere else, lover,” he said quietly. “How is it?”

She sighed. “Felt better. Then again, I’ve surely felt a whole lot worse. That was one of the better jumps.”

Ryan nodded. “Mildred’s coming out of it,” he said. “Leaves Doc to last.”

“As usual,” the black woman muttered, still sitting with her eyes closed.

Ryan grinned at Krysty, squeezing her fingers. Ever since the thirty-six-year-old doctor had joined them, she and Doc Tanner had always teased each other.

Mildred Winonia Wyeth was born in December 1964, more than a century earlier. She had been one of the world’s greatest authorities on the science of medical freezing, which turned seriously ironic when she went into hospital for minor abdominal surgery in late December of the year 2000. Something went wrong with the operation, and to save her life the doctors decided to freeze her.

Only a few days later and the world exploded.

The nuclear holocaust that had been feared for nearly sixty years finally happened. The heavens were blackened with missiles, at the time that was later to be called “skydark.” Tens of millions died in the massive blasts of the first couple of days. Then came the predicted period of the long winters, with the insidious radiation chilling off hundreds of millions of the survivors of the first strikes.