Rat King
Rat King
# 51 in the Deathlands series
James Axler
May we not who are partakers of their brotherhood claim that in a small way at
least we are partakers of their glory? Certainly it is our duty to keep these
traditions alive and in our memory, and to pass them on untarnished to those who
come after us.
—Rear Admiral Albert Gleaves, USN, 1859-1937
THE 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…
Prologue
The old man was going to die soon. He knew it, and so did the others. They could
feel the pain of old age, of a body’s survival systems shutting down one by one.
They could feel it within him, reaching out to spread over them. One chilled,
all chilled.
Inevitably they panicked and wanted him detached, their mute cries coming
through on the readings as a sudden increase in electrical activity. Readings
the like of which no one in the redoubt had ever seen before.
MURPHY GLANCED over the shoulder of the hunched tech. His hands were slow on the
keyboard, laboriously tapping in a code to trigger a programmed instruction.
Except that Murphy knew there wasn’t a code. Wasn’t a program.
“Wallace will have to know,” he said.
The tech said nothing. He just kept tapping. Tap-tap-tap… even though the screen
repeatedly told him that there was no response from the mechanism.
Murphy hit the man on the shoulder. He didn’t often come to this level, and sec
men of his standing didn’t bother to fraternize with the other ranks. That was
just the way it was. He felt the small rankle of irritation grow to a full-blown
itch of anger. An itch he had to scratch.
“Hey, stupe, why don’t you answer when I say something? You know you have to
answer to superior officers.”
Murphy swung the tech around by the shoulder and drew back his arm to deliver a
backhand blow. It was his favorite form of mild reproof, as each of his four
fingers had a thick silver or steel ring rammed down beyond the knuckle joint.
The index finger had a ring with the head of an old god called Elvis, his name
embossed underneath. The middle finger had a skull and crossbones-—the edges of
the crossbone motif would make a satisfying tear on many an impudent mouth— and
the third finger had a five-pointed star that had been awarded to him by Wallace
in recognition of the manner in which he had led the defenses on the last
outsider attack. Many of the scum had been chilled on that day.
But it was the little finger that held the prize—a diamond cut into many sharp