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In the nuclear-storm devastated Deathlands, a warrior survivalist of the 22nd century leads the relentless fight to reclaim a lost world. Barely escaping from a marauding gang, Ryan Cawdor and his band of post-holocaust survivors emerge from a gateway into an idyllic community ruled by Druidic law. But this new Eden may be a mirage, concealing a deadly threat. For the seed of dissent had been sown in the past and is again ready to destroy.

The nuclear exchange that ripped apart the world destroyed a way of life thousands of years in the making. Now, generations after the nuclear blight, Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists try to reclaim the hostile land, led by an undimmed vision of a better future. Hard on the heels of their escape from a powerful baroness, the wayfarers arrive at the shore of the might Mississippi. As if whisked back in time, they find themselves passengers on a riverboat plying the waters and offering every gambling pleasure.

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.

Fish are mysteriously disappearing from the coastal waters of the United States and it's anybody's guess what the problem is. Red tide, pollution? But soon angry fingers point north, to Canada and the two countries trade threats and insults, all signs of neighborliness gone. Forced to consider losing this vast resource, America is in shock. Fish devotees may see it become a coveted delicacy of the past, but the situation is much graver for Remo and Chiun. Possibly they'll have to eat nothing but rice and duck for the rest of their lives.

Ruled by a perverse and malevolent Nature, roamed by lawless remnants of humanity, the Deathlands is what's left of the continental US after a nuclear apocalypse unleashed hell on Earth. Here, only a few can survive and still retain hope for the future and of these, none are more determined than the exiled son of a coastal baron and his closely knit band of warrior survivalists. The years of struggle in the new reality made Ryan Cawdor a bold and undisputed leader, but now he may have to contend with his former mentor, the enigmatic Trader.

Emerging out of the ashes of the nuclear apocalypse, no one has been more successful and determined than Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists. But if the wasteland's endless miles come between them, the odds for getting back together again — for their very survival — are not in their favor. A cryptic message regarding the long-missing Trader sends Ryan and the Armorer on an odyssey to the Pacific Northwest, away from their base, away from their band of warrior survivalists, away from Krysty Wroth.

Survival is an endless battle in the dark age of post-holocaust America, but even amid the ashes of the past, new pockets of civilization emerge, fledgeling communities bound by savage rules. Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior-survivalists are transported from one Valley of the Shadow of Death to another, shaken by the mind-bending effects of the mat-trans, emerging at last into a promised land whose inhabitants are healthy and young.

Generations after global annihilation, Kansas is a mutated landscape of dense, deciduous forest. Gone are the amber waves of grain, another hideous result of nuclear devastation that changed the face of the Earth forever. Now it's survival of the freakish. Following rumors that might lead them to the long-lost Trader, Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior survivalists find themselves the unwilling house guests of the wealthiest barons in all of Deathlands.

Once an idyllic chain of inlets running from Key Largo to Key West, the Florida Keys have become an isolated universe of grotesquely mutated wildlife and bizarre submarine malformations. Blind 70-foot sea snakes lurk among the reefs around underwater volcanoes, while typhoons and pirates turn the crystal waters above into a death zone.

Invisible swarms of insects are on the rampage, heading toward America's heartland. Immune to pesticides, the creatures are consuming farms, leveling wheat and cornfields. On the frontlines, Remo and the Master of Sinanju face not only the insurgent insects, but the Iowa Disorganized Militia - convinced this pestilence is actually a government conspiracy.

It's now generations after the firestorm that nearly consumed the Earth, but the survivors haven't yet finished paying for the sins of the fathers. All of life suffered and of those that survived, not all survived well. This cradle of life is now home to forms fallen far from their human inheritance.

As the 22nd century emerges from the blight of nuclear damnation, humanity is slowly coming to terms with the bizarre new world of Deathlands, where each new generation holds the promise of renewal and redemption — in men like Ryan Cawdor and his son, Dean. Ryan Cawdor and companions emerge from a gateway into the ravaged world of the Rockies. It's old hunting grounds for Ryan and the Titan-haired Krysty Worth — her home and the place where they first came together.

The nuclear storm that swept the globe has left behind the Deathlands, a legacy of hate and violence. Pockets of survivors live off the ravaged land or on stockpiles found in redoubts. But from out of the ashes, a fearless man spearheads the drive to pierce the heart of darkness.... The gateways are secret installations from pre-dark days used by Ryan Cawdor and his group as escape routes. Once again, the warrior survivalists emerge from a jump and into a world — and empire fallen — ruled by the samurai code. And here Ryan has to face a new threat.

J.B. Dix takes several arrows before his team manages to extricate themselves, and, while the wounds themselves are not fatal, Dr. Mildred Wyeth worries with good reason that the arrows may have been tainted. J.B. soon shows symptoms of a deadly infection. Their best chance is a journey of several days to where there had once been a hospital when Mildred trained there a century earlier, in the desperate hope of finding the drugs that J.B. needs to survive.

Having narrowly escaped with their lives from the redoubt near Cornerstone, the Deathlands survivors known as the Companions arrive via mat-trans at a destination they presume to be North Dakota, if the mysterious codes given them while in Cornerstone are accurate. That assumption is soon put in doubt as they discover a devastated city covered in continual ashfall, a sky perpetually obscured by black clouds illuminated only by sporadic lightning. The former metropolis is not deserted, however, but densely populated with ravening hordes of barely human creatures.

On the coast of what used to be Maine, the group's armorer, J.B. Dix, lies dying from a gunshot wound. Having no other choice, Ryan makes a deal with a local baron and his strangely beautiful wife. J.B. will get the surgery he needs when Ryan and crew rescue the couple's daughter, abducted by slavers. But the cold, deep Atlantic waters harbor predark secrets, including the terrifying specter of a USSR nuclear submarine...and its descendants.

It's become the fastest - and surest - way to get from here to eternity. Somebody is playing the railroads like a giant train set, causing high-speed derailments that strew the rails with headless victims from coast to coast. And could the repeated sightings of a ghostly samurai swordsman be fact or mass hysteria? As the carnage continues unchecked and the body count mounts, Dr. Harold Smith suspects the train terror is merely a decoy for the real target.

After the events of Deathlands 131: Freak Pharm and the overthrow of the corrupt pseudo-medical theocracy there, Ryan Cawdor, Krysty Wroth, and their fellow companions had decided that the recovering community of Bomville would likely be the safest place to prepare for the eventual birth of Krysty’s child, rather than venturing out yet again into the unknown. Otherworldly circumstances soon convince Ryan and Krysty that the opposite is true.

The pot-smoking and relentlessly abrasive mad scientist Dr. William Hammersmith, whom the companions first encountered in DL 124 Child of Slaughter, has made “New Zea” his home. The mad scientist uses private-sector mat-trans technology to track and transport Ryan Cawdor’s small team of survivalist warriors from the Deathlands to the islands under siege in order to enlist their aid in training the soft local populace for the imminent attack and lend their own battle-tested mettle to rescue the imperiled community.

In the epic conclusion to the Cornerstone saga, the sinister forces at work in the troubled ville grow insidiously stronger, and Ryan Cawdor is the only one with first-hand knowledge of the true enemy. However, he’s trapped outside the ville, wanted for murder, and, with a hijacked Cornerstone mission team, must return to the redoubt where he and Jak Lauren nearly died, in hopes of finding the means to defeat the monster in Cornerstone’s midst.