Prologue

Four men are trekking up through the wilderness. They have backpacks, food, weapons. They are: Hennings, Duber, Rogan and Manix. Hennings is an okay guy; Duber and Rogan are greedy, brutal men; Manix is a mutie. To look at him he’s perfectly normal, but he has a strange extrasensory power: he can “smell” danger. That’s why Duber and Rogan have forced him to come; they need him because there’s danger aplenty up here. Hennings has been brought along as shotgun, a backup heavy, to blast anything that Manix misses.

This is a strange place, odd stories have been told of the area. Somewhere up here, in the heart of Glacier National Park, there exists a treasure of some kind, or a hidden place beyond the peaks, of untold riches. The stories have gotten confused over the past sixty or seventy years, and men who have sought to explore the area have all disappeared, never returned to the plains. All except one: a guy who trekked out with a twenty-strong party about five years previously. After a month he returned to the plains, a wild-eyed, staggering wreck of a man babbling of “fog devils.” He died without revealing much else. Since then, no one has ventured back into the mountains. But the greed of men such as Duber and Rogan drives out fear; always such men believe they can succeed where others have failed.

There’s a sullen atmosphere of resentment and unease between the four men. The air is strangely heavy with electricity. Tempers are fraying. Darkness is falling as they stumble up a rocky track beside a precipice—an electric darkness crackling eerily with blue-tinged flares. They round a bend in the trail. Ahead is a bank of thick, impenetrable fog extending across the trail. It shifts and quivers, seems almost alive. Tendrils of fog lick out from the main mass of it, like groping fingers. A dull, eerie glow emanates from it, lighting the immediate area somberly.

A fight breaks out among the men, already bickering and snapping at one another. Duber and Rogan scream at each other. The other two join in. They seem to have gone insane. Duber tries to strangle Rogan. Manix tries to smash in Hennings’s head with a rock. Snow begins to fall, large thick flakes feathering down silently. Rogan goes crazy with his gun, shoots Manix, who disappears shrieking over the precipice. Hennings pulls his own gun, fires, misses, gets slammed back with a round through the shoulder. Duber dives for the dropped gun, grabs it, blows Rogan’s head away in a spray of red stuff. Cackles crazily: he’s going to finish Hennings off; he’ll get through the fog, whatever is beyond will be his

his

his alone! Jams gun toward helpless Hennings, unaware of the thick tendril of fog that is even now reaching down the trail toward him, wreathing through the air, curling around his throat. He yells. The fog fingers clutch, lift him screaming up into the air emitting long blue hissing sparks; he’s haloed in a weird cyanic fire. Shrieking, he disappears into the fog.

Hennings crawls away, scrambling to his feet. Clutching his bloody shoulder, he staggers back down the trail

back down toward the foothills and the relative sanity of the plains.

The Story

Ryan Cawdor is a tall rangy man in his early thirties. He’s not a child of the Deathlands. Once he was the privileged son of one of the more powerful barons of the East Coast. (NB: I may well change such nomenclature in the actual writing, if a better system occurs; also, I may change certain characters’ names I may not be entirely happy with.)

Ryan’s educated, has read books, knows pretty well what life was like one hundred years before; maybe the detail is lost in the years, but the general outline is understood. He lived a good life, far better than most in what used to be the U.S. of A. What, then, is he doing acting as head guard to a trade-trucker on a fleet of land wagons amid the hellish conditions of the Deathlands?

He grew to hate the life in the East, the power struggles, the court intrigues, the greed and corruption already rampant, the life of unearned luxury not shared by ninety-five percent of the population. His father, Donn Cawdor, farmed a huge tract of land, used muties as laborers—but was sensitive to their problems, did not use them as slaves. The son of a rival baron casually slaughtered a group of Donn Cawdor’s workers, and Ryan went berserk, shooting up the rival baron’s HQ and incidentally killing the baron himself. It was a setup. The son wanted his father out of the way, knew Ryan would react as he did. In fake revenge he destroys Donn Cawdor’s HQ, Donn Cawdor himself, most of his family and grabs his lands. Ryan escaped, but not before dealing death to many close to the rival baron’s son. Ryan fled into the Deathlands.

Or, the same basic situation but it’s Ryan’s own brother who is the villain of the piece. That is, Ryan’s brother and Ryan are poles apart in character. Ryan’s brother slaughtered his father’s muties, his father and other members of his family, and heaped the blame on to Ryan. I like this better. More conflict.

Ryan traveled across the Deathlands, seeking work, seeking some kind of peace of soul—seeking he doesn’t quite know what. And so lands up as head shotgun for the Trader, a man who trades in the Deathlands. (NB: All of this background material will be infiltrated into the narrative by degrees, not of course in one solid chunk.)

The Trader needs as many guards as he can get. He deals in arms, all kinds of weaponry. He travels through as much of the Deathlands as he can, selling or bartering guns, ammo, grenades, small missiles, whatever he’s got, whatever he can find, whatever he can make. Apart from Ryan, the Trader’s main lieutenant is J. B. Dix, known as the Weapons Master.

The Trader is simply a businessman; it’s Dix who has a fantastic knowledge of weaponry, booby traps and so on. A thin, intense, bespectacled man with a receding hairline, a penchant for thin black cheroots, a fast but very devious mind and a terse and monosyllabic conversational style, Dix the Weapons Master will be an important character in the series. There is no knowing what kind of weird stuff he has in his grab bag, a satchel slung over one shoulder or indeed in his clothes and on his person. He is secretive, but will prove to be immensely loyal to Ryan Cawdor.

Not unnaturally, the kind of cargoes shipped by the Trader are prime targets for the ruthless marauders who prey on anything that moves in the Deathlands. And we open with an unidentified man watching from cover as a line of lights wobbles across his line of vision, heading across rough terrain in the predawn hours: the weapons train, a line of trucks, powered wagons and armored personnel cars— along the lines of armored dune buggies, but bigger and with much hardware attached: these are for the guards—bumping and jolting along an uneven, potholed road, what used to be a main interstate, now in appalling disrepair. No weapons train ever stops for the night in this area of the Deathlands. A blazing battle erupts. Ryan and his men manage to beat off the attackers for the moment but only after terrible casualties and a good deal of land wagon damage. Now they have to stop.

Ryan and a small group of guards scout out, under cover of the darkness. They discover the attackers’ camp. Discover, too, that the leaders of the band—mostly horrifying mutants—are about to gang-rape a beautiful red-haired girl. In an explosive sequence Ryan and his men destroy the mutants’ camp and Ryan rescues the girl. The girl is Krysty, the only survivor of a small land-wagon train heading for Glacier National Park in search of a fabulous treasure, rumor of which had fired them to make the dangerous trek into the Deathlands. Ryan dismisses this talk of treasure and riches. It’s a myth, a will-o’-the-wisp.

The weapons train is headed for the town of Mocsin, ruled over by the brutal Jordan Teague, a man who intends that his empire will one day become the most powerful in the Deathlands. That’s why he needs much weaponry. And he can pay for it, too, with gold that is mined within his own territories, fantastically rich new lodes exposed in the war. On the other hand, he’d rather have the guns free if he can.

Toward sundown the weapons train arrives at Mocsin at a grim moment—a mass execution of various men and women who in one way or another have bucked Jordan Teague. Mocsin is a kind of frontier boomtown, except for the fact that due to Teague’s vicious excesses, it’s now rundown, seedy. Teague and his henchmen live in a style of primitive decadence, high off the hog, but it’s clear that things can’t go on in this way for long. The majority of the townsfolk live in fear of Teague’s “police,” run by the sinister Cort Strasser, a hideously disfigured man with a biotronic eye and a face full of alloy.

Most of the townsfolk want an end to Teague and his reign of terror and violence. Strasser himself is not Teague’s second-in-command. This dubious honor belongs to a plug-ugly man named Jarl Kremer. Kremer and Strasser are not on the best of terms, but whereas Kremer is a bullet-headed thug, Strasser is a ruthless schemer with a maniacal power lust, which, for the time being, he keeps well under wraps.

The Trader places his convoy outside of town, well aware that Teague will double-cross him if he can. Teague keeps putting off settling day. The atmosphere is more than tense; it’s getting to be explosive. The slightest spark could touch off a blazing conflagration. During one of their parleys Teague, a man of gross appetites, has made it perfectly plain that he wants Krysty as part of the deal. The Trader—an honorable man, incidentally—rejects this contemptuously, but that doesn’t go down at all well with Teague, who is used to having his own way. This adds to the tension.

At these conferences a strange, half-crazed wreck of a man has sometimes been in evidence: Teague calls him Doc, and he appears to be some kind of court jester, to be booted around and made the butt of countless practical jokes by Teague’s oafish bully boys. In moments of lucidity, he talks of a country where flowers grow and there is peace and plenty—stuff like that—in a weird kind of English, using strange, alien phraseology. Ryan figures that this could be the basis for the legends about “the place beyond the peaks” that Krysty spoke of, but again dismisses it.

At Teague’s HQ, Ryan sees a man in chains and manacles being savagely beaten by some of Teague’s goons. Ryan intervenes, lays the goons out. Strasser tells him the guy is a lunatic, not to bother about him. Later, at the convoy camp, the guy appears. He has escaped from Strasser’s police HQ. His name is Hennings. He tells his strange tale of the fog devils and what he saw up in the peaks, as detailed in the prologue. Ryan now begins to think there’s maybe more to these stories than surface myths. Dix, too, is more than interested. He figures that the fog could be some kind of dispersed energy. Where’s that energy escaped from? It doesn’t sound natural. It could be a clue to some kind of hidden arms cache of long ago, from before the nuke war, of the type that the Trader and his men are continually seeking and sometimes stumbling across. Hennings was being kept on ice by Teague, who is also interested in his story. Hennings also tells them something about Doc, who, in his less-crazed moments, talks of places of power and scientific miracles. Teague is eager to mount an expedition. The Trader and his men hide Hennings. After they’ve finished their business with Teague, they intend to head for Glacier National Park to investigate.

Things boil up. In a final confrontation Teague kills the Trader, grabs Krysty, Ryan and his men and throws them into the pokey. Ryan is prepared for this. Using some plastique they have and detonators—all innocuously hidden in their clothes and boots—they blow themselves out of jail and hit Teague’s armory, demolish it and most of Teague’s HQ, rescue Krysty. The town’s citizens rise up, and Ryan and friends head out across the plain in convoy, with Hennings and Doc, whom they grabbed in the shootout.

After a horrifying drive through the wilderness—losing vehicles in acid lakes, fighting off packs of mutated wolves as big as bullocks, etc.—they reach the foothills and find a crumbling but navigable metalled road leading up into the higher mountains. Here they encounter the fog. The fog is pure energy that has leaked out from the maw of the hidden redoubt. In its contained form, inside the redoubt, it’s “safe.” But free, it becomes pure destructive energy that can render a man down to his essential molecules and scatter them to the four winds. Dix the Weapons Master destroys the fog juggernaut with an implosion grenade that on bursting, sucks energy into its core, neutralizes then safely destroys-disperses it. The way is clear, but by now they’re down to three or four vehicles and only about fifteen men— in no shape to withstand the sudden assault of a much bigger band of mutants who suddenly attack. The same band in fact that attacked them before they reached Mocsin; devastatingly patient, they licked their wounds and bided their time. But just when things are getting desperate help arrives—but in the shape of Teague, Strasser and their men who have vengefully pursued them across the Deathlands.

The mutants are finally destroyed, but Ryan and his party are captured. They move on up into the towering peaks, although at night there are strange and inexplicable occurrences: some of Teague’s guards disappear; some are found dead in the morning. Ryan is taken out at night and interrogated by Strasser. Here he begins to understand Strasser’s motivations and restless ambition. Kremer is drunk, obnoxious, crowing over Strasser. Strasser kills him, tells Teague that Ryan managed to grab a gun and iced Kremer. Now Strasser is second-in-command, and Ryan’s in deep trouble. He’s taken out to be executed by two of Strasser’s goons. But just as they’re about to nail him, one flops over coughing blood with an arrow deep in his back. Ryan deals with the other guy. His rescuer is the mutant Manix, the man who can “smell” danger—a useful attribute. He managed to survive the plunge over the precipice—in the prologue— and has been living like an animal in the hills ever since. He knows Teague from way back, which is why he’s been killing off Teague’s men. More to the point, he knows where there is a vast steel-lined door in the rocks, obviously leading down to the bowels of the hills.

Ryan realizes that there is absolutely no percentage in doing a big-production rescue of Dix, Krysty and the rest. There are still too many of the Teague-Strasser bunch to deal with. It’s a case of softly-softly. Ryan and Manix silently free the others, get to a personnel buggy—but are then discovered. They get away up the road and their only chance is to reach this “door” before Teague-Strasser catch up.

In a nail-bitingly tense sequence they manage to do this. Just. Teague is hot on their heels. They find themselves in a vast, softly lit, steel-walled cavern. The roof is so high it’s beyond view. Lines of computer banks seem to stretch away from them forever, separated by narrow alleyways. High above, a spiderweb of fragile-looking walkways cross-hatch the air. Lights flash on consoles, relays click and chatter, there is a quiet but insistent hum of on-line machinery. And there is a lot of dust.

There’s a running fight through the vast length of this underground complex until they reach the fog room, where Doc suddenly starts babbling about the fog being a gateway to another place. Maybe more. Maybe another time. A stray round creases his scalp and he keels over. But now Ryan and friends are trapped. Teague and his heavies are moving in for the kill. Teague is yelling exultantly: all this power, all the secrets of the preholocaust era are now his to do with as he likes.

Ryan manages to hurl one of Dix’s implosion grenades at him. There is a sizzling crack, a red-cored flash. Then things start to tip over the edge. Teague and a number of his minions are sucked into the grenade blast, becoming liquescent as they sluice into the weird flickering fireball. But it doesn’t stop there. There’s too much power in this vast chamber, long crackling lines of fork lightning spark out from the computers, console screens crack and shatter, lights explode. The implosion ball sucks greedily at that vast acreage of energy, drawing it all in. It can’t stop. It won’t stop until it’s sucked everything in to overload and then it’ll blow just about the entire mountain into orbit!

There’s only one way out—through the fog wall. Doc said it was a gateway; Ryan and friends hope like hell he’s right. They jump into the fog

Context

Editorial Trends

A look at recent developments in Action Adventure and in Science Fiction and Fantasy (SF&F) as indicated by author and publisher activity. Conclusion: there is a healthy market for “near-future fiction.”

The Origin of Near-Future Fiction

The Survivalistby Jerry Ahern (Zebra). This series, first published in 1981, is now at #12 with more contracted. It continues to be popular and is successful overseas. It created the “near-future fiction” genre. The success ofThe Survivalist series has led to imitations from a number of paperback publishers in 1984. They follow the ingredients established by Ahern: heroic action in a postnuclear holocaust setting.

Doomsday Warriorby Rider Stacy (Zebra).

Travelerby D. B. Drumm (Dell).

The Outriderby Richard Harding (Pinnacle).

Near-Future Fiction is not just for SF&F readers

The Warlordby Jason Frost (Zebra). This series, now at #4, is written by our Bolan author, Ray Obstfeld. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in the film for release in early 1986, following his success in the action-adventure SF film,The Terminator .

Out of the Ashesby William Johnstone (Zebra).

Streetlethalby Steven Barnes (Ace).

Those Who Favor Fireby Marta Randall (Pocket).

LikeThe Warlord , many near-future novels are aimed at the general reader rather than the science fiction fan, by offering sex, action and patriotism elements traditionally enjoyed by a wider readership. The books shown here are more upmarket thanThe Survivalist imitators, but share withThe Survivalist a readership that goes beyond SF&F.

Action Adventure is also for SF&F readers

Battle Circleby Piers Anthony (Avon). This is a near-future trilogy about “America’s barbaric future” by the leading U.S. writer of Fantasy. The packaging stresses heroic action-adventure themes.

The Mercenaryby Jerry Pournelle (Pocket). Captioned “a thundering adventure,” this book by a major SF&F writer is a Mack Bolan-type novel set in space.

Cross the Starsby David Drake (Tor). Drake’sHammer’s Slammers series, of which this is a spin-off, is the most highly regarded of recent SF actioners. The cover shows paramilitary types posing against a spaceship background.

Space Tyrant: Mercenaryby Piers Anthony (Avon). A book about force, power, warrior violence in a space setting.

These kinds of books show that the action-adventure elements of near-future fiction appeal to SF&F readers, as much as its science-fiction elements appeal to the action-adventure readers.

Fully developed SF&F Action Adventure

Star Worldby Harry Harrison (Bantam). This series has been packaged to look likeThe Survivalist . Although Harry Harrison’s books are not strictly near-future fiction, they are action-adventure and they are earning for the author and the SF&F genre a new kind of reader.

Planet of the Damnedby Harry Harrison (Tor). Sex and violence on a distant planet.

Berserkerby Fred Saberhagen (Ace).

The new kind of SF&F readers come to the genre from other areas of reading, bringing with them a taste for sex and violence blended with a curiosity about the future. They also appreciate books in series.

Conclusion

The argument presented by the preceding exhibits is that the action-adventure genre and the SF&F genre are finding new readers.

Publishers have responded to this development by encouraging the near-future fiction genre, where the elements of heroic action, and the scientific “unknown” of the postnuclear age, most effectively cross over.

Although near-future fiction is a subgenre, it is not isolated from the mainstream either of action adventure or SF&F, or general reading. Action elements continue to appear in SF&F books of all kinds, and SF&F elements are vital to all action-adventure books set during or after World War III. Readers for near-future fiction are found among the general readership for action-adventure, SF&F, and other categories such as mystery and occult. The genre is not a limited phenomenon like some SF&F, but is a response to the real world’s uncertain future, a topic that has continued potential.

Both action-adventure and SF&F readers bring to near-future fiction an acceptance of series. The various subgenres of SF&F such as space operas (E. C. Tubb, Perry Rhodan, E. E. Doe Smith, etc.) have built up loyal followings through ongoing series. There are over four million of John Norman’s GOR books in print. Action-adventure also has its tradition of long-standing series, and therefore successful space actioners such asHammer’s Slammers become series as swiftly as successful mercenary-hero books.

David Hartwell, founding editor of Pocket Books’ Timescape imprint, confirms the conclusions above:

The one direction science fiction is moving in is toward adventure fantasy.

Publishers Weekly

The growth in new kinds of readers for SF&F was accepted as inevitable by the attendees of our science fiction focus tests in 1981:

Readers of SF are extremely receptive to mixed genre books whose growing popularity springs from mass audience interest inStar Wars, 2001, Star Trek etc.

The new breed of mass-market science-fiction readers come to this category of books because they are interested in science fiction renditions of themes that are used in other types of books.

—PI Market Research Report:

SF Focus Groups

Tom Doherty, president and publisher of Tor Books, gives a similar explanation for the new breed of SF&F reader:

Our steady sales growth in SF&F since I started Tor in April 1981 (103% sales increase, 1983 over 1982) can be explained in part by the increasing number of SF&F novels that have begun to hit the national bestseller lists.

Magazine & Bestsellers, September 1983

There is no doubt that SF&F is looting other genres and readership groups for themes and for sales. Ace/Berkley is launching its six-figure SF promotion campaign for 1985 by advertising in military magazines. Retailers report that the SF&F market is growing because of the dual nature of the new readership (women, as well as men) and the crossover between young and mature readers (David Thorson of B. Dalton, 1984). Waldenbooks increased their SF&F shelf space by 150% in 1983-84. George Fisher, marketing manager of Warner Books, reports a sell-through of 60%-70% in SF&F.

These observations of the marketplace suggest the following:

• SF&F is a continually developing category. (Representative sample: Harry Harrison’sStar World

•Action adventure is a continually developing category. (Representative sample: Jerry Ahern’sThe Survivalist .

• The near-future-fiction genre is where the new generation of SF&F and action-adventure readers meet.

• There is strong potential in near-future fiction for selling series to a wider readership than pure SF&F or pure action adventure.

• In order to develop Gold Eagle’s potential in action adventure, as well as to explore the SF&F category as it connects most obviously with action adventure, Gold Eagle should enter the field of near-future fiction.

The Concept of Deathlands