Where in the South the rich and evil soup of chemical and biological agents vomited across the landscape, there now exist fetid strontium swamps and near-tropical forest, where new and terrible life-forms lurk.

The Southwest has become a huge tract of simmering hotland, dust-bowl territory for the most part, skinned of cacti and even the most primitive forms of vegetation, where 250 mph winds hurtle in from the Gulf. And when by some atmospheric miracle storm clouds sweep across from the Pacific, it is acid rain that falls — pure acid that can strip a man to the bones in seconds flat.

The resculpted West Coast has now calmed down, although it is still volcanic, and far below the earth's surface and beneath the waves there are still tremendous natural forces simmering in uneasy captivity. Stark fjords stab into the mountainous coastline to the north; steaming lagoons lie to the south.

In the heartland of this huge country there are dramatic changes. The Great Salt Lake, already rising dangerously in the late twentieth century, has extended its bounds because of quake subsidence at the Wasatch Fault and the years' long drenchings caused by intense climatic disturbance. It now covers nearly 15,000 square miles and is roughly the area of the ancient Lake Bonneville of more than ten thousand years ago.

Everywhere there are ruined cities overgrown with noxious vegetation where people, of a kind, still live and battle for survival and supremacy among the brooding tree and undergrowth-choked urban canyons. A new lake has formed in what was once Washington State; new deserts have appeared; the Badlands are even worse.

Large areas of the country lie under an umbrella of dust and debris that clings to the atmosphere in strange forms: in some places as a boiling, red-scarred belt of cloud maybe a mile thick; in others as a dense blanket of toxic smog and floating nuclear junk. A coverlet of destruction mantling a land of doom.

Little wonder, then, that the entire continent, north to south, east to west, coast to coast, is known to those who inhabit it as Deathlands.

Three generations have now passed since the Nuke, time enough for bizarre, mutated life-forms to have developed, both human and animal. In some mutants the genetic codes have become completely scrambled, giving life to monstrous beings, men and women with hideous deformities; in others, the rearrangement has been far more subtle. Extrasensory perception and the weird ability to "see" the immediate future are two of the special talents typically possessed by certain mutants.

In all the coastal Baronies, mutants are feared and hated; in some they are hunted down and ruthlessly exterminated. Small groups of "muties" have fled up to the far northeast, to where old Maine bordered old New Brunswick. There are no customs houses now. Here, amid the cool, dark pine and larch woods, largely untouched by radiation showers, they have integrated with the Forest People, isolated and secretive folk who rarely travel.

Far more roam the Central Deathlands, where it's still pretty much a free-for-all society. There is no interest at all in what goes on in the rest of the world. Why should there be? Here is what matters. And now. A fight for survival in what is still a hostile and deadly environment, a grim world of danger and sudden death and teeming horrors from which there seems to be no escape.

And yet, and yet...

Strange stories have been handed down from one generation to the next. Wild hints circulate. It is said that the old-time scientists made certain discoveries back before the Nuke — bizarre and sensational discoveries that were never made public. It is rumored that there are awesome secrets still to be uncovered in the Deathlands, deep-level "Redoubts" stuffed with breathtaking scientific marvels, fabulous technological treasure troves. It is even whispered that there is an escape route: that somewhere, beyond the Deathlands, there lies a land of "lost happiness."

Absurd, of course. Irrational. A foolishly nostalgic dream conjured up to compensate for living a life of horror in a land of death.

Or is it...?

Reacher could smell blood.

It was there in his nostrils, a coppery odor, redolent of death and horror. Then it was gone. It had lasted a microsecond, as it always did, and then there was nothing there at all but the memory of it.

That and the icy chill stroking his spine like skeletal fingers and the blood-red haze that clouded his mind. He shivered, groaned softly, clutched at his brow.

Death was ahead. The warning had been given. The weird antennae of his psyche had fingered the future, told him of blood and destruction. But the how and the why of it, the exact where and when, were never granted, not to him. Reacher was not a true Doomseer; exact details were denied him. He could only perceive the psychic smell of it. And he knew it would be soon, very soon. Within minutes. There was nothing he could do about it, nothing on earth he could do to stop it.

McCandless growled excitedly, "The mutie's got something. He's pickin' something up."

Reacher felt a hand shake him roughly on the shoulder. It broke his concentration, scattered the scarlet fog in his mind. He stumbled forward, dropped to his knees, his hands scraping rock and sharp-edged stones at the side of the old tarmac road.

"C'mon, c'mon!" McCandless's voice rose from a growl to a vicious snarl. "On ya feet, mutie. What is it? Whatya seen? Where's the danger coming from?"

Still half-dazed from the effects of the sudden mind-zap, Reacher struggled to his feet, blinking his eyes rapidly. He stared around him as though seeing the terrain, his surroundings, for the first time, as though waking up from a dream.

A cliff face rose up sheer from the side of the road on his left, its summit lost in the hovering gloom that was split, every few seconds, by fierce jagged traceries of lightning darting surreally about the sky. To his right, beyond the road and the bush-matted strip of verge, was the lip of the gorge that plunged heartstoppingly down to the river racing far below. Ahead was the road, rutted and cracked and potholed, unused for generations, devastated by the angry elements that feuded constantly day and night in these blasted and forsaken mountains, winding steeply, disappearing around craggy bends. Behind, the road snaked downward to the river, through grim foothills, past sick forest and leprous meadow out to an even grimmer plain.

"Reacher, dammit! What the hell do you see?"

Reacher wiped an arm across his face, leaned groggily against the black granite of the sheer cliff, stared sullenly at the three men facing him.

First, McCandless. Always first. The leader. The guy who had brought them together, the guy who had succeeded where everyone else, every mother's son over the past three or four decades, had failed. That was his boast. Black bearded, scarred, glaring eyed, hulking in his furs. McCandless was a brute schemer who let nothing get in his way. He wanted power and he bulldozed opponents, anyone who thought differently or acted differently.

Then Rogan. McCandless's sidekick. Tall, craggy, stupid faced and stupid brained. But handy with his shooter — that had to be admitted. Reacher had seen how handy Rogan could be back in Mocsin when the tall, pea-brained man had shot a guy's nose away. Rogan hadn't liked the way the guy had been badmouthing McCandless, calling him crazy for even thinking of heading up into the Dark Hills. Rogan had shot the tip of the guy's nose off — one slug, swiftly done, almost without thinking about it. Last Reacher knew, the guy was still alive. And why not? All Rogan had done was blow his snout away. Nothing to it.