White Wasteland, Jeff Kirkham [ebook reader with highlight function TXT] 📗

“I wouldn’t assault a prison. It’s super bad feng shui.”

“How would you take it down, then?”

“I have an app for that. Hold on.” Evan fiddled with the channels on his radio, then keyed the mic hanging on his shoulder. “Lord Clovenhoof. Do you copy? This is Evan.”

“Hold for Mister Jeff,” Zach the ham radio guy, back at the Homestead, responded from their “god radio.”

While they waited, Evan waved his column forward and caught Wheaton up on the last four months of mayhem at the Homestead.

“This is Jeff. Go ahead, Evan,” the radio finally squawked.

“Hey bro, you’ll never guess who shot at me.”

After a slight pause, Jeff replied. “Did you run into one of your ex-girlfriends?”

Evan laughed. “Good guess, but no. Sean Wheaton’s up here in Draper living in a compound straight outta The Postman.”

“Wheaton?” Jeff said, incredulously. “He survived?”

“He’s fat and happy and surrounded with country boys. Hey, he’s got a question for you. How would you take down a prison full of gangsta-bators?”

Jeff replied immediately, “Don’t assault a prison. A kindergarten class could defend a prison.”

“We weren’t going to assault it, bro. We just wanted to kill everyone inside. There’s a two hundred man army of rapists holed up at the Utah State prison and they’re directly in your path if you’re going to advance to the Point of the Mountain.”

“How do we know they’re rapists?” Jeff asked. “Are there women and kids inside?”

Evan needed to do some more homework. He wasn’t going to take anyone’s word for it when it came to killing a bunch of people. He’d need to see it for himself.

“I’ll work on intel. You think about the assault.” Evan paused, then continued. “We may need to clear the prison before we take up blocking positions in the pass. Give me a few days.”

Jeff went silent for a handful of seconds.

“Okay. I’ll come up with a solution and meet you at your location in seventy-two hours. Give Zach your coordinates. Kirkham out.”

Utah State Penitentiary

Bluffdale, Utah

Jeff, Evan and Wheaton stood beside six, seven-inch mortars and took a final gander at the Utah State Penitentiary. Jeff had shown up the day before with a small team, crammed into the back of the two MRAPs that used to belong to the Salt Lake Unified police department, now permanently on loan to the northern Mormon army under Jeff’s command.

A thousand yards from the perimeter fence of the prison, Jeff had his men assembled the mortars and unpacked sixty, one-gallon paint cans. The entire area for more than five miles around the prison had become an absolute ghost town, without a living soul in the margin between the criminals’ fortress and the people of Salt Lake City.

“What’s in the paint cans?” Wheaton asked.

“Do-it-yourself napalm,” Jeff replied, as though it was no big deal. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that the roofs on those concrete buildings are made of standard petroleum-based EPDM rubber, or something similar. It’s fire resistant but made out of an oil byproduct, so it should burn like crazy once we get it hot enough. Everything burns if you get it hot enough,” Jeff said with a slightly-creepy smile. “I made the napalm out of diesel fuel and styrofoam packing peanuts. Only took us half a day.”

“Hold up,” Evan said with an exhale. “We’re not one hundred percent sure that there are only criminals in there. We’re not ready to flambé a bunch of people quite yet.” Evan had known Jeff for a long, long time, but he still never knew for certain what he was thinking. At war, he’d seen Jeff make decisions, then follow through with merciless commitment. The guy could be a gun machine, through and through.

Wheaton’s crew had kept the prison under 24-7 surveillance for weeks, and they hadn’t seen any innocents come or go. Still, Evan couldn’t imagine that two hundred criminals hadn’t employed slaves—particularly women and children.

“I’m pretty sure there are innocents inside,” Jeff agreed. “Why wouldn’t they have slaves serving them food, doing their cleaning and getting them off? I’d have slaves doing my laundry if I were them.” Jeff went back to his binos. Evan and Wheaton glanced at one another. Evan shrugged.

Evan followed up. “So, yeah. Lord Clovenhoof—I’m guessing you’ve got some ideas? Frankly, I hesitate to ask, because it gives me the creeps, just how good you are at this shit.”

Jeff hung his binos in their harness around his neck. He didn’t smile with his mouth, but his eyes sparkled. “I might have been born in the wrong era—at least that’s what I used to think.”

Jeff could be forgiven his glee, Evan reminded himself. Based on Wheaton’s team’s surveillance, the horde inside the prison were the very worst of the worst—hardened rapists and murderers to-a-man. The southern fundamentalists on the radio weren’t entirely full of shit. The prison was only a couple miles from the county line and the Point of the Mountain pass into Utah County. The dirtbags had been running raids into Utah County virgin territory. In this case, “virgin territory” actually did mean territory full of virgins; hot Mormon farm girls.

The prison horde had to be burned out, come hell or high water. They’d blighted the valley for miles around, killing, robbing and raping until the whole south end of the Salt Lake Valley, except for Wheaton’s fortress, had uprooted and moved to less-dangerous digs.

Purely as a military matter, Jeff’s army couldn’t occupy and defend the county line against the fundamentalists with a seething horde of criminals at their backs. The army would never get a moment’s rest if criminals were running forays into their camp and raids on their supply lines.

“So…what’s the plan Master Sergeant?” Wheaton asked.

Jeff answered the question with a question. “These prison guys don’t know who we are, right?”

Wheaton shook his head and his big beard swung side-to-side. “They know the Lions—us—but they’re probably scoping you guys out right now and wondering ‘what’s up with the MRAPs.’ They probably think you’re cops.”

“Let’s give them a better story to chew on.