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

The black smoke from the Utah State Prison would probably continue for days, but the fight—if you could even call it that—had climaxed. Nobody knew how many burned, skeletal bodies lay twisted and smoldering inside the sixteen buildings of the prison, but there were at least a hundred and fifty half-cooked men laying on the prison grounds.

The criminals finally made their stand with just two buildings intact. The last thirty of gathered behind the final, northern cell blocks.

By then, Jeff’s mortar guys had become so good at placing napalm that they were able to drop canisters in the middle of the knot of men taking cover. With a little help from the last of the bottle rockets, they set that whole section of the prison yard on fire. Even the concrete and asphalt burned brightly, like a demon that wandered around drunk, consuming everything he touched. The criminals’ bodies—blackened men tossed on white patches of snow—reminded Evan of the holocaust museum he’d seen while on leave in Germany.

His father whispered in his ear.

To catch the man-fish, you gotta let the boy-fish be.

Evan cocked his head. Fucking weird. He’d never heard a voice in his head before.

…let the boy-fish be…

“Hold up,” Evan whispered. Jeff looked at him with an uncharacteristic, haunted expression—like he’d seen a ghost.

“HOLD UP,” Evan yelled at the mortarmen. “Stop fucking shooting those things. STOP.”

Jeff was already speaking into his radio and Evan’s own radio blared Jeff’s voice.

“Break, break, break. Cease fire. Hold positions. Take cover. I repeat, CEASE FIRE.”

A still descended on the scene. The moment stretched. Evan wondered if he was losing his shit.

Then the door on the north cell block flew open. The sound of the steel door slamming against the wall took half a second to reach Evan.

BAM!

Three women came out the door first. One was holding a baby. Prison gunmen stood behind each woman, gripping their hair like the reins of a mule. One gunmen shouted, but Evan had no idea what he said. It seemed pretty obvious. The women were their shields, their hostages. The shitbags had finally figured out that the guys shooting napalm at them weren’t another gang—that they were military. If Evan hadn’t pulled the plug when he did, those women and that baby would be bar-be-cue right now. A chill went up his spine.

“Instructions!” one of Evan’s men shouted into his radio, panic in his voice.

“This is Evan. All stations. Chill the fuck out.”

“All stations, take cover. Shoot in self-defense only. Repeat, shoot in self-defense only.” Jeff broadcast over the command channel. “Let ‘em go. Repeat. Let them go.”

Evan looked at Jeff and shrugged. It wasn’t a sexy plan, but it made sense.

Evan jumped on his own channel with his riflemen. “Let them go. Repeat. Let them go.”

“Stand down!” Jeff bellowed at his mortars. “Stand those mortars down.”

The last six criminals from the prison duck-walked the women toward the gate on the west side of the prison. Without needing orders, Tommy—in command of the guys on the west side—pulled his men back behind the cover of his MRAP.

The criminals swiveled and walked sideways, shoving the bawling women and the crying kid between them and Tommy’s guns. They kept the women with them for two hundred yards after they passed through the gate. Then they left the human shields and took off running like jackrabbits.

“We’ll see you on the flip side,” Evan said to himself. “Then you die, cockbags.”

Jeff had his binoculars up to his eyes, watching the criminals run across a field of sagebrush toward an alfalfa farm in the distance.

“So what was that, Big Guy?” Evan asked Jeff.

“Six squirters. It wasn’t worth putting the women and the kid at risk to shoot them.” Jeff’s face was in the binos. The human shield women milled around, confused. Tommy looked like he was getting a detail together to go collect them.

“No, Einstein. I meant what happened? I saw your face. Why did you call cease fire—that was before they egressed the building? I saw you do it.”

Jeff scanned the prison. “Why did YOU call cease fire? You called it first.”

“It was something my dad said once…” Evan’s voice trailed off. “It was like…”

Evan stopped talking. He didn’t have words for it and he wasn’t sure he wanted to put it out there, anyway.

Their radios squawked. “Evan. Tommy here. We’re gonna give the women a few MREs and send them back toward town. Good?”

“Affirmative,” Evan answered.

Jeff had stopped glassing the prison. Jake’s team breached the fence and they mopped up the criminal wounded. The occasional gunshot echoed in the distance as the Homestead riflemen put them out of their misery. There would be no medical treatment for rapists.

Jeff looked at Evan with his “lizard face” as Evan called it. Jeff was neither surprised nor bored. Neither interested, nor disinterested. He was just…there, looking at Evan. It used to give him the willies when Jeff did that, but he’d long ago grown used to it. It was his resting face—Inscrutable Caveman Jeff.

Jeff spoke. “If it makes you feel any better, I felt it too. Something or someone put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me back right before they came out that door.” Jeff turned away and watched the final act of the massacre of evil men.

Officially, the weirdest thing Evan had ever seen.

What Jeff described wasn’t exactly what Evan had felt, but he wasn’t going to argue. Close enough for government work.

With the destruction of the prison complete, there would be a couple hours of daylight before the Homestead squad needed to bunker up behind the walls of the Lion garrison for the night.

Jeff wanted to make the most of his time in the south end of the valley, but more than anything, he wanted to get away from the prison and get the stink out of his clothes. He smelled like a trashcan fire. He needed some fresh, cold air in his lungs.

He’d left the Homestead leadership in disarray when he’d come to Evan’s call. Before