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

how much they prayed together, they could not reach an accord. However strongly he felt about his decision to keep his word and go without food, Melinda felt an equal conviction that he should live and eat. She would not hesitate to give up her own life, but she felt utterly certain that Richard had been foreordained to lead the Church in this time of travail.

So when a neighbor came to the door with a case of Meals Ready to Eat, MREs, their discord came to a head. Melinda had been willing to refuse food together and to perish together. But she was not willing to let her husband starve alone. She wouldn’t eat the neighbor’s food unless Richard ate with her.

For three days, she ate nothing. They watched her blood sugar spiral out of control. Finally, Richard relented.

If he’d been willing to order his wife to eat by priesthood authority, she would’ve complied, and all of this would’ve been avoided.

He couldn’t bring himself do it. The moment came when he should’ve commanded her. He held her aging face with great tenderness, both of them weeping, and he opened his mouth to say the words, “in the name of the Priesthood, I command you to eat.”

Yet the words refused to come. He clapped his mouth closed and held her face next to his. Their tears co-mingled and they shared the tangy breath of two people in the midst of starvation.

They’d always been of one heart and one mind. His love for her made him so dizzy that it rivaled his love of the Lord. When they finally opened the foil package and shared the cold meal, they did so with tears in their eyes, holding aging hands, not sure where the disobedience would take them. Never before had they defied God.

The smoke over the Ross Homestead had dissipated. Richard didn’t know if that was good or bad. The shooting had ceased and the day moved on, wiping away the distant violence in the apathy of another, relentless winter day.

Brother Vanderlink—a Rambo type survivalist if ever there was one—had continued to share his food with the prophet and his wife. Hunger had become a distant, foul memory, and in exchange, the President of the Church had lost any sense of what God wanted him to do.

President Thayer didn’t know for sure what the collapse of the United States meant in scriptural terms. He’d studied the dire visions in the book of Revelations and the writings of the prophet Joseph. Even so, he couldn’t really say if they now faced the End of Times, the Apocalypse or the promised Millennium. God hadn’t whispered anything to him in the last two months. All President Thayer knew was confusion and guilt.

Even with a cancerous faith, he reasoned, he could be of some use to the Saints. He could help the people organize food and water. He could inspire them to cooperate. And, just maybe he could get the people of Utah to stop killing one another. Above all else, he could not allow his sin to curse the faithful. Whether he felt worthy or not, they looked to him to lead the Church.

The political leaders of the United States had, one generation at a time, succumbed to their churlishness. Now, everyone paid the price in blood. He’d be damned if he’d let his own failings cause even one child to suffer.

Residence of President Rex D. Burnham

Prophet and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Provo, Utah

Since he received the priesthood at the age of twelve, Rex Burnham knew he would be somebody in the Church. His boyhood bishop had said so—that Rex would “rise to the highest levels of leadership within the Church.” Since that day, his every decision had been dedicated to that end: to rise within the Church.

The evening light painted Mount Timpanogos in purples and pinks set off by the indigo sky as it deepened toward night. From President Burnham’s massive bay window, he could see from one end of Utah Valley to the other. Electric lights twinkled in the south, where Provo blended into Orem which then gave way to the checkerboard, snow-covered fields of Springville and Spanish Fork. Fifty miles to the north, beyond the ridge that divided the valleys, Salt Lake City festered in collapse, but Utah Valley had not collapsed. In a fashion, Utah Valley had risen to its birthright.

He’d personally ordered that power from the wind farm in Spanish Fork Canyon be diverted away from the cities of Provo and Orem to the agricultural towns in the south valley—the towns that continued to feed them from grain silos and livestock feed yards. President Burnham was pleased to see his orders had been followed to the letter. The only lights twinkling to life in the coming dusk were in the agricultural south, around the Provo Temple and in his own home.

Utah Valley had risen to glory with the coming of the End of Times. The valley gleamed in the setting sun under a crystal clear sky, finally free of pollution. North toward Salt Lake, a slab of brown smoke hung in the air. President Burnham couldn’t see past the Traverse Mountains, but a muddy haze threatened to spill over from Salt Lake into their perfect valley. Undoubtedly, the big city burned with a thousand fires as it consumed itself in wickedness.

Two months before, Salt Lake had been the seat of the Church; the home of the Church offices, the Salt Lake Temple and the grand Tabernacle. Today, all of those buildings were probably gutted by fire. As he pictured the once-stately Salt Lake Temple marred by black tongues from every window, President Burnham tingled with excitement. Judgment had come not just to the Gentiles, but to lukewarm Saints as well.

In a whisper, President Burnham quoted Joseph Smith.

“Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen? Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of